We did two water runs today.

We had dipped down nearly to the bottom of the barrel behind me in that weird corner in the middle of the kitchen-dining-living room in here.

One run was to fill all the jugs and buckets.  Then we emptied the buckets into the barrel and took them back again to be filled.

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On the first run, Koji came along.  It was much easier this time.  He has a new head collar, like the one he was trained in as a pup.  He outgrew it, and was apparently losing his training, so now  he has a new training collar.

I got a few decent shots such as this one looking southeast across Sheep Creek Flats, and the ice crystals in the stream, at top.

Then there was the one that got away.  After the water was loaded into Streak, I handed Koji’s leash to Doug while I got the camera case and put the camera away.

Then I looked up and around to find boy and dog, and there they were, coming down the hill.  Koji was surging forward, plunging down, grinning.

Doug was trying to keep up.  He did manage to keep his feet almost all the way.  He slid on his butt in  only one steep area.

While Doug unloaded the water and filled the barrel, I walked out to the cul de sac.

That sun, near the southern horizon, shows how low the angle of the sun is at  mid-day this time of year.  As everyone in the far north now, I’m looking forward to the solstice when it begins to climb the sky again.

Before we went back to fill the buckets again, we took warm water to the feral cats across the highway.  Doug had to break ice out of their water bowl, from the water  he had taken over there yesterday.  Most days, he walks.

Greyfox had seen two kittens on one recent visit, and Doug saw one today.  By the time I wandered up the driveway looking for something to photograph, they had all taken cover.  Not even any of the more tame adults was around, nor did I find anything worth capturing in pixels.

A neighbor was at the spring at the same time we were today.  It doesn’t happen every trip, but sometimes we run into people.

He complimented Koji’s good looks (that was the first trip, when he was with us) and said his dog had recently died.  Then we each got on with getting water and getting home.

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It snowed yesterday.  Koji had an appointment at the vet.  Greyfox is a little bummed out because his car, Lassie, that doubles as his roadside stand, had an engine breakdown Sunday.  He stayed home and Doug and I took the dog, in my car Streak, to the doctor for his booster shots.  Traffic was heavier than usual and, if this is possible, even crazier than usual.

Near the start of our trip a, big, empty, auto transporter zoomed up behind us ‘way over the speed limit, which I was doing, and passed me on a curving hill.  He was about halfway around me when an oncoming car crested the hill.  I’ll bet that driver was scared, seeing the truck bearing down on him in his lane.  I slowed as quickly as I could without losing traction, and the oncoming driver slowed and pulled onto the shoulder, and we all squeaked through that near miss.

The vet praised Koji’s condition and courage *glow* and renewed his immunizations.  Then we headed to Wal-Mart for a few necessities:  chewy treats for Koji, sweet treats for Doug.  They walked around the parking lot while I shopped, then I took Doug to Burger King for his dinner.  I had a bottle of water and my mid-day handful of empty-stomach supplements.  I wasn’t even tempted by the junk food.  This, my first town trip since starting the current regime of neurotransmitter precursors, was a test and I passed.

On the way home, an ambulance passed us going toward the hospital, and then we passed a wreck where another ambulance and several emergency vehicles were still on the scene.  It was on an icy hill and our wheels spun as we tried to creep past the wreck.  I was ever so glad for Streak Subaru’s front-wheel drive.  We made it through that slick area without even having to shift to 4WD.

That was yesterday, and I forgot to take the camera with me.  This morning, as the sun was coming up, I slipped into my boots and out the door with the camera.  I was fine until I ventured out onto the ice of the muskeg.  I went Doug one better; filled both my boots when the ice cracked over a deep spot.  It wasn’t too deep:  the surface of the ice was about at knee level when I hit bottom.

Since I was far enough away from the brushy edge of the marsh to get this unobstructed shot, I went ahead and captured it before climbing back up onto the ice and heading for the house.  I got some disparaging comments from my two guys as I hung my boots on the dryer over the woodstove.  I guess I deserved that, after giving Doug a hard time a few days ago for the same dumb trick.

What I do for a living….

Last night was the coldest yet this year.  Doug walked all the way across the ice on the muskeg this morning, before breaking through at the edge on the other side.  That, and the fact that our drains don’t drain, clued me that it was cold.  When I chided the kid about his boot full of icy water, he said, “At least I had sense enough to come right back in once I got wet.”  Yes, there’s that.

The weather is only tangentially related to what I do to keep body and soul together, but the kid’s lack of forethought is fairly pertinent.  I provide care and feeding for him, and for his step-father, and sometimes even for Charley, my ex, Doug’s father, who lives nearby.  All three of them occasionally need some guidance or help that I can provide, and in return they take care of some of my needs.

