The Ultimate Answer to Kings

On this morning’s Monday water run I thought I was gonna get a chance to be the big white knight and only ended up perplexing myself. There was a bit of a line at the water dispenser; ahead of us was an old lady in a minivan that was almost as old, and when she tried to crank her engine the starter relay just clicked. Well, no problem – D&L have a fairly late-model truck and a nice high-class and well-cared-for set of jumpers, so we’ll be able to fix this in no time. D was still filling water bottles, so L brought the truck up and I connected the batteries with a superior flourish … and it did no good at all. I could not get a good connection no matter how I tried. Didn’t help that D&L’s truck has a battery box with exterior connections that clearly weren’t meant for jumper clamps, but even so I should have been able to do something right.

About the time I was genuinely ready to give up and leave the old lady to the mercies of whoever she could get on the phone, another cedar rat pulled up in a seventies Ford that looked like every further yard of progress might be its last. Seeing the predicament, he rummaged around in the ice and snow filling his truck bed and eventually pried a set of weathered and beat-up cables out of the ice. I shook my head as he opened his hood, but took one end of the cables and connected the old lady’s battery. Immediately I got nice sparks on her negative post, and almost immediately she could start her engine. Go figure.

Torso Boy got a scare a few evenings ago. He has a nighttime ritual that he just loves: He goes out to the juniper grove by the porch and I light it up while he has a last pee. Then he comes straight in, gets a treat, and runs into the bedroom so I can pull back the blankets, pat the sheet to invite him up, then rub his head and tell him how great he is. We do this every night, and that’s his bedtime. Well, a couple of evenings ago he went down the stairs just in time for a nearby coyote pack to start singing to the moon. That’s not an every-night occurrence and he found it startling. His ruff went up and he started barking at the interruption, then seemed to realize just how dumb that was because he forgot all about urination and decided it was time to go inside for treats and bedtime right f’ing now. The next evening we started the bedtime ritual but he got as far as the edge of the porch then turned around and came right back to me, staring up and wagging his stump a mile a minute. I kept telling him to “go pee,” but he wasn’t having any of it. Damned if he didn’t want me to go down to the trees with him. I wasn’t going to encourage a phobia about peeing in the evening – that’s why I stand right there with a bright light, to keep the predators away – so I let him back inside. A couple hours later he really had to go, listened to my encouragement and got the job done. Then last night he seemed to have forgotten all about the matter. But that coyote pack certainly must have made an impression if he remembered it from one evening to the next.

I can be a cheap old bastard sometimes – this morning as I got ready for the water run I agonized over what to do with this last 3/4 of a gallon of drinking water in this one bottle. I had filled my filter pitcher, the teapot, and I’d cleaned and refilled TB’s water bowl but there was still just too much water in this bottle to throw away. Considered filling my canteens but this time of year I don’t have much use for them and don’t like to keep them full lest they mildew. I really needed to refill the bottle, but I just couldn’t bring myself to pour that 20 cents worth of water down the drain. Finally…

…I filled the pan I normally use for heating wash water. I knew at the time it made exactly zero sense – I was not really saving anything by heating up drinking rather than well water. But it was the principle of the thing, dammit. 🙂

Too hot!

I always argue with myself over whether I ought to stoke the woodstove that one last time before sunup, when the wall thermometer says low sixties and it’s going to go up from there at least a little no matter what I do. That display is up against an outside wall, so natch it’s always going to read lower than the actual air temp.

So this morning I went ahead and stoked it because why not, and then went off for my chicken chore walkie before the sun came up over the rim and became an issue. Came back half an hour or so later, and the temperature downwind of that cool heat-powered fan was stifling. I was already sweating in my coat, and by the time I got it and my hoodie peeled off I was swimming. I’ll be leaving for a dollar store run with D&L in about two hours, and maybe I need to change into something a bit less gamey.

