Baby suddenly starts to dart about house, goes wild, wreaks havoc

All of a sudden, Kalib is able to scoot, crawl, and while he can't yet walk outright, he can shuffle about on his feet by grabbing hold of things like the edges of couches and coffee tables to support himself. Hands against the wall are a pretty good source of support as well.

And all of a sudden, today, he scurried all about the living room and the kitchen, raising hell.

He gets into a little pantry.

I leave grandma to deal with his mischief and retreat to my office. I step back in about ten minutes later and find that he has crawled onto the lower run of this end table. He has a Pepsi bottle and is shaking it vigorously. Margie is dumfounded. "Thirty seconds ago, he was on the other side of the room," she insists.

Again, I retreat to my office.

When next I step back into the house, he is getting into the cupboard beneath the microwave - far from the last position that I saw him in.

Everything that is in the cupboard, he pulls out. 

Kalib closes the cupboard door and goes for the broom.

He pulls the broom down.

He tests the bristles for texture.

Then he gives it a good shake up and down.

Grandma snatches him from the floor. While I spend all but a few minutes of the day in my office, he keeps her on the run continually. But I must tell you - she does not begrudge him. Margie delights in his company.

In the evening, we celebrate Jacob's birthday. He is much older than four, but four candles is what we have, so four candles he gets. As his dad prepares to blow out the flames, Kalib reaches out to grab one. Dad acts fast, and blows it out just before Kalib's fingers close down on it.

He put in a pretty darn good day.

Music to drive home from Wal-Mart by

I had the radio tuned to KSKA, Anchorage Public Radio, when I dropped Margie off at Wal-Mart the other day. A program called, "Rock Island Line" was on the air. The song, as these people walked in front of me into the parking lot, was Bob Dylan's, "Blowing in the Wind," as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary.

I drove home via the low road along the railroad tracks. Right here, the song was "This Land is Your Land," performed by Woody Guthrie himself. I am among those who believe this should be our national anthem.

While it might sound odd to some, as I listened to Guthrie sing, "from California to the New York Islands, from the redwood forests to the gulf-stream waters, this land was made for you and me," I thought of a certain young woman in India, who I call Muse, and who will marry soon. Someday, I hope to play this song in my car, for she and her husband, as I drive them down an American road.

An Alaskan road...

Now, back to Bob Dylan, with help from the Son of David, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: "To Every Thing There is a Season," or maybe the title is "Turn, Turn" this time performed by Joan Baez.

A Season was still playing when I came upon these two ravens. I pulled into a turnout, and shot through the open window.

One raven flew away. These three boys came walking by.

"Black Bird," by the Beatles, as I passed beneath this raven. That's a lie. I don't remember what song was broadcast here. I wish that it had been "Black Bird." But then you wouldn't have believed me.

Bob Dylan again - this time, performed by Bob Dylan: "Shelter From the Storm." Most appropriate.

Still "Shelter."

Altogether too appropriate: "Cumbaya" A few years back, I heard about a crash on this corner that killed a mother and her baby. Shortly after that, someone put up the cross on the left.

The cross on the right came later. It says, "Dad." I do not know the story.

"Someone's crying, my Lord, Cumbaya, someone's crying, my Lord, Cumbaya..." I don't remember who was singing. So many have done this song and when I remember back to this moment, I can hear different versions of it in my head.

"The Eerie Canal." Again, I cannot recall the performers."

"Winkin and Blinkin and nod..." The boy carries a rifle.

"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore..."

Puff, the Magic Dragon - Peter, Paul and Mary, of course.

"Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys..." - Willie Nelson. Not really... another lie. But it is a cow. Cow moose. Someone ought to enter it in a rodeo, let some cowboy chase it on a horse, lasso it, trip it, jump off his horse, tie its hoofs together and then raise his hands into the air.

I wonder how fast he could do it?

Tired, lazy, busy

Lazy today. Tired, too. Still two hours before normal bedtime, can hardly keep eyes open. Busy today, too, but accomplished nothing. Took a total of only two pictures, all day. This one, when I was driving to Taco Bell by myself. I forgot to change the ISO from indoors, so it was set at 1600, shutter speed 1/60. Then I also shot through a dirty, cracked window.

Still, it is what I saw, so here it is.

And this one, while gassing up my car as the guy getting out of the gas truck gasses up the gas station.

Compared to the other morning, it had warmed up greatly, about 30 degrees. The temperature was in the 20's, but the wind blew brisk and I wore a light jacket, which I was too lazy to zip up. So even though it was warm, it felt damn cold, standing there, gassing up the car, listening to the rattling diesel engine of the truck run as it pumped gas into the gas station.

I have great ambitions for this blog. What I am doing for now is using it to hold the space, until I can figure out how to find the time to build it into what I want it to become.

Today we dined at Taco Bell

Even though it was Sunday, we did not go to IHOP today. Instead, as lunch neared, Jacob, Muzzy and I took off walking towards Taco Bell, somewhere between four and five miles away. Margie would be coming the other way, taking her lunch break.

She would pick me up, and Lavina would come from behind, and pick Jacob and Muzzy up.

Sometimes in the past, I have left early enough to walk all the way to Taco Bell and meet Margie there.

Before I got hurt, I often rode my bicycle and I would almost beat her there.

I would not have wanted to ride a bike today, anyway. This is a bike trail that we are on, right here. Someone had plowed it in the morning, but enough snow had since fallen to make a miserable pedal out of it.

Lavina, Jacob, Kalib and me at the Taco Bell order counter. That's me in the blue. I am holding the camera out over the cash register with my left hand, since it is still hard to stretch my right that far. I asked the kid behind the counter if he could see those three on the camera screen. He said he could, so I took the picture.

The focus could have been better, but it's good enough.

Kalib ignores his Cheerios to watch little kids pass by. I heard a girl at the table behind him tell her dad, "It's your birthday, Dad! Happy birthday, Dad!"

A car passes by as Margie and Lavina visit. Lunch is over. In just minutes, I will drive Margie back to work at Wal-Mart, and then I will drive home the long way. I have a series of pictures from that drive, too. Let's see if I get a chance to post them.

I have much to do, and every minute that I spend in here is a minute away from that. And thanks to the odd vagaries of Squarespace, my bloghost, I spend much more time here than I ought to, just wrestling with the strange glitches that invariably pop up.

Where others failed, the quest to succeed persists

It was just November 20 when I posted a picture taken at the corner of Seldon and Church, about two miles from this corner, Seldon and Lucille, of a sign that looked very much like this, except that it advertised gas at $2.79. That was notably lower than any other gas that I had seen in Wasilla at that time.

Now Wasilla gas has fallen and seems to be selling from about $2.65 to $2.69.

So the owners of the new business on the unlikely, out-of-the main way, Seldon and Church gas station, have lowered their prices even more, and have spread the message to a distant corner.

See the mini-mini mall in the background? Interestingly enough, there used to be a sledding hill there. Kids would bring their sleds from all around. What a great time they would have!

Then someone cut the hill down and built this little mini-mall. It, too, seemed like an unlikely place for such a business, yet a stream of enterprises set up shop within, from a coffee shop to movie rentals and even, if I recall correctly, a rug seller. Every space filled. 

All failed. Every space emptied. Several reopened, including a string of coffee shops that went in and out of the same location, but then emptied again. Then a church moved in and now there is a little pre-school or daycare center that may or may not be affiliated with the church. I suppose I should find out. 

Margie got off work at 4:00 PM today. Here I am, driving to pick her up.