The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Hardly beautiful, will probably rain later. But it’s still cool and first thing in the morning there’s no wind to speak of.

And for the first time this year I rode the bike from Ian’s to town to Ian’s, no cheating. First time in the year it always seems like such a big deal, so I have to psych myself up to do it and rediscover that it really isn’t. The fat bike is so much easier to use on rough roads, and of course I’m not working myself into arrhythmia pedaling up hills. But still: 10+ miles going, and…

…11+ miles coming back. There’s juice left in the battery at the end but you want to make sure you start with a full charge unless you want to get out and push on the last serious upgrade. That bar graph charge indicator is imprecise to say the least. It’ll say there’s plenty of charge left when in fact you no longer have the full 750 watts available – and you’ll find out about that at the worst time in the worst way. And I don’t think Lance Armstrong could get that big heavy bike up that particular hill without help from the motor. With help, even the stiff old one-legged guy can do it.

Also, ow my butt.

Got back to Ian’s and found that I had a boarder who was unhappy with the accommodations!

Somebody’s looking for nesting material. That’s not good: I don’t want to spend the summer hunting down a new generation of indoor mice. Thought about moving the one active kitchen trap to the bathroom, only to find…

…that a pregnant female mouse had taken the bait at last. (chicken skin. Never fails for long.) Is it the same pregnant female mouse? Time will tell, but clearly the warm season contest is on. I’d love to know how they’re getting into the Cave this time.

It’s like some weird tradition at this point.

The bucket trap on my porch* never catches just one mouse. I get why they’re attracted to it: If you have a bucket of water sitting around overnight in the desert further bait is really not required. But if I climbed a ramp to a tank of water, even if dying of thirst, and saw a drowned body inside, I think I could probably resist the temptation to dive in with it.

So what is it? Are they holding hands and jumping together, a mousey sort of suicide pact? Is one trying to rescue the other? Are they really just that amazingly oblivious?

One good thing…

It’s the desert. I’ll never run out of places to dispose of bodies so it isn’t necessary to fish them out, wrap them in plastic and stink up the trash barrel with them. Some enterprising coyote or badger or whatever will dine well tonight.

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*And why oh why are so many mice attracted so unerringly to my porch at night? It really doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Not that I’m demanding logic from mice, but come on.

These little barrel-shaped cacti aren’t very common around here but I seek to know where they are in my stomping grounds because a) they are absolutely paved with the most evil spines ever: Surgically fine and brittle and hooked and barbed to boot, and b) they have the prettiest spring flowers in the whole desert. They don’t bloom every year, but…

This looks like it’s going to be a good year for them.

Night before last I got to bed late and woke (with some help from you-know-who) far too early. As a result, by 7pm I was nodding. I’m a big boy and can decide my own bedtime, so I said screw it and went straight to bed. And straight to sleep. Meaning, of course, that I was awake at 4 after nine straight refreshing hours of sleep. I don’t often get active before Tobie does but this morning he had to follow me for once.

Also we’re heading into a rainy week, it seems: First thunderstorm of a projected several happened yesterday, so the day didn’t dawn cloud-free. And it made for the prettiest sunrise in a while, noted during the morning walkie.

Wasn’t sure the camera on the “new” iPhone would catch the sunrays, but it kind of did. And speaking of the new phone…

I am, obviously, not a customer for the latest and greatest of every generation of smartphone. For a long time I was one of those boomers who delighted in bragging that he didn’t have and wouldn’t have one. Of course I dropped both claims about five and a half years ago when Landlady gifted me her cast-off iPhone 6. It is, as she predicted, transformative technology: It changes the way you spend your day, not always in good ways. Like everyone else, I was quickly hooked. But neato as it is, the 6 was old when I got it and lately (I don’t know which) either being deliberately crippled by its software or just physically going downhill. In particular it was getting harder and harder to keep it connected in our patch of boonies which is at the best of times pretty damned far from the nearest cell tower.