Thing is – this is going to sound like the very model of a first-world problem – by this point in winter I’ve usually just acclimated myself to a lower temperature, maintaining body warmth with layers. But now the propane heater lets me sleep comfortably through the night with just a hoodie and a Corgi and a couple of blankets, and the Lair’s wall insulation holds heat so it’s normally at least 20 degrees above ambient inside anyway. So less morning fire goes a lot farther than it did a few years ago, and it’s kind of forcing my winter habits back into the twentieth century.

Guess I could just open a window if it bugs me so much…

Yesterday’s solo post was supposed to only be a placeholder while I dealt with some photographs, but that’s not the way things worked out. In fact I could barely even post that screenshot, and I couldn’t download my photos from the majik elff boxx at all – In fact all day was pretty much a bandwidth-free period.

I woke yesterday to grey sky and a couple of inches of new snow…

So it wasn’t very cold at all – in fact I never lit the fire, just baked bread and waited for the oven and the sun to warm the cabin, which it gradually did.

But first I had a fairly abbreviated walkie to take care of chicken chores. Turns out their water wasn’t even completely frozen. I’m not a fan of winter – at all – but on such a morning there’s something charming about fields of new snow on which you get to make the very first tracks…

I had to go to D&L’s to do the noon feeding; looks like Thursday is going to be D’s regular doctor appointment for a while. Already being out in the Jeep, TB and I did an early afternoon chicken visit to get that out of the way. Aaand then I made a serious tactical error – The sun had come out and the afternoon warmed up nicely, almost into the forties. Since the yard spigot was running and the chicken water bottles were almost all empty, I filled them and then optimistically put them into the Jeep for the morning…

Yeah. I have no idea what I was thinking. Clear sky means pleasant afternoon – actually yesterday the wind got a bit much but I take what I can get this time of year – and truly frigid nights. So now 2/3 of my chicken water is frozen absolutely solid and it may or may not thaw enough to be useful by this afternoon’s chicken chores. If I’d just driven them to the powershed yesterday everything would have been fine. That’s pretty much on me.

That oopsie aside, today has shaped up quite lovely. It’s not even eleven and already above freezing, so until the sun converts all this snow to mud and makes walking a huge trial I’m loving it and looking for things to work on outside.

…in the face of the facts and of all logic. Almost.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the wit, wisdom and social commentary of gun grabber extraordinaire – Shannon Watts!

Please explore this reasoning with me: According to Ms. Watts, who has presumably given this matter a lot of thought, the whole West Freeway Church of Christ affair was made possible, indeed was caused, by the relaxation of a law against carrying weapons in a church. Because, presumably, not only would the intended victims have been unarmed and helpless under the terms of such a law but the shooter would not have been able to bring a shotgun to a church service.

Because gun carrying in a church would have been illegal.

Like mass murder.

(Headslap)

H/T

I don’t feel dead. But hey, maybe everybody else is. Maybe the coastal cities were deluged too quickly to report their own destruction?

Report Hyped by Climate Alarmists Warned of Million of Deaths, Nuclear War, Sunken Major Cities by 2020

“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world,” the report added.

The alarmist document went on to claim that nations would resort to using nuclear weapons to protect dwindling food supplies, a situation that would “bring the planet to the edge of anarchy.”

—

The authors of the report, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, also asserted that “By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war,” causing widespread “crop failure” and “famine.”

So apparently, the UK is just 5 days away from being plunged into a “Siberian climate” and millions of people are about to die in a giant nuclear carnage caused by global food shortages and monster droughts.

I’m a hermit, not a scientist, and for all I know the global climate might be changing slightly here and there. Seems no more dramatic than usual around here, but I don’t know how indicative of change elsewhere that might be.

What I do know is that when somebody tells you the sky is falling and that your only hope for salvation is to turn your life and all your life decisions over to them – well, put one hand on your wallet and the other on your holster, son, because you’re not talking to a friend.

