They'rrrrrrre baaaaack.... in the blog: Jobe, Lavina, Kalib, Jacob and Margie - in that order

How long has it been since this face has appeared in my blog? Six weeks? Something like that. And look, in this, the very first frame that I shot of him upon our reunion, he is just standing around. STANDING around. Not wobbling shakily. Standing.

As though it is no big deal at all. As though it is just something that a little kid would be expected to do.

Jobe. 

Standing around.

And he walks around at will, too.

I was worried that after all this time, he might have forgotten his grampa. Remember how he loved me? How he adored me?

Has he now forgotten me?

After a brief period of study and contemplation, he walked right over and sat down on my lap. He had not forgotten.

And then he went out to play with Martigny. Martigny did not not want to play with him. Maybe it was the "woof" on his shirt that scared her away.

I'm afraid Jobe has been sick the past couple of days. Respiratory infection. 

Jobe needed rest.

Still, he gets up and moves happily around. He is getting better.

Then Jacob called, to say that he and Kalib were coming home from their walk and would soon reach the nearby park. I went out to see and this is the first frame I shot, right after they came into view.

Last time I saw them, there was a still a good amount of snow here. Now the leaves have come out.

Kalib went straight for the slide. As he started down, he looked up at his dad to see what his dad would do.

His dad came sliding after...

Kalib threw some pebbles into a slide chute and then watched as they tumbled and slid back down.

Then he ran off and his dad chased after.

Soon, they were in the house, eating popsicles. When offered a variety of colors, Kalib chose the green one. Then he saw his mom pick a red one for herself and decided that the red one would be better instead.

I also had a red one.

The red ones are best.

Although the green is pretty good.

It was about 10:30 PM now. Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive at 1:38 AM. I had come in early just so I could finally see the boys, but Jobe was now asleep and the rest would soon join them.

That meant I had three hours to wait.

The prospect horrified me.

What I could I do with all that time?

I could go sit in a bar and sip root beer, wink my eyes at honkey tonk women and say stupid things as they danced and sauntered across the floor.

Instead, I laid back on the couch. I sank right into it.

I closed my eyes. The lids were so heavy, I did not feel like I could ever open them again.

I fell asleep right there. At 1:09 AM, I forced myself to get up and go. I drove to the airport and picked Margie up. Her plane had come in half-an-hour early and she was standing there waiting when I pulled up, so I stopped, she put the one bag that she had left with in the back plus the other that she had bought and filled in Arizona and jumped in. 

I took off without even taking a picture.

As regular readers know, it is our tradition to go out for breakfast the morning after either one of us returns from a trip.

So this morning we went to Family Restaurant - no, not Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant but Denali Family Restaurant, just a few miles further up the Parks Highway.

I would not have even known about this brand new restaurant had I not gone to Fairbanks to cover Katie John's graduation, but I saw it as I drove home.

If they had named it, "Mckinley Family Restaurant," I would never have tried it. I would not have walked through the door. I try never to patronize a business that bears the name, "Mckinley." I stick to "Denali."

Inside, it was very much like Mat-Su Family Restaurant. The decor was similar, the menu similar, the food similar and the plates exactly the same. Even all the staff that I could see, including the waitresses, were staff I recognized from Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

So I thought maybe it was an extension, built by the same owner to compete with him/herself.

No. It wasn't. It was built by a competitor and the staff that I could see had all been hired away.

Breakfast was very good - the hash browns cooked just right and, I hate to say it, better than at Mat-Su. 

I will still continue to patronize Mat-Su. It is a bit closer. And Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant has helped me bear some extremely hard mornings. Very hard mornings. Mornings that followed nights of turmoil and grief, nights without sleep.

So I will keep going to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

But I will patronize Denali, too. Good hash browns are a big draw to me.

Margie enjoyed it, too.

It was the first time she had drank coffee in weeks, she said. 

She stayed with her sister, who remains a pretty active, decent and abiding Mormon. She allows visitors to brew coffee for themselves, but Margie did not feel like brewing coffee for just one so she abstained.

Tomorrow, I will discuss a recent NPR story about the health benefits of coffee - particularly for the prostate - and will thank a generous, almost not-anonymous lady who bought me a coffee at Metro the other day.

Margie is glad to be home, but she says it feels cold here.

"I have come back to winter," she said.

This, even though the leaves are sprouting out here and it snowed three inches at her sisters house 6000 feet up in Arizona her final morning there.

Still, it was warmer there than here.

Which it ought to have been.

