Things I saw on the bike ride that took me into springtime Wasilla; I nearly crashed

Monday rapidly ages, and I have yet to complete my post on Saturday's bike ride, so I guess that I had better get to it.

As noted, the day dawned sunny and while the morning was cool, the afternoon turned warm and beautiful. The temperature rose to 48 degrees and the sky went to deep blue. The wind was calm. I climbed onto my bike and headed out to see what I might see.

I see that I overexposed this image. That's because sometimes camera settings change on their own and when you are pedaling a bicycle, you are unlikely to notice. If you do notice, then you have to stop to make the changes.

I got a better exposure on this one. The man walked with a dog and they were close together when I first spotted them from a couple hundred yards back, but, by the time I got close enough to take a picture, the dog had gone off into the trees.

"Good afternoon, sir!" I called out as I pedaled past.

"Good afternoon," he smiled back.

It used to be that you would see these golf-ball domes sitting atop towers spaced at regular intervals all along the Arctic Coast, in the Aleutian Islands and at various places in the interior, such as Clear and Fort Yukon. They were part of the Distant Early Warning Line, operated by the US Air Force to scan the skies for a Soviet nuclear missile or air attack against the United States.

On a clear day, before I got GPS, I could spot them from my airplane from as far as 50 miles away and then I could just relax, place my map aside and fly straight toward them.

Of course, I have also had the experience of thus relaxing, only to see fog sweep in off the ocean and cause the golf ball that I was following to disappear - along with the entire village by which it sat.

This always made the flight a little more interesting.

Some of those golf balls are still out there, but many have disappeared. I first spotted these in Wasilla about the time they began to disappear from the bush, so I assumed that they had been moved here from there, that perhaps I had safely followed one or more of these very balls to my destination, but I've never actually researched the origin of these to find out if that's true or not.

I often see this young gentleman from my car, as I drive by him. Usually, he will smile and wave as I drive by. I return his greetings. On this day, he smiled and said, "hi."

"Hi," I answered back.

Just down the road, I saw this police officer, parked in his car near the park that used to be the Wasilla airport. I used to keep my airplane here.

And in the park, I pedaled past young people flying - not by airplane but by swing.

As I did, my iPhone vibated and chimed in the instant message mode, so I stopped to see what the message was. It was a photo of "my boys" - Jacob, Jobe and Kalib, sent to me by Lavina, who had taken it in Hope. It was good to see, because that told me that, after being so sick, she was feeling well enough to want to travel and see things.

A bit further down, young people shot baskets where airplanes once parked.

Kids flowed by, riding bikes and scooters.

Many had come to the park to enjoy the weather.

At one point, I saw a kid pedaling around a curve toward me, looking at the trail behind him instead of ahead. He was all the way to his left and I soon realized that we were on a collision course. No big deal. All I needed to do was apply a little brake and get out of the way. 

I held my camera in my right hand, so I braked with my left. Remember, now, this was only the second bike ride that I had taken since mid-October and I had forgotten just how sensitive that left-hand brake is. Worse yet, it affects only the front brake. The front wheel came to an instant stop and the back wheel began to rise. I then realized that the bike was going to do a complete flip and I was going down.

Woe be unto me if I were to land on my artificial shoulder!

I don't know how I did it, but somehow, after the bike passed the vertical position, I leaped right over the handle bars and came down on my feet on the bike trail. The bike then crashed to the pavement, upside down, behind me as I ran forward.

The kid went by, wide-eyed, looking at me. "It's okay!" I told him. "No problem."

I can imaging how strange it must have looked to a boy of that age, to have been looking backward from his bike, only to turn around and see what to him could only have appeared to be an old, old, man with a whitening beard leaping over his handle bars as his bike took to the air.

This was not the kid, by the way. The kid wore a helmet. This would have been just a little bit before the kid appeared.

I stopped at the skateboard park just long enough to shoot a few frames from off my bike. There, I saw eight-year old Cole preparing to use this ramp even as his mother was shouting at him, telling him that some older boys were headed towards it and had asked him to clear the space.

The older boy thought that he could miss the younger boy by scooting along the top of the steel railing, but he lost control. His skateboard sailed through the air and very nearly missed giving Cole a good whack on the head.

"That was the worse moment of my life," the older boy, whose name I did not catch, exclaimed afterward. "I have never been so scared in all my life."

As for Cole, he took it calmly in stride. "I love to skateboard," he told me.

"Oh, yes," his mother added. "He does love it."