Have a safe and prosperous new year!

Look what I got yesterday!

From a weekender neighbor I don’t even officially do work for! I just swing by his place from time to time to leave tracks (I have a theory that marks of recent activity keep curious scroungers away, and so far it hasn’t been disproven) and make sure it’s still all there. And he never asked me to do it, so it isn’t as if he owes me anything – I only do it to help keep a little bit of order in my immediate neighborhood.

Anyway, you know how I’m always going on about synchronicity – well, it’s been really cold so I’ve been burning a lot of propane, and I had that week-long gig on the other side of the plateau so I’ve been burning a lot of gasoline, which basically meant that on yesterday’s regular water run I needed to buy all the things.

And it was the end of the month, so Big Brother’s monthly care package wasn’t in my hands. I had Patreon money on the debit card so I could do the gasoline but I planned to dip into my cash reserve for propane. No emergency, obviously propane costs are going to go up quite a lot in winter and that’s what the reserve is for, but still irritating. And then I opened this unexpected card and found a very unexpected gift, literally minutes before I went on the water run. Nice!

…and then as if to keep me balanced, I came home from the water run and found that the #40 bottle running the bedroom heater* had sucked dry. So my propane supply wasn’t topped off even for a comforting minute. Figures.

Anyway, yesterday I got BB’s care package and in an hour I’m going up to get paid for last week’s gig, so I’m flush for cash for January. So it’s all good.

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* Yes, I’m aware that I need longer hoses. Thank you for not pointing out my lack of foresight.

Two days of off-and-on snow with lots of wind. We actually got some drifting, which hardly ever happens and which let TB demonstrate his technique for getting through snow higher than his legs are tall. A smaller dog would hop from place to place but Torso Boy, who spent the bulk of his life in Wyoming and really isn’t as small a dog as I think of him as being, just snowplows through it. Can’t be comfortable on his nethers, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s not much interested in spending a lot of time outdoors, though.

Landlady’s panels never got cleared because she didn’t come up this weekend. Their placement is an object lesson in why you should check for shadows in choosing where to build your rack. If she lived here full-time I’d probably agitate for the removal of that tree, but it’s really only an issue around the solstice. Not much can be done about the chickenhouse/powershed, though.

Ever since I built the Secret Lair the kitchen stove has operated on one small propane bottle. And it never fails…

It simply never fails. The pressure never fails on a mild, dry winter morning. No.

It invariably gets me out in this.

Yesterday it snowed and snowed – and the snow couldn’t decide if it wanted to melt or freeze solid. Overnight it made up its mind, so it wasn’t so much replace the propane bottle as chip out the propane bottle and then replace it. Ditto the wrench, which was buried under all the ice on the shelf above the bottle (which was one of my better ideas, BTW.) And get it done before your fingers freeze. Then you can go in and make your coffee. After you remember to re-light the oven pilot.

Yeah – come Spring I need to rearrange a few things and get another of those bypass regulators for the kitchen propane.

Yesterday’s promised snowstorm delayed and delayed, and then never really amounted to much. It put down some wet snow in the late afternoon which later froze, and then maybe half a inch of powder on top of that. So…

…take your time and let the taught-to-drive-in-Michigan instincts flow through you.

I had this really busy, cluttered morning planned, and nearly all of it got cancelled on account of weather. But I still had to cross the plateau one last time to feed T&S’s horse, and I still had to do chicken chores. Walking to Landlady’s might have worked out just fine, and it might have ended halfway in either direction with a broken kneecap so I gave up walkie plans and just drove – very carefully. And now I guess I’ll go back to my tea and book, because I’m sure not going anywhere else.

Not much more than an inch of snow fell early this morning, and it stopped around eight – exactly like the weather report predicted. The same report that predicts it’ll start back up soon and basically snow all day. No word about wind.

