Breakfast, coffee break; Melanie comes out and we decorate the tree

Now, today:

In the morning, I got up and drove to Abby's Home Cooking. Abby had been at the wedding last night with her family, including daughter Emily who was a member of the bridal party.

So I decided I would go and let her fix breakfast for me.

I passed this cyclist along the way.

As you can see, another horrid mass of warm air has moved in from the Pacific - just like I speculated it would when I was trying to read the signs and predict the weather.

Damnit!

I hate this warm weather in December.

Funny, if any place else in the country, including the coldest states of the northern tier, had experienced the degree of consistent cold that we did in November, the religious among them would have said it was a sign that end was coming soon.

Hmmmm... perhaps all this warm weather in December here in South Central Alaska means... the end is coming soon?

There she is - Abby - cooking away behind the counter. This morning was the busiest I have ever seen it at Abby's. Every table but one was filled and there was action at the counter, too.

Shelly was not there to help her, because Shelly had run the restaurant all by herself all yesterday so that Abby could go to the wedding.

Abby's husband Andy was there, helping her.

Still, Abby was waitressing, cooking and busing.

If business keeps building up like this, she is going to have to hire more help.

As always at Abby's, I enjoyed my breakfast.

I guess I didn't totally work through the afternoon. Margie took the car and went shopping, so, having little rituals that I follow to keep me sane, when the time came, I walked to Metro Cafe for my coffee break. As I walked, this airplane flew by to both inspire and taunt me.

If it had been me up there, I would have had skis on by now.

I surely would have.

I'm not criticising, mind you.

This pilot might have a perfectly good reason to have kept this plane on wheels.

I can't think of a good reason, but the pilot might have thought of one.

Still, I would have rejected such a thought.

One of Carmen's guests had brought his 1974 yearbook to Metro. I would tell you his name, but I am going to let you see if you can figure it out for yourself.

If you can't, then I am sorry to say it, but your own education was a waste.

I don't care if you are a historian now, getting paid millions of dollars by government agencies and $60,000 a speech - if you can't figure this out...

Now, don't anybody post your answers in comments.

If you were wrong, I would hate to have to inform you.

In the evening, Melanie came over. We ate dinner, then we ate Alaska Wildberry chocolates. After that, we decorated the tree - or least Melanie and Margie did, after they went out into the yard while I was working on the wedding and cut it down.

For a long time, Margie had what she called "a Charlie Brown tree" all picked out.

They didn't cut it, though, because Melanie found another, even better, Charlie Brown tree.

Now, I have a very serious question to ask you:

Do you see any chocolate on the left side of Melanie's face?

Do you see any chocolate on the right side of Melanie's face?

Neither do I.

This is important, because a bit after I took these pictures, Melanie saw the image of herself in a mirror. She claims that chocolate was spread all across her face. She says she then washed that chocolate off.

She then began to scold me, telling me not to dare put a picture of her with chocolate on her face in the blog.

You didn't have chocolate on your face, I told her.

Yes I did, she insisted, and don't use any pictures showing chocolate on my face. Delete them. Delete them all.

I never delete a picture, I told her.

It didn't matter. There was no chocolate.

Margie hangs a Christmas tree ornament.

Melanie hangs a birch bark canoe ornament on a high branch. "We should get a star for the top," Margie said.

"Okay," I agreed.

This conversation has taken place now for, oh, I don't know... 25 years now? 30.

We really should, though.

Or an angel.

Or a cat, holding a song book, singing Christmas carols.

It could have a chip in it and really sing.

Last came the tinsel.

When it was done, I noticed they hadn't put the airplane oraments on the tree.

"Why didn't you put the airplanes on the tree?" I asked, reasonably.

"You have to do it," Melanie said.

"No," I said. "You could have done it."

"No. You always scold me. 'Don't put the airplanes on the tree,' you always say, 'only I can do that.'"

"No," I countered, truth on my side but to no avail, "I never say that."

Yet, it was clear that if the airplanes were going to get on the tree, I would have to do it.

So I did.

There were only two of them.

What happened to the rest?

I had enough airplane ornaments to decorate a whole tree all by themselves.

Not that I would ever do that.

But I had enough.

Where did they go?

Probably flew away, I guess.

Finally, the tree was done. The three of us stood before it and altogether we sang, "Oh Christmas Tree."

Or at least I did. All by myself.

Or at least I sang this much of it, in a non-existant key of my own invention:

"Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree! How lovely are thy branches!"

"Dad," Melanie challenged, "are those the real lyrics? Or did you make them up?"

