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 rumbling train causes Margie to sit right up in her hospital bed

Jobe and Kalib came to the hospital last night to visit their grandma. They did not quite know what to think of her hospital room and were a little hesitant to enter.

But enter they did. Kalib greatly loves his grandma and immediately began to tell her about a great adventure in his life. It had something to do with trains - and in particular, a train named Thomas.

Holy cow! What is that in Kalib's hands? Could it be a train? Could it be... Thomas the train?

Practically the whole family was there - except for Caleb, who had to stay home and go to his regular night shift and Lisa, who had spent some time hanging out here earlier in the day.

All present were very curious to see what Kalib would do with the train that he held in his hands.

Why, Kalib put the train on the table in front of his grandma, found a tunnel, and drove that train right through it and to the edge of a cliff!

Astute readers will notice that Jobe also holds a train engine - that's Percy - Percy the train. As we were all talking about Percy the train, the door opened and in walked my friend... Percy! Percy Aiken from Barrow, who had come down to be with his brother Earl, who is intensive care.

I know many people are wishing the best and praying for Margie and me, but Earl needs prayers and good thoughts much more than we do.

I went down to the ICU unit to see Earl and there I also saw some friends from Point Hope. Caroline Cannon who was there to support her son, Leroy Oenga, who also has a great need for good wishes and prayers.

This morning, I slept very late. I've been doing that a lot lately. When I got up, I knew that I should fix myself oatmeal, but, solitary individual though I am, I wanted to go someplace where I could sit in solitude among people, eat, sip a bit of coffee and be waited on.

So I headed off to breakfast.

Here is a lone diner, at Abby's. We were both alone, him and I.

The truth is, I forgot my camera when I to breakfast this morning, so these last two pictures are actually from Wednesday morning, before Margie came home from Anchorage, before her gall bladder struck her down. These pictures are standins for today, although today I went to Mat-Su Family.

They are now planning to subject Margie to two surgeries - the first one to remove her gall stones, and the second one to remove her gall bladder. I do not understand this. I do not know why they don't just take the gall bladder out with the stones in it and get it done at one time.

There must be a good reason, but I do not yet know what it is.

They are hoping to do the first surgery tomorrow and then the next the day or two after.

They would do the first today, but they still need to bring down her level of infection.

We are scheduled to depart for Arizona Monday morning on Alaska Airlines.

We are not going to make it. In Arizona, Lynxton will be introduced to his bigger Apache and Navajo family and we were greatly looking forward to being there for it.

I was going to do some heavy blogging.

Now it will go unblogged. It will be documented, though. Lavina will be posting on Facebook.

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Two November 13 birthdays, part 1: No alcohol at this party, but boy, it was a wild one!

It was Rex's birthday party - which one? - 33 I think, but I'm not certain...32? 34? He's my third son and I'm still a young man, barely into my 30's, I'm sure; possibly still in my 20's. That's how I usually feel, anyway - not so much right now, because of these damn shingles - but usually I think of myself as being just about as young as I was on the day I married Rex's mom.

So I don't know how he could be 33 or 32 - I hope he's not 34 - but, according to the calendar, he is, indeed, somewhere in that age range.

Oddly enough, Rex hosted his own party at the home he now shares with his special friend, Cortney, who has won all of our hearts since she and Rex first got together last summer.

It was a brunch party, with eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage and a cut up fruit mix of pomegranate, strawberrys, pineapples, melons and such.

It began with coffee - french press or American style.

Charlie went for French Press, which is just what anyone would expect him to do. 

We had not been sitting and eating long before Lisa passed her iPhone 4 around the table, so that people could laugh at the picture on the screen. Rex and Cortney did, indeed, laugh.

I was slightly baffled. "It's a men-up," Lisa said. I had no idea what a men-up was, so after I got home, I googled the term. I learned that men-ups are  "colorful photographs of 20-something guys dressed in guises of stereotypical masculinity and posed like mid-century pin-up girls." 

Men-ups have gone viral. They even have their own men-up calendar.

Next, Cortney passed her phone around. Even before she and Rex got together, she shared her home and heart with another guy, Kingston. When she was not looking, Kingston kept opening the door to let the birds fly in.

For some reason, birds really like to fly into this cozy little log cabin.

This is Kingston. Not the honey - the dog. 

And this is Lynxton. He is studying the world that he was born into, trying to figure out what is what. I wish he had a camera that matched his eyes, so he could show us what he sees and how he sees it.

Kalib was as full of mischief as I have ever seen him. If I had had the energy and good health and had kept my eyes open more of the time, I could have taken about 3000 pictures of him doing things like this. He was all over the place, shooting from one side of the room to the other, then to the other sides and then all four sides, seemingly at once. 

He was under the table, then on this chair and then that chair.

One time, I opened my eyes and saw him running upside down across the ceiling. I don't know how he did that, but he did.

"That's impossible!" I exclaimed.

"No it's not! I could do that!" Charlie claimed.

"Well, do it then!" I challenged.

Okay," Charlie said. "I will." He then ran up the wall, took two steps across the ceiling and then fell onto his head, fortunately on the dog bed.

I photographed the whole thing, but, damnit, I forgot to use my camera.

Melanie, Lynxton and Margie, partying hard at the party.

Lavina shovels some nutrition into Jobe's mouth.

