People just keep feeding me; another dog charges into traffic; Green Terror swims into the house; Kalib returns to play golf, study properties of light

It used to be that Caleb and I would go to IHOP together just about every Sunday - at least those Sunday's when I was home. Then it just stopped happening. Sometimes I would ask, but he would decline - usually because there was a game he wanted to watch. For awhile, he had a girl friend and tended to prefer her company to mine. I didn't mind. Last night, he asked me if I wanted to go to IHOP with him this morning.

When I got up, after spending a long, hellacious, night battling with Squarespace,* Kalib was once again battling opponents from all over on his video game - but he broke away and off we went. Melanie greeted us happily and sat us down. She was not our waitress, but just the same, she brought our food to us.

For reasons that I do not fully understand, we both ordered off "The All You Can Eat Pancakes" menu. "I love IHOP pancakes," Caleb said. "IHOP just has the best pancakes."

Later, he added this, "I'm beginning to hate that video game. It's just addicting, especially when you play online with other people."

I told him that, based on some comments left on this blog, he just might open the door one morning to find one or more girls ready to snatch him away from the video game.

He claimed not to be interested. All he wants now, he says, is for the snow to melt so he can get back out to the golf course. That won't happen for awhile.

He made it sound like it had to be golf or girls, but not both together.

This made me think of Tiger Woods, but I did not utter these thoughts.

Caleb bought my breakfast. That was nice.

Later, I headed out on my walk. I had barely stepped out the door when I saw the dog that nearly killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot and the drunken ice cream lady crashed her good-humor vehicle.

"Dog! Dog!" I once again found myself shouting as I saw this hapless, unsupervised, character charge straight into the path of this car, on Seldon. The dog turned away from death at the last possible instant. I don't know if my call had anything to do with it or not.

Maybe.

The driver of the car did not slow down - not by one mph.

The sky was laced so beautifully with high cirrus clouds. An airplane flew through it. (Sorry, Norman Maclean.)**

You will recall that yesterday, as I dealt with a loose dog, Margie called to tell me about Uriah getting caught in the explosion at the White Mountain Apache Sunrise Ski resort.

Well, my phone rang as this dog, Tequilla, was barking at me. It was Margie, with good news about Uriah. He was on his way home from the hospital in Phoenix. He is going to be okay. He will need to lotion his second-degree facial burns and try to keep the direct sun off of them for awhile, but the scarring should not be bad at all.

As Margie updated me, Tequilla followed along. She barked at me throughout the entire conversation.

Then this guy came along, running with this dog. Lucky and Dale. Lucky is the dog, Dale the man. Dale is Lucky, too. He wound up in my blog, just because he ran with his dog.

Then this boy came by, on a four-wheeler. I believe he is a child of Russian immigrants.

Further along, I found the headless stuffed turtle that the black lab had been carrying when it almost got run over yesterday.

I stopped at Pet Zoo today and bought this little Green Terror to put in the 90 gallon tank with my old parrot fish and the baby yellow peacock that I bought a couple of days ago.

I have had two green terrors in the past. One was so mean that I eventually had to clear out all of his tank mates and let him have a 55 gallon tank all to himself. The other was docile, and never went after another fish.

I will never let this guy beat up my parrot. The parrot is too big for the Green Terror to bother now and I hope that as he grows, he will just accept the parrot.

If he doesn't, then I will have a problem to solve.

Green Terrors are very beautiful fish and they are smart, too.

My mean one really liked Lisa. Whenever she would come into my office, he would get excited and swim to the glass to greet her. She liked him, too.

Right now, this little baby is about two inches long. It should grow to eight to ten inches.

About 4:30 in the afternoon, Lavina called to tell me that she, Jacob and Kalib were on their way out to see me and they wanted to take me to dinner. I was surprised, because she is still experiencing contractions, although much lighter, and I did not think that she would want to leave Anchorage.

All week, she has done nothing but stay at home and get bed rest. "I just had to get out and go somewhere," she said.

On the way out, Kalib fell asleep in the car, so they took the long route through Palmer to give him time to snooze. 

Here he is, just waking up. He is not happy about it.

They took both Caleb and I to Jalepeno's. Another free meal for me. The little girl in the background is named Raeligh.

Jerry, the manager and a member of the owner family came along, to admire Kalib and to speak Spanish to him. Once, a couple of year's back, I came here by myself and ordered a meal that cost $14.00 plus and paid for it with my debit card. The next day when I checked my bank account online, $1400 plus had been removed from my account.

It was an honest mistake. Jerry quickly had the money transferred back into my account.

When we returned to the house, Kalib and Caleb resumed their ongoing golf game.

Lavina gave Royce some love. I'm afraid Royce had a hard day today. His progress seemed not only to stop, but to reverse itself. He almost fell off the couch twice. He shook and shivered for awhile, even though the fire was warm. He did some drooling. He walked stiffly. Although he begged to get it and dug right in, he left much of his soft food uneaten in his bowl.

Early in the week, Lavina had been convinced that new baby would come before the week ended. Now, she feels it could be a few days yet. If its not here by the eighth, the doctor plans to induce it, for medical reasons.

That is our little grandchild who she holds.

Kalib manipulates a "This American Life" ap on Caleb's iPhone.

I'm not quite certain what Jacob was up to, but he was in the back, rummaging through this and that. Then he came out with this - a wedding invitation. The couple pictured is Margie and me. The invitation is to our wedding - 36 years ago. Jacob said he was going to keep it.

To see Margie standing there, beside me, in that picture... see how beautiful she is? She chose to go with me. How did it happen? How could it not have happened? Someday, perhaps I will tell you more of our story, how we came together. But not right now.  