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I go to town to take Margie to the doctor, pay the printers and look at airplanes

I had to get up very early today and it was hard. No, you would not likely call it early - 8:00 AM, but I have turned the clock upside and have been going to bed somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 or even 6:00 AM. I don't fall into a good sleep, because of these damn, persistent, shingles, but I seem to get my best rest between 8:00 AM and noon, which is when I usually get up.

But Margie had a follow up doctor appointment in Anchorage scheduled for 9:30, so I had to get up at at 8:00 after going to bed at 4:30.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 8:42 AM as we passed by on the way to Anchorage. To get the picture at all, I had to push my ISO to 3200.

Still, there is a lot more light here this time of year than there is in Barrow.

So I dropped Margie off at the hospital and drove to University Mall, where Jack of Print Solutions Alaska met me. I gave him a huge check, which I would have really liked to have kept because it could have supported us for three months. He gave me some copies of Uiñiq magazine to take home. The rest went into the mail and to the North Slope Borough in Barrow.

Maybe someday I will look at them. It's kind of a funny thing, but after I finish a big job and get the printed product back, I can't look at it for a long time.

I still haven't looked throgh the Kivgiq Uiñiq that I put out a couple of months ago. That was 116 pages. This new one is 120.

Now that it is done, I do not have a single paying job in front of me. For the moment, I do not want one. I want to work on my own projects. But pretty soon I must find some kind of work that will pay me some decent money or Margie and I will be on the street. I think we can make it for another six weeks. Maybe two months with good luck, one month with bad.

I have no idea at all what kind of job might come along. I want to keep working in the Arctic, though. I do. I love the Arctic more than I can express. Sometimes, I wonder why, because it is a tough place and it can be terribly difficult to work in, but I want to, because there is so much that needs to be done and I want to do it.

And the people. For whatever reason, the people of the Arctic tend to be good to me.

So I want to keep working in the Arctic. It is changing so fast. My eyes can sometimes hardly believe the changes I see.

This isn't the Arctic, though - this is Anchorage. Once I paid for Uiñiq and got some magazines to bring home and stick aside and never look at, I knew that I would have an hour or so until Margie was done.

And so I just started to wander and pretty soon, as always happens, I came to a place where there were airplanes. Lake Hood this time. It could have just as easily been Merrill Field.

I remember reading the story in the Anchorage Daily News or the Alaska Dispatch when this old World War II era plane wreck was recovered, but I don't remember the details. I tried to find it online but failed. I do remember they were going to restore it. Maybe someday it will make it back up there, where it can play with the clouds.

I returned to the hospital at 11:00. Margie was waiting for her medications. She asked if I could go to Jake and Lavina's and feed Marty, the calico cat. Lisa usually feeds her but didn't make it over this morning.

So I did, and as I neared their house, I saw this woman cleaning snow off her car.

I think I fed Marty, anyway. I never saw her. I looked in every room, in every nook and cranny that I could find. I called her name. I called out, "kitty, kitty, kitty."

But I never saw her.

Then I went back and picked Margie up. The doctor had removed the tube from her abdomen. He said she was doing pretty good, although they do want to monitor her blood for awhile. We then drove out to the Dimond area where Lisa met us at Red Robin.

Lisa said that in all the days that she has been feeding Marty, she has not seen her once. When she comes back the next morning, the cat food she put out the day before has all been eaten.

The two of them looked very pretty sitting across the table from me and I meant to take a picture, but I forgot. So, as Margie I waited a nearby red light, I photographed this overpass instead.

We continued on. While we were stopped at another light, this little Cessna 150 or 152 flew over us. I don't want a plane like this one. As metal planes go, they are cheap and economical but they are lousy bush planes. They are good for training student pilots and that's about it.

Still, if someone were to offer me one, I would accept. Then I would try to trade up, probably to another Citabria 7GCBC, because I loved my Citabria.

As you can see, Jim makes things hard for me. He has been in the space between my keyboard and my monitor ever since I sat down here about three hours ago. In this capture, he is simply turning around to face the opposite direction from what he had been.

I don't make him move. I just tilt my head this way and that way and work around him.

Tonight I want to get bed early and see if I can force myself back onto a schedule that comes closer to matching that of the world around me.

It is 2:29 AM right now. Maybe I can make it to bed by 2:45 and get up before Sunrise, which probably happens about 10:00 AM. Maybe a few minutes before. If you look at the time this actually posts, then you can figure I got to bed maybe 10 or 15 minutes after that.

I hope I can get some decent sleep. I've got all kinds of medications now to take away the pain and the horrid, horrid, itching and they help a little bit, but not as much as one would hope or think. In fact, the last several nights have been maddening.