I used to love it, too. Cole, I'll bet you down know it, but it was me and my peers that pioneered skateboarding for you. We started out by taking steel-wheeled roller skates, separating the front from the back and then nailing them to short wooden planks.

We had a blast on these, coasting down hills, shooting about on broad, school-yard walks. Then, one day, a kid showed up with the first commercial skateboard any of us had ever seen.

Thus began the revolution, which you young guys keep perfecting. We came up with many tricks that we thought were pretty spectacular. My father could not believe his eyes when he saw what we did on our skateboards - but I cannot believe my eyes when I see what you young guys do today.

One day this summer, I will take my big DSLR's to the skateboard park and just hang out for awhile, just to show people the amazing things that you kids are doing there. 

Afterward, I pedaled on into and through the graveyard. I saw a few graves that broke my heart, for they were children's graves, decorated with artifacts of children playing and swinging, doing the things the children who lay beneath had been robbed of ever doing. I did take a couple of pictures and at first, I put them in this post, but pulled them out before I published.

As I pedaled on through the trees, I saw children playing across the street from the graveyard.

Play, children. Play hard. Laugh, and love every minute of it, even when you fall and scrape yourselves, even when someone is mean to you and you cry and think you are miserable.

Laugh. Play hard.

I got back onto the bike trail and pedaled towards home. "Hello, fellow bike rider!" the girl in the back shouted at me as we passed.

When I spotted these boys, they were close together, spread out across the trail so that there was no room to pass by. The image took me right back to challenges that I had faced as a child when my path would be blocked intentionally to intimidate me, but, as you can see, these three respectfully cleared a path through which I could pass.

As I passed it, this dog growled and eyed me threateningly. After I passed it, without looking backward myself, I pointed my camera behind me and took this snap.

I should note that, after I flipped the bike, I remembered that it was my broken shoulder and the fact that for several months I was able to shoot pictures only with my left hand that got me into pocket cameras in the first place. I had become adept at shooting with my left hand, so why had I switched back to my right, even while riding a bike?

Hence I took this, and most of the pictures that followed that flip, with my left hand. This way, if I should happen to need to brake again, I could brake with my right hand, and it would be the back wheel that stopped. The bike would not flip.

I also recalled that the reason that my shoulder suffered such a grievous injury in the first place was that because when I realized I was going down and there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I had tucked my camera into my chest and there protected it by taking the brunt of the blow directly on my shoulder.

Hey! That was an expensive camera! Very expensive! The best and most expensive DSLR on the market at that time.

But that expense was cheap compared to the losses that followed if I had only protected myself first and not worried about the camera. In fact, those losses are truly responsible even for the rough spot I temporarily find myself in. This pocket camera is relatively cheap. It occurred to me that if I found myself going down, I could just toss it aside.

It might get damaged, but better it than me.

The barista, her nipples and the hungry baby; Kalib jumps upon shadows

I pulled up to a coffee hut near Jacob and Lavina's house in Anchorage and the barista stepped to the window. It was one of those kiosks with a somewhat elevated floor and a window that is long in the vertical dimension so that when the barista moves about behind it, her full figure is on display and - by coincidence, I am certain - the figures always seem to be shapely.

Still, it is close to their house, I had promised Margie and Lavina that I would bring them each a cup, the coffee is Kaladi and usually very good, so I pulled up and ordered three.

Shortly afterward, the barista found that she had to perform a task that required her to bend over, toward me. This put her breasts within arm's reach and right at my eye level. Their magnetism pulled my eyes right to them. I then discovered that I was looking, not at cleavage, but at breasts - full breasts, in their entirety - and they were the kind of breasts that, once glimpsed... well, you know.

When such a sight is put in a front of a heterosexual male of any age, he cannot help but want to look at it. That is the way God made the human male and there is no way around it. That's how we are. Yet, I know that it would be impolite and unseemly for me to stare, so, naturally, I averted my eyes toward the nearby car wash. A GMC pickup truck was just emerging from one of the cleaning stalls. Steam rolled out with it and churned into the air all around it.

I watched that truck depart, then turned back to the window. The breasts were still there. The barista had to know, so I thought maybe it would be okay if I studied them for a bit, but I quickly rethought this position, turned away and watched another vehicle emerge from the steam and then depart.

I turned back... still there. I turned away.

Finally, the delightful breasts of the barista had been removed from my sight, she had handed me the coffees and I had paid and tipped her the same as I would have if she had been dressed like an old-fashioned school marm. I did not try to stuff the tip into anything. I just handed it to her. I drove away, feeling a bit shaken.

