The collapse

As I pedal my bike, I come upon these two dogs. Head down, tail up, the black one turns toward me and approaches, growling. I do not believe him. I think he is bluffing. It turns out I am right. Still, it is a little nerve-wracking when this happens.

I pedal past a lady on a four-wheeler going in the opposite direction. I have ridden my bike three times since I returned from Arizona/Anaktuvuk Pass. Each time, it has been hard - much harder than when I first got my bike out after the snow melted. I had expected it to be very hard then, but it wasn't so bad.

Now, it has strained my muscles and burned my lungs. I do not think it is because my physical condition deteriorated that much while I was in Arizona and Anaktuvuk. I think it is because I have missed so much sleep, because I have sunk into so deep a state of fatigue.

That's my theory.

Naturally, in such a state of fatigue, I do not want to cook oatmeal in the mornings. I do not want to deal with dirty dishes. A couple of mornings, I have eaten cold cereal straight out of the box, dry. It has been good, but sometimes I just have to go to Family Restuarant, be waited on and have my dishes taken away to be washed by some poor guy or gal on the bottom rung of Wasilla's economic ladder.

At the moment, I stand on a rung not much above his; maybe not all. I am in one hell of an economic pickle. Although I thought I would have a new contract over one month ago, although a new contract was sent to me just before I left Arizona and I signed it and sent it back, legal-technical people keep finding reasons to stall that contract, to continually come up with one more task that needs to be done before it can be activated and then, once that task is done, they come up with another.

I feel as though I am living in the Twilight Zone.

My credit cards are completely tapped out. I still have a tiny bit of the cash that generous readers have donated to keep this blog going, but that's all and not much is left.

So I have no business going to breakfast at Family Restaurant, but I go anyway.

No, this is not a plea for more blog contributions

That contract will eventually be activated, soon, I think (but then I have thought so for a month now) and then I should be okay for half-a-year or so.

Maybe that will be enough time for me to figure out how to turn this blog into a more profitable, self-sustaining, activity so that I don't have to worry about contracts anymore.

You readers who have contributed have greatly bolstered my confidence that such a thing is possible.

I will write more about this in a later post.

I took the above picture at Family Restaurant not because this guy was walking through the door, but because the train was rolling by in the background.

I love the train. I prefer to catch the engines, but my camera was still in my pocket when I heard the whistle blow, when the blue and yellow engines appeared beyond the door. By the time I got the camera out and ready to shoot, the engines had moved on and this guy came walking through the door as the passenger cars rolled past behind him.

If I can't get the engines, I prefer freight cars or the caboose, but this was a passenger train for tourists, so there were no freight cars, no caboose.

In this life, when you can't get exactly what you want, you have to take what's there.

I am so damn wise I amaze myself.

Margie, by the way, was still in Arizona when I took this picture.

Later, as I drove down Lucille toward the Parks Highway - Wasilla's real main street - I heard a siren. I looked in my mirror and saw this emergency vehicle coming, so I pulled to the right and shot this image as it passed. I wondered what had happened.

I looked in my mirror to see if there were more emergency vehicles coming. There weren't, so I turned left onto the Parks Highway, right behind the red vehicle of the previous frame. The driver did not pull out into traffic, but instead entered the middle "suicide" turn lane and then proceeded forward, slowly.

The accident was right there. It didn't look bad. I could see no smashed-in vehicles. I did not study the scene to see what I could make of it, but raised my pocket camera and took a blind snap as I rolled by. Once I had passed, I accelerated and moved on.

At this small size, it is a little hard to see all the elements in the picture, so, having no actual knowledge beyond this frame of what happened, I will describe those elements to you:

It would appear that the gray mini-van was rear-ended by the black pickup - but I don't know this for a fact. It just looks that way. There is glass spread across the hood of the black truck and the man in the Levi's with the blue shirt seems to be examining that glass. Inside the van, an apparent EMT wearing a blue glove appears to be securing a neck brace on the driver. The open sliding-door reveals two small children, one of them an infant suckling on a pacifier, strapped into car seats. 

The children must be basically okay. They look fine; none of the EMT's are rushing to or hovering over them as they would be if they had been hurt.

Car seats - what a wonderful invention.

I'm not going to accuse anyone of tail-gating, because this picture is 100 percent of the information that I have and I don't know what happened, but let the implication stand as sober warning to all tailgaters anyway.

Don't tailgate. There is no need to. It won't get you there any faster. A baby's life could hang in the difference - maybe two babies.

Elsewhere, a young man worked to attact business to a car wash by offering a free one with every oil change. There must be a catch, of course.

I ate a sandwich on the back porch. Jimmy came out with me. As I bit, chewed and swallowed, he walked among dandelions going to seed.