View images as slideshow

(warning - slideshow contains additional photos of Jobe and Kalib not seen in the actual post)

I drive to town through a beautiful part of America to pick Margie up; Kalib and Jobe; the wind blows; moose die in front of cars

It was time to go pick Margie up from her latest stint at Jacob and Lavina's to help care for Kalib and Jobe. When I took off about mid-afternoon, A Prairie Home Companion was on the radio. Soon, the song, America, the Beautiful was performed. As I happened to be driving in a particularly beautiful part of America, I lifted my camera and shot a frame through the windshield, just as they sang about "spacious skys" and "amber waves of grain."

Around the next bend, I came upon this car, sporting a decal of a grenade on the rear window. That grenade is a little hard to see at this size, but, depending on the size of your monitor, it stands out in slide show view.

In town, gas was a bit cheaper than out here. I wonder what the price will be next week? 

On my way to Jacob and Lavina's house.

I unlocked the door and entered the house. It was very quiet, as if no one was there. I was pretty sure someone was, so I headed up the stairs. At the top, I came upon Martigny.

Margie was resting in the living room. 

Jobe was taking a nap on Kalib's bed. As for Kalib and his parents, they had gone downtown to see some of the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous stuff, like the snow sculptures. As for me, I had no time for Fur Rendez on this day. I just wanted to pick up Margie and head back to Wasilla as quickly as possible.

But we could not head back with Jobe asleep and his parents and brother away.

After a bit, Jobe began to wake up. He had a cold, was not feeling well, and was a bit groggy.

Jobe's little feet.

I do a self-portrait of Jobe and I. I see I should have washed my hair that day.

Oh well.

About half-an-hour after I arrived, the rest of the family came home. Lavina reported that it had been very cold downtown, that the wind had been blowing, picking up the snow and hurling it through the air. The flying snow had stung everybody's faces.

But I know from experience that if I could have gone downtown I would have saw many people frolicking, riding the carnival rides and just having fun.

Lavina was not feeling well, either. Kalib needed a nap. Margie picked him up and carried him to his room. He was not pleased by this and vocally expressed his displeasure, but, once down, Kalib soon fell asleep.

I had been holding Jobe, but I gave him to his mom and then went and sat back down.

Jobe wanted me back. How could I refuse?

Finally, we just had to go. Jobe was not pleased.

Out on the road, we came upon Jacob, who had been walking Muzzy.

The wind buffeted and rocked the car as we drove home. If you were to view this in slide-show mode, you would see that those two signs have pictures of moose on them, as a warning to drivers. Another caution sign, just when you enter the valley, states that 198 moose have been killed by moose-car collisions in the valley so far this winter.

View images as slide show

A cat full of coffee and other New Year's tails

The New Year began with me sleepy and exhausted and I am sleepy and exhausted right now - too much so to write much with these pictures. So I will simply say that, with breakfast and such behind us, Margie and I are in the car, driving past Wasilla Lake, enroute to Anchorage to celebrate the New Year at Jacob and Lavina's house.

The wind is howling and it is one of those horrible warm winds from the South Pacific that sometimes materialize this time of year and then ruin a good Alaska winter.

There is nothing to be done about it, though, so we just drive to Anchorage.

The New Year got off to a poor start for someone. On occassion, these guys in their patrol cars with their sirens, beepers and flashing lights unnerve me a bit, but I am damn glad they are there.

While I do not believe the US should enforce or coerce its ways upon any other nation, I just cannot help but to think that if in India they set up and enforced traffic laws, honestly, with no bribery, to the degree that they do here, I might have slept a lot better these past six weeks and three people who should still be breathing and walking on this earth would be doing so.

Yes, only two of them went by crash, but the third would not have followed had there been no accident in the first place.

So, yes, I appreciate these uniformed men and women who we call cops, these who we ask to risk their lives to keep us safe even as they sometimes suffer our abuse. Yes, there are some bad ones to be found here and there among them - the same is true of preachers, teachers, astronauts, photographers, and baseball players -but on the whole they do a pretty good job and get cussed at all too often.

Even if they pull me over later today and write me a ticket, I will appreciate them. I will swear and cuss when they walk back to their car, but still I will appreciate them.

When we arrived at Jacob and Lavina's house, we found a bag filled with something in the living room. It was kind of curious, because the bag was upside down.

I wondered, what could this bag be filled with?

Why, it was filled with Kalib!

Remember those dinosaurs Kalib had been surrounded by in yesterday's post? As part of his late birthday present, his parents let him pick one out.

