You don’t expect to see sky burials in the city – but they’re all around. Burials when the ground is too hard to bury a body, so the culture ceremoniously leaves the deceased out for vultures to pick away at it. It’s the natural order of things, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Except there is no ceremony in the city.
On Saturday Mark and I came home late, crossing through the alley on a cold night, making some noise as we usually do to scare away any rats. We’ve both had the experience of sneaking up on one, catching him by surprise – once, in the parking lot, I had three little ones race towards me in their game of tag before I screamed and they quickly veered off to the right. Another time, Mark had a big fat one nearly run square into him before it saw a person standing there and took off the other way. This night, coming down the alley, we came up on a big one, a foot from head to butt, lying on its side. It looked to have just died. His fur was clean and brownish grey, his belly white. He was well-fed and strong, and probably poisoned. We rounded it respectfully, though I wanted to take a closer look. It felt disrespectful somehow, to gawk. The next morning he was gone, presumably swept away by maintenance workers.
Yesterday morning while making coffee I looked out to watch the ducks in their precarious premating rituals: one brown female surrounded by five green-headed males, all of them vying for her attention, and as they bathed themselves in the icy water, a dead carp floated by, unnoticed.
This morning I was awoken by the loud screams of sea gulls – a group had gathered on the ice over the river and were pulling apart a dead fish. They have been out there for hours, pulling out sections of its gut, two or three standing guard while one takes its turn at the carcass.
We cannot bury our dead with so much concrete. We go out to the expressway-rimmed suburbs, we cremate and sprinkle the lake. For some reason I am glad to know that sky burials are still a viable option.
20070228
20070219
When All Else Fails...
…Suspend a ceramic space heater down the sewage area and melt the proverbial rat in the snake’s belly.
Mark had the pump-out working in less than an hour, and we had good plumbing again.
Ah, the wonders of outsourcing.
Mark had the pump-out working in less than an hour, and we had good plumbing again.
Ah, the wonders of outsourcing.
20070215
Peeing in a Bucket
Word on the marina was that the pump out was broken. It had been a good two weeks since we pumped out, but when we heard the news from Stan on Sunday, we didn’t take it too seriously. J---, another boater, had tried to pump out to no avail. “Too bad, ‘cause he’s full, too,” Stan said. We agreed. Too bad. And we went on our way.
Monday, we noticed some overflow in the bilge. Probably from the condensation that had formed ice inside the boat and was now melting. It wasn’t very dark. But by evening, it was dark. And smelly. And Tuesday morning, the toilet was resisting when we tried to flush it. Yep – time to pump out.
If pump out was a two-person job before, it’s now even more complicated. While Mark stands on one side of the marina, separated from our boat by water, I toss him one end of a yellow rope, which he ties to the pump out hose, and I drag across the marina to our side. It just reaches the opening to our tank, and I attach it tightly while Mark flips the switch. We communicate by yelling across the marina; if it’s windy, we use cell phones.
But it was still questionable whether the pump out was working. After shoveling a foot of blowing snow off our deck, I tromped over across the marina to the pump out, which was duct-taped and had a sign: “Out of Order Management Called.” When Mark came home, he thought he could still get it to work; he couldn’t. We had a full tank, a nonfunctioning pump out, and a snowstorm so bad that they were canceling university classes.
Mark made some calls. The other boaters all said the same thing. “I’m peeing in a bucket.” He called Captain P---, president of the condo association and supposed marina management. Captain P--- said he outsourced the marina management to a great company – but they’re on vacation for three weeks. He didn’t seem very eager to do anything to help the situation. The hose was probably frozen – just gotta wait till it thaws out. And the fact that temperatures were supposed to drop below zero for the next week? Captain P--- shrugged over the phone. “I’m peeing in a bucket.”
Mark relayed all this to me after he hung up the phone.
I repeated it to make sure I understood. “You mean the condo association president is peeing in a bucket ‘cause he outsourced the job of fixing things and the company he outsourced to is on vacation?”
Mark confirmed this was true. “The entire marina is peeing in a bucket."
We did this before, you know. We went without water when the boat froze, and peed in a bucket, and came up with an ingenious design of a plastic bag in the toilet to catch our solid waste, which we promptly threw out in the same dumpster beside the rats. It’s not like this is new or anything.
“I don’t want to pee in a bucket,” Mark said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
I asked him if he could just leak the waste into the water. “I’d do it if we were out on the lake, but I don’t want to do it in the marina.”
We discussed the options. There weren’t many. Mark got a scary look in his eye. “How about we just get a shop vac and suck it out? I won’t throw it in the marina, but I’d throw it in the river.”
“Maybe you should sleep on this idea,” I suggested.