This blog was prompted by a question, weeks ago, from OpaulleeO , commenting on my “Happiness” blog that is featured in this week’s ZangaZine.  I had crowed about having no job, boss, contract, schedule, etc., and Paul wanted to know what I do for a living.  The thought intrigued me, and I decided I wanted to answer the question, even though Paul might not ever see this.  He only commented here a couple of times, each time complaining that my blogs were too long.  This is going to be another long one.

Since my current activities, healing myself and writing my memoirs, are somewhat in the nature of investments in the future, rather than providing any current support, I decided to blog about a lot of the things I have done to support myself and my extended family since the last time I had a real job, in 1975.

I lost my last job for absences due to illness.  Around the same time, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline construction boom came to an end and Charley was out of work, too.  For years before that, I had been dumpster diving for food, clothing, and whatever else I found that I could use.  We started doing more of it and also took things we didn’t need, to sell at flea markets.  In this shot of our booth, the material it is built from, the shelves, the big sign, and much of the merchandise came from dumpsters.  That is Charley in profile on the right, and the back of my head and my bottom are visible behind the counter.

Those flea markets were where I first started selling the jewelry I made.  Before that, I either wore it myself or gave it away.  I started stringing beads, the classic long strands of hippie love beads, in the ‘sixties.

I still make necklaces much like those I made in the beginning.  We call them “lollies” now:  “little old ladies” because older women really like them.  They slip on over the head, no clasps to fool with.  The materials I use are natural stone and metal, very little glass or ceramic, and virtually no plastic.  I also make bracelets and shorter necklaces with clasps, and a few divination pendulums.

Back in the ‘seventies, at flea markets, my most popular items were roach clips.  Charley used silver solder to fashion the clips, and I attached short strings of beads to them for decoration.  My most popular items now are earrings, simple drops of tumbled stones or small crystals.  This winter I plan to make a few hundred pairs for sale to tourists next summer.

I did Tarot card readings at the flea markets, too.  That started with the first annual Girdwood Forest Fair, during the post-pipeline economic bust.  They advertized for musicians, jugglers, fortune tellers, etc., and I decided to go for it.  Prior to that, I’d been reading cards for seven years, but never got paid for it.  That business grew, until by the mid-eighties, between my marriages, I was working half a dozen summer festivals.  Then I started doing readings by mail and the psychic work accounted for most of my cash income, supporting Doug and me for a few years.

Someone for whom I did a reading at Girdwood invited me to work the Renaissance Faire in Anchorage, and that led to my joining the Society for Creative Anachronism.  The little pavilion at right, and all the garb on Charley and me (Fergus McGowan and Faianna ni Kenneth na Dunlioscairn–with wee Dougal McFergus “in the oven” there) were sewn together by me.

That’s another thing I “do” for a living.  I make do, making things instead of buying them.  Charley fashioned the framework for the pavilion from scrap aluminum electrical conduit discarded at a construction site, and I made the cover out of six bedsheets and 2500 yards of thread, during three weeks near the end of my last pregnancy.  Sparkling new in the photo above, now after 21 years, it’s faded but still serviceable.

Hunting bargains and buying quality are absolutely essential to my lifestyle.  My old brown buffalo hide purse, so full of wabi (Japanese, an elegant term for the charm that can come only with age.) has been by my side more than a quarter of a century.  I neglect and abuse it.  I fling it in a corner or hang it on a hook.  The shoulder strap wore out, and I patched it with ducktape.  The rainbow-colored Central American sash winds tightly over the duct tape for camouflage when I go to town.

Camo is essential in any Alaskan wardrobe.  Get a load of those new soles on my no-longer-holey, almost white yeti feet booties: camo ducktape.  The booties were $2.00 at a thrift store four years ago.  Inside are army surplus felt insoles.  They are warm.  I’m wearing them now, put them right back on as soon as I took that shot.

Another bargain was that hundred-year-old Navajo eye-dazzler rug my treasured wabiful possessions rest on (spread hastily over a reclining Doug for this illustration).  At one of those flea markets, I spotted it in someone else’s boxes as she was unloading her truck.  I dropped everything and waited around for her.  The rug had several holes in it, which I’ve mended to prevent further raveling.  I bought it for $5.00.

Last Xmas, when I asked my SIL for ideas on what to give Greyfox’s twin nieces, she said they were obsessed with Barbie and she had not been able to find any Barbie bedding.  From two silk blouses picked up for practically nothing at thrift shops, a ragged old towel and a scrap of felt, I made each girl a set of silk sheets, wool blanket and cotton towels for Barbie’s bed and bath.  They were delighted.