This is the one he choose. They say that it was the most realistic out of the bunch. Some were bigger, they say, but Kalib went for realism over size.

I am jealous. I loved dinosaurs when I was little, too, but I never got to have one like this. I think the biggest dinosaur that I hever had stood maybe three inches tall and was made of hard plastic - and I only had that one because I found it lying in the road.

Jobe had been napping when we arrived, but soon he floated out to join us.

Jobe and his mom.

Did you know that my daughter, Lisa, carried a full semester worth of credits this past fall even as she worked full time, and also made the honor roll?

She did. 

I wonder who she is calling? Could it be me? Is it possible I placed my phone somewhere and could not find it?

I was lying on the floor, in front of the TV, feeling so exhausted that I could hardly move. Yet, I wanted to get a group New Year's day picture of everybody that was there. The light here is very dim, so I wanted to get them in front of the TV, both so that there would be a little more light on them and so I would not have to move from my position on the floor.

I called everybody over to pose.

I could see that it was going to be a challenge to get them to do so.

Still, I was determined to get the photo, and to do so from down on floor.

It took some doing, but finally I got it. You will notice that Caleb, Rex, Ama and Bryce are not here. Sometimes, you can get everybody together and sometimes you can't. So you take a group picture of those who you can.

I am in this picture, too - just on the other side of it, sprawled across the floor in front of the TV.

I was so exhausted I did not know how I was going to drive home. And Margie hates to drive at night, on black, slippery roads.

So Melanie poured me a cup of coffee from her cat thermos. "Charlie and I never go anywhere without a cat full of coffee," she explained. She also said that she was a chick-a-dee, and that in the winter she eats one-and-a-half times her weight everyday.

As for Lavina, she wound up with a cat full of... cat!

Just in case you were worried that with all the new Christmas and birthday toys Kalib might have forgotten about his beloved spatula...

Kalib and Jobe came home with us. Kalib feel asleep in the car. When I brought him into the house, he transferred his sleep to the couch. Then about 3:00 in the morning, he came in, climbed onto the bed and slept right by me.

Margie likes to collect rocks. She keeps some of them in this little basket. Looks like she needs to find a new place to keep the basket.

Jobe woke up maybe three times during the night, but went back to sleep after he dined on mother's milk stored in a bottle.

Looks like I wrote a little more than I though I would. I'm still sleepy and exhausted. I need to go back to Barrow before the sun rises, find a nice cubby hole somewhere, crawl into it, pull a quilt over my head and sleep for 20 days straight.

Hey - what would you do if you found a suitcase filled with $50,000 cash?

This actually happened to a friend of mine in Barrow. I will see if I can find him by phone or net and will make this the subject of my next post.

View images as slides

Kalib's birthday, part 2: We party, there is fire in the house, dinosaurs roar, a dragon flies and a train goes round the track; goats take the right of way

Once again, I am running behind. Time to catch up and put Kalib's birthday behind us for another year. Anyway, readers will recall that on Christmas night, Jobe came down with a nasty bug and so the family stayed with us that night. The next morning, December 26, Kalib cooked breakfast for us. It was his third birthday.

His mother had planned to throw him a big sledding party in the afternoon at a park near their house in Anchorage, but, given the circumstances, had to cancel those plans.

Still, except for Caleb, who was not feeling well himself, and Bryce, who had just lost his grandfather, we all gathered at Kalib's house in Anchorage in the evening to throw him a little party.

Kalib was happy to see his new love, Ama and so came with his spatula to visit her and his Uncle Rex.

After a bit, I heard the sound of laughter and commotion out in the kitchen. It was Lisa, playing a YouTube video title, The Dream of the 90s is Alive in Portland. There is a line in it that could only have been written about Charlie - "in Portland, you can put a bird on something and call it art."

Readers from way back then will recall that Charlie and Melanie put birds in his beard Charlie, which won him a big award at the national beard championships in Portland and got his picture spread round the world in a multitude of both print and online publications.

Lisa and Melanie, and Charlie and I believe Bryce as well, have all fallen in love with Portland, the city where young people go to retire, and sleep until 11:00. They think it is a great city and they talk about moving there someday.

Jobe was still under the weather, but improving. When the party ended, I would go home alone so that Margie could stay for two or three days and care for Jobe until he gets well enough to return to day care.

Readers who have been with us for previous birthday parties may have noted that cakes have been brought out for people in the 20's, 30's and even the breach of 60's that have had very few candles on them - even as few as three.

