Although there aren’t many, there are some less than perfect sides to our life on an island off the grid. We experienced two of them on Thursday.

Sometimes the weather and limited daylight hours can prove challenging with winter scheduling. We had booked the dog groomer on the same day as our flu shots and both appointments were coordinated with our current wine bottling requirements. All of which were to take place in town last Thursday, carefully timed with grocery orders for optimum efficiency. The days of endless good weather could have lasted until the end of the month, but they didn’t.

When we got up, we saw that it was brutal out on the water. I would have been very happy to postpone the trip but honestly, to rebook everything would have been a pain in the a$$ and well, we all have life jackets.

Off we went. The crossing was one of the less pleasant trips we have had since living here. But the dogs were champs and were quick to forgive us once they had returned to their beds by the fire. It was a long day.

A long day made worse with the discovery of a dead deer on the lane by our house. No visible signs of trauma or reason for his death, but he has been coming to my garden for as long as I can remember, so I have chosen to think of him as dying peacefully in his old age. E and I carried him deeper into the woods to complete his cycle and feed the other wildlife. All very sad but such is the reality of life on the nature channel.

I was glad to see the end of Thursday but did feel a certain sense of satisfaction when we got home, after having accomplished so much. Nine hours after we left, we returned just before dark, soaked to the skin, with forty additional bottles of wine for the pantry as

an adequate consolation.