Kalib visits us all day; I meet some friends on my walk; Melanie and Lisa come out

I can't remember precisely what time, but I think about 3:00 AM, I was suddenly awakened by what sounded to be a "thump," followed by the sound of Kalib screaming. I leaped out of bed in an instant and dashed for his room - even as Margie, who is still moving ever so slowly and always with a bad limp, did the same.

But all was fine in his room - except for the fact that he was sitting in the middle of the bed that Margie made for him and he was screaming.

It must be kind of frightening, that having been his room for as long as he can remember, to suddenly be in it by himself, with his parents and all their furniture gone.

He quickly settled down and went back to sleep.

Then, at 4:30, I heard him scream again and this time I heard the pounding of his footsteps as he charged through the door and down the hall. I jumped up again, but Margie stayed put. "He's going to Caleb," she said, as I charged for the door.

Caleb, of course, is a night-shift worker and although it was his night off, I could now hear what sounded to be him playing video games."

"You got The Little One, Caleb?" I shouted out.

"I've got him," she shouted back.

So I went back to bed and fell asleep and stayed asleep for too long, even though, totaled up, I feel significantly short of the eight hours they say you need.

When finally I came out, this was the scene that greeted me.

A bit later, I was sitting here, in my office, at this computer, when Margie brought him out to feed the fish. I always clean and rinse my hands real good before I put them into any of my tanks, but Kalib suddenly plunged his hand in and offered a pellet of fish food directly to one of my fish.

I suspect that all the fish will be okay. The fish in this tank are all eight or nine years old, so, if I were to find one floating tomorrow, how would I know if a germ got them or it was just old age?

I'm pretty sure they will be okay.

Not long afterward, I went walking. I soon came upon this car, stuck off to the side of the road. Judging from the deep, burned-in rut of a tire spinning, it would appear that someone tried to pull it out but didn't succeed.

A little further on, I came upon Danny, Becky and their mom. They had come out to go sledding. I am always happy to see them and they are always happy to see me.

So we did a New Year's family portrait.

Afterwards, mom mentioned that she was looking at the picture that I gave them of Becky and Danny with their bicycles, the morning after their grandfather Red - her father - died. It was the first picture that I had ever taken of the two together - although I had once photographed a little tiny Danny with his late grandfather, Red.

She looked at the date on the photograph and was surprised. "I couldn't believe that it has been five years already," she said.

Becky then asked what I saw when I looked down at the white snow and the brown snow. "I see white sugar and brown sugar," she said.

Then she showed me the new phone that she got for Christmas. She was very pleased. Her mother told her not to lose it, because if she did, then she would have to go back to having one of those generic "minute" phones that you can buy at Wal-Mart.

Everybody then set off to walk up the hill, but Becky set the fastest pace, so we walked together as the other two dropped back again.

"I'm the fastest walker," she told me.

She then told me how excited she was about an all-night get-together that her church was hosting for its young people. "We're not going to go to bed all night," she said. She said they would probably go bowling, too.

Once we got to the top of the hill, she climbed to the top of a snowmachine trail off the road - and then zipped past me on her sled.

Back home, Jim, my good black cat, came to see me, to get an affectionate scruff.

Jim and Kalib. A short time before, Kalib had been vacuuming the floor.

Melanie and Lisa came out late in the afternoon. The three of us went to Little Miller's for coffee and brought one home to Margie.

After we came in and sat down, Kalib put some stickers on himself. Here, he shows one to Lisa.

Then Kalib started chasing Melanie around the wall that separates the kitchen from the woodstove and the living room. Or maybe Melanie was chasing Kalib.

I am not quite certain.

Now, I am very sorry to say, there are three images left that I had planned to include in this post. I am unable to load them. The picture upload feature of Squarespace, my blog host, has frozen up. I cannot upload any more pictures. Over the past two hours, I have tried all kinds of things. I have cleared the cache, I have refreshed the page, I have closed down my browzer and opened it back up again. I have restarted my computer.

