Happy Father's Day, Son!

Lavina had a health fair to do in conjunction with the Chickaloon and Knik tribes at the Palmer fairgrounds, so Margie and I went and picked her up when it was all done, about 4:00 PM. Jacob and the boys came out about two hours later. The boys were asleep when he arrived and so we left them that way.

We took turns peeking into the car to see when they might wake.

Jobe woke first. He reached for me, right away.

In the past on this day, I have paid tributes to the fathers from whence we come. Today, I pay tribute to the fathers who descend from us and since one of those is my oldest son, I focus that tribute on him.

Here he is, yesterday evening, tossing my middle grandchild Jobe into the air.

Now he shows him the first frog of the season. It used to be that our yard teemed with frogs - one could hardly walk without stepping on one.

Now a frog sighting is an occasion to take note of.

Jobe does take note. 

As for the oldest grandson Kalib, he still sleeps in the car.

In time, Kalib wakes up and comes back, too. The frog is still hanging out nearby, so Jacob shows it to Kalib. He invites Kalib to touch it, but Kalib is wary.

To demonstrate that this frog poses no harm, Jacob gives it a kiss. 

A bit later, Jimmy begins to wander too far away for my comfort, but I am entertaining Jobe and Jobe does not want me to leave, so Jacob goes and hauls him back.

Well, I took a lot of pictures last night and my computer is acting up big time - it is headed to the repair shop tomorrow or Tuesday and if I could afford to I would just replace it because I am spending maybe 30-40 percent of the time that I work with it - and sometimes, all of the time for an hour or two straight - watching the spinning color wheel go round and round and suffering mulitiple freezeups and forced shutdowns, so it is just too exasperating to try to look at the photos I took.

It was possible to navigate my way through the spinning color wheel and crashes to the toss and frog shots, because they were clear in my memory and I knew just where to find them, and the two shots that wrap up this series were at the end of yesterday's take, but it is too much of pain to search through the others.

This one, however, just popped up on my screen as I was swearing and cursing at my computer and it was so damn cute I just grabbed it.

There are some serious people within the photographic community who dismiss cute photos as irrelevant and facile, but, damnit, cute is part of life, too.

Please take note: I am a very serious photographer and this is a very serious photograph of real and true life.

More serious stuff - my son, the dad, with his entire family, his wife and three children. Jobe is taking an ever greater interest in spatulas.

Wait a minute, the astute reader protests... your son Jacob has only two children, Kalib and Jobe... why do you say, "three?"

Remember when Jobe quit breast feeding and I noted that Jacob and Lavina had been using the breast feeding method of birth control and it would soon become apparent how well that worked out?

See that little bulge in the tummy, right behind Jobe?

That is how well that worked out.

Very well, indeed!

So here is my son, the dad, with his wife, his two children that the light now falls upon and the one that is scheduled to make a first appearance in the light of the delivery room in October.

Happy Father's Day, son!

I don't know how you ever got to be such a good dad. You didn't have the greatest example to follow and you were kind of wild there, for awhile. Yet, an excellent dad is what you have become. A little overindulgent at times, perhaps, but overindulgence is love, and infinitely superior to neglect. These kids of yours are pretty damn good kids and that didn't just happen.

I love them.

You make me proud.

And so does Lavina. Even though this is Father's Day, not Mother's Day, it has to be said.

Happy Father's Day!

To all you good dad's out there!

Young dads, old dads, dead dads like my good dad - all dads.

Happy Father's Day to you all!

View images as slides

I am about to go into the jaws of this machine, where I will be ordered to lie perfectly still for 90 minutes - Hi, Bill! - Kalib studies the world

The thing is, my shoulder has made great improvement and continues to do so, but my wrist kind of got overlooked. I remember lying in the hospital after my shoulder replacement surgery, my wrist hurting like hell. I did not think too much of it - I figured that I just banged it up pretty good without doing any real damage.

The attention all went to my shoulder. Maybe three months later, when my wrist was still in pain, I brought it up to Dr. Duddy on one of my visits and so he had his beautiful technician shoot some some x-rays of it.

No breaks, no cracks, no damage of any kind that he could see.

So I continued to just tough it out, expecting the pain to eventually go away.

But it did not.

And now, on the whole, my wrist causes me more pain than my shoulder does. I can lift and pull with it, no problem. But if something pushes my palm downward, or someone shakes my hand too hard, or I lie on it wrong... AYYY YAHHH!

It hurts!

I have written about how I would like to get on a snowmachine this spring and head out onto the ice pack, but I am a bit afraid. And I know I could not hang onto the back of a sled.

It's my wrist, even more than my shoulder that causes me to bear such fear.

So yesterday, Dr. ordered up an MRI just for my wrist.

Today, I spent 90 minutes in this machine.

I had intended to describe the experience - the sounds of the MRI: some like a jackhammer, others like a machine gun, others like an old fashioned shock-treatment device putting an electric charge into flesh, all with NPR programs speaking soothingly to me through my headphones, but I have already written more words than I intended.

It was not painful, it was not terrible, it was just long.

And when I finally I got up, my wrist really hurt. My back was sore.

So I drove to Taco Bell and ordered a cheese quesidilla and a bean burrito with green sauce.

This is Bill, who works for Alaska Open Imaging here in Wasilla, the place where I got the MRI. He is not the technician who put me through the MRI, but he remembered me from the last time I came to AOI. That was after I got rear-ended the eve before Christmas Eve and was left with a bit of whiplash.

Not bad, mind you, but I had to get it checked out, anyway, and Bill is the one who took my x-rays. He was quite impressed today when he saw my G10 pocket camera and wanted to know all about it.

So, as a demonstration, I took his picture and gave him the address to this blog.

Hi, Bill!

And here is one sheet of film from that MRI. I must take it into town Monday to give to Dr. Duddy. I did not want to go to town, Monday. I already must go Tuesday to take Margie in for a followup visit regarding her injuries.

Oh, well.

And here is Kalib, looking out into the world. What a little man he has suddenly become!

It is white out there now, but soon it will be green. Mosquitoes will buzz through the air and tiny frogs will hop about in the back yard.

Not as many frogs as used to hop, though. 

Tons of frogs used to hop around out there.

Now only ounces of frogs hop about.

What happened to them all?