Our sewage tank holds 50 gallons. “If we had a 10-gallon shop vac, it’d be ten times flushing it out,” Mark said. “If we had a 20-gallon shop vac, that’d be half of it. You don’t like this idea, do you? C’mon baby, where’s your sense of humor?” But I know he’s not kidding. “Trying to be self-sufficient, too, you know?”
“You don’t have any problems emptying 50 gallons of sewage into the river?” I asked him.
“Hey, it was your idea,” he said, “But I am a member of Friends of the River. I took an oath and all…”
So we're peeing in a bucket. And finding toilets in restaurants, libraries, and office buildings as often as possible. Who knows when this problem will be solved. The trickiest part is, nobody really knows who’s managing the River City marina. River City? The condo association? Captain Pee? Some mysterious outsourced company in India?
The best thing about living on a boat, you’re under the radar. The worst thing about living on a boat? Still under the radar. Just remember to bring your bucket.
Monday, we noticed some overflow in the bilge. Probably from the condensation that had formed ice inside the boat and was now melting. It wasn’t very dark. But by evening, it was dark. And smelly. And Tuesday morning, the toilet was resisting when we tried to flush it. Yep – time to pump out.
If pump out was a two-person job before, it’s now even more complicated. While Mark stands on one side of the marina, separated from our boat by water, I toss him one end of a yellow rope, which he ties to the pump out hose, and I drag across the marina to our side. It just reaches the opening to our tank, and I attach it tightly while Mark flips the switch. We communicate by yelling across the marina; if it’s windy, we use cell phones.
But it was still questionable whether the pump out was working. After shoveling a foot of blowing snow off our deck, I tromped over across the marina to the pump out, which was duct-taped and had a sign: “Out of Order Management Called.” When Mark came home, he thought he could still get it to work; he couldn’t. We had a full tank, a nonfunctioning pump out, and a snowstorm so bad that they were canceling university classes.
Mark made some calls. The other boaters all said the same thing. “I’m peeing in a bucket.” He called Captain P---, president of the condo association and supposed marina management. Captain P--- said he outsourced the marina management to a great company – but they’re on vacation for three weeks. He didn’t seem very eager to do anything to help the situation. The hose was probably frozen – just gotta wait till it thaws out. And the fact that temperatures were supposed to drop below zero for the next week? Captain P--- shrugged over the phone. “I’m peeing in a bucket.”
Mark relayed all this to me after he hung up the phone.
I repeated it to make sure I understood. “You mean the condo association president is peeing in a bucket ‘cause he outsourced the job of fixing things and the company he outsourced to is on vacation?”
Mark confirmed this was true. “The entire marina is peeing in a bucket."
We did this before, you know. We went without water when the boat froze, and peed in a bucket, and came up with an ingenious design of a plastic bag in the toilet to catch our solid waste, which we promptly threw out in the same dumpster beside the rats. It’s not like this is new or anything.
“I don’t want to pee in a bucket,” Mark said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
I asked him if he could just leak the waste into the water. “I’d do it if we were out on the lake, but I don’t want to do it in the marina.”
We discussed the options. There weren’t many. Mark got a scary look in his eye. “How about we just get a shop vac and suck it out? I won’t throw it in the marina, but I’d throw it in the river.”
“Maybe you should sleep on this idea,” I suggested.
Our sewage tank holds 50 gallons. “If we had a 10-gallon shop vac, it’d be ten times flushing it out,” Mark said. “If we had a 20-gallon shop vac, that’d be half of it. You don’t like this idea, do you? C’mon baby, where’s your sense of humor?” But I know he’s not kidding. “Trying to be self-sufficient, too, you know?”
“You don’t have any problems emptying 50 gallons of sewage into the river?” I asked him.
“Hey, it was your idea,” he said, “But I am a member of Friends of the River. I took an oath and all…”
So we're peeing in a bucket. And finding toilets in restaurants, libraries, and office buildings as often as possible. Who knows when this problem will be solved. The trickiest part is, nobody really knows who’s managing the River City marina. River City? The condo association? Captain Pee? Some mysterious outsourced company in India?
The best thing about living on a boat, you’re under the radar. The worst thing about living on a boat? Still under the radar. Just remember to bring your bucket.
20070214
The Other Live Aboard
I first came to know him in the middle of the night, scampering in the walls. I thought I was dreaming; Mark said I was imagining things. But I couldn’t shake the feelings that we weren’t alone.
