A birthday party

Margie had me load the uncooked pinto beans that she had been soaking all afternoon into the car in such a way so that they would not spill, unless we hit a moose or something. We then headed to town to throw a party for Rex on his 32nd birthday.

I can hardly accept the idea that Rex is 32, for I am only slightly older than that, myself. The gap of years between us just keeps narrowing and if it continues on like this, it won't be long until my youngest son is older than me, and that will be a very strange occurrence. 

I do not believe that anything like it has ever happened before in all of history.

We arrived in Anchorage about 4:00 PM, as the sun was going down.

The party was to be at Melanie's house. I was so tired when we first arrived, that, after I hauled the beans up the stairs and into Melanie's house (she was still at work) and helped Margie rinse them off, then refill the pot and put them on the stove to boil, I laid down upon the couch and there I stayed as Margie cooked.

After about an hour or so, other people began to arrive. Lisa got onto Melanie's computer. Charlie went out into the kitchen to put his raspberry cheesecake on the counter and to melt chocolate chips. I maintained my spot on the couch, but every now and then raised my pocket camera up into the air to take a picture.

Rex and Kalib arrived at about the same time. They greeted each other robustly.

Bear Meech and Diamond watched in wonder as their house filled up with more people than they are used to seeing.

And that's Cassie, Rex's dog, the one that came with Stephanie when they got married. No, Stephanie cannot be seen in any of these pictures. Perhaps in time, I will provide the required explanation, but this is just a time to give space.

Even as Kalib played with his grandmother's phone, Melanie's land line rang. But the receiver was not about. Rex is living for awhile in Melanie's basement apartment and had taken the receiver down there. He jumped up and ran down the stairs to get it.

You guessed it - when he picked it up, he heard Kalib gibberish on the other end.

Lavina cooks the frybread. This would make it Navajo frybread. If Margie had cooked it, it would have been the same but then it would have been Apache frybread.

As for me, I maintained my position on the couch. I was really tired and lazy.

When Melanie left work, she went straight to the airport to pick up Ryan, who had flown in from Calgary to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. Ryan and Melanie were special friends during their college days at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and spent some time in Europe together.

We all loved Ryan then and we still do, just as we love Charlie. And they are friends.

Here is Charlie's cheesecake, covered with the melted chocolate chips, which solidified into something very hard. A fork could not pierce this chocolate armor, an ordinary table knife could not cut through it.

The only way to get through the chocolate chip frosting was to saw with a serrated knife.

But... oh, was this cake good! The chocolate, the pumpkin cheese filling and the raspberries...

an absolutely magical combination!

You probably wish you could see the Navajo/Apache tacos that we made out of Lavina's frybread and Margie's beans. I should have photographed them, but I was too busy eating my share.

Ryan pets Diamond. In fact, he "overpets" Diamond.

Charlie saws his way through the chocolate on a piece of his cheesecake as Kalib jumps up and down.

After the food had been eaten, we all engaged in good conversation.

Jacob and Lavina had brought a store cake and regular birthday candles to go along with it. The candles could not be found, but someone did find these three big ones somewhere in Melanie's house. 

Kalib helped Rex blow them out.

Jacob gives his little sister some love.

As Rex unwraps presents from Jacob and Lavina, he finds the missing birthday cake candles.

Rex continues to unwrap his presents.

Soon, it was all over. Rex hugged Kalib goodbye. We all hugged each other goodbye. And then Margie, Kalib and I headed back for Wasilla, leaving Jacob and Lavina to spend the night in town with Melanie and Rex to begin a new year of life.

Catching up,* Final: Family Restaurant leftovers

Kalib and his mom as we enter Family Restaurant. 

Other people wait to enter and they look pretty darned excited and hungry.

Charlie and Melanie soon joined us. The last time we had seen Charlie, his hair was long, so this was a bit of a surprise.

Soon, there will be a toast at the table. In fact, there will be several pieces of toast.

Melanie and Charlie, who drove all the way out from Anchorage just to eat breakfast at Family Restaurant with us. It would have been nice if the entire family had come, but not everybody could make it.

Kalib examines his mother's wedding ring.

There were many happy people at Family Restaurant that day. Even though most present were strangers, it kind of felt like we were all one, big, family, all eating at Family, all enjoying breakfast together separately.

Jacob, at Family.

Do you remember how wonderful it felt, when you were his age, and you got to lay your head against your mother's chest and listen to her heartbeat? Although the recollections are a bit dreamy, I do remember. And, just a short distance away from the heart that Kalib listens to, a new one, ever so tiny, also beats.

