We do some early Christmas shopping - Kalib gets trapped in a tube

I think it cooled down a bit last night. It got quite cool in our bedroom and I did not have enough blankets on to keep me warm. I could have got up and got another, but I was too lazy. When I first got up this morning and stepped outside, there was still clear sky and the air felt quite crisp.

Yet, in what seemed like no more than 15 or 20 minutes, clouds hid the clear sky, the temperature quickly warmed and it began to snow - fairly heavy, too. Margie and I had decided that we would do our Christmas shopping early this year and this was the day to begin, so I strapped Kalib into the car seat and off we went.

The temperature was 10 degrees (-12 C) but would rise to 20 (-6 C) by the time we would return home.

As we headed into "downtown" big-box strip Wasilla, we passed this man as he walked through the storm.

He held his head up high.

I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that he is not afraid of the night.

Walk on, man!

On the Parks Highway, we saw Coca Cola, coming down the road. Was this Wasilla Coca Cola, or was it headed to Fairbanks? Or places in between?

Wherever, off it went.

We were all hungry, so we went to McDonald's so Kalib could have some Chicken McNuggets, a tiny portion of french fries, apple slices and get a chipmunk toy. He showed little interest in the chipmunk. He is into Thomas.

Not so long ago, it was a spatula. He really got into that spatula.

Now it is Thomas the Train.

I have no idea what it will be next.

Whatever it is, Kalib always takes it very serious and delves deep.

He wanted to go into the McDonald's playground, climb into the tube and then come down the slide on the other end. Not long after he started, he stopped at a porthole to show off for his grandparents - grandma in particular. Boy, does he love his grandma!

I think its all that time she spends babysitting him.

Then things got tricky. He moved to the end of the tube, where it doubles back to the slide and there he paniced. Kalib froze. He would not move from this spot. "You've got to keep going, to the slide!" his grandma and I told him repeatedly.

"No!" he would shake his head and cry.

It was an exasperating feeling, both from inside the tube and out. Looking in, I even felt a little claustrophic, the way you do when you are not dead but people think you are so they bury and then you wake up in your coffin and no one can hear your shouts, because there is six feet of dirt on top of you.

We, of course, are too big to enter the tube. So I could not go in and coach him out. There were other kids in there, most a little bigger than he. They could see his plight. I kind of hoped one of them might lead him out, but none did.

This went on for many minutes - us trying to coax Kalib to either go forward to the slide or back to the entrance.

"No!" he would shake his head each time, crying all the while.

"Ok, Kalib," I finally told him. "Your grandma and I are going to go now. Goodbye."

Then we walked away - maybe 7 or eight feet, to a place where he could not see us.

Filled with new motivation, he soon popped his head into the entrance/exit, saw us there and smiled. "Hi Grandma," he said.

Boy, does he love his grandma!

As we prepared to leave, I saw two dogs waiting in the very long drive-through line. The lady told me their names, but I have forgotten.

So I will call the one on the left Frank and the one on the right, Henry.

Henry barked at me.

The lady told him to stop it.

Then we headed down to Target. We would have to make a left turn into the parking up there where you see another car waiting to turn left. I wondered if we would ever get a chance.The traffic coming from the direction of Anchorage seemed to be a nonstop river of lights.

But, when we got to the left turn lane, the drivers across both oncoming lanes of traffic stopped to create a gap that we could drive through. Margie waved thanks to them from the passenger seat as I quickly shot through the gap.

I briefly put my iPhone in the cart. "No!" Kalib said. Then he grabbed the phone and threw it onto the floor. Not so long ago, I swore to myself that no matter what he might do, I would never harshly scold Kalib. But I did. Then I put the phone back in the cart and refused to go any further until he picked it up and handed it to me.

He did.

A bit later, I discovered that the "on-off" button was missing.

So I can't turn off my phone now. That's not really a problem, except that sometimes an ap will lock up and the only way to get that ap working again is to restart the iPhone.

It still doesn't matter much, though. Before the end of the year, I plan to get an iPhone 4s - mostly for the camera. The camera in the 4s - really good.

Maybe we bought some gifts at Target, maybe we didn't. Shopping in these stores is almost impossible for me. We go down the aisles and my mind just blanks out. Besides Kalib throwing my phone on the floor, the only thing I clearly remember is the many Thomas the Train toys. 

We could not buy any of those. Kalib was with us.

If the highway is not too hazardous, we will drive to Anchorage tomorrow and try again.

