Our Christmas, 2011, part 1.5: we gather, we give and receive gifts, we eat

I took this picture the day before Christmas, as Margie and I were finishing our shopping. On Friday, the 23rd, we had heard from Rex that Cortney would like a kuspik for Christmas. So we stopped at the Alaska Native Medical Center gift shop, but the selection was small and the sizes too big.

After we got home, I called Arlene Warrior to see if she might know someone locally who had either kuspiks or atikluks for sale. Kuspiks and atikluks are pretty much the same thing, but they tend to be kuspiks if made by the Yup'ik peoples of southwest Alaska and atikluks if made by the Iñupiat of northern Alaska.

Arlene told me she had a couple that were nearly finished, that she would be home alone Saturday and would complete them.

I did not wish to put her out on the day before Christmas, but she said this would give her something to do.

So Saturday afternoon we went over to the warrior house, where I saw the BB gun I had as a child hanging on the wall, and she had two atikluks ready to go. Margie liked the darker one and I liked this one - with the blueberry-raspberry print.

Arlene would not let us pay anything, because she says she doesn't know how to charge and so only sews for family and good friends.

I would have tried to find a way to pay, but I had just shot the wedding of her daughter and I don't know how to charge, either.

Now, it is Christmas morning. Santa was still in the house. We were all very surprised at how tiny he was. We wondered what had happened to his white hair and beard.

As we waited to open gifts and eat, Jobe took a stroll in the backyard.

So did Kalib. I still find it hard to believe he is growing so big and handsome.

Four dogs had gathered with us. Here are three of them: Rex and Cortney's new pup Akiak, Cortney's Kingston and Lavina and Jacob's Muzzy, who is well known on this blog.

Lisa and Bryce arrived bearing gifts - even as it is written in holy scripture that wise men, shepherds, noble men and others arrived bearing gifts to a tiny baby born in a manger in Bethleham over 2000 years ago. So we gave gifts on this Christmas Day, because they gave gifts way back then.

Jobe opened one of his many presents with his feet. It was a sled.

Margie used her hands to open this gift from Lavina, which turned out to be a beautiful basket that she had brought on the trip back to Arizona that Margie and I missed when she went into the hospital for emergency surgery and I was in some of the worst stages of my continuing battle against shingles.

Jobe jumped right in.

Rex gave this baseball bat to Lisa and Bryce. Rex had once seriously hoped to go pro, and this is one of the bats he had used to knock the ball around.

Charlie received some beard socks.

I am not sure who received this book, Charlie or Bryce, but something in it had them both amused.

I was curious, so I had them show me... oh, no! What kind of book is this? And why didn't my mother give me some of this medicine?

The raspberry-blueberry atikluk had a cut more to Melanie's fit than Lisa's, so Melanie got it. Lisa wants one now.

Cortney in her new Arlene Warrior atikluk.

Margie offered the blessing.

And then we ate... and ate... and ate...

I was too busy eating to take pictures of the food items, but Jake's squash did not come out of the oven until I thought I had finished and had left the table.

Jake came up with this recipe of squashed stuffed with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, walnuts, pinons or whatever he feels like putting in it after reading about how the Wampanoag brought squash cooked with berries and nuts to the first Thanksgiving they shared with the Pilgrims.

It is the best squash dish that I have ever eaten, bar none.

There were many more gifts, of course. I will not try to recount them all.

One came courtesy of our niece/cousin/aunty Sujitha. After dinner, I assembled that gift and then it became the center of joyous and excited attention for hours.

That gift, and all that followed in its wake, will be the subject of part 2. I probably won't post it until mid to late Tuesday afternoon.

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We do some early Christmas shopping - Kalib gets trapped in a tube

I think it cooled down a bit last night. It got quite cool in our bedroom and I did not have enough blankets on to keep me warm. I could have got up and got another, but I was too lazy. When I first got up this morning and stepped outside, there was still clear sky and the air felt quite crisp.

Yet, in what seemed like no more than 15 or 20 minutes, clouds hid the clear sky, the temperature quickly warmed and it began to snow - fairly heavy, too. Margie and I had decided that we would do our Christmas shopping early this year and this was the day to begin, so I strapped Kalib into the car seat and off we went.

The temperature was 10 degrees (-12 C) but would rise to 20 (-6 C) by the time we would return home.

As we headed into "downtown" big-box strip Wasilla, we passed this man as he walked through the storm.

He held his head up high.

I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that he is not afraid of the night.

Walk on, man!

On the Parks Highway, we saw Coca Cola, coming down the road. Was this Wasilla Coca Cola, or was it headed to Fairbanks? Or places in between?

Wherever, off it went.