Nothing does the trick.

Nearly two hours ago, I sent a message to Squarespace support, where they promise to "respond to service related incidents immediately," hoping that they might help and solve this problem. So far, nothing.

So I am unable to finish this blog post.

Update: I just got a response. I have been informed that I am at 99.9 percent of my storage space and that is why the upload is stalling.

So I have to buy some more storage space.

I don't have time right now. This will have to do it.

Christmas Day: It's gone now, but I remain stuffed and full, blessed with wealth, even in tight times

The preparations had been going on for quite awhile by now, but I had not been ambitious enough to take a picture. After Margie baked these cookies, Charlie did some artistic decorating. Lisa was amused.

Out in the living room, the good black cat Jim stepped into the shadow to eat tinsel and study the gifts that waited under the tree.

Charlie takes a picture of his cookie artwork as Melanie, Lavina and Margie keep on cooking.

As I take a picture of Charlie's artwork, Jacob reaches in to begin destroying it.

Kalib is impatient and tugs at his mom. No, they did not stay here last night. They drove out in their pajamas.

Many gifts were given. Lavina gave Jacob a new electric razor.

I gave Lisa a framed picture of her buddy, Juniper.

Margie gave me the pig. I gave her the salt and pepper shakers. We were both very pleased.

And here is a camera that Margie and I gave to Rex. He is going to Seattle next week to hang out with his buddy and he will need to take some pictures.

Charlie with a little, cast-iron, bird that I gave him.

Caleb got some tires with snow studs for his bike.

Kalib opens up a gift from his Uncle Caleb. Uncle Caleb was born with a magnificent artistic talent, but he has never come around to harnessing it. A good uncle teaches his nephew, so maybe they can help each other.

Charlie blessed the food. It was an unconventional blessing, but he said he was glad to be part of this family. We are glad, too. I took no more dinner pictures after this, because I was too busy eating.

Kalib feeds turkey to his buddy, Royce.

Later, we came back to the table to eat pie and fruit goup.

As good as it was to be together, to exchange gifts and to eat, the day still came pierced by a huge hole. If it is a little hard to read at this size, the words on Rex's shirt say, "Table for one."

It is still a big and painful mystery to all of us why Stephanie up and walked out, but she did and there is nothing to be done about it. Rex has asked us all to think of her kindly and lovingly.

Rex left first, to go meet his buddy, Eddie, who now lives in Seattle but is also in Wasilla to visit his family.

I never stepped outside today. Just before they all left, I laid down upon the couch and was soon covered by a cat blanket. I normally step out onto the porch to wave goodbye to everybody as they leave, but I was too sleepy and these cats felt too good.

So, one by one, the departers came to the couch to give me a hug, then they all went out the door and drove away. I stayed put on the couch for a very long time.

Guess what? Kalib turns two December 26 - hey! That's today! - so, after we get some sleep, we will all gather together again.

What she has missed the most

Other than the pain, discomfort and immobility, the thing that has bothered Margie the most is the time that she has missed with Kalib. She had been his official babysitter up until she suffered her first injury in January, and then his parents had to enroll him in daycare, because she was in no condition to care for him.

Then, about a month ago, she had healed enough that she took over his care once again. And now he is back in daycare.

At least she can get out of bed now, and come to the couch and sit with him.

Even when she couldn't, I would be in the room with her sometimes after his parents came home. The door would be closed, but then we would hear his little feet running down the hall.

Margie would smile, big.

Perhaps she will never be his regular sitter again. He and his parents moved in with us about a year-and-half ago so that they could save some money while Jacob applied to the US Public Health Service Commission Corps and then waited to hear from them. It was a very long process and until it was over, there was no point in them trying to buy a house.

Right now, Jacob works directly for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium as a civil engineer, but once accepted in the Corps, he would be subject to being sent anywhere in the world that the US operates health care programs, from Barrow to Afghanistan, maybe Guam.