After we ate, we headed back to the car and passed by this Doggie in the Window. None of us knew how much it was. Probably, it wasn't for sale at all.

*Yesterday's post mistakenly claimed it to be the final of the catch-up series. This is because I had originally scheduled this one to appear earlier in the week, but then moved it to this day so that I could post snow pictures. Then I simply forgot to correct yesterday's post before it went up. When the post was up and I saw my error, I thought, "Oh, well."

Catch up* Part 6: Kalib potpourri

Okay. This will be the final day that I revisit recent pictures that I did not post when I shot them but instead waited until Thursday, November 5, after I had fallen ill. I might as well end this catch-up series with a Kalib potpourri. Here he is, on the couch.

I worry that perhaps some of my regulars will have grown weary of this journey through the recent past by now, but I know there is a group of people down in Arizona Navajo/Apache country who cannot get enough Kalib images. 

Actually, this one dates all the way back to September. Just about every day since then, Jacob has asked me if I am ever going to post it. We went out to eat at Jalepeno's, where Kalib dipped his chip in the salsa. He must have liked it, because...

...he then picked up the bowl and began to drink the salsa. He drank quite a bit, too.

Kalib with some of my fish. The little outfit that he wears has ears.

Kalib did not like it at all when the ears came up. This reminded me of the bunny-rabbit pj scene from the classic film, A Christmas Story.

Kalib and Margie.

They had been to a thrift store a short time earlier, where they bought this very noisy ambulance. Each time that he set it off, I had to look in my rearview mirror.

One day, as I drove back home from somewhere, I saw these three ahead of me. By the time this appears on my blog, more than a full week will have passed since I typed these words - I sure hope all this bare gound is now, at long last, covered in snow. I hope my project is done - at least to the client review stage.

Perhaps I am not even in Wasilla anymore. Perhaps I somewhere else.

If so, where could that be?

*Although I have scheduled this to appear Saturday, November 14, I actually made this post on Thursday, November 5. There are two reasons for this: 1: whatever bug it is that has got me down has left me unable to concentrate to the degree that I must to do my work. 2: The project that I have been working on is very nearly done, but I have never brought such a project to a close without going full-bore, night and day, on it at the end, distracted by no other tasks, including this blog.

So, before I go to bed, I am going to put up several days worth of posts from photos that I have recently taken but have not used. Then, for the next several days, I will not blog, I will stay away from the internet as much as possible and just bear down on getting this job done - but my posts will keep coming.

Addendum: One Kalib image from today:

Here is Kalib a bit after 8:00 AM, caught in my headlights as I return home from a breakfast at Family Restaurant and he gets ready to go into Anchorage with his parents to spend the day at daycare.

Last night, I had thought that I could get by without taking any more medicine for whatever it is that has been ailing me. Big mistake. I coughed and coughed, all through the night, or at least that part of the night that spent in bed.

Having got to bed about 1:00 AM, and then after going to sleep having been woken up every few minutes by my coughing, I woke up for good at 5:00 AM. I did not want to believe it and so tried mighty hard to go back to sleep, but finally gave up about 6:00 AM and got up. I then came out to my computer to make a quick check the news, various blogs and such, then went to Family.

Later in the day, we went to Anchorage to celebrate Rex's birthday. I do have pictures that I want to blog, but I am too tired right now. It is midnight. I am going to take some medicine and see if I can sleep tonight. I have been coughing all day long and have a bad sideache and my throat is very sore.

I hope it is clear to everyone that when I say this addendum image is from today, I refer to the day that I have just lived, the day that is now ending. I have this post scheduled to come up at 4:00 AM which means that you, the viewer, will not see today's addendum image until tomorrow, by which time today's image will have been taken yesterday.

Still, at the time that I write the addendum, the statement was accurate.

Even now, as accurate as the statement is, it is now inaccurate, for the clock just passed midnight, which means it is now tomorrow, but of course it is never tomorrow, it is always today. Yesterday it was today and tomorrow it will be today.

But then you know that, don't you?

Catchup,* part 5: Margie nearly gets flattened by a rude mother in a truck with her two, beautiful, young daughters

There were several empty handicapped parking spaces near the main entrance to Carr's when we pulled in. Given Margie's condition, we could qualify in some ways, but the fact is we do not have the proper license plate or sticker, so of course we did not park there. No one who does not need those spaces should ever park in a handicapped spot.