We were all hungry, so we went to McDonald's so Kalib could have some Chicken McNuggets, a tiny portion of french fries, apple slices and get a chipmunk toy. He showed little interest in the chipmunk. He is into Thomas.

Not so long ago, it was a spatula. He really got into that spatula.

Now it is Thomas the Train.

I have no idea what it will be next.

Whatever it is, Kalib always takes it very serious and delves deep.

He wanted to go into the McDonald's playground, climb into the tube and then come down the slide on the other end. Not long after he started, he stopped at a porthole to show off for his grandparents - grandma in particular. Boy, does he love his grandma!

I think its all that time she spends babysitting him.

Then things got tricky. He moved to the end of the tube, where it doubles back to the slide and there he paniced. Kalib froze. He would not move from this spot. "You've got to keep going, to the slide!" his grandma and I told him repeatedly.

"No!" he would shake his head and cry.

It was an exasperating feeling, both from inside the tube and out. Looking in, I even felt a little claustrophic, the way you do when you are not dead but people think you are so they bury and then you wake up in your coffin and no one can hear your shouts, because there is six feet of dirt on top of you.

We, of course, are too big to enter the tube. So I could not go in and coach him out. There were other kids in there, most a little bigger than he. They could see his plight. I kind of hoped one of them might lead him out, but none did.

This went on for many minutes - us trying to coax Kalib to either go forward to the slide or back to the entrance.

"No!" he would shake his head each time, crying all the while.

"Ok, Kalib," I finally told him. "Your grandma and I are going to go now. Goodbye."

Then we walked away - maybe 7 or eight feet, to a place where he could not see us.

Filled with new motivation, he soon popped his head into the entrance/exit, saw us there and smiled. "Hi Grandma," he said.

Boy, does he love his grandma!

As we prepared to leave, I saw two dogs waiting in the very long drive-through line. The lady told me their names, but I have forgotten.

So I will call the one on the left Frank and the one on the right, Henry.

Henry barked at me.

The lady told him to stop it.

Then we headed down to Target. We would have to make a left turn into the parking up there where you see another car waiting to turn left. I wondered if we would ever get a chance.The traffic coming from the direction of Anchorage seemed to be a nonstop river of lights.

But, when we got to the left turn lane, the drivers across both oncoming lanes of traffic stopped to create a gap that we could drive through. Margie waved thanks to them from the passenger seat as I quickly shot through the gap.

I briefly put my iPhone in the cart. "No!" Kalib said. Then he grabbed the phone and threw it onto the floor. Not so long ago, I swore to myself that no matter what he might do, I would never harshly scold Kalib. But I did. Then I put the phone back in the cart and refused to go any further until he picked it up and handed it to me.

He did.

A bit later, I discovered that the "on-off" button was missing.

So I can't turn off my phone now. That's not really a problem, except that sometimes an ap will lock up and the only way to get that ap working again is to restart the iPhone.

It still doesn't matter much, though. Before the end of the year, I plan to get an iPhone 4s - mostly for the camera. The camera in the 4s - really good.

Maybe we bought some gifts at Target, maybe we didn't. Shopping in these stores is almost impossible for me. We go down the aisles and my mind just blanks out. Besides Kalib throwing my phone on the floor, the only thing I clearly remember is the many Thomas the Train toys. 

We could not buy any of those. Kalib was with us.

If the highway is not too hazardous, we will drive to Anchorage tomorrow and try again.

On the way home, we stopped at Metro Cafe - right about the usual time of 4:00 PM. Branson and a new boy named Jacob were there, claiming to be helping out.

When we pulled into the driveway, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Kalib had fallen asleep. 

When he felt the car stop, Kalib woke up. Sort of. Waking up wasn't an easy process.

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We take a scary drive to take a dog home and then we get to see three boys who are not as little as they were last time

Muzzy had been separated from his immediate family for almost four weeks now and besides that he kept eating the cats' food. So, somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00 PM, we loaded his own food and personal possessions into the car, opened up the gate to the back and in he jumped.

We - Muzzy, Margie and I - then set off to drive to Anchorage. Down on the floor of this valley, the sun, which at its zenith now barely rises above the tops of the mountains to the south, had already set.

It's rays still created a beautiful fringe of light on the icy mountain tops.

The highway was icy, too, and scary. Here and there, cars had slid off the road.

I thought of the day before, when I had decided to sleep and let Margie drive herself into town for her doctor appointment. As I stated, she hates to drive in the dark, especially if there is ice on the road. In contrast, my night vision is probably about as good as anyone's except for a cat.

When I saw the ice on the highway, the big trucks and thought of Margie driving this gantlet in the dark, I felt very badly that I had slept. But, she did good. She came back alive and well.