Now one was brought out for a three year-old and it had a bunch of candles. 

Kalib did not object.

Kalib cut the cake himself - with just a wee bit of help from dad. He did not need anybody's help to clean the cake-cutting knife.

Lisa and Martigne. She also entertained us with You-Tube videos of Maru, a Japanese cat with an obsession for boxes - even tiny, tiny, boxes that it cannot fit into, but fits into them anyway.

Then, as Walking With Dinosaurs played on the TV, Kalib set about to open his presents. It was clear from the box that this one from his grandma contained a dragon, but, try as he might, Kalib could not open the box.

He tried so hard to open the box that he stubbed his toe and started to cry. He went to his Uncle Rex for comfort. In the meantime, Jacob went and found some tools and began to try to open the box.

At a certain point, Kalib shifted to his mom, and there received comfort. 

Whoever had designed and constructed the box really did not want anyone to ever open it and to free the dragon. It took Jacob several minutes, but finally the dragon was out.

It was Toothless, from the movie, How to Train Your Dragon, piloted by his Viking friend, Hiccup.

Kalib went flying with them.

How they flew! And what magnificent things they saw!

If you might be worried that such a fine gift would cause Kalib to forget about his spatula, put that worry away right now.

Lisa is certain that Toothless was patterned after her black cat, Zed. To prove this, she pulled up a picture that she had taken of Zed with her iPhone and put the two side by side. "See? Toothless looks just like Zed," she said.

Since I first saw Toothless in the movie, I have been convinced that he had been patterned after Jim - not only in looks, but in movement and mannerisms.

He also got a little train.

Kalib, Toothless, Hiccup and Margie.

And this one from India:

The open road is always a wonderful and dangerous place, but, much to my now ever-lasting pain, the Indian highway is an exceptionally dangerous highway. There may be traffic laws, but if they are acknowledged at all, it is only as suggestions meant to be ignored. Lanes mean nothing. Tail-gating is taken to the extreme. It is considered good driving to charge straight at the oncoming driver from an impossibly close distance and then to swerve at the last instant and escape death from headon collision by one inch.

But there is a law on the Indian highway that is absolute. Everyone obeys this law:

Goats have the right of way.

Goats always have the right of way and that right is respected and obeyed.

View images as slide show

Preview of Nannie Rae's Cross Island birthday party; Kalib and Jobe return to the blog

In about one hour, I must leave for an overnight trip to Nikiski, where I will spend the day tomorrow, so I am just plain out of time to put together the Cross Island post that I had planned to do today. The fact is, while I had hoped to have done a complete initial edit of my entire Cross Island/Nuiqsut take by now, so far I have gone through less than one percent of that take.

Once I do go through it, there are huge sections of it that I will not post at all, but will save exclusively for Uiñiq magazine. As for Nannie's birthday, I plan to put it in both the blog and Uiñiq, but in Uiñiq I will probably have to limit it to one or two pictures, whereas here I can post a few.

Here, at least, is a preview of what I plan to post Monday, when I will return this blog to Cross Island/Nuiqsut for two or three more posts:

It is Nannie Rae Kaigelak, with a few of those who gathered in the Cross Island cabin of successful whaling captain Billy Oyagak to celebrate her 22nd birthday.

So I will dedicate my Monday post to a spread that will focus not only on Nannie's birthday, but on a particular Eskimo drum that happened to play a role in that birthday.

If you love Cross Island and you love Nannie Rae - and a great many people do - or even if you have never met Nannie Rae and all that you know of Cross Island is the tiny bit that you have so far seen on this blog, be sure to come back Monday.

In the meantime, come Sunday, I will let Barrow Whaler fans know how the team fared in Nikiski.

So I finally got to see my grandsons and their mom again, yesterday afternoon, when I drove into Anchorage to pick Margie up from this week's babysitting stint.

Here they are, in their driveway.

Little Jobe ALWAYS has a big smile for his grandpa, everytime I see him. 

Martigny was there, too. She never smiles, but she does purr.

As I Margie and I prepared to drive away, Lavina brought Kalib to the window to wave goodbye to us. He did not want us to go. He wanted us to stay. He cried to see us go.

And now, once again, I must go.

That's how my life is. I seldom have time to ever settle down, except for when I was hurt, or Margie was hurt. I am always going.

Go... go... go...

Always.

One day I will be dead and then I will go no more.

I wonder how much I can get done between now and then?

View images as slides

They will appear larger and look better