I enjoyed the food and the company. No matter what I am doing, I must bear the pain of these shingles, so I thought I would be just as well off feeling the pain at the party as sitting home. And Cortney is a doctor in residency and she reassured me of what I had already been told. While I can theoretically pass chicken pox from my shingles to someone who has never had the pox or been immunized against it, I cannot do so through the air. I can only do so with close physical contact.

The only person in the room who had not had the pox or been immunized was Lynxton. So, as badly as I wanted to pick him up, I did not. I kept my distance from him.

Yet, the experience proved to be much tougher on me than I had anticipated. I spent a good deal of the time huddled up somewhere with my eyes closed, trying to retreat from the pain into my own pysche and meditation. I was jarred from one such round by the sudden, loud, angry screams of a wronged Jobe.

I quickly gathered that he had secured a new prized possession, but someone had taken it from him.

He quickly got it back. The screaming stopped. Jobe was happy again.

Any long-time reader knows that whenever anybody in this family has a birthday, Kalib must assist in the blowing out of the candles.

So, after the candles had been lit and the cake placed before Rex, Kalib was called over to assist with the blowing out.

But Kalib refused to blow. He would not blow. Then he produced a Thomas train engine and developed a new method of putting birthday candles out - the "fan and snuff" method. He furiously pumped the train up and down over the candles, creating enough wind that he actually blew some out, but some of the flames would not yield to this little wind. These he snuffed out by bringing his Tom train engine right down onto the flame.

Jobe got to eat the first raspberry.

Then Kalib got a raspberry.

One wasn't enough. Laughing with each bite, Kalib repeatedly shot his hand in, grabbed a raspberry, shoved it into his mouth, then grabbed another before Rex could stop him.

I think he got about half the raspberries.

I only got one.

The cake was delicious, but the bite with the one raspberry that had escaped Kalib's thievery to make it to me was the most delicious of all.

Oh, that was a good bite!

But I only got one such bite...  :'-(

I got the idea that I should take a regular-style group photo of all who were there, except for me, to make certain that everybody present wound up pictured on the blog. It was okay that I would not be in the photo, because the mere fact that such a photo would exist would be proof that I was there.

So I asked everybody to gather on the other side of the table and everybody did - except for Kalib. As different folks called out, "Kalib, come over here," he dashed this way and that way, out into the entry and back again, but he would not join the group.

Then he ran beneath the table, where he knew I could not see him. I couldn't, either. All I could see was the top of the table and the people behind it - all of them damn cute, but Lynxton the cutest of all.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I dropped down to a squatting position, I would be able to see Kalib. I also knew that once I spotted him, I had to act instantly. As soon as he realized what I was doing, he would shoot out from under the table and be gone.

So I dropped down to a knee. At that very moment, Melanie began to choke mildly upon a raspberry, Jobe threw a fit and there was distraction all around. I shot.

I suddenly realized that from this angle, all the camera could see of Lynxton was the top of his head, including part of his right ear. "Margie, lift Lynxton u..." I began to shout.

Too late. Kalib scooted out from beneath the table and was gone.

Two November 13 birthdays, part 2.

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I happen upon an eagle, then must choose between it and my grandson

As I drove home the long way on my coffee break, I saw a bald eagle, perched on a bare branch high in a tree over the Little Susitna River. I stopped, got out, got as close to it as I could without falling into the river, took a few pictures, got back into the car and continued my journey toward home.

I was tired, weary, lacking in energy. I did not want to do anything that I did not have to do. "That's it," I told myself. "This will be my one picture for the day. I will shoot no more. I will post just this one."

When I arrived home, I was surprised to see Lavina's car idling in the driveway. The fact that it was idling told me that she was keeping it warm because Jobe had fallen asleep on the drive out and was still napping.

I peeked through the glare and the images of bare trees reflecting off the windshield and, sure enough, there was Jobe, napping peacefully.

Sorry, eagle.

Still trying to figure this new one out...

Click to enlarge.

Here you see an "old" picture of a still pretty new Jobe on the refrigerator and a new one of him sitting on the coffee table, with baby Lynxton lying at his side. At the time of the refrigerator picture, Jobe was extremely happy and comfortable with his place in the chain. He was the little one, the cutest person in any room that he entered, and he got all the attention that he could possibly want.

Now, attention that was once his has been diverted to baby Lynxton, who has a great need for that attention. Since Lynxton's birth, Margie has spent a considerable amount of time in Anchorage helping Lavina and Jake care for all three siblings and on weekends, we have been bringing Jobe home with us to make it a little easier at the Anchorage household.

Kalib has been staying put on weekends, because he has proven to be a good little helper in the care of Lynxton.

But poor Jobe has been feeling a bit displaced.

So this past weekend, we did it the opposite. Kalib spent the weekend with us and Jobe alone with his parents and Lynxton, so that he could get some special parental attention and bond more deeply with little brother. One day, Jacob took a long walk through the park with Jobe running about in front of, behind and beside him. Lynxton was strapped to his dad's torso in a baby carrier. All through the walk, Dad snapped iPhone images and then texted them to us.

Jobe was having a great time. He was smiling, laughing, figuring out how to make his way through downed trees. Lynxton slept through it all.

The time finally came when they had to come out here, pick Kalib up and take him back to Anchorage.

I think Jobe is adjusting to the idea of a new little brother, but he hasn't totally figured it out or come to terms, yet.