The party begins with a buttery shout, progresses to flaming fire, and ends in displays of affection

The party began with a shout,"Pizzles stop licking the butter!" It was Liza who shouted, instantly causing all heads to turn to look at Pizzles as he licked the butter.

Shortly thereafter, Rex fed a piece of buttered bread to Cortney. Nobody shouted, "Cortney stop licking the butter!" 

No, this indignity was saved for Pizzles alone. True, Cortney was eating bread that the butter was spread on, yet, however one consumes the butter, in one way or another, one must still lick the butter.

Afterward, poor Pizzles begged for a piece of the bread spread with butter so that he might lick that butter too, but nobody would give him one. I am proud to say that, a little bit later, when I was eating my salmon, I gave three pieces to Pizzles. They were tiny pieces, yes, but he is a cat. He is a tiny creature. Tiny pieces for a tiny creature - just right and quite generous of me, because I wanted to eat all of the salmon - my piece and everybody else's, too.

I should note that Lisa took a little heat for calling Epizzles, Pizzles, rather than the nickname that has become the moniker of preference for him: "Poof."

This is because awhile back, Pizzles, who had always been an occasionally well-mannered cat, started to pee outside his litter box.

Poor Melanie and Charlie - they tried all the known remedies to convince a cat to restrict his peeing to the litter box, but nothing worked.

Then, they suddenly realized, "Pizzles.... Pizzzz..." Kind of sounds like the whiz of a cat peeing, pisssss. It occurred to them that everytime Epizzles heard them call him "Pizzles," he could be misinterpreting his name as an inducement to pee wherever he wanted.

So Melanie and Charlie quit calling him "Pizzles" and stuck to his other nickname, "Poof."

And sure enough, Poof quit peeing in the house.

I understand that he started to blow lots of stinkers, however. Nobody told me this, but it only makes sense.

Poof was well-mannered on this night, however, and didn't poof often, because he wanted some of my salmon and he innately understood that I do not share my salmon with Poof cats who are poofing all about.

Pretty soon, Charlie appeared with Lisa's surprise birthday cake. Her birthday was actually November 22 and we had all planned to celebrate together as a family down on my wife and children's ancestral White Mountain Apache reservation in Arizona, but then Margie had to go to the hospital for emergency surgery.

I stayed home with her, of course, but given the fact that I was in the hard, early stages of the shingles that still bother me, if to a lesser but still sometimes very aggravating degree, traveling would have been pretty hard on me, anyway.

So we had a late celebration.

It has, of course, become a tradition that no matter whose birthday it is, Kalib, joined now by Jobe, with Lynxton on deck, helps to blow out the candles. But Kalib and Jobe are in Phoenix tonight. Tomorrow, they will board a plane and fly back to Alaska.

So Lisa had to blow her candles out all by herself. Without the benefit of the assistance of little people, this process, which normally takes at least 10 or 15 seconds, happened just like that. So I did not get to snap a bunch of frames, but had to settle for just one.

This was a wild berry cheesecake, by the way, made by Melanie with assistance from Charlie - I am pretty sure it was the best cheesecake I ever tasted.

Afterwards, the glow of young love brightened up the otherwise very dim room: Lisa and Bryce.

Melanie and Charlie.

Rex and Cortney... and a reminder of young love from a different time, which feels like maybe last week to me... the young love that made all of this evening's display of young love possible... Margie.

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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. 

When rest takes over, conquers all

Yesterday, soon after I got up, I discovered that a new, daunting and totally unexpected task awaited me and I could not rest until I addressed it. Rest was what I needed, the doc said. If I did not get rest, then I would not shake these shingles off. Yet, this task had to be done. So I turned my attention to it and here is what I had to do: open up a document, go a certain page, change a lower-case "i" to a capitol "I," make a pdf of that page and email it.

It took some doing and nearly put me in my grave, but I did change that "i" to "I" I did make a pdf and I did email it.