A few minutes later, I carried the coffees into the living room to give to Margie and Lavina. "I don't think that I should go back to that coffee hut," I said as I handed them their drinks.

"Why?" one or the other of them asked.

"I feel like I have just been to a strip club," I answered. They both laughed.

"Did you see something?" Lavina asked.

"Yes!" I answered. "Everything! From here up," I placed my hand at sternum level. "Even her nipples! Her nipples were fully exposed. So I don't think I had better go back there. I may be growing old, but I'm not dead."

Sometimes, when Margie holds a baby, she speaks for the baby, becomes its mouthpiece. Now she spoke for Jobe.

"Nipples? Oh, boy, grampa!" she spoke in happy baby tones. "Me know what to do with nipples! Me hungry. Me can make good use of those nipples."

We adults all laughed some more and then Lavina asked, "where did you get the coffee?"

"You know, that place right over there, where we usually get the coffee." The name had slipped me.

"The Hot Spot?" she asked again.

"Yes, the Hot Spot."

"The REALLY Hot Spot," she added.

"Yes," I agreed. "And they looked really nice, too."

To be quite honest with you, I still haven't fully gotten over it.

The worst part of it is, right now, Jobe cannot have mother's milk. Regular readers will recall that Margie went into town Sunday night, planning to spend four days and nights taking care of Jobe so that Lavina could go back to work.

Instead, Lavina got sick - very sick, painfully sick. e-coli sick. So Margie took care of both her and the baby and stayed a fifth day. Lavina is now feeling much better, but even so is taking medication that will prevent her from breast feeding Jobe again until May.

So Margie fed him some formula and then burped him.

A bit after 6:00 PM, Jacob came home from work with Kalib, who he had picked up from day care. A tennis ball preceded them up the stairs.

Muzzy snatched the tennis ball and made it his own.

Kalib walks across the living room floor without his tennis ball.

Where is the tennis ball now?

Here comes Martigny. Maybe she hid it.

Kalib, Lavina and Martigny. No tennis ball can be seen anywhere.

This cannot be disputed.

I was even more tired than Kalib and I knew that Margie was, too. I wanted to get going, headed back home.

Jacob and Lavina invited us to go to dinner with them at Taco King. We decided to delay our departure long enough to take them up on it.

Jacob left ahead of the rest of us, walking with Muzzy. Kalib and Jobe got buckled into their car seats in their family's Tahoe and, given the fact that Lavina was still weak, Margie drove them all.

I drove our car, so that we could head straight for home afterward.

I arrived at Taco King first and, as I waited outside for the others to arrive, an airplane flew overhead.

When dinner was over and it came time to say goodbye, Kalib jumped on his mom's shadow.

Then he jumped on "Shadow."

He stomps on Shadow's left leg.

Kalib, living in his grandfather's shadow.

Kalib, shadow hopping.

More shadow hoping.

Then it was time to go.

I should note that before I went to buy the coffee and pick Margie up, I had a little business meeting. Very soon, I will be working on a new project and can start paying bills again. Such can be life when you are a freelance photographer.

I am very glad about it - but this does not change the fact that, whatever projects I must take on to survive, I now see my real work and future as tied into the development of this blog. I will still put up that button, hopefully today and will work on other schemes to bring in blog-based funding. I give myself until July 14, 2011, to figure out how to make this thing self-sufficient.

And whoever you are in New Jersey, thank you. I will be in touch.

Margie goes off with Jobe and leaves me alone; I see a dark cloud over my valley, my nation

Lisa came out Sunday morning and took her mom and dad out to breakfast at Family Restaurant. Sadly, when I pulled out my pocket camera to photograph the occassion, I discovered that I had forgot to put the card back in - just like I had done when I had breakfast with Aaron Fox in New York.

Just like then, I did take a few pictures with my iPhone, but have not yet bothered to download them.

In the afternoon, Kalib and Jobe showed up with their parents. Lisa tried to entice Kalib to give her a hug, but he wasn't going for it.

I tried to get him to give me a hug, too. He didn't want to.

I don't feel too badly about it. I remember when I was small and I never wanted my grandmothers to hug me and it seemed just smothering and awful when they would do so anyway and then try to add a kiss on top of hug.

My one grandfather who still lived never did try to hug me. At that time, in the family and society that I was born into, males just didn't hug each other, period. We would shake hands.