We reached Muzzy's house in safety. In the window, I saw the face of a little boy who, it felt, I had not seen in years - even if it had only been a bit less than four weeks.

Dog and family exploded in joyful reunion.

Finally, it calmed down a bit.

Then Jobe noticed that grampa had come, too.

Kalib dragged his grandma to the downstairs playroom to see the trains. Jacob and Lavina bought this set of Thomas trains off Craigslist for $40 - and it has proved to be the best toys these boys have ever had - better than anything electronic or magical.

They hold it, they carry its cars here and there. They push it around the tracks and even where there are no tracks.

They never tire of Thomas the train.

I want such a set for myself.

I don't know where I could put it, but I want one.

Lynxton was sleeping in the very dimly lit master bedroom. His dad was still at work. It is kind of hard to get off a plane after three-plus weeks in Arizona, southern Utah and Las Vegas and go straight to work, but that is what he had to do.

Lavina goes back to work Monday.

It was hard enough for her just to leave the warm sun of the southwest and come back to Alaska.

Margie plans to go in Sunday night so she can stay and hang out with the boys.

The cats and I will be alone again.

Last Christmas, Melanie gave Margie and I a gift card to Century 16 and we still had one movie and one set of refreshments left on it.

So, at 5:00 PM, we headed to Century 16.

We saw Hugo.

MAGICAL movie.

I was entranched from the first fame to the final.

And that was the 2D version. The time of the 3D was off for us.

Yet, even the 2D often seemed 3D.

Gotta see it in 3D, some day.

Oddly enough, this latest wonder of modern communication technology really brought to life the wonder of books.

It made me want to do nothing but read books - and create books.

Afterward, we returned to the house to see if Lynxton had woke up yet. We found him asleep in the cradle of his dad's arm.

He soon awoke. Then his grandma took him.

I was amazed at how big he had grown - how chubby his face had become.

His had left with a lean, slender, face. He returned with chipmunk cheeks.

Lavina ate a lot of mutton in Arizona.

And then we left to go home.

As we always do.

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A dog gets fed, I freeze in mild weather, a traffic ticket gets issued

As you can see, Margie is getting better. She's not running around or jumping about and she is still plenty sore, but besides making two pumpkin chiffon pies and baking rolls, she cut up some dog sausage for Muzzy. I don't mean sausage made of dog, but sausage made for dogs. When Margie was in the hospital, I stopped by Jacob and Lavina's just before they flew south, picked Muzzy up and brought him home.

The original plan was for Caleb to care for him and that's still the plan, but, in practicallity, most of Muzzy's care falls upon us as Caleb is either at work, asleep, visiting a friend or scolding the '49ers when they are losing on TV.

I don't know how it would have worked out for Muzzy and Caleb if Margie had not had to go in for emergency surgery.

They would have got through, I guess, but Caleb really does not have the time to care for a St. Bernard by himself. He can care for the cats, but compared to the dog, their needs are small.

As for me, I have been extremely lazy, doing almost nothing. Yesterday, I stepped out of the house just one time - to photograph the moose that appeared in yesterday's post. And that was just onto the porch.

Today, I got up very late, ate my oatmeal, then lay down on the couch, where two cats joined me, and then semi-dozed off.

Shingles make me not want to move. Shingles make me want only to sleep. Shingles makes it hard to sleep. But, come mid-afternoon, I decided I must do something. So I made myself get up and take a walk. I did not take Muzzy. That would be too hard on me right now.

I just walked by myself and I damn near froze to death.

It wasn't even that cold: 12 degrees, F (-11 C) - the kind of weather that would normally envigorate me. But today it just froze me. It has been that way since I came down with these shingles THREE WEEKS AGO! They are fading in color and the blisters have scabbed over, but they still bring misery to my every second.

But I don't want to write about shingles anymore. Until they go away, I think I must try to find the way to live as usual, as if I did not have them.

So I don't want to write about them anymore. One day - maybe next week, maybe next month, maybe next year, maybe the year after (I have learned that in some cases shingles pain can linger for months and even years after the shingles disappear) I will wake up and there will be no pain.

Then I will write again and say, "My shingles are gone. They don't hurt anymore."

At 4:00 PM, I went out and dropped some bills in the mail. Metro Cafe was closed, so I stopped at the Mocha Moose drive-through and bought an Americano to bring home and share with Margie. Across the street, a cop pulled someone over and appeared to write him a ticket.

Thankfully, Thanksgiving was already over, so the driver did not have to worry about falling short on turkey because he had to pay for a ticket.

How long can an iPhone last at -20 F? A "that's so Wasilla" moment

I still had my iPhone when I took this picture Sunday of Kalib back in his house after Rex's birthday. That phone has really become a part of me. My life is wrapped up in that phone. But it would soon disappear.