He leaves clues after a long night. Like last night. Before going to bed, we turned down the diesel furnace. This morning when we turned it back on, it didn’t work. Fuel pump is intact, everything is the same – but no go. On Saturday, Mark vacuumed up an inch of standing water in the bilge under the bow. We thought maybe it was sewage that had overflown. This morning, it’s back, but not quite so brown, so not sewage. Where’s it coming from? What could have caused these mysterious disturbances?
Fate and chance are too obvious, poltergeist too adolescent. No, we have deduced that it’s the gremlin. We joke that he’s half rabbit, half rat, ostracized by both communities, and at risk of being eaten by the coyote who lives in the trees along the south loop river bank. He’s come to live on Mazurka for safety, lurking about in the darkness of the engine room, and because it amuses him. He’s a trickster – what can he do? Is it his fault he’s surrounded by wires, just waiting to be crossed? Is it his fault the generator is so complex that every night he can tinker with just one more piece, thus eluding the captain from ever figuring out the “real” problem?
We thought maybe the cats would kick him out, but he seems to have struck a deal with them – they pretend to know nothing of his existence, and look the other way when something goes awry. And, as much as I love my cats, I know they’re not smart enough for these top-notch jobs – they’re amused just watching the snow slide down the shrinkwrap.
He’s a bit of a klepto, too, probably due to his feelings of insecurity and lack of stable social network. Somewhere on board he is hoarding flashlights, wrenches, critical O-rings and bolts, and bushels of pens, batteries, hats, and lighters of all variety (he seems overly fond of fire, which sometimes worries me). You’d think in a small space like a boat it would be impossible to hide anything for long – you would be mistaken.
I refuse to appease him by setting out snacks. St. Anthony can handle our pleas for lost items, and I stopped putting out cookies for Santa long ago.
Even if I could get my hands on his jaunty little self, which I know prances around with pride while we struggle and swear at his handiwork, even if I could get ahold of his rabbit foot or his rat tail, I wouldn’t kick him out. I feel for the guy. These shores are tough – between the River City canine community, who spend all day cooped up in Jetson-like apartments and are just itching to sink their teeth into a pokey little gremlin, and the hissing geese who, when they start nesting in about a month, are likely to beat him to death with their wings if he comes within twelve feet of their eggs, well, there’s too many enemies. Not to mention his own kind – the city rats and the country rabbits – who scorn him ‘cause he looks different. I can relate to straddling those two worlds – the urban and the rural – and those of us who don’t fit in neither world gotta stick together.
Just as long as he keeps his paws off the shrinkwrap.
He leaves clues after a long night. Like last night. Before going to bed, we turned down the diesel furnace. This morning when we turned it back on, it didn’t work. Fuel pump is intact, everything is the same – but no go. On Saturday, Mark vacuumed up an inch of standing water in the bilge under the bow. We thought maybe it was sewage that had overflown. This morning, it’s back, but not quite so brown, so not sewage. Where’s it coming from? What could have caused these mysterious disturbances?
Fate and chance are too obvious, poltergeist too adolescent. No, we have deduced that it’s the gremlin. We joke that he’s half rabbit, half rat, ostracized by both communities, and at risk of being eaten by the coyote who lives in the trees along the south loop river bank. He’s come to live on Mazurka for safety, lurking about in the darkness of the engine room, and because it amuses him. He’s a trickster – what can he do? Is it his fault he’s surrounded by wires, just waiting to be crossed? Is it his fault the generator is so complex that every night he can tinker with just one more piece, thus eluding the captain from ever figuring out the “real” problem?
We thought maybe the cats would kick him out, but he seems to have struck a deal with them – they pretend to know nothing of his existence, and look the other way when something goes awry. And, as much as I love my cats, I know they’re not smart enough for these top-notch jobs – they’re amused just watching the snow slide down the shrinkwrap.
He’s a bit of a klepto, too, probably due to his feelings of insecurity and lack of stable social network. Somewhere on board he is hoarding flashlights, wrenches, critical O-rings and bolts, and bushels of pens, batteries, hats, and lighters of all variety (he seems overly fond of fire, which sometimes worries me). You’d think in a small space like a boat it would be impossible to hide anything for long – you would be mistaken.
I refuse to appease him by setting out snacks. St. Anthony can handle our pleas for lost items, and I stopped putting out cookies for Santa long ago.
Even if I could get my hands on his jaunty little self, which I know prances around with pride while we struggle and swear at his handiwork, even if I could get ahold of his rabbit foot or his rat tail, I wouldn’t kick him out. I feel for the guy. These shores are tough – between the River City canine community, who spend all day cooped up in Jetson-like apartments and are just itching to sink their teeth into a pokey little gremlin, and the hissing geese who, when they start nesting in about a month, are likely to beat him to death with their wings if he comes within twelve feet of their eggs, well, there’s too many enemies. Not to mention his own kind – the city rats and the country rabbits – who scorn him ‘cause he looks different. I can relate to straddling those two worlds – the urban and the rural – and those of us who don’t fit in neither world gotta stick together.