I know I am not supposed to scratch, but when I get suspended in a strange state of near sleep and the itch that accompanies the pain is maddening, I can't stop myself. I scratch. I just hope this itching means that it is going away.

It has been just about four weeks now since I first knew that I was getting struck by something bad.

Thank God it was only shingles. At first, before the rash appeared, I truly thought this might be it, the affliction that would take me down. But it was only shingles. No big deal. Just a painful nuisance for awhile.

But I would like to sleep, uninterupted. I would really like to.

Tomorrow, I will post more pictures from my time of hiatus. They will be fun pictues, I promise you. 

Unable to attend Lavina's birthday party, I Facebook an old friend and order a special cake for her

It is Lavina's birthday and, to my great frustration, I cannot take the time to go into town, join in the party and wish her a happy one. I suspect that all the family but me will probably show up. There will be good food and gifts, cake and ice cream. Candles will be lit and even though they will be for Lavina, Kalib and Jobe will assist her in the blowing out part. Lynxton, who as of yesterday had grown to seven pounds, seven ounces - nearly two pounds more than he was born with - will at times open his eyes and look around and at other times will sleep peacefully.

He might cry a little bit, but not much, because he is not a cry baby and, anyway, once he starts to cry, whatever need he is asking to have taken care of, whether it be a serving of mother's milk, a needed burp or a diaper change, will soon be taken care of.

Oh, how I want to take this day off!

But I can't. I must stay right here and struggle to complete my work. I cannot go to Lavina's birthday party.

I hate my work. I love my work. I love it and I hate it all at once. But it is all a labor of love - even the hate part.

I had to do something and, as it happened, just yesterday, I learned through Facebook that my old friend, Ernest J. Tigglemaster, who I had not seen since our kindergarten days together at Lincoln Elementary in Pendleton, Oregon, is now Five Star General Ernest J. Tigglemaster, US Air Force, and is assigned to the Pentagon. He has great authority.

So I sent him a Facebook friend request. He accepted. Then we started messaging back and forth. I asked if he could contact the folks at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage and have them send up a pilot and a jet to make a sky cake - triple decker - for Lavina.

"Sure! Anything for the daughter-in-law of my old kindergarten buddy, Bill Hess!" he exclaimed. And he did.

And this is the jet, in the process of making the sky cake. The thing about a sky cake is that you cannot eat it. You can only look at it and admire its transient beauty, for, like a real cake, it does not last long. It disintegrates, sublimates, disappears, joins the clouds and drifts away.

But, for the little bit of time that it exists it is a beautiful thing, one that proclaims to all who can see:

"Happy birthday, Lavina!"

And see those things down below in the shadows - the things that look old, junked, cars?

They are not junked cars. They are expensive and elaborate birthday gifts, creatively wrapped. Any kind of gift that you want, Lavina - just imagine it and you will find it there, down below your sky cake.

Pregnant spider walking; Lavina comes to pick up her babies as we wait for the new baby; Hannah Solomon, who lived for almost 103 years

On my morning walk, I came upon this pregnant spider -- VERY PREGNANT! I had the wrong lens to be photographing a spider, but, to quote once again from Donald Rumsfeld:

"As you know, you photograph a spider with the lens you have, not the lens you wish you had brought or might bring at a later time, when the spider is gone."

Lavina had planned to come out yesterday and then spend the night with us so that she could see her babies again, but she didn't. This was because she had been having contractions Friday - not true labor contractions, but getting ready for labor contractions. Then it intensified to the point where she told Jake that it was time for him to take her to the hospital.

So Jake got ready to go and then the pains went away.

Margie and I then made plans to drive the boys back home Saturday. Lavina called to cancel our plans. She and Jacob were going to come out and pick them up themselves.

The idea of her traveling an hour away from her hospital scared me a bit, but I guess she had been cooped up at home too long, and needed to get out.

In the meantime, Kalib took a nap.

Jobe and me on the back porch.

Kalib prunes some bushes as he waits for his mom to arrive.

She arrived in the early evening, with Jacob and Muzzy in tow. She saw Jobe first, so picked him up and just gazed at him. This bed-rest stuff has been pretty hard on Lavina, because she loves to be with her babies but over the past weeks we have had them here more than she and Jacob have had them there.

Kalib then wanted her attention and he got it.

Soon she had them both.

Soon, they were ready to go - and they were taking Margie with them, so she could help out. Margie is one hell of a grandma, I'll say that. Back when we young and making babies ourselves, I never thought of her as a grandma, but she is a grandma and quite an amazing one, I think.

Before they got into the car to drive away, Jacob and Lavina discovered they had to clean dog poop off their shoes.