Look! Look! This guy has an iPhone! Is it mine? It must be! Mister, you better give my iPhone back, right now! 

Oh, wait a minute. I still had my iPhone when I took this picture. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Charlie's little car with Melanie at the wheel and we were stopped at a red light in Anchorage, watching penguins waddle by. This guy had called the head penguin and was telling her to get her birds out of the road, because he had places to go.

The penguins paid him no mind at all, they just continued to waddle by, one by one, until all 5,000 had passed through the light.

I would have taken a picture, but the penguins had posted a "Do Not Photograph the Penguins!" sign. I felt like my First Amendment rights were being violated, but penguins don't care about American law, the US Constitution, or the First Amendment.

They follow penguin law and penguin law only and they were carrying Ak-47's and shoulder-fired rocket launchers just perfect for blasting Charlie's little car right off the road.

I did not photograph the penguins.

This is where the story starts to get tricky. It was Monday afternoon. Thanks to these shingles and the fact that all my immediate work was out of the way, I hadn't done much but still I took my coffee break and went through the drivethrough at Metro.

I had my phone with me. On my way home, I saw this school bus stop on the road, red lights flashing. Naturally, I stopped, too. This dog came walking out to meet the bus. I was certain the dog had come to meet a student debarking from the bus. But the bus just sat there and the dog just stood there, for about one minute. 

Nothing else happened. Finally, the bus left the dog behind and continued on its way without a single student debarking.

Pretty strange.

After I returned home, I came out here to my office and got into my computer. After half-an- hour or so, I became aware that my iPhone was not in my pocket. I searched the area around my desk. It was not there. I searched every single place in the house that I had been. No iPhone. I searched the car. No iPhone. The weather had turned cold and I had been to the woodpile a couple of times, so I searched all around the woodpile.

No phone.

I called my phone in all these places and more. It did not ring. I called it with all the lights turned out, including the flash light. It did not glow.

I just could not find that phone.

Just before I went to bed, I did another outside search. I did not wear gloves. My hands are very cold conditioned and I can man my cameras bare-handed for long periods of time in zero degree F weather but it was well below zero now and pretty soon my fingers went numb.

So I built up the fire and headed for bed, making a stop at the bathroom to the master bedroom along the way. I could see my breath in there.

The next morning, yesterday, Tuesday the temperature here stood at -20 F (-29c) and it would stay below zero all day. I called my phone. It went straight to voice mail - this meant the battery had died. That meant that I had most likely lost it outside.

But where?

I did a lot of re-searching, both in places I had searched and in places I had not even been before the phone got lost.

Once, if you lost a phone, you lost a phone. Annoying, but no big deal, really. You just replaced it. But now when you lose a phone, you really lose something. Your whole identity gets wrapped up in that phone. There are notes and photos and recorded interviews and aps going here and going there and intimate notes sent back and forth to your wife written when you are separated from her and plenty of personal information.

Losing a phone has become a big deal.

Today, I slept in very late. I have turned the corner toward healing, but I am still battling these nasty, painful, shingles and I still need as much sleep as I can get.

When I got up, I found a note from Caleb. He had found my phone - wedged into a very strange place in the car where I swear I had looked myself. My theory is that the phone froze and so did not ring nor glow when I called - because I called it a few different times from within the car and never did it ring or glow.

But I have it now and life is okay, once again.

Now about the picture: yesterday afternoon I went to Metro one hour earlier than usual. I had not seen Carmen in two weeks, maybe more, because she leaves early these days to pick Branson up from school. So I dropped by a little earlier than normal.

When I pulled into the drivethrough line, there was big pickup truck in front of me, just one space behind the window itself. I could not see a car in front of the truck, so I reasoned that someone in a small car was sitting at the window in front of the truck, which I figured blocked my view of it. It was one of those trucks with a darkened back window, obscuring the occupants from view.

I sat there, waiting in line for several minutes, wondering when the order to the lead car that I could not see because the big truck was sitting between us would be filled and the line could progress.

Just as I was growing so impatient that I was just about ready to jump out and go up and see what was going on, a woman who I had never seen before walked out of the coffee shop, climbed into the truck and drove away. There was no smaller vehicle in front of her. She had just parked her car in the drivethrough line one space back from the window, left it there, went inside, made her order, and took her time.

Boy! This falls into the category of behavior that my daughters call, "That's so Wasilla!" It really isn't indicative of most Wasillans, but we have more than our share. Like all those times that you pull into a crowded parking lot and find someone has parked their big truck at angle across two spaces - sometimes three, if they can figure out how to manage it.

When I pulled to the window, I saw Shoshana and Carmen on the other side. They had wondered why it had been so long since anyone had pulled up to the window.

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