Not long ago, Big Brother gifted me his cast-off iPhone 8+. And in among my usual boomer complaints (“The button is here now when it’s supposed to be here! Dang it!”) I found that it is also more powerful in unexpected ways. The (originally excellent) camera is notably better. I get a lot more range out of a bluetooth earpiece. And the phone works in places the old one never worked before even at the best of times, like…

…Ian’s front yard, which was always an absolute dead zone. There’s a signal booster inside the Cave but it never used to be any use outside the Cave itself. Now I can listen to podcasts while doing every phase of laundry. Still not in the powershed, though. The “new” phone is better, not omnipotent. 🙂

I was reminded just now of a story I heard a long time ago. Looked it up so as to get it right…

Nasrudin was caught in the act and sentenced to die. Hauled up before the king, he was asked by the Royal Presence: “Is there any reason at all why I shouldn’t have your head off right now?” To which he replied: “Oh, King, live forever! Know that I, the mullah Nasrudin, am the greatest teacher in your kingdom, and it would surely be a waste to kill such a great teacher. So skilled am I that I could even teach your favorite horse to sing, given a year to work on it.”

The king was amused, and said: “Very well then, you move into the stable immediately, and if the horse isn’t singing a year from now, we’ll think of something interesting to do with you.”

As he was returning to his cell to pick up his spare rags, his cellmate remonstrated with him: “Now that was really stupid. You know you can’t teach that horse to sing, no matter how long you try.”

Nasrudin’s response: “Not at all. I have a year now that I didn’t have before. And a lot of things can happen in a year. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die.

“And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing.”

That story meant a lot to me. Sometimes I called it the triumph of hope over despair. Sometimes the triumph of hope over experience. Sometimes, at the risk of seeming overdramatic, it kept me alive.

I have lived a long and often unpleasant life filled with many misfortunes. Most were painful; some were positively horrid. There were times when things got really bad, when I thought there was no point in going on. There were times when I thought the smartest thing I could do to deal with my troubles was blowjob my .45 and get the nightmare over with.

I never did that, obviously, and the reason I never did that was because as long as I was still alive there was still some chance that sometime, somehow, life might just possibly stop sucking so damned much. If I kept going, and if I kept open to what came.

And one great day, my chance came. And since then my life has been happy. Hard, sometimes, but happy.

I’m reminded of a friend. He’s smarter, prettier and far more gifted than I am but his enthusiasms seemed to drift, dropping one opportunity after another to chase (what I took as) some other dream. This went on for years: I began to fear that my friend’s doom was an inability to focus on any one thing to the point of success, until he would end a failure despite his many obvious virtues.

As usual, I was completely wrong. I judged him according to my own experience, imagining that he was drifting from chance to chance when what he was really doing was determinedly seeking the right chance. And when he found that chance, he latched onto it and drove it with energy and skill I never could have mustered. Now, more than a decade later, he’s prosperous and busy and – as far as I can tell – very, very happy.

It’s interesting to contrast the difference in our two lives. I bounced from mistake to mistake, drifting through despair until I found a means of escape and when I found it I determined that I would do anything – even get constructive – to make it stick. My friend was being constructive all along: He just took a while to find the one thing he most wanted to build.

We really only had one thing in common – we never gave up on the hope that at some point, despite the odds, if we kept at it, the horse might sing.

I know this will come as a complete surprise and I hope most of you don’t lose faith in me and my friends as building contractors. But yeah. The truth is none of us had a freaking clue. It’s a mystery to me how so much of it worked out so well.

Here’s something that didn’t work out well at all, and it’s been bugging the crap out of me.

The idea was to bury the powershed under the same sand that covered the Dome. But the powershed’s roof is just plywood – in fact at one point it needed emergency repair when the loader moving the sand tried to fall through it – and so Ian bought a bunch of pool liner to waterproof the plywood.

