Easter Sunday, Part A: Our early morning reunion with Kalib and his parents

A few minutes before 1:00 AM, it suddenly occurred to me that I had better get a camera ready. I found a memory card, inserted it into the camera and then walked into the kitchen, where Margie continued to suffer through tax preparation.

"What are you up to?" she accused, suspiciously, when she became aware that I was standing directly behind her, fiddling with my camera. It was as if she suspected that I was about to take a surreptitious picture of her preparing taxes - this is something that I would never, ever, ever, do - no, not ever!

"It should be just about time, I answered. "I want to be ready."

 Just then, I heard a car pull into the driveway. Suddenly, Margie understood. "Is it them?" she asked.

It was. After more than a full week without him, we were about to see our little grandson again. And his parents. As you can see, Kalib was so thrilled to see me, he didn't know what to do.

Then it was grandma's turn.

Oh, the joyous reunion with Royce!

And then, back in the bedroom where Kalib and his parents sleep, Muzzy joined in.

Here they are, the travelers, home from the southwest. After everybody got some sleep, there would be an Easter egg hunt. Please come back, and witness the action. It will be up, soon.

Valiant though his effort be, Muzzy pees and pees and pees and pees, yet fails to reclaim Serendipity

Muzzy and I walked into Upper Serendipity (the developers call it, "Serendipity Hills) and Muzzy immediately marked the subdivision as his.

Muzzy continually checked for any challenges to his claim as we walked on through Serendipity.

Perhaps some dog has challenged him on that berm, but the leash is too short for him to reach and sniff it.

The Saint Bernard zeros in on a challenge.

Muzzy stakes his claim deeper in Serendipity.

He believes himself to be grabbing even more new territory.

He will soon claim this spot, too.

Of all the new homes in Serendipity, this is the most ostentatious - excuse me - I mean "grand." This is the most grand home in all of Serendipity. Muzzy must find just the right spot before he stakes his claim.

Muzzy finds the spot. He claims the property, along with all of Serendipity.

He zeros in on his next mark.

Soon, we will leave Serendipity. He reinforces his claim with a final mark.

Muzzy is proud and happy. He believes that he has claimed all of Serendipity. He does not realize that human law does not recognize "Deed by Pee." He does not realize that, the moment someone called these former woods Serendipity, they were lost to us forever.

As we near home and walk back down Sarah's Way (the name was quite innocent back when we moved in) we spot Tiffany driving the oppposite way. She had been at the house to visit Caleb. She stops and pets Muzzy, who still believes himself to be the owner of Serendipity.

He is most definitely The King of Pee.

A walk with Muzzy, a dog who is a decent representative of Wasilla

Muzzy knew. I don't know how he knew, but he did. He knew that I was about to take my walk, even though I had not put on my jacket or done anything to signal my intent. His ears were perked; he had that excited look on his face and he was jumping up and down, hammering our bamboo floor with his claws.

I wanted to walk by myself. I walk to let my mind go, to let roam where it will even as I roam where I can reach, to let it play with words. I can not do this when I walk Muzzy. He demands 98.5 percent of my time and concentration, and then causes chaos during the 1.5 percent of my time that I do let my mind wander.

It is okay when Jacob and Lavina are here and I walk with them, because they take the responsibility, but Jacob is in New Mexico and Lavina in Arizona.

This type of thing used to be okay, too, back before Serendipity, before Muzzy, when Willow was the dog of the house. Willow and I would go into the woods and I would just let her go and she could run as she liked, my mind could go where it liked.

But now I cannot go into the woods. I must walk along roads and through subdivisions. Some call this, "improvement," "growth," "progress."

Even so, Muzzy needed to walk, so I took him.

"Muzzy! Muzzy!" I would keep saying and he was doing okay, until I saw this girl, walking her dog from Lower into Upper Serendipity.

Fortunately, I saw her before Muzzy did, and so I got a good solid grip on his collar.

He pulled and he jerked and he whined and he tugged against my arm. I thought about the screws that bind the artifical socket that my titanium humerus fits into to my bones and wondered how much of this kind of thing it could take before those screws popped out.

But I kept him restrained. He didn't like it, because he wanted to play with that dog, but he knew that I meant it.

Finally, the girl and her dog were safely out of sight. Next, I came upon Becky and her mother. Becky was thrilled to see Muzzy. "He's so sweet!" she said. "So beautiful."

This kind of thing happens often with Muzzy.

And he is all of those things. True, he's not a cat, but he is a pretty good fellow and if I did not have an artifical shoulder and they had never built Serendipity, I would not mind taking him out at all. I would enjoy it.

Becky's mother commented that she had a friend who has a collie that looks just like Lassie. "She's bigger than Muzzy," she said.