But to get back to making a living, some of our living is subsistence.  I haven’t been fishing for a long time, but Charley fishes, and other neighbors bring fish or moose or caribou occasionally when they have a surplus.  For a few years between marriages, Doug and I were on the roadkill list.  Low income families… late night phone call… go out and by the light of your headlights, gut, skin, butcher and salvage a roadkilled moose.  Hard work, but worth it.  The fresh liver of a young moose melts on the tongue with a flavor unlike anything else.

I forage for wild greens and berries.  I know where to find fresh medicinal herbs in summer, and the ones that retain their usefulness when dried, I dry and store for winter.  Early in the spring, before the garden yields anything, I pick the native fireweed shoots while they are still purple and tender.  They go with the first leaves of the imported chickweed and dandelions.  In the fall, wild greens yield pungent salads after frost has killed the gardens.

When I’m well and strong enough, I plant vegies, things like snow peas and red lettuce, things we all like to eat.

When enough things are in remission so that I feel energetic enough for a challenge, I grow herbs and vegies for competition.  That cabbage beside me is Elvis, named after the King by Greyfox.  Elvis won a blue ribbon in the Largest Garden Vegetable category at the state fair.  Cash awards go with those ribbons, and each year I have competed, I’ve won dozens.  Three times I’ve won the purple Best of Show rosettes:  croissants, cheese and herb filled dinner rolls, and Hot Hungarian wax peppers from my greenhouse.

  I do biointensive organic companion plantings in microbeds, deep, but narrow enough that I can reach the center without stepping in the bed.  Besides those things I plant, there are bed after bed and rock gardens filled with perennial food, flowers and medicine plants I planted years ago:  raspberries, mint, chives, hardy green onions, Shasta daisies, valerian, and more.

I grow some tender herbs that need to be brought in over the winter.  This pic was taken this morning.  That’s thyme on the left, sage on the right, and marjoram near the bottom between them.

When Doug was little and some great people owned a general store near here, I would start more seedlings in the greenhouse than I needed, and sell the plants at the store.  I always spent the money I got for them there at the store.  It worked out great.  On Doug’s sixth birthday, his cake was a twinkie bought with my plant money at Cache Country Store.

I’ve sold herbs and vegies to Sheep Creek Lodge for their restaurant.  I’ve done other little things for the lodge, too.  I typed up the new menu a few years ago, and got a few free meals for the family.  I type other things for neighbors, and I edited and did all layout work for Greyfox’s newsletter, The Shaman Papers.  A lot of bartering for goods and services goes on here.  Greyfox has a friend named Sam whose family get books, videos, rocks and whatever from the stand, in exchange for Sam’s help with a lot of mechanical jobs. Sam is also teaching Greyfox how to do some of these things.

I must acknowledge that while I’ve been ill these past few years, most of my living, cash-wise, comes from Greyfox’s Last Stand.  I earn it by putting up with the old fart.  And then there’s the Permanent Fund Dividend.  Alaska is the only state that pays its citizens to live there.  Greyfox says it’s the only state that has to pay people to live there.

Baking and gardening aren’t my only competitive areas.  This water flower photo won a ribbon at the state fair, and one of my plans for the near future is to have some of my photos made into note cards and a calendar, for the tourist trade.

In the SCA, my numerous and frequent first prizes in cooking contests won not only a multitude of material goodies as trophies, but also an unprecedented (for the Kingdom of the West) Award of Arms in less than six months.  A lot of prestige, applause and admiration went along with that, and I’m a hog for attention and applause, as well as for the tangible goodies.  Lots of things mean more than money to me, and make of this existence a real “living”.  For me, money does not equate to survival.  It’s a great way to get extras and meet emergencies, but I can get along without it.

I could always get along without it.  I’m living in the Flow.

Paul Lee, if you got this far, I’m astounded, gratified, and flattered… and aren’t you glad you asked?  I’m certainly glad you asked.

Frosty day today, but still no snow on the ground. 

The ice on the muskeg is still too thin to support anything bigger than a cat or small dog.

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I don’t feel like writing, for once.

Anchorage, early 1974

I cheated on my taxes that first year in Anchorage, unwittingly.  I claimed Stony as a dependant, which was fine.  But I claimed unmarried head of houshold status for myself, to which I wasn’t entitled because Stony and I are unrelated.  I neglected to read all the fine print.  I was the major wage-earner in that tax year, and we were unmarried to each other, so that category seemed appropriate.  My bad.  No prob.  The difference amounted to less than $35, so it was forgiven. 