I'm glad that nonsensical code is behind me now.

How awful it would be, never to hug my grandson - if only he would hug me.

How nice it would be to get the opportunity to hug my grandmothers, and kiss them on the cheek - my grandfathers, too - both the one who I marginally knew and the other, who descended into the earth before I had the chance.

The reason they had come out was to snatch Margie away from me and take her back to Anchorage is because Lavina had to go back to work today and someone needs to care for Jobe. That someone is going to be Margie.

From now until sometime in August, when a spot is scheduled to open up for Jobe at daycare, Margie will spend four days of the week in town, caring for him in the day and staying overnight in his family home.

I do not like the fact that she will be gone so much and I will be without her, but for little Jobe, it is worth the sacrifice. He is too little to be going to daycare, anyway. When he is with his grandma, I know he will be loved and cared for to the full measure of her devotion.

This will not be easy on Lavina, either, for she is a woman who loves being a mother.

They had to load up a mattress for Margie into their Tahoe and as they did, Kalib went into the back yard to golf with Caleb. See how he keeps his eye on the ball and how hard he concentrates as he draws back the club to make the swing?

His aim was right on.

Golf never interested me much, but this kid is a natural, I tell you!

Uncle Caleb then prepared to give nephew Kalib a demonstration of what can be done with a different kind of ball - a softball that had just emerged from the snow.

Uncle Caleb tossed that ball and the three of us watched as it climbed high into the sky. I kept waiting for gravity to take hold and draw that ball back to the earth, but it just kept rising, higher and higher, until it was just the tiniest dot. Then it disappeared altogether. It looked as though it had gone into orbit.

Soon, it was time for Margie to go back to Anchorage with them - but after they put the mattress in the Tahoe, there was no room for her.

So I drove Margie to town. Kalib rode with us.

Jacob, Lavina and Jobe reached home well ahead of us. When we finally got there, Jacob came out to get Kalib, unbuckled him and removed him from his car seat. He began to carry him back to the house but then stopped, looked up into the sky and stammered, "what the...????"

It was the softball that Caleb had launched! Maybe three hours before! Finally coming back to earth! In Anchorage! I wonder how many orbits that softball made? Why didn't it burn up on reentry?

I tried to take a picture, but the swoosh of wind from that softball as it plunged downward to bury itself deep in the frozen earth beneath the snow ripped my pocket camera right out of my hands. Fortunately, it suffered no major damage.

This is the bed they fixed up for Margie to stay in, four nights a week for the next four months. Lavina made certain that it included a stuffed Muzz, just for Margie.

I left Margie among family a bit after 9:00 PM to begin my drive alone back to Wasilla. According to the metadata, I took this photo at exactly 9:40:50 PM and it looks exactly as I feel, for inside me wages that ever present battle of light against darkness, of black clouds and night moving against the sun - even during this time when the length of the day steadily increases.

I feel this way for many reasons - some economic, the fact that I am in this house alone with the cats (always good company, by the way) but also because I attended the Wasilla Tax Day Tea Party rally. That rally was largely about getting out the vote to turn around a situation that many participants see as intolerable. They lost out in the last election and now they want to get out the vote and reverse that situation.

That is the way the American system is supposed to work; when it comes to choosing our leadership and the political course of our nation, we leave our guns at home and go to the ballot box. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. When we lose, we gear back up and work toward the next election. And so it goes, back and forth over time. One side rises after the vote, then falls, then rises again, then falls again... and there is impeachment, should enough people and their Senators be persuaded that they had erred in the last election and that the situation has become too urgent to wait for the next election.

Voting. An act of light - one that keeps people from killing each other over political differences.

But there were also clouds darkening at that rally, not-so-subtle insinuations made by people who proclaimed themselves to be patriots, loyal Americans eager to defend the Constitution of the United States even to the point that if they must, they stood ready to nullify by violence the majority of votes, constitutionally cast in 2008 by other loyal Americans, in order to force an outcome more to their liking.

I do not attribute this attitude to all who participated, but the sentiment was there and prominently so.

It is the words of one man that keep coming back to me the strongest. When he was called to the mic, he did not rant, he did not scream, he did not yell. He was articulate and spoke softly, clearly, in words that he chose carefully. He referenced his military service and that of the sons that he had sent to war.

He said many things that I agree with and, in fact, that most Americans, be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent would agree with. I would say 95 percent of his words were along this line. While the comparison would undoubtedly offend the man, in Garrison Keillor's own unique style I have heard him say the same things this man did.