I jokes! I jokes! I jokes!

They were just checking out the soles of their shoes.

I think their shoes were new, that's why.

They sure look new to me.

Sooner or later, though, they will step in dog poop.

It happens to us all. It happened to me just yesterday... in the marsh that has dried up and become a meadow.

Gross!

Then they were all in the car, ready to go.

And there they go, Jake and Margie waving at me. You can't see Margie's face because she has turned it to her grandchildren, telling them to wave goodbye to grandpa, but I couldn't see them, so I don't know if they waved or not.

Kalib probably did. I doubt that Jobe did.

He wouldn't have been being stuck up or ornery, he's just not quite into waving yet... but he's getting there.

As I left, I climbed onto my bike and pedalled off on short ride, about ten miles round trip. As I pedalled down Seldon, this airplane flew overhead.

You can hardly see the plane at this size. It would show up bigger in slide show view. A few seconds later, I took a shot that I like better, because I dropped the camera down just a bit and you can see headlights coming down the road with the plane above.

But the plane is too small in that frame to even bother posting here.

I mention this less for the readers' benefit than my own.

One day, I intend to include these words in the title of a book I have so far only dabbled at but hope to publish before I die:

I still look up

And I think the one with the car headlights in it might be good enough to include in that book.

So I write this to myself so that when I come back to this page and see this plane, I will know that there is another image that I must go take another look at.

Remembering: Hannah Solomon, 10/10/08 - 9/16/11

Hannah Solomon, Matriarch of the Gwich'in Nation, who passed away in Fairbanks late Friday afternoon - three weeks before her 103rd birthday. July, 2006.

Hannah Solomon dancing at her 100th birthday party.

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Passing airplane still generates magic; a man, a horse, and Catahoula; two girls on a riverbank; four-wheeler in the river; ice cream on the face

Despite all the work facing me, I remained lazy throughout the remainder of the day. One should not work on magical days such as yesterday, especially when his grandsons are present.

I was out in the back yard with Margie and the boys when an airplane passed overhead. I remembered when I was a child how wonderful, mystical, and magical it was to see an airplane pass overhead. What with their constant viewing of videos, the trips to the 3D movies and all that, could Kalib and Jobe ever possibly get that same feeling from watching an airplane pass overhead?

Ha! Kalib got the feeling!

And so did Jobe!

In the afternoon, I took off on a 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't long enough. It was too short. I wanted to go and go, but I figured I would be gone too long. Down on Sunrise Drive, I saw a man, a horse, and a dog coming toward me.

It was these three - the man is Jim, the horse is Warrior and the dog is Chain. Chain is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a breed that I had never heard of.

"I never thought I would wind up with a Catahoula," Jim said. "But I did."

I looked Catahoula up on Google and found they originated in Louisana. Here is part of what I learned about them:

The Catahoula Leopard Dog is independent, protective, and territorial. Loving with its family and all people they know well and reserved with strangers (this would include strange children)...

These dogs need attention. This is not a dog that can be tied to a doghouse, fed, and ignored. Chaining and or ignoring a Catahoula Leopard Dog will either make them shy or aggressive. They need human companionship. This breed needs direction, training, something to do, people, attention...

A Catahoula Leopard Dog enjoys the company of a good horse...

Maybe I made up one of the above lines.

I pedaled until it looked like the road was about to end in someone's yard.

On the way back, I decided to stop, climb up the rise over the road and see what I could see. This is what I saw - the Little Susitna River, with two girls sitting on the bank. Hence, this series of studies, beginning with:

Two girls on a riverbank, study #4,328: They stick their feet in the water.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #2: The sky overhead.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #282,881: they are joined by a dog.

I shot this four-wheeler image as I pedaled across the bridge that crosses the Little Su.*

*In comments, reader AkPonyGirl has pointed out that it is illegal to drive a four-wheeler in the Little Su, due to the damage they cause to salmon spawn.  Thank you, AkPonyGirl.

About 10:00 PM, I mentioned the words, "ice cream cone" and Kalib got excited. So I loaded up the boys, left Margie home for some moments of solitude and headed off to Dairy Queen. On the way, we saw a rainbow and began to chase it.

We did not catch it, but we did overshoot Dairy Queen, so we turned around at the next stoplight and headed back in the direction of ice cream.

At Dairy Queen, we got our cones, then parked for awhile. In the outside driver's rearview mirror, I saw two Dairy Queen workers, taking a break.

The boys and their cones. After I took this picture, I started the car back up and drove home.Jobe was a sticky mess when we got home, but the cone made it all the way without being dumped on the floor, in his lap or on Kalib and that was a first.

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