Lavina was really hoping that he would be assigned to the Southwest. Flagstaff was the place she really wanted, because it is close to her home.

The assignment finally came - Anchorage.

Today, Jacob and Lavina went house shopping in Anchorage.

So, probably, by the time comes that Margie is again able to take care of little Kalib, he will be living in Anchorage with his parents.

Better that than Guam.

Not that I have anything against Guam. I am certain it is a nice place, but its a long way to have to go to see your grandson. It's a long way to have to go.

Anchorage is not.

That's hot chocolate that he's drinking there, by the way. His Auntie Lisa made it for him. That's her, sitting at the end of the couch, by Jim, the black cat.

I sure do love that cat.

I love them all.

The ordeal that my wife has so far faced - I wanted hospital care for her

Just today, the fourth day, the situation has begun to improve. I think we can reasonably manage it now, all on our own. But the previous three days and nights have all been hell; miserable, miserable, miserable; what little sleep could be had was for me always interrupted by Margie's screams of agony and for her prevented by the terrible pain itself. Simple, two minute tasks that everyone must perform have taken two, even three hours to carry out and it has taken the assistance of at least three strong adults each time. And very soon afterward, the task would need to be performed all over again.

To help get her through this, four adult family members have taken leave from work. It quickly became obvious to me and all the others here that she needed hospital care, at least for the first few days. The demands of caring for her in a way that would alleviate as much pain as possible were beyond our capability and facility. 

I will begin with the third night, when neither Margie or I got more than a few minutes sleep straight at any point. Every ten to fifteen minutes throughout the night - and I do not exagerate - Margie would scream out in terrible pain. This was how often the muscle spasms struck in her left leg. Each time one did, it pulled at her injured knee. This knee has been excruciatingly sensitive to movement and touch. The lightest touch upon her leg or foot could cause her to scream out in pain, as could the tiniest movement, often imperceptible to the eye.

This is why it would take us so long to perform those two minute tasks, for which we never moved her farther than one foot away from the bed.

So the third night passed with virtually no sleep for either of us - me, because the moment I would begin to doze would be the instant that her scream would jar me to full awake. Once awake, I was helpless to do a single thing for her. It is obvious why she could not sleep.

She took all her medications as prescribed.

Now I will bounce back to the first night, the first day, after we left the Taco Bell on Muldoon in Anchorage where I had bought her a burrito so that she could take her pain medication. I drove home, with her sitting in the back seat and, as usual, it took close to one hour. For her, it was a miserable ride.

Once I got her home I had to get her from the car into the house - but remember, the slightest movement, the slightest touch, would cause her to scream out in pain. We retrieved the crutches she had used after her last injury, but while there were no broken bones this time, whatever damage has been inflicted upon her ligaments has brought even more severe pain than did the break. After about 15 minutes of struggle, punctuated by scream upon scream, we had not succeeded in moving her more than a foot from the car.

We then decided that we needed a wheelchair, just to transport her, but we did not have one. So I came here, to my office, retrieved my desk chair and took it outside. Then, through many more screams, Jacob and Caleb slowly lowered her into that chair while I attempted to keep her leg straight and her knee from bending by supporting her brace wih my right hand just below the knee and her ankle with my left hand.

Once we got her into the chair, we could not really roll it because our driveway is not paved and the tiny wheels of my office chair would not roll over rocks, gravel and dirt. So we picked the chair up by its wooden arms, carried her into the house and sat her down in the middle of the front room. We padded another chair with pillows and placed her injured leg upon it in a way that would keep it straight.

She was now so exhausted by the pain and effort that she wanted to do nothing but sit in that spot without moving. So she sat there for about an hour, maybe longer, then decided that it was time to move to the single bed at the foot of our bed. This is where she had slept after I had I got my titanium replacement for the shoulder that I shattered on June 12, 2008. It is where she continued to sleep after she fell and broke her left kneecap and right wrist January 20, even before I had healed enough to share our bed with her.