On the way home, we stopped at Metro Cafe - right about the usual time of 4:00 PM. Branson and a new boy named Jacob were there, claiming to be helping out.

When we pulled into the driveway, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Kalib had fallen asleep. 

When he felt the car stop, Kalib woke up. Sort of. Waking up wasn't an easy process.

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Breakfast, coffee break; Melanie comes out and we decorate the tree

Now, today:

In the morning, I got up and drove to Abby's Home Cooking. Abby had been at the wedding last night with her family, including daughter Emily who was a member of the bridal party.

So I decided I would go and let her fix breakfast for me.

I passed this cyclist along the way.

As you can see, another horrid mass of warm air has moved in from the Pacific - just like I speculated it would when I was trying to read the signs and predict the weather.

Damnit!

I hate this warm weather in December.

Funny, if any place else in the country, including the coldest states of the northern tier, had experienced the degree of consistent cold that we did in November, the religious among them would have said it was a sign that end was coming soon.

Hmmmm... perhaps all this warm weather in December here in South Central Alaska means... the end is coming soon?

There she is - Abby - cooking away behind the counter. This morning was the busiest I have ever seen it at Abby's. Every table but one was filled and there was action at the counter, too.

Shelly was not there to help her, because Shelly had run the restaurant all by herself all yesterday so that Abby could go to the wedding.

Abby's husband Andy was there, helping her.

Still, Abby was waitressing, cooking and busing.

If business keeps building up like this, she is going to have to hire more help.

As always at Abby's, I enjoyed my breakfast.

I guess I didn't totally work through the afternoon. Margie took the car and went shopping, so, having little rituals that I follow to keep me sane, when the time came, I walked to Metro Cafe for my coffee break. As I walked, this airplane flew by to both inspire and taunt me.

If it had been me up there, I would have had skis on by now.

I surely would have.

I'm not criticising, mind you.

This pilot might have a perfectly good reason to have kept this plane on wheels.

I can't think of a good reason, but the pilot might have thought of one.

Still, I would have rejected such a thought.

One of Carmen's guests had brought his 1974 yearbook to Metro. I would tell you his name, but I am going to let you see if you can figure it out for yourself.

If you can't, then I am sorry to say it, but your own education was a waste.

I don't care if you are a historian now, getting paid millions of dollars by government agencies and $60,000 a speech - if you can't figure this out...

Now, don't anybody post your answers in comments.

If you were wrong, I would hate to have to inform you.

In the evening, Melanie came over. We ate dinner, then we ate Alaska Wildberry chocolates. After that, we decorated the tree - or least Melanie and Margie did, after they went out into the yard while I was working on the wedding and cut it down.

For a long time, Margie had what she called "a Charlie Brown tree" all picked out.

They didn't cut it, though, because Melanie found another, even better, Charlie Brown tree.

Now, I have a very serious question to ask you:

Do you see any chocolate on the left side of Melanie's face?

Do you see any chocolate on the right side of Melanie's face?

Neither do I.

This is important, because a bit after I took these pictures, Melanie saw the image of herself in a mirror. She claims that chocolate was spread all across her face. She says she then washed that chocolate off.

She then began to scold me, telling me not to dare put a picture of her with chocolate on her face in the blog.

You didn't have chocolate on your face, I told her.

Yes I did, she insisted, and don't use any pictures showing chocolate on my face. Delete them. Delete them all.

I never delete a picture, I told her.

It didn't matter. There was no chocolate.

Margie hangs a Christmas tree ornament.

Melanie hangs a birch bark canoe ornament on a high branch. "We should get a star for the top," Margie said.

"Okay," I agreed.

This conversation has taken place now for, oh, I don't know... 25 years now? 30.

We really should, though.

Or an angel.

Or a cat, holding a song book, singing Christmas carols.

It could have a chip in it and really sing.

Last came the tinsel.

When it was done, I noticed they hadn't put the airplane oraments on the tree.

"Why didn't you put the airplanes on the tree?" I asked, reasonably.

"You have to do it," Melanie said.

"No," I said. "You could have done it."

"No. You always scold me. 'Don't put the airplanes on the tree,' you always say, 'only I can do that.'"

"No," I countered, truth on my side but to no avail, "I never say that."

Yet, it was clear that if the airplanes were going to get on the tree, I would have to do it.

So I did.

There were only two of them.

What happened to the rest?

I had enough airplane ornaments to decorate a whole tree all by themselves.