Yet, he spoke with a different end in mind. He made it unequivocally clear that as a Patriot and soldier, he had taken an ever-binding oath to protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic and stood ready to kill or be killed in order to do so.  He said that domestic enemies now held the highest offices of the United States, that Barack Obama was not a legitimate President and was not his Commander-in-Chief. In other words, he stated his readiness to kill me and how many other loyal, patriotic, Americans from Wasilla, Alaska and elsewhere, in order to nulliy those votes that we Constitutionally cast in November of 2008, because he does not approve of the President we elected and installed as Commander-in-Chief. To be fair, he was still definitely a part of the "get out the vote" in 2010 effort, but he clearly implied what he felt needed to be done beyond the vote, should that effort fail to accomplish his larger goal.

There is no way around it. That is what he said. I can see no other way to interpret his words. And he was applauded. 

Perhaps I make too much of it and it is nothing to be concerned about - just words spoken by a calm, angry, man exercising his First Amendment rights; words that will be blown away and forgotten in the winds of history.

Yet, he spoke as a movement leader to a small town audience of maybe 400 people, with more recycling in and out, their overall numbers growing. Others continually drove by, too busy to stop, but not to honk their horns in support. Over 1000 hot dogs were sold.

A lack of time has prevented me from posting the pictures that I took at the Tea Party rally and time is passing by and the timeliness of the event is fading. An argument wages inside me, should I still take the time to post those pictures and do my write up or should I just move on and let this do it?

I want to make that post, and I don't want to make that post.

I want to just move on, forget about it and just live a peaceful life and let others do the same, whatever their political leanings. We can work it out at the ballot box - but I'm not sure I can just forget about it. Perhaps we now all plunge forward in a direction from which no u-turn can be made.

Perhaps not. I don't know. It's too easy to get carried away by hyperbole.

We take Jobe home, where he is eagerly greeted by his lonely family; Misty and Kennedy give me a Kivgiq video

It was time to take Jobe back to Anchorage and to his parents, but he was fast asleep in his cradleboard. Margie began to untie him, so that she could take him out, but she did not want to wake him.

Very gently, she picked him up to transfer him to his car seat. He snoozed on.

And then she buckled him in. He slept through it all. He did not stir.

And when his mother came dashing out the door to meet us at the car to retrieve the baby whose first night of absence from her had left her so miserable, she found him just as he had been when Margie had buckled him in one hour earlier: fast asleep, but with a smile upon his face.

Mother and baby, in the house, reunited.

Father and baby, reunited. It had been a long night and day for everybody there.

Even Kalib wanted to hold his baby brother, who had been gone for so long.

Misty Nayakik of Wainwright performs Iñupiaq motion dances in a style of great beauty and grace. She is one of those performers who always draws my lens straight toward her. Until last year she had not missed a Kivgiq in 20 years, but last year she could not go.

Recently, she got a copy of the video made of the 2009 Kivgiq. When she and Kennedy Ahmaogak watched it, they came to the part where Isaac Killigvuk gave me a gift and then brought me out of my shyness and onto the floor without my cameras, to dance with him.

When they saw me dancing, she and Kennedy wanted me to have a copy. Last week, she sent me a message to tell me that they were coming to Anchorage and she was going to bring a copy of the DVD to me.

After we left Jobe with his parents and brother, Margie and I headed over to Residence in where they are staying. As we walked from the car to the door we saw Kennedy, Misty and one-year old daughter Adina waiting for us.

Thank you, Misty, Adina and Kennedy. I will treasure this video always.

Saturday evening, I received a text message from my youngest son Rex, who had joined in a 200 km bike ride on the Kenai Peninsula: "132 miles on my bicycle completed in about ten hours and 45 minutes!"

Melanie drove along to provide support.

This morning, I encounter a little conflict between the Wasilla Tea Party and my grandson Jobe - who do you think will win?

Recent readers will recall that Kalib burst into my office yesterday as I was working on this blog - just when I had gotten to the point where I was about to arrive at the Wasilla Tea Party rally, staged April 15, Tax Day. This little surprise knocked me off my schedule and when I tried to get back on, too much of the day had passed. I could spend no more of that day working on this blog than I already had, so I stopped, and left it to speculation as to whether or not I would get my tea party rally coverage up today, or ever, or whether I might get distracted by the natural progression of life.