And that was it. Two minutes work, maybe three. I had no other job pressing me - not one other thing that I needed to do, and the day was still early. To be under no work pressure - what a strange feeling! 

I was under doctor's orders to get rest. I had been given the assurance that if I did not rest, I would not get over these shingles. So, for the rest of the day, my mission would be to rest. Nothing else would matter. Rest, and rest only

But how? How does one rest, especially after such a prolonged stint of not resting?

"I will read," I told myself. But no, I could not read. The weight on my brain was dragging it down below the reading point. Then the answer came to me. I had purchased the photo book, burn.02, weeks ago, but had not yet even removed it from the packaging. It would involve a little bit of reading, too, but not much, as the stories are told in the pictures.

So I got the book, freed it from the packaging, took a seat on the couch, and began to slowly page my way through. The photography, of course, was quite excellent and I was enjoying the experience, but still the weight was heavy on my brain and all the shingles remained in place -- although thanks to the vicodin and the other drugs, the intensity was less and it was more bearable.

Margie had a nice fire going. The heat felt good - much better than furnace heat or electric or natural gas heat can ever feel. Chicago thought so, too. Normally, if I go to the couch, I either have to scoot her over or she joins me within minutes, but this time she made herself comfy on the floor, where she could soak up the heat.

Jim was maintaining the office by himself and who knew where Pistol was? He tends not to join in the couch napping scrums, because of the animosity that he and Chicago hold for each other.

But about halfway through the book, as I was in the midst of the Arab Spring, as shot by Paolo Pellegrin, chapterm Pistol-Yero came nosing his way towards me.

I put the book down so that I could use my hands to keep Pistol from stepping onto my chest. After a few attempts, he got the idea and settled down onto my legs. Due to the heaviness of the weight on my brain, I did not pick the book back up, but just leaned back into the pillows and dozed off into another strange dream.

And then I rested - a strange rest that at once was both pleasant and troubling... I want to explain but it is too complicated. So, to keep it short and simple, I remained on the couch, in a state of rest both troubled and pleasant, for about three hours. Then I got up for my coffee break, headed to Metro Cafe, and took the long way home, sipping, with the radio on.

It was earlier than I normally go out and instead of All Things Considered, Fresh Air with Terry Gross was on KSKA. The segment was devoted to wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a soldier who had lost his legs and five buddies to an IED was being interviewed.

As he spoke, I saw a raven, sitting atop a utility pole as another flew by overhead.

Soon, I was passing by the horses, wondering what insults I might have to bear today. "Hey Bill," Black horse shouted. "We hear you got the shingles. We don't care. We don't care at all. It is no big deal. They will soon pass. So we are just going to ignore you, as if there is nothing wrong."

And ignore me they did.

So I drove on. I decided the horses are right. Shingles is no big deal. It hurts like hell for awhile and then it is gone. At the moment, to me, it does seem like a big deal but it isn't. It is a temporary discomfort and nothing more.

When I got home, I found Chicago stretched out on my dreaming couch. I scooted her over, pulled the blanket up over us both and soon fell asleep again. The fire was hotter than it had been before, hotter than I normally like but somehow that heat just felt wonderful to me. I felt as though I never wanted to rise from the couch. I stayed there, Chicago purring at my side for about two hours, until about 6:30, when it was time to get up and take another vicodin. Margie had dinner just about ready, so I stayed up to eat it.

I should note that, except for the book, Margie put the other things on top of the couch to try to keep the cats off the cushions. She does not like the way they crumple the cushions when they lie on top of them.

After dinner, I asked Margie if she wanted to go to Dairy Queen. I expected her to say, "no," because it was very warm and cozy in the house and cold outside and she is not one who likes to venture out needlessly from a warm house into the cold, especially to get ice cream.

"Sure," she said.

So off we went. And here is Miranda, handing me the cone I bought for Margie. I had a banana split. During times of suffering, one must take pleasure where he can find it.