Just as long as he keeps his paws off the shrinkwrap.
20070207
Shackleton's Endurance
Every February Mark's family meets in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the Munising Ice Fest, a long weekend of cross-country skiing and climbing frozen waterfalls in subzero temperatures.You have to really love the cold to want to climb ice. It requires putting on several layers of clothing, procuring the necessary gear (harness, crampons, two pick axes, and a helmet), and hiking out to a frozen waterfall. Walls of ice are unforgiving, and don't much care how fit you are or how far you drive to climb them - they are cold and foreboding and will stand firm no matter how much ice you chip off in your attempt to scale the wall and conquer it.
We were exhilarated Sunday night, driving back to Chicago, counting down the temperatures ("Now it's -8!"), and returned from a weekend climbing ice to find...ice. The Chicago River was virtually frozen over, with geese like new penguins sliding around on the geometric shapes of dark black ice. River City's marina was completely frozen, and ice closed in on Mazurka's hull so that it resembled Shackleton's Endurance at the South Pole in 1915. Inside, cabin temperature was 28 degrees - everything was frozen, including all the faucets, pipes, olive oil, and contents of the fridge. It felt like an abandoned ghost ship, save for Hunter and Leo, their fur puffed up, looking a bit shell-shocked and thirsty - their water dish was a solid block.
We deduced that sometime after Saturday afternoon, the electric heater stopped working, probably when the river temperature became so cold that the water inlet froze and the heater could no longer pull in warm water to heat the boat. The backup furnace, which runs on diesel, also stopped, the fuel tube somehow bent. "This is my worst nightmare," Mark said, and started the engine - the quickest way he could think to start warming things up - and we plugged in space heaters. We heard the terrible crack of a pipe breaking; thankfully it was just the drinking water filter under the sink. Expensive, but not dire. We stayed up till 1 AM, when the cabin temperature had risen to 42 degrees, then went to bed on an ice cold mattress over the water tanks, which were probably frozen, too.
While I love climbing frozen waterfalls as much as the next girl, I like it even more when I know at the end of the day, we're going to hike back to civilization and drive back to the hotel, where there's hot soup and coffee and a sauna and whirlpool. Driving eight hours back to Chicago, I was looking forward to a nice, hot 6-minute shower, some clean clothes, and a warm bed. Instead, we lay down on a block of ice wearing the same three layers of clothing and hats and coats we'd worn all weekend. I tried to be grateful that I had a roof over my head when there were plenty of people sleeping under cardboard. It was all I could do not to break down sobbing. "I feel like throwing up," I told my husband in the darkness. He agreed. It was the first time in four months I thought maybe living on Mazurka wasn't such a great idea.
The next morning we worried about living on board without water. We considered which friends we could stay with. Mark said he would stay on Mazurka to make sure she was okay. My first thought was to put my cats in the car and drive to my parents' house till things heated up, but I thought again - I was married now. I would stick by my husband.
Shackleton told about the sound of ice squeezing the Endurance, locking it in a vice that eventually forced the crew to abandon ship and haul lifeboats across the frozen Antarctic tundra. It was one of these lifeboats that Shackleton and a few crewmembers sailed on an amazing voyage to get help and save the entire crew.
I doubt any of that crew ever forgot what it was like to walk away from the Endurance, abandoning her to the ice.
"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked.
"A pipe could burst and the boat would fill with water and sink."
We kept the engine running and space heaters cranked while I drove Mark to work and bought two more space heaters. By mid-morning we were up to 50 degrees. Mark came home just after noon and built a contraption off the dock to suspend the de-icer - a large bubbling fan - beneath the bow of the boat, which began churning the water, fighting the ice from squeezing the hull and potentially cracking it. For fun, and because it looked possible, I decided to test the strength of the ice off the stern and stepped right from the swim deck onto the ice. It held. Cabin temperature kept rising. By late afternoon the pipes had thawed and we had water again, but drains stayed frozen. We decided it was safe to turn off the engine.
That night, we slept in a warm bed, listening to the reluctant moan of ice as it released its grip on our home.
By Tuesday afternoon, cabin temperature was 71 degrees, and we had hot water and functional plumbing again. The de-icer had cleared all the ice from the boat. Hunter and Leo basked in their new sources of heat. Outside, it snowed and windchill remained below zero. By Wednesday, we were floating again.
When I told my friend Anne our adventures, she laughed. "Instead of trial by fire, you're going through trial by ice!"
20070205
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