I wonder about that. Maybe she looks taller, because she's probably skinnier.

I bet Muzzy would weigh more, if you put the two on a scale.

I'm more than a bit disgusted with what is going on news-wise right now, emanating ultimately from our small town.

Muzzy could represent Wasilla better than these folks.

Today, part 1: Before the ash fell - Scenes from my walk; hot water heater ruptured, replaced

I had barely begun my walk today when I came upon this moose. If you look closely, you can tell that it is the very same moose that I came upon yesterday, the one that inexplicably scared me. Well, today I redeemed myself. The moose did not scare me at all. I hung out with it for awhile and we visited. I learned that its name is Gertrude. 

Gertrude has a calf nearby and I photographed it, too, but I want to get this done and get to bed, so I will leave the calf out of the post.

A little further on my walk, I saw this kid on a four-wheeler.

Please note that this is not a state trooper, but a Wasilla police officer who is taking the driver's license from the poor sap in the van. (Should you ever happen to read this, poor sap, please do not get offended. Sooner or later, frequently or infrequently, we all do our time as poor saps.)

Even though they call this area Wasilla, and the mailing address is Wasilla, it is just beyond Wasilla city limits and the Wasilla police did not used to have jurisdiction here. Remember how I told you about the time I had to make a citizens arrest on the drunken ice cream lady and hold her as my prisoner for one hour while I waited for the Alaska State Troopers to come, because the Wasilla police would not?

Or did Wasilla finally incorporate my neighborhood and I just didn't hear about it?

I hope Wasilla did. I am tired of paying all these sales taxes to Wasilla and not getting any direct benefits back.

So maybe this cop who has pulled this poor sap over is finally a direct benefit.

As I neared home, a Tahoe stopped on the road beside me. It was Jacob and Muzzy.

After that, somehow, I wound up walking the rest of the way home with a St. Bernard.

As I neared the house, I saw Jake pulling someone who had slipped into the culvert directly in front of our yard out of it.

Jacob and the guy he pulled out.  Jacob told me that this guy is new in the nieghbor and has three big dogs.

If I were to tell this full story, it would take all night, so I won't. Suffice it to say that, this morning, when Margie got up, she heard the sound of rain hammering plastic, but it was not raining.

The sound came from the crawl space beneath our house. It was hot water, pouring out of our ruptured hot water heater through a vent in the floor down into the crawl space.

So here is this Don, putting a new hot water heater into the laundry room.

Don attaches the natural gas line to the new hot water heater.

As for us, we were $1000 poorer than we were when we woke up in the morning.

That was a pretty hard blow to take.

Don lives in Anchorage where he has a plumbing business. We did not hire Don, Sears did. They keep him on contract just so he can help people like us out.

Don has been coming out to the valley to install water heaters and do other plumbing work for 20 years.

Besides Sears, we also checked Lowes, but they would not have been able to install until maybe Tuesday - and their installation fee was higher, even after the $90 emergency fee to have Don come out on a Saturday was added into the Sears installation fee.

Kalib with pan that he wants us to fill with hot water. He wants to boil a fish in that pan, that's why.

This post is for you, Lavina, beloved daughter-in-law, wonderful mother of my grandson

Lavina, I hope that you are enjoying Vancouver and learning much that will help you in your work. I especially hope that your presentation goes well. I know you miss Kalib terribly, so this blog entry is for you. Here is Kalib, this morning, at the back door, when I returned from my walk.

This is from yesterday's walk. Your husband just hurled the sled as hard as he could, to see how far Kalib would slide.

I had to jump out of the way.

Then we all went back into the marsh.

Jacob and Kalib headed home from there. I had not walked far enough, so I continued on. "Bye, bye!" I waved to Kalib.

He raised his hand and waved back.

Then I walked through the snow. For just a little while, it really snowed. Then the sun came out.

So here they are, your dog, your son and your mother-in-law, who you call, "Mom," just like you call me "Dad." This gives us a warm and good feeling, Daughter.

Lisa brought Juniper out. Kalib and Juniper had a good time. Grahamn Kracker has posted more pictures from that visit on his No Cats Allowed blog. If you go there, you will not only see more pictures of Kalib, but the moment when Juniper discovered herself in the mirror.

A wider shot, from my return this morning, of Kalib, in Caleb's arms. Very similar to another I did awhile back, except that I made a point of including my reflection in this one.

I suppose that I ruined it, by including myself in it.

I know that you have heard about the latest eruptions of Mt. Redoubt. Today, the flights going north toward Fairbanks and Barrow were canceled, but the flights going and coming from the south mostly flew.

We sure do hope that the planes all fly on the day of your scheduled return.