So I took that opportunity to go take care of T&S’s horse, double-feeding her in case it’s not safe to go back this afternoon. If weather allows I’ll go, but her water won’t re-freeze between now and four in the PM and she won’t fade away from hunger – so I’m not risking a stranding to do it.

In the meanwhile the chickens still need me, and that I can happily do on foot. It’s one of those mornings where the snow seems more pleasant than not as long as you wear crampons and watch your footing; it’s a few degrees above freezing but the snow hasn’t converted to mud yet, so it’s a nice morning for a walkie and I’m off to get mine right now.

I know for a fact that there was no snow on the ground at 4 ayem, because Torso Boy and I went out for a pee at that time. Then when I crawled out of bed for serious an hour and a half later, I had the suggestion that the ground outside was of a … lighter hue. And when the sky finally lightened enough to show details…

It’s not snowing hard, and hopefully between now and 9ish it’ll stop and let me go feed T&S’s horse. I remember what happened the last time I got caught in a snowstorm without windshield wipers, but them’s the breaks.

I don’t celebrate Christmas or any holiday especially, and as far as I know neither does Torso Boy. But it was a cloudy, blustery day perfect for sitting inside where it’s warm, and I decided that holiday or no, it was a good time to have a little feast.

So I ordered my servants to get cookin’ – and when nobody answered, I did it myself.

Fresh bread – it was baking day anyway – canned veggies and a couple of those pork chops I put up for winter two months ago, marinaded in chili sauce. Lovely! TB approved as well, though he had nothing good to say about canned peas. He didn’t get any of the wine, he’s not even nine years old yet.

As on Christmas and indeed every other day this week, I had to go up the plateau to feed T&S’s horse. The morning was frosty, though not especially cold…

…and as I turned the Jeep into the sun the windshield decided to fog right back up. This was a problem, since the defroster setting that had always worked before decided not to blow on the glass…

…and there was nothing to do but stop until I worked out the problem and could see again. This is one of the advantages of living way out in the boonies; if you just stop in the middle of the road, nobody’s going to complain. Or even notice.

Fed T&S’s one remaining horse, an old mare that’s gone damned near feral by now – They both had practically back-to-back serious riding injuries several years ago now, and decided that the fun of riding half-broke horses wasn’t worth the near certainty of death or crippling wounds. Since then the horses just stood around on the bare dirt that was their “pasture” and consumed hay, giving nothing back. One died last year, and I think T&S are just kind of hoping to outlive this one. They went to visit family for the holiday this week and I’ve been up to their barn twice a day all week. Didn’t have to climb the mesa to care for their dogs this time though, they took them with.

This was also the day D&L had to go to the biggish town about 35 miles away for D’s doctor appointment, and so I also gave their horses a feeding at noonish.

A pretty day today, hardly any clouds, though it turned windy this afternoon. That’s supposed to change overnight; tomorrow’s supposed to cloud up and bring snow as well as be substantially colder. We’ll see; so far things have been pretty mild, but we’re headed for the new year and that usually brings weather trouble for some reason.

Only those who have actually raised a baby will completely – and I do mean completely – sympathize with the conclusion.

There’s a shorter version but it misses the funny part at the end. I’m also a fan of Samuel L. Jackson’s take on the problem (very much NSFW).

TB and I are cocooning in the Lair and nothing much is going on, so in lieu of political filler things are currently a little quiet on the TUAK page. But just so you know I’m prepared to be inconsistent on that ‘no politics’ thing…

Have a very pleasant holiday. And best wishes to all TUAK readers and others of good will for good things in the coming year.

I never used to pay the slightest attention to it – in fact for much of my adult life I couldn’t even have defined it with assurance, it was that insignificant. But off-grid, with improvised, scrounged, inadequate homemade housing and infrastructure, the winter solstice seems like it’s everything. And year after year TUAK readers patiently suffered along with my inevitable complaint, “I hate winter.” Because it seemed like I was bloody freezing half the time.