Trouble is…

The sand didn’t cooperate. In hindsight everything would have worked fine if we’d simply put a lip around the edge of the roof that sticks out. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, always bringing glorious clarity far too late.

Anyway. That pool liner has been flapping in the wind and drying in the sun ever since. And I’ve been meaning to get around to doing something about it, no matter how ugly, for quite a while. Since the immediate forecast calls for a week of rain starting tomorrow, today seemed like a pretty good time to finally get around to it.

Patch the liner and secure it to the wood. I’ve done this before and the wind just tore it loose. Then…

Take some spare flashing that’s been laying around and screw that sucker down.

Ugly? You bet. But I bet the wind can’t tear the liner loose anymore. And all I care about is keeping the rain off the wood. Ugly, at this point, is non-negotiable.

Say what you will about the pear tree, it’s certainly hardened to local conditions. In 2011 and 2012 we planted a whole bunch of fruit trees in what was supposed to be a veritable food plantation on Ian’s property. We went to extensive, nay, extreme measures to prepare the sites for the plantings. The trees got watered regularly with the really big irrigation network we laid down. Every one of those trees died like wimpy bitches, and they wasted no time doing it.

Meanwhile…

The single tree I planted in Spring 2011 got stuck in a hole behind what later became the woodshed. I remember to water it maybe twice a summer in dry years. I think I’ve weeded around it twice in 12 years, and every other year it gets a halfhearted pruning. In those negligent conditions it has – by desert fruit tree standards – thrived. Hell, it even fruited year before last and that makes it unique in the annals of Gulch fruit trees.

This morning I hoed the weeds away from it and laid down a mulch of rotted chicken shit and straw, and other than a few waterings that’s all the 2023 care it’s going to get and more than it gets most years. The perversity of the universe tending as it does to a maximum, the poor thing will probably die now.

Of course one precaution that absolutely must take place is the replacement of the anticattle fencing, because obviously.

Nice cool morning for a walkie…

The cliff roses are in full bloom. These are the only really aromatic flowers in the Gulch, so right now everything smells like too much perfume.

The yucca are just beginning to bloom. In a week these flowers will be everywhere.

And these things are underfoot everywhere you look. No idea what they are.

May is my favorite month.

Monday morning water run got cancelled. Don’t know if it’ll be rescheduled for later in the week or no. No problem, I have plenty of drinking water and plenty of groceries but this did provide an excellent excuse to go for a bike ride. Lovely clear sky, mild temp, no wind (yet: It’s pretty important to do this in the morning in Spring) means let’s go even though there’s no real need.

I love this thing.

Every spring I have to get my wind back before I can take long dog-less walkies. Because I hate cold, and mostly cocoon through winters. The dog helps with the conditioning process but he can’t come on real expeditions. When Tobie and I go for walkies it’s all about Tobie; hard to get any real work done. But I’ve been feeling pretty good lately, stump and knees and back are doing okay, and I wanted to take a serious walk into the nothin’.

So I did. But I didn’t get as far as I wanted to. (Pics below the fold) Continue reading →

A gift from Ian I’ve been milking for well over a year…

Shared a glass with a guest in January, leaving one shot in the bottle. Finally figured what the hell, may as well polish it off.

If you fancy the water of life and ever get a chance, you have to try this.

Busy day. Did laundry and yard chores till 11:30 when I had to run meet D&L for the long drive to the Palace of Food. Didn’t actually get home to the Lair till 3:30 because I walked a bunch of heavy stuff to Ian’s Cave and by the time I got all the groceries put away in all their various places I was beat. So I crashed for an hour, then it was time for Tobie’s walkie when I realized I’d neglected to wash a load of t-shirts*. I spent that time packaging meat for the freezer and we didn’t get home for good until like quarter to six. I’m ready for bed. Tobie walked into the cabin and straight to the gun rack where I’d hung my bag after coming in from the store, and stuck his nose directly into the bag. Where I’d completely forgotten all about…

…his new chew bone. And no more fooling around, Uncle Joel, Tobie wanted his bone. He’d clearly been smelling it for hours.