Someday, I will post my photo-essay on my late brother, Ron, and you will understand why I am a hawk on this issue. I am learning to control myself, to tell myself that I am not a police officer and that there is nothing I can do about the rude, ignorant, dolts of the world, but I simply get outraged when I see a healthy person with no sticker park in such a spot. In the past, I have unleashed my wrath on more than a few, but now I try just to take a few deep breaths and move on.

Yes, when I post that essay, you will understand.

A big pickup truck was parked in one of the handicapped spaces. I could see no sticker, no license plate - but maybe there was something in the front window that was not visible to me from the back. 

Despite the fact she would be slow, Margie wanted to go into the store and shop for herself and I wanted to sit in the car and listen to All Things Considered on the radio. We were fortunate to find a parking space not far from the door, so I parked and she got out.

As she did, a fairly young woman with two little girls, who appeared to be her daughters, came bounding happily out of Carr's. And I mean bounding. All three were laughing and smiling, the little girls skipped and bounced and the woman moved at a brisk pace to easily keep up with them.

You can imagine my surprise when they climbed into the truck parked in the handicapped space.

That surprise soon turned to helpless terror when the lady backed out at too high a rate of speed - headed straight for my Margie, who was hobbling helplessly on her crutches. I was helpless. I could do nothing.

She missed her by inches.

Then, laughing with the little girls, she drove happily away, oblivious to what she had just about done.

Damn!

This was from one of those days when I got up late and groggy and had to go eat at Family Restaurant. It is nearly noon and that is why the sun is so high. If I had been there at a typical breakfast time, it would have been dark.

Family Restaurant.

When Kalib was a brand new baby, this waitress was delighted to see him. She oohed and aahed and cooed and all that kind of stuff. I can't wait until we can bring the next baby in and see how she reacts to him/her.

Old, wrecked, cars passing through Wasilla. Were they part of the Clunkers program? Or just old, wrecked, cars?

Did anybody ever make love in any of them?

How many hamburgers and hot dogs were eaten within?

Did anybody ever die in one?

Or break their neck and never walk again?

Or hit a man on a motorcycle and break his neck, so that he never walked again?

I find myself stopped behind a school bus.

On one side of me, this dog, Tequilla, barked furiously...

..simultaneously, on the other side, this dog barked, observed by two cows. Barking dogs, in stereo.

A typical scene from Schrock Road during a coffee break.

Jacob and Royce.

*Although I have scheduled this to appear Thursday, November 12, I actually made this post on Thursday, November 5. There are two reasons for this: 1: whatever bug it is that has got me down has left me unable to concentrate to the degree that I must to do my work. 2: The project that I have been working on is very nearly done, but I have never brought such a project to a close without going full-bore, night and day, on it at the end, distracted by no other tasks, including this blog.

So, before I go to bed, I am going to put up several days worth of posts from photos that I have recently taken but have not used. Then, for the next several days, I will not blog, I will stay away from the internet as much as possible and just bear down on getting this job done - but my posts will keep coming.

I think Kalib with get three of those posts, two at the very least.

Addendum - one image from today:

A shadow self-portrait. This is not early morning, it is not late afternoon - it is high noon. This is the season of long shadows.

A short walk on a beautiful, snowy, day

Oh, damnit! I put up all those posts last Thursday so that I would not have to put any up this week and what am I doing? Putting up new posts every day! 

Well, a very nice snow was falling as I walked and I thought, "I will get one image and add it as an addendum to the Family Restaurant post" that I had originally scheduled to go up in this time slot.

But after I got home, I wanted to share the entire walk, so here it is, beginning with these three girls, Tristan, Trimilin and Destiny, just a way's down Sarah's Way. Actually, I doubt that Trimilin's name is Trimilin at all, but that's how I remember. I stand to be corrected.

Oh well. It shouldn't take that long to post this.

I will just move the catch-up Family Restaurant post that was going to go up this morning to Sunday, November 15. It took place on a Sunday, anyway.

I was walking down Ward's when I got a feeling to turn around and look behind me. When I did, I saw these two young moose crossing the road. I think their mom must have already crossed when I was looking the other way.

After I turned away from the moose, I saw this pickup, being spun in brodies atop the Ward's Road hill.

Brody spin #2.

Brody spin #3.

Brody spin, #4.

A different truck coming down the hill.

Tracks left by the brody-spinning truck.

Back on Sarah's Way - a lady who has two dogs shovels her driveway.