But in the past few years things finally turned around. And now my monotonous refrain becomes “Look how well the Lair is doing!”

Shirtsleeve temperatures in late December did not used to be a thing, I assure you. Certainly not at six in the blessed ayem. It’s not coldest at the Solstice, certainly – January is the coldest month, overall. And for some reason you can almost confidently expect a cold snap right at New Years that will be the event by which the winter is remembered – the desert does like its drama. But December is the first and darkest month of winter – from then on at least you can make a game of seeing how much earlier every morning the sunlight first clears the ridge and appears on the Lair’s wall – if indeed it’s clear enough to the east for the sun to do its thing. You still have the cold bit to slog through, but it feels as if you’ve hit the bottom and are headed slowly uphill even if it’s not really true. I fully understand, now, why Northern Europeans used to make a big deal of the Solstice.

Happily, it’s not the big deal here that it used to be. The Lair finally began turning into a snug place to cocoon through winter in ’15, after I finally got it wrapped and sided. By then, too, my chimney fire phobia began to fade after that memorable morning in February 2012. The fear of fire roaring up the stovepipe wasn’t gone by any means but it had at least begun to fade to where I was no longer willing to shiver rather than use my perfectly good woodstove to its potential.

And with the new siding, the stove’s potential was – almost shirtsleeve temperatures. Winter became not entirely negligible, but no longer a trial.

Then came the summer of 2017 and the bedroom addition – providentially on the windward side of the cabin – with its much-improved insulation and vented space heater! Ha! No more piling on blankets to keep you from waking up shivering at 2 AM every damned night. And throwing off the blankets at five to go light the fire in the main cabin is no longer a test of character.

And now, when neighbors text after a cold snap like the one we just came through to ask, “Are you staying warm?” I can chuckle and reply, “Snug as a bug.”

I don’t care what the calendar says, Winter Is Here. Which means one of the first essential daily chores of the Compleat Desert Hermit is to get liquid water to his chickens.

And from now until sometime in late February or March, that’s going to be an issue needing address because the waterers absolutely will freeze overnight. Normally you’d just get a heating pad to keep the bottom of the waterer above freezing – but off-grid, electrical heaters are usually a no-no. Seriously, one of the most useful technological advances for off-grid electrical systems was the compact fluorescent lamp. Heat takes way too much juice – and particularly when it’s expected to run all night long.

So, as with most things, I fall back on redundancy.

Even if the air temperature never gets above freezing all day, the sun will heat up that south wall until it’s uncomfortably warm. Replace the frozen waterer with a spare from the powershed – which seldom goes far below freezing, though it may not be warm enough to thaw ice – and put the frozen one on the pad in front of the wall. When you come back in the afternoon, it’ll be well-thawed and ready to clean and store in the powershed for the next rotation.

You gotta understand and take advantage of the resources you have, because they may be completely different from the resources you grew up used to.

I genuinely sympathize.

Joel to the Past: I’m sorry I laughed at Murduck and said it was the most idiotic product ever packaged and sold in the western world.

Okay – Murduck may have been the most annoying product in history, but he is now proven not to have been the most ridiculous. That seat is taken.

Introducing…

I am not making this up.

37^o in the main cabin when I rolled out around 5:30, and it’s struggling to get above 60. Yesterday temp stayed below freezing all day and the sky was clear so you knew it would get good and cold overnight.

That new(ish – this is its first winter) big pressure gauge on the sink gives instant reassurance that no pipes split overnight. 🙂 I truly think/hope I finally have the insulation issue sorted out well enough I can be confident of getting through a winter without busted pipes – but since this is the first test, confidence is not yet justified. Only hope.

Double coat be damned, Torso Boy considered it a one-human night at minimum. Never came out from under the blankets – I truly don’t know how he breathes through the night – and wanted full-body contact at all times. Roll over to get a tissue from the nightstand, and you can expect a wrestle for bed space before you can go back to sleep.