After we got back home, I decided to put this post together. I downloaded the pictures, selected the ones you see here, uploaded them into this blog in draft mode and then stopped, without writing one word. That weight was mighty heavy on my brain. I hadn't done much, but still needed to take a short break. It was about 8:30 PM.

I returned to the couch, adjusted Chicago, pulled the blanket up and then Jim joined us too, settling in on my legs. Again, I slipped into dreamland. Again, the heat from the fire felt wonderful to me. Again, I felt as though I never wanted to open my eyes again, or to ever rise fom the couch.

I stayed put, right on the couch, my blog unfinished, until midnight. By then, it was time to go to bed. Even though I was on my feet, I did not feel that I had fully awakened. I did not want to fully awaken. Having spent so much of the day asleep, I feared that if I did fully awaken, I would not be able to go back to sleep. But I wanted to do one thing only: sleep.

Still, certain things had to be done. The fish needed to be fed and so did the cats. Margie had already cleaned the litter. I had to check email, brush my teeth, etc., take my next vicodin and the other bedtime pills. I decided just to leave the blog unfinished.

So I spent five to ten minutes doing all that I needed to do and then went straight to bed. It was about 12:30 AM now. I feared I might have trouble going to sleep. If I did fall asleep, I felt certain that I would wake up at 2:30 or 3:00 AM, certainly no later than 4:00 and would not be able to go back to sleep.

I was wrong.

I quickly fell back to sleep. With a few, short interruptions, I stayed asleep until just a few minutes before noon - almost 12 hours - and this after spending more than half of the previous day napping!

I got up and took Margie out for a late breakfast. After that, Margie dropped me off at the house, then turned around and drove through falling snow to Anchorage, so she could help Lavina care for the little ones, because Jacob was off doing ski patrol at Alyeska.

I came out here to add words to the photos and complete the blog post I had started last night.

I did not want to do it. All I wanted to do was nap.

But I did it. This post is now up. Next, I will add a few more logs to the fire. Then, if necessary, I will adjust Chicago and lie back down on the couch.

Who knows how long I might sleep? Half-an-hour? Four hours, when my next vicodin is due? All day?

I don't know and I don't care. I will sleep however long my body demands. The doc says I need to rest, my immediate work is all done. I want to plunge these shingles back into dormancy, so I am going to rest.

I just realized - this is a long and boring entry. I could tighten it up, but the weight on my brain is too heavy for that. Couch, here I come!

My shingles proves to be pretty tough on the good black cat, Jim

As you might suspect, I have a lot I want to write about right now and I sat down at this computer planning to do just that.

Now that Jim is on the screen, I realize that for the moment I am just too done in to write it all, so I am not going to even try.

Instead, I will write a tiny bit about Jim.

This whole process has been damn hard on him.

He likes to jump on my lap, walk across my shoulders, my keyboard and then settle down on my torso with his paws on my chest. And I can't let him. It hurts too bad.

Jim is a very good cat - there is none better - but he is not a healer cat in the way Thunder Paws was. If Paws were alive, he would want to be with me, too. But he would know not to walk across my shoulders, or put his paws on my chest. He would know the places where I hurt and he would not touch those places.

But he would touch where I did not hurt, and he would apply his healing powers.

I know this will sound nonsense to many, but that's the kind of cat Thunder Paws was.

He was a healer cat.

And a thinking cat.

Jim is a buddy cat, a fun cat to hang out with but he will walk across my shingles.

He does not understand why I won't let him; why I keep evicting him from the room, or pushing him away if I have collapsed on my back on the couch.

This has been very hard on Jim.

He is not a healer cat and he does manage to make contact and that contact hurts, yet, somehow, his presence makes the pain easier to bear. Even if he hurts me sometimes, he will help me heal faster.

Jim - my good black cat.

How lucky I am to have a buddy like that.

Buddy Jim.

Scary Jim

It was Halloween. Jim scared the hell out of everybody.