Margie enjoys digging out the dandelions, but she was still in Arizona.

Late Saturday night, she came in on Alaska Airlines, with Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe. Although he, his brother and parents would be picked up and taken home by Rex, Kalib jumped into the car with me for a few minutes. Margie stood outside the door with Jobe.

Jobe looked so wonderful that I just wanted her to hand him through the door to me so I could hold him and give him a little hug.

"Margie, pass Jobe to me!" I kept saying.

There was a lot of noise out there. She didn't hear me. Soon, Jacob took him from her arms and then they disappeared. Kalib went with them.

Margie got into the car.

I drove away from the airport feeling extremely frustrated that I had not been able to hold my little grandson.

Why are we this way? What makes a grandfather so strongly want to hold his baby grandson that when he doesn't get to, he is left feeling frustrated?

Along the way home, we saw someone parked alongside the southbound lanes of traffic who was probably feeling pretty frustrated, too.

I got to have Margie's company for one day only. Then, early Monday morning, I drove her into town and dropped her off at Jacob and Lavina's, so that she could spend the week babysitting Jobe.

"We just vegged-out all day," Lavina spoke of their activites Sunday.

Man, I thought - that's what I need to do. Just veg out. I have become unspeakably exhausted. I go from one thing to another, never stopping, never resting. It has been this way for months and months and months. Never stopping. The push through Arizona and then straight onto Anaktuvuk was particularly draining, for reasons that my posts of the past few weeks make clear.

I vegged out and laid around through the summer of 2008, because I was hurt and recovering from my injuries and had no choice - but once I got going again, I have pretty much gone, non-stop.

"Be sure to take a nap," Margie told me when I drove away, leaving her with Jobe.

After I returned home, I sat down to my computer and tried to do a few things, but I was too tired. About 11:20 AM, I got up and headed to the bedroom. Jimmy followed me to the door but then stopped without entering.

"If you want to nap with me, you had better come in now," I told him, "because once I'm down, I'm not going to get up and let you in."

He didn't believe me. He plays this game all the time. He stops at the door and won't come in until he knows I am down and comfortable. Then he meows and raises a fuss until I get up and let him in. Then he settles down on top of me and goes to sleep.

Sure enough, he refused to come in.

"Okay," I told him. "I warned you."

Pistol-Yero was already in the room, sitting in the window sill.

I laid down, pulled the blanket over me and fell almost instantly to sleep.

Occasionally, I would wake up slightly, would barely hear Jimmy meowing and pawing at the door, but I did not get up to let him in. I could not get up to let him in. It was like I was paralyzed. I could only close my eyes and go back to sleep. Pistol-Yero was there, sleeping with me - sometimes next to me, sometimes atop me.

And so it went until a bit after 2:00 PM.

Then I got up and didn't do much of anything. I did spend some time in front of my computer, but it was pretty much all stupor-time.

I lasted only until a bit after 10:00 PM, then had no choice but to go to bed.

Jimmy played the same damn game, then sat and meowed and scratched at the door until 3:00 AM, at which time I finally got up and let him in.

Then the three of us, me, Pistol-Yero and Jimmy, slept snug until 9:00 AM.

Once again, I could not bear to cook oatmeal or wash dishes, so I breakfasted at Family. As I left to go home, I saw these kids with two adults, playing in the park.

I then returned home, determined to veg another day.

Once I got home, I kept receiving a flurry of tasks that came by email, all needed to be done immediately and all were non-revenue generating, but were the kind of non-reimbursable tasks one must do for clients.

These have continued to come in as I have worked on this blog entry, which I intended to be much shorter than it turned out to be.

In my next post, I plan to return to the undone work from Arizona and Anaktuvuk.

For now, I want to veg some more.

Not necessarily sleep - just veg.

And ride my bike.

Walk a bit.

Drive the car.

Whatever.

Comments

[twain12]

hope you get some rest and also sending good vibes hoping the contract comes through very soon. Good Luck !

[Grandma Nancy]

Rest, veg, take good care!

[Lynda (AK CDA)]

Hi Bill,

I know just how you feel. Days like today, months like the past few, make me tired of living where I am in Canada. I miss Alaska. So I'm trying to sell my few pieces of furniture, eventually my computer, then my old truck, so I can afford to leave for good and move back to Alaska so I'll be happy again. It takes too much energy living here. Life should not take so much struggle to get the simplest things done by others whose job it is to do them.

I know what fatigue is. Tired of being tired. Tired of job hunting to try and pay the bills. I've been in that situation for too long.

Time for a move. Or maybe a nap. I can afford a nap right now.

[debby]

Yeah. I know the feeling. But this too shall pass. You've got to focus your eyes on something more distant and keep on keeping on.

I'm sure glad that you did not stop for that free car wash while you were on your bike.