Not that I would ever do that.

But I had enough.

Where did they go?

Probably flew away, I guess.

Finally, the tree was done. The three of us stood before it and altogether we sang, "Oh Christmas Tree."

Or at least I did. All by myself.

Or at least I sang this much of it, in a non-existant key of my own invention:

"Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree! How lovely are thy branches!"

"Dad," Melanie challenged, "are those the real lyrics? Or did you make them up?"

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Margie in surgery right now; chilly this morning - we still might make it to Arizona

Margie is undergoing surgery right now. As soon as I finish this post, I will head for the hospital so that I can say "hi" to her when she comes to. As it was explained to me, the reason for the two surgeries is that it is possible pieces of gall stone could have broken off the big one in her gall bladder then got stuck in various ducts that lead away from it. If the gall bladder were simply removed, those stones could stay behind and cause trouble.

This surgery involves no cutting into the body. A scope and stone removing tool is sent down through the mouth to search the bladder and the ducts.

This surgery is not supposed to be that hard on a person. Margie may be able to come tonight. Furthermore, depending on what is discovered and how it goes, the second surgery, the one to remove the bladder altogether, might be able to be postponed or dropped altogether and we might still be able to go to Arizona.

There is only chair in Margie's hospital room and Melanie will not sit in it if I am there. She insists that I do, so I do. She looks more comfortable lying next to her mom than I feel in the chair, anyway. 

Unless you are looking at this in the click and blow-up size, it may be hard to read, but the unlit sign on the back window of this car says, "see me about lighted car signs."

When I took the picture, the temperature on this part of Muldoon in East Anchorage, which gets much colder than at the airport which sits right by the inlet, where the official Anchorage temperatures are read, was -14.

When I got home, it was -15 (-26 C) in our driveway.

This morning, it was -26 (-32 C).

One might think that this portends a good, old-style, cold winter ahead, but experience tells me that we cannot count on it.

Sometimes it starts out this way and then one of those troughs sets up in the Pacific and then pulls one South Pacific storm after the other up from Hawaii and ruins everything.

I hope that doesn't happen this winter. We will see.

I like my winters cold.

Now I am off to the hospital, to see Margie and maybe bring her home.

The week so far in catch up: girl sled boats in meltwater; school bus adventures; Oscar's bike ride; Jobe is ill; Studies of dogs eating biscuits

Thanks to my three part series covering Jobe's first steps stepping out party Sunday evening, I have neglected to post anything about the week since as it has unfolded so far. Truth is, while it has been a week of furious and relentless activity inside my head and flowing through my fingers into the keyboard and then my computer, visually it has not been a week that has given me many images to post.

I have basically spent it right here, at my computer, day and night, typing and mousing, picking cats up off my keyboard and putting them on the floor only to have to them ump right back up so we can do it all over again.

Still, I have a few images to post. I will start with today, a day that has begun very lazily for me for the simple fact that this morning at 3:00 AM I finally finished up the task that I had hoped to complete by last Saturday night, but which proved much more time-consuming than I had reckoned.

As all my tasks seem to do.

I then went to bed exhausted, yet wired up and so lay awake for about two hours, after which I slept sporadically and then got up about 9:00 AM, determined to take this day off and relax.

I found that it was snowing, and the wind was blowing.

Pretty normal for this time of year.

It is also not unusual this time of year to have the image of spring appear before you, to have people say, "this is really it, this is spring," even though everybody knows that this a very foolish thing to say because, even though for Alaska our climate is fairly temperate here, spring still means something different in Wasilla than it does in most of the more populated world.

So late Monday afternoon, when I pedaled my bike back home from Metro Cafe and saw this girl, using ski poles to propel herself through a huge puddle of melt water, it certainly looked like winter had given up altogether.

Yesterday afternoon, I pedaled by there again. The puddle had refrozen. The yard behind was again blanketed in snow. I thought about taking a picture to prove it, but I did not want to stop and so I just pedaled on.

When Margie stays in town to babysit, I tend to eat breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. So that is what I did Tuesday morning. As I drove home, I saw these students, waiting for their school bus.

A bit further down the road, I witnessed what might have been their bus, turning onto Church Road. It was a damned exciting sight to see.

Then up ahead on Church, I saw another bus, stopped, stopping the pickup behind it, stopping me, so that these three students could board and head for class.

And in the afternoon, post-Metrol Cafe, I came upon this four-wheeler.