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*It looks like it’s going to be a weevil season: The tin shed where I store seasonal stuff is rodent-proof but not bug-proof and an infestation has already begun. Yay, another chore: I need to empty and clean out the shed.

Tomorrow is Senior Day at the Palace of Food, which has become a monthly ritual with D & L & I with the continuing deterioration of the crappy little food market in the crappy little town nearest where I live. I eat a lot of eggs, and lately I’ve been stockpiling eggs by the month because they’re a lot less heartbreakingly expensive at the Palace of Food than locally. I knew by this weekend that I wasn’t quite going to make it through to Senior day on the current stockpile, but didn’t worry about it to the point of rationing because I could pick up a dozen on Monday. Right? Because I’m a putz.

This happens so often as not to come as any surprise. And why I just naturally assumed it wouldn’t happen this week, being the worst possible time, is just a proof that I never got over my cockeyed optimism in the face of reality.

So this morning…

Last of the Mohicans, baby. I missed it by one day. I’ll have to get creative with tomorrow’s breakfast.

The woodstove has been put to bed for weeks now…

…but I left the pilot lit in the bedroom heater for that occasional frosty night.

But now it’s May and they’ll become rare enough that I don’t need to spend propane on specific precautions. Gas valve set to “off,” gas line valve closed, the most full propane bottle sealed and the most empty left open just to keep the line pressurized because getting this pilot to light on an unpressurized gas line is a memorable PITA. Dust the stove off and cover it with a cloth because it will promptly start accumulating belt kibble.

Then there’s the semiannual Rotation of the Closet Pole…

…reminding me that I need a new clothing cull: There’s a generation of “too nice to actually use” winter shirts that will probably find their way to the thrift store. I kind of traditionally get first refusal on warm clothes neighbors are throwing away, and being scarred by some past really cold winters I’m mostly incapable of refusing. Since there’s no longer any real need to stockpile layers of woolies, they accumulate and get in the way. But the winter stuff I do actually use goes under plastic against the constant desert dust, and the thin summer rags come out.

😀 May First! May is my favorite month of the year.

4:53. Near as makes no difference, it’s time for supper and evening walkie.

And you better believe he knows it.

Seriously, this dog’s sense of when the important stuff is supposed to happen verges on uncanny.

I don’t buy chicks at the local feed store, having done it once and run into severe quality control issues. But I welcome the sight of new chicks as a sign of Spring.

And Phoebe, who’s been hanging around for a couple of weeks, finally got busy.

This is the approach to the Lair from the wash on a pretty extremely typical Spring day…

As you see, excitement galore.

On the one hand this is exactly the way I like it: People come here and exclaim at the quiet, and the quiet is possibly the biggest reason I love it here so much. No traffic noise. No crime worries, no utility bills, no civil ‘servants’ decrying my chronic inability to submit my Form 27B/6 in proper order.

On the other hand, the Gulch has become a great deal tamer than it used to be. For the first several years of my residence life at the Gulch was a different sort of sea of troubles – constant infrastructure breakdowns, freezing and baking with the vagaries of weather through inadequate housing, issues with hostile wildlife. It’s the sort of problem-strewn life that, quite to my surprise, suited me rather well. I won’t say I never pounded my breast and cursed the gods over some new midnight plumbing failure but in general I became a much calmer and happier man here even in the worst of times than I ever was when I was trying to be Mr. Suburban Man.

To the extent physically possible the troubles have largely been sorted. Which is good, of course. And which has left me … rather bored.

And none too soon, honestly, because I am paying the price for an inadvertently adventurous life in the form of greatly increasing – shall we say skeletal issues. At one time or another I have outraged virtually all my major joints and as I approach 70 it is coming home to roost. I’m getting a lot more chair time than is quite right for a beautiful Spring. Certainly Tobie thinks so.

“I’m just saying that was a pretty pathetic walkie, Uncle Joel.”