So remember how last Saturday night, after I returned home from the Arctic Slope, I looked forward to climbing into my bed with my wife who I had not seen for seven weeks?

That night, last Saturday night, the night before she fell again, was the first night that we had slept together in our bed in fourteen months. FOURTEEN MONTHS! Who knows when we will next spend another night together in the same bed?

So we moved her slowly down the hall and then to the bed. Once at the bed, with me always trying to keep her leg straight, it took us three hours, again punctuated by many pained screams and shreiks, to place and position her.

No sooner had we accomplished this when she needed to use the restroom. We could not get her to the bathroom, but we did manage to raise her from the bed and we did manage to take care of the matter and then to place her back upon the bed - and again, the entire process was torn by the screams and shrieks and it took another two hours.

Altogether too soon, it would be time to do it all again. Any reader who has been with this journal for awhile will understand that I entered this new nursing job with its 24 hour shift followed immediately by 24 hour shift already in a state of exhaustion, yet it had to be done and so I did it. 

I knew that if she was going to get the care that she needed to keep her pain and suffering at a more tolerable level, she needed to go back to the hospital and be admitted. Yet, she had been through too much, suffered too much and was too exhausted to try now. The car was parked just outside the front door - less than a minute walk away out the bedroom, down the hall, through the front room and then outside - but it felt as far away and inaccessible as the moon.

It was late now, well after-hours, and there was nothing to do but to give Margie a chance to rest as best she could - which would not be much rest at all - and then see how we could get her back to the hospital. In the meantime, I decided to call the Alaska Native Medical Center, explain the situation and see if there was any kind of advice or help that I could get.

I called the main number and was transferred to the emergency room. I explained the situation to the person who answered. In an impatient tone of voice, she told me that she could neither offer any advice nor connect me with a doctor, nurse, or anyone who could, as it was against policy to make any kind of diagnosis or give any kind of advice over the phone.

The remainder of the first night and of the wee and early hours of the morning passed with many shrieks and screams of pain and with almost no sleep.

Come the second day, I was so exhausted that I could hardly function; I had strained my back in two places, but still my wife needed my help. I felt guilty for thinking of my own comfort and fatigue when I knew that what Margie was going through was so much worse.

Over the course of the next day, we spent some time on the phone with various people at ANMC, all of whom were most courteous and all expressed a desire to help. In the end, concerning the matter of further hospital care, a gentleman called me back and we engaged in a fairly lengthy discussion. This was the gist of his message: the chart for your wife has been examined. This is not the kind of injury that warrants hospital care. You can bring her back in. She will then have to be reexamined - the examination will mean we have to move her leg around and bend her knee. This will aggravate her injury even more. Then we will almost certainly send her home again and she will be in worse condition than she is right now.

This was followed by two more days of no sleep, of multiple two-hour, even three-hour, screaming ordeals. Her pain killer was changed and strengthened, yet not much seemed to change. 

This is me, late last night, lying on our bed not far from the one where Margie lay in pain. As he always is, Jim was there to help me through the ordeal. Not long afterward, an amazing thing happened. Margie improved dramatically. The two hour ordeal dropped to 20 minutes, her pain became bearable and her screams ceased. My help alone became sufficient to get her through it. Come morning, Jacob was able to drive back to Anchorage and return to work.

Lisa works at ANMC and had been busy serving as a go between to help her mom at least get a prescription for a stronger pain-killer, plus muscle relaxants. Perhaps that is what finally made the difference. Thank you, Lisa. And thank you Jacob, Lavina and Caleb for what you have done to help us get through this hard ordeal to this point.

On one of those miserable nights, Kalib looked out the door into the backyard and spotted a bull moose in velvet.

The bull moose, in velvet, in our backyard.