I don't know why the decades pass so fast, but they do. Not so long ago, it was she and I who were making babies and it was our parents who so eagerly waited to meet their new grandchildren.

Now, save for Margie's mother, our parents are in the grave and it is us, Margie and I, waiting to meet our new grandchild.

And here is the first one. He is experimenting with a flashlight. The world remains a new and exciting place to him. He wants to learn about everything.

Kalib helps Caleb put his clubs back in the bag. Then he leaves with his parents.

There was certain desperation evident in Royce tonight, the intensity of which I had never before witnessed. He seemed desperate to communicate something to me. He kept looking into my eyes like this and when he was close enough, he would reach out with a paw and touch me, and look at me this way. His motor control was not good. His claws would dig painfully into my skin.

He was trying to tell me something. What? It made my eyes water, just a little bit.

*That battle continued tonight. Problem not solved. Hours wasted. Eaten up by Squarespace - the nightmare blogging program from hell.

** Author of A River Runs Through It.

CM*D29: Kalib gets naughty at IHOP, I spot a hunter on Church

We took Kalib to IHOP today and he was naughty. Very, very, naughty - the naughtiest that he had ever been during any outing that we had ever taken him on.

He even hurled a crayon that struck a lady at the next table in the back of the head.

That's how naughty he was.

We were all quite proud of him, because he was acting just like a kid in his "terrible twos." Kalib has over too months to go before he reaches his "terrible twos."

So we knew that he is above average, advancing fast. We were so proud, our chests swelled and our bellies damn near burst right through our shirts. 

Even so, we kicked him out, shooed him away from the table and sent him outside. His dad went with him. 

Soon, he was at the window, eager to come back in and raise more chaos.

If you wonder why the two glasses and Cholla sauce are on the window sill, it is because we put them there while he was still inside so that he would not knock them across the table.

Later, in the afternoon, I was driving down Church Road when I spotted a hunter on a fourwheeler.

I wonder if he got his moose?

Do you think he was naughty when he was a toddler?

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

IHOP Sunday: A toddler never escapes the gaze of another toddler; Who did you vote for, Wasilla pitbull? Car search begins: The Insurance Adjuster

Kalib and Cade spot each other at IHOP. I wonder if they might be buddies one day? Not if Lavina has her way - she wants the whole family, including us, to move back to Arizona as soon as possible. Margie does, too - at least for the winter months. Me, Alaska is my home and was my home before I ever even came here. I am an Alaskan, born into exile in the state of Utah. I am an Alaskan now and I was Alaskan then. Just the thought of living anywhere else damn near kills me. 

A little bit of time in Arizona each winter will be fine - if we can figure out how to afford it. 

And then what about Margie? She has given me nearly 28 year of her life in this place, where she freezes every winter and pines for her Native southwest. Don't I owe her something for that?

But to give up Alaska?

She likes it here in the summer and says that it is fine with her if we spend our summers here. She didn't much care for this past summer, though. It was a cold summer, and it rained and rained and rained and the rain was cold.

When a Mat-Su summer turns out nice, however, it is the sweetest summer in the world. No other place that I have been can produce such a sweet summer as does this valley. Even my Arizona girl agrees on this.

We stepped out of IHOP to find two dogs in a truck. I wonder who this pitbull voted for? And how did the dog get away with it? It's against the law for dogs to vote in Alaska. And why did the pitbull vote today? The election was not today. It was November 4.

Does this pitbull sometimes wear lipstick? I don't see any on it right now.

The pitbull wanted to kill me, but I bravely stood there and photographed it with my trusty G10 pocket camera. 

The Insurance Adjuster - Joey Seibet. Okay, I must back up to last week, just before New Year's, when the insurance adjuster for Progressive came over. We are insured with State Farm, but the cops cited the poor kid who rear-ended our Taurus with his GMC truck and they didn't cite me, so Progressive had to pick up the damages.

I was wary at first, expecting a battle. I guess in part because it is my health insurance that I have been dealing the most lately, due primarily to my accident in June and that company is a horrible organization. It makes promises when you sign on and then when the time comes, gives your case to a person who gets paid very well to sit in an office to find ways to allow his company to break those promises and to make you pay, even when you can't pay.

So I was expecting a battle, but Mr. Seibert proved easy to work with and he seemed to care.

Sadly for us, our nine year-old Taurus had almost 200,000 miles of Alaska driving on it and so its market value was many thousands of dollars less than what it would have cost to repair the damages. When that happens, they total a car out at its market value and give you a check for that amount, then they take the car and sell it to the junk man.

So we got $2,833 for our old Taurus. Enough for a down payment on a new car.

Now we are engaged in the miserable process of shopping for a replacement. I hate it. And when we are done, we will be saddled with monthly car payments, something that we have not had to face for several years. And, even with 200,000 miles on it, Alaskan miles, we had babied the Taurus engine and it was running smooth and sounded fine.

So, you see, even when the insurance adjuster is a fair person, you can still come out in a much worse spot than you were in before his client smacked you in the rear.

As for Mr. Seibert, he says that being an insurance adjuster around here right now is like "trying to take a drink of water from a fire-hydrant." That's because people are continually crashing on our icy roads. Alaskans like to deride Lower 48 drivers whenever they see them sliding around on the news after a snowstorm, but the fact is, Alaskans are forever sliding off the road and crashing into things.

Mr. Seibert says that he feels good when he is able to help a family out, but sad when he can see that the insurance company's liability falls short of their needs, especially when there are small children involved and people who have been hurt.

He does not deal with fatalities or injuries that involve broken bones. These go to someone else.

While he did not mind being photographed, Mr. Siebert expressed a worry that I would freeze, given that the temperature was close to 20 below, F. Ha! Me - a genuine Arctic photographer - and look at him, how he is dressed!

And he's taking pictures, too!