Case in point: I started carrying a .44 revolver about 12 years ago after two scary incidents involving local wildlife, where I had a .45 1911 in my hand and felt naked. Seriously, I carry a .44 Magnum every day, usually loaded with .44 Special hollowpoints but also on my belt I’ve got speedloaders with everything from cheap plinking handloads to hardcast bear loads, and I do that because once upon a time I never knew what I might have to shoot during the course of any given day. And I kind of liked it that way. “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” All that happy horseshit.

But it’s just not necessary anymore. I spoke with my friend Ian last weekend and he’s going to shop for a modern 9mm for the old man, more as a badge of office than as anything really needed, because frankly life here has gotten so tame it’s time to unburden my belt of the hand cannon and its ammunition limber. It will simplify life – and I like acquiring new guns as much as the next guy – but also it will make me a little sad.

Three years ago I wrote, “It might be time to retire the blog because it’s less and less about the adventure of roughing it out alone in the boonies and more about an old man quietly living in a cabin with a Corgi.” There have been troubles and adventures since then – little did I know how soon that damned Corgi was going to break my heart – and no doubt there will be troubles and adventures in the future. But the slide toward quiet old age has continued apace. Makes it a little hard to come up with interesting blog fodder, is all.

I really prefer BDUs in the summer. But the older I get the more wearing surplus camo at my age seems a little silly. So when I got a chance to send a little non-essential money Amazon’s way I began transitioning to solid-color pants. And for a few years there, the patching material stayed in my sewing box.

But all things get old…

This little project had to wait till I remembered where I stashed my clothes iron. Now I’ll spend the evening watching a movie and stitching around the edge of the patch so it’ll stay put.

Meanwhile I got a nice surprise…

I think my last use of the iron predated the final power system improvement, and now it doesn’t even do alarming things to the indicated voltage!

Once again, nothing much going on here. Weather’s much more mild, befitting late April. Wind is trying to scour the earth bare, also befitting late April. I’m just doing chores and reading books. I’ll try to find something blogworthy.

This is the front of the crappy little food market in the crappy little desert town nearest where I live.

In the spring, the front columns are always infested with chickadees. Apparently the columns are constructed of concrete blocks with lots of nice holes perfect for nesting.

And Spring is announced by the return of the chickadees.

Another clear sign that winter is over…

The bull snakes come out of hibernation.

Tobie found me this one. Bless his heart, he approached with proper respect.

Bull snakes are harmless to the point of benevolence. But I want my dog to treat all snakes with respect bordering on fear, because I assume he can’t tell the difference between bull snakes and rattlesnakes. It’s a proper survival trait.

And finally…

My friends S&L invited me to a dinner party last night, apparently in part because I recently passed a birthday. Which also happens in Spring.

Never have I been so happy to have an appliance fail me.

Last December I had a problem with the bedroom heater, which (after over ten years without overnight heat) I love beyond measure. It just wasn’t reliable anymore for some reason. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Turned out the reason was really simple, and after I found and (very simply) fixed the problem I had no more problem all the rest of the winter.

For the past couple of weeks the heater has barely run at all. I’m wasting propane on the pilot light. All this past week I’ve considered putting it to bed for the warm season but I figured there was probably at least a few frosty nights yet to come. And I was right: Got down to 25 overnight, and I woke to an unusually chilly world outside the blankets. Not super cold (probably should have gone ahead and shut off the heater, really) but cold enough that the heater should have been running. Sat up and looked at the thermostat…

…and yeah, the heater should have been running. And it wasn’t. Huh.

Rather than break my heart trying to figure out what was wrong with the perfectly-functioning heater, this time I just took hold of the two sides of the clamshell-like thermostat and gave it a shake. And the heater immediately lit right up. It is properly snapped together this time, so it’s probably some corrosion in the connections. And I have a perfectly good spare.

So I’ve made a note to replace the unit in the autumn, and call the whole thing good.