Wasilla forever teems with exciting activities.

In the evening, I went to Anchorage to pick Margie up and bring her home, but first I stopped at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art to take in an ASMP slide show titled Nomadic Photographer presented by Oscar Avellanda.

Oscar's roots are in Columbia, so in January of 2010, he got on his bike and with his sister and a friend pedaled his bike from Anchorage to Whittier. There, they boarded the ferry and traveled to Bellingham, Washington and then he and his sister continued on and pedaled all the way down through the West Coast, through Mexico, El Salvadore and into Columbia.

As you would expect, he took pictures all along the way, although not nearly as many as he had anticipated, as the work of pedaling a bike often took precedence over photography. The picture that stands out strongest in my mind is a black and white of his little tiny bike parked near the oceanside in southern Mexico, with a gigantic cruise ship looming large above it in the background.

This what the online ASMP announcement had to say about Oscar:

"Along the way, Oscar was attacked by a dog, underwent treatment for rabies, became engaged, discovered his roots, and redefined his conceptions of material necessities. Mr. Avellaneda’s artistic photographic images and stories have redefined his role as a photographer while challenging the social norms of his industry."

It is a much more complex story than that, of course, but I think for now, I will that suffice. In time, I suspect, Oscar will produce something that tells the story in depth.

I then went over to Jake and Lavina's to pick Margie up, but Jobe had taken a turn for the worse. He had vomited. He was running a fever. Margie decided to stay, probably until Sunday, when Jacob, Lavina and family depart for a workshop in New Mexico and then a vacation in Arizona. She will help them out until they go.

Yesterday, for my one break in a very long day, I again pedaled my bike to Metro Cafe at coffee time. There, I shot this series of three Metro studies:

Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #410: Carmen offers a dog biscuit to Loki. Loki sniffs the biscuit, but does not take it.

Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #63: Jim, the dog's pet human, takes the biscuit. Loki then takes the biscuit from his pet.

Through the Metro Window from inside, Study #7,895: Jim takes a second biscuit from Carmen and the dog, Coda, takes it from Jim.

And so goes the world.

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I meet a Dutch Harbor fisherman beside a picnic table on the ice of Wasilla Lake

As I drove by Wasilla Lake, I saw a table sitting on the ice. I thought it might be a good place to take Margie out for dinner - a catered dinner of grilled halibut and asparagus on a gusty, chill, night and so went down to check it out.

At this size, he is kind of hard to see, but if you look closely toward the top of the picture just beyond the berm, you will see a man walking toward the lake.

Even from here, I could hear him talking, so I figured that he must be using his cell phone, via Bluetooth or something.

He stepped onto the ice and kept coming, conversing all the way. I did not try to make out his words, because I figured they were directed towards someone else.

As he drew close, I suddenly realized that he was talking to me and had been all the time.

"How deep is it? Pretty deep?" he was asking.

I reasoned that what he meant was "thick is the ice?" 

"Probably close to three feet," I estimated.

True, the ice doesn't look that thick in this two-D pic, but standing on it, looking down through the cracks and frozen bubbles, it did.

"So if I were to try to walk across the lake I would fall right through?" he speculated.

"No!" I answered, surprised. "You can walk across the lake. You can drive a truck across the lake. The ice is thick. The ice is strong."

"J" said he was a commercial fisherman, lives in Wasilla and works out of Dutch Harbor catching cod, halibut and such. He said things were a bit tight at the moment, until he can go out and fish. He made it clear that he is a hand and not a boat owner or permit holder.

The guys who are, he said, take their profits and go off to tropical islands, while he must stay home and tough it out.

He told me repeatedly how dangerous and crazy fishing is - furious activity surrounded winches and cables that a careless person can get caught in or that can snap and slice you up.

A fisherman can rip his shoulder hoisting halibut, he demonstrated.

He pointed down the highway and warned me about a certain, sneaky, cop that likes to hide out and then nail you as you pass innocently by in all good faith and intent.

Then he went his way and this couple walked past.

All this exposed grass is not due to warm temperatures. It is due to scouring winds. It has been windy, windy, windy! and mostly cool, with temps between about -10 F and +teens here in Wasilla, but yesterday, the day I took these pictures, was warm and still. Temperature about 29 F, wind calm.

Today, the wind howls again.

I have not yet stepped outside, but the house was not that cold this morning, so I suspect that the temperature remains on mild side.

This being March, there is no telling what will happen next.

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