And so passes this recent chapter of our lives, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

I take my first bike ride since I fell off the chair; The Fit Lady falls into Catch 22 with the Department of Agriculture and the IRS; various and insundry Wasilla scenes

The last time that I rode my bike was in early June of last year, just before I went to Barrow, stood on the chair, fell off the chair, shattered my shoulder, took a $37,000 ambulance ride in a Lear jet back to Anchorage and got a new shoulder.

But today I rode it. Now I want to ride and ride and ride.

It hurt. It burned my lungs and strained my arms. I am so out of shape.

It felt good.

I just want to ride and ride.

But I have places to go, soon. I won't be able to bring my bike.

As you can see, I kept my brace on. I have been told to keep it on all the time. 

As I neared Serendipity, I saw The Fit Lady, walking on the bike trail ahead of me. I slowed down and pedaled beside her for awhile. She always has a good story. I wondered what it would be today.

Here it is:

Not long ago, she got a bill from the Department of Agriculture demanding that she pay the interest on an agricultural loan that they had never given to her. The Fit Lady is not into agriculture. She is in to skiing and biking and sailing, but not agriculture.

So she wrote a letter and told them so. In time, they wrote back and said okay, maybe you don't have a loan with us. Sometime after that, they sent a statement to the IRS claiming that they had advanced $38,000 in taxable income to her.

Now, the IRS expects her to pay taxes on money she never received for an agriculture business that she does not own.

"I'm not going to pay it," she said. "If I had a cow on my porch, I think I would know. Well, yesterday, I did have a cow moose on my porch. I opened the door and accidently banged her nose. She was there for the bird feeder. She got it, too. There's no food for the birds, now."

Just when so many of them are arriving after their long winter's absence!

After I got home, I parked my bike by my wrecked airplane. After I crashed it, many people told me that I was lucky to have walked away unhurt. It didn't feel lucky then and it doesn't feel lucky now.

I was also told, many times, "any landing that you walk away from is a good landing."

I made many good landings in the Running Dog. This last one wasn't one of them.

Later, I saw this guy, riding his bike. 

I took Margie to Carr's, so that we could buy three-dozen eggs to boil and color. Kalib is coming home tonight. He will need eggs to find tomorrow.

Before I got out of the car, Michael came by. I had never met him before, but he was a nice kid, pleased to learn that he would be on the blog.

Michael has been working at Carr's since January or February, taking groceries to cars for customers, and retrieving shopping carts. "It's a good job," he said. "I meet lots of nice people. I enjoy helping people."

There you go: Michael of Carr's in Wasilla, Alaska.

Inside Carr's, I was surprised to see Slackwater Jack. Slackwater is a commercial fisherman from Cordova and a member of the Native Village of Eyak Tribal Council. I first met him many years ago, when I was doing portraits and interviews of Alaska Native veterans of foreign wars. 

Jack is Tlingit, and fought in Vietnam.

Now he shops at Carr's in Wasilla, because his wife moved here, so he must hang out here a bit, too.

A lot of people will be eating strawberry shortcake tomorrow - Easter Sunday. Does this look like a time of hardship?

And yet it is, for many. Maybe us, in a month or two. You never know, when you work freelance and have no business sense. When I have money, I spend it. When I don't, I don't and when it gets really bad, I sell things, and hock things and sometimes I never get them back - like those guns I was telling you about.

This hasn't happened for awhile, though. Years. Not even this last year, when my income dropped by more than half, due to my injury. I hope it never happens again, but one never knows.

I just want to write my books, now, and do this blog. Neither activity pays any money.

And then these cats who hang out with me always need food, and litter to deposit it in after they process it.

One place I spent money recklessly today was at Little Miller's, where I pulled up to the drive-in window and bought an Americano for me and another for Margie. I could see through to the other drive-in window, where this guy studied the menu before ordering.

I don't know why he stood there and did not sit in a car like the rest of us, but he did.

Margie spent the day working on taxes. I had to spend time rounding up receipts for her. As usual, wherever I was, Jim was there, too. He is here with me, in this office, right now, asleep, curled up on his chair.

My buddy, Jim.

I treasure his presence.