This morning, I sort of woke up thinking that I had better post those Tea Party pictures and I had better write something about what I observed as I wandered through the rally. If not, then what was the point of ever taking the pictures in the first place? What was the point of listening to participants speak those words - some articulate and thoughtful, some totally absurd?

I say, "sort of woke up" because I am not 100 percent certain that I ever really went to sleep and if I did not ever really go to sleep then how could I have woke up?

So I am rather tired. I am not certain that I possess the energy required to think through the words that I must write to go along with the Tea Party pictures.

I will start today's post with this picture of Jobe, Lavina and Margie and see what happens from here - if I make it back to the Tea Party or not.

Even when I am so sleepy that my brain hardly functions, I can find a few words to write about Jobe.

Lavina had brought the two little ones out in part because Kalib has been very clingy towards his mom lately - at least when he gets the chance. So often, when he wants her, she is busy with Jobe, taking care of his needs. Kalib's day care center had scheduled a very special, annual fun day for he and his classmates and all their parents today, one at which a surprise animal always shows up.

Last year, it was a kangaroo.

Lavina wanted to be able to devote a period of uninterrupted, special time to Kalib and his fun day and so we agreed to keep Jobe with us overnight and to return him to Anchorage Saturday afternoon. It would be the first time that Lavina had ever been separated from Jobe for more than a couple of hours.

In the meantime, as the three visited us, both Kalib and Jobe fell asleep. By now, it was 4:00 PM. Coffee and All Things Considered time. So, as Margie stayed behind with the babies, Lavina joined me in the car, we went to Metro, got our coffee and then took the long way home.

Along the way, we saw this student leaving his school bus. I felt a little bad that Kalib was not in the car with us. The sight of a school bus greatly excites him. He would have loved this moment.

Shortly after we got home, not without misgivings near to the point of tears, Lavina picked up her oldest son and left her baby boy behind with we, the grandparents.

She would have a very hard night. One that would bring her to tears - especially when she looked at Jobe's changing table and the place where he sleeps. Even at midnight, she would almost give in, drive out, and pick up her baby - but, for the sake of her oldest son, she persevered and left him with us.

A bit later, I had to check the mail and run a couple of errands. As I did so, I kept hearing sirens and those deep-pitched yet screechy, loud horn blasts that firetrucks make when they are in a hurry and need to get around people. It sounded like the end of the world.

Many screaming, blasting, vehicles passed outside my range of vision, but when I came in sight of the highway, I saw this one coming behind the others - and police cars, too.

Trucks from different stations were involved. It appeared that something major had happened.

Right after the above truck passed, this guy came by on a motorcycle.

Now I had to pull out onto the highway. No more emergency vehicles were in sight, nor could I hear anymore coming. So out onto the highway I went. Then I heard a police siren. I looked in my mirror and saw a police car coming, fast. The traffic was packed in our lanes near the stop light where I now was, so the driver veered into the oncoming lane of traffic, shot past and ran the red light.

This fire vehicle soon followed, and went round on the right.

The driver, as he passed me. I scanned the horizons ahead for smoke, but could see none. I turned off the Highway onto Lucille Street and headed back towards home.

I do not know what happened. This morning, I looked at the Mat-Su section of the Anchorage Daily News, but there was not a word about it. So, for all the drama, it must not have been as bad as it appeared, but, I suspect, for someone, it was very bad indeed.

I decided just to spend some time relaxing in front of the TV with Margie and Jobe - something I very rarely do. We watched The 3:10 to Yuma. To me, there will never be a better kind of escapist movie than a good western.

To his great joy, I gave Jobe some whiskerly love.

And then I fed him some twice-warmed Momma's Milk.

At bedtime, Margie tied Jobe into his cradle board and put him down in our room. Not long afterward, I came in. As regular readers will know, I am joined by at least one and usually two, sometimes three or four, cats every night.

We decided to keep the cats out on this night. What if one of them jumped up onto Jobe's cradleboard?

And that is why I am so sleepy, why I wonder if I ever slept.

Two of those cats, Pistol and Jim, positioned themselves outside the door and kept up a ruckus, all night long. I know I gave in and got up and groggily let one, then the other, in, but somehow, each found the opportunity to get out at some point and then start pleading, pawing, and tapping to get back in.

As you would expect, Jobe woke up crying a couple of times.

And when I heard his little cry, pulling me again into full awakeness from the edge of sleep, I smiled and chuckled.

Never in my life have I heard a more beautiful sound than that little cry.

And so ends this post. No Wasilla Tea Party today.