All it cost me was a trip to the local IRS office and a morning spent with an anxious feeling in my gut.  What I got from that trip downtown was an excellent lunch at a restaurant I hadn’t tried before, Le Potage.  More than worth it, I’d say.  Nothing but soup on the menu, but what soup!  And there was fresh-baked bread to go with it.  It was eight blocks from work, but I’d walk down there, fast, at least a time or two a week, for lunch.

I found a great place for dinner, too, and it was just a block off my route home from work.  It was The Restaurant.  I loved sitting at the counter where I could watch the cooks.  I always ordered the same thing:  abalone ala Sinatra.  There have not been many restaurants that I’ve frequented in my lifetime that had abalone on the menu; just that one, one on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and one in Morro Bay. 

The Restaurant was so great, in ambience, comfortable seating, the floor show of the sauté cooks, and esprit of the staff, that I would sit there sipping the excellent coffee, and fantasize about going to work there.  But I was hooked on the two jobs I had, and wasn’t money hungry enough to try a part-time swing shift gig. 

I put in 96 hours a week and as many more, at time and a half, as were required to do the job at New Start.  I usually had six to ten hours overtime on each check, from driving clients to interviews or helping them find housing after office hours.  I had one female client who, because of digestive problems, needed a blender to process all her food.  We tried to find one she could afford at a thrift store, and when none could be found, I found a nice lady at Catholic Social Services, who cut a check for a brand new one.

We did job search classes one evening a week, and that made up, on my time card, for the Wednesday morning staff meetings at Open Door.   I’d help people compose a resume, then I’d type it up and make copies.  Mike checked a video setup out of the state A/V pool, and we taped mock interviews and ran them back so the clients could see and critique their own interviews.

Mike and I researched possible businesses that a proposed organization of ex-offenders could start as a place to employ the more hardcore unemployables among our clients.  We both really loved the idea of a recycling center, but all the research suggested that it would not support itself economically.  It was more than a decade before a recycling center opened in Anchorage, and it has been struggling ever since, because of the cost of shipping the scrap out to somewhere there is an industry to use it. 

We settled on housing construction, since the area was booming.  Mike prepared a proposal to present to the Inmate Council and the Jaycee chapter at the Palmer Correctional Center, a minimum security facility where most of the inmates were serving time for alcohol- or drug-related offenses.

Steve, my friend who worked midnight shift at Open Door, was interested in the project, and he was a Jaycee, formerly with the PCC chapter.  He and Barb, the parole office’s PR person, and Mike and I went to Palmer to tell the inmates there about our idea.  One phase of it was the construction company.  Another was a halfway house, alternative to incarceration to run in connection with the industry.

One funny-looking man, the president of the Jaycee chapter, did most of the talking.  He asked searching questions, wanted details about the plans, and our delegation left it to me to answer most of them.  When he asked whether the men in the halfway house would have any chances to, “get their ashes hauled,” I sorta choked and sputtered, trying not to laugh at the colorful turn of phrase. 

I said something to the effect that I supposed so, if the men could find anyone to do the hauling for them.  Mike spoke up and contradicted that, saying that most probably that would not be allowed.  Both the funny-looking guy and I looked at Mike incredulously, neither of us, I suppose, quite able to understand why that might be, but familiar enough with the system not to argue with him.

I should probably explain that this guy wasn’t deformed or anything.  He just dressed funny.  Nobody else in that joint was dressed that way.  His style was what was commonly referred to as “plastic hippie”, only more extremely plastic than I had ever seen.  He wore jeans and a jean jacket, of dark blue synthetic fabric, not the faded cotton denim favored by “real” hippies.  There were no holes in the knees or seat patched with colorful scraps, no embroidery or flowery applique.  His pants had been slit at the bottom and turned into bells with a gusset of cloth, in the hippie style, but the edges of both pant legs and the waist and cuffs of the jacket were trimmed with factory-made decorative braid.  His patches were of the machine-made sort, too.  One patch gave his “sex sign” as Sagittarius, “inventive” with a naked couple coupling in the upside down 69 position.  Several others celebrated marijuana and advocated revolution and praised rock and roll.  They were stuck on randomly, and, as I said, the effect was comical to me.

After the presentation, while we were milling around, Steve introduced the funny-looking guy to me as “Stud”, his ol’ jail partner.  ”Stud” stuck his hand out and corrected Steve: “Chuck, Chuck Studdert.”  He had a nice warm, firm handshake and a cute crooked smile.  He led us on a tour of the joint.  First we saw the kitchen, where he gave some orders to his helpers who were preparing lunch in his absence.  He explained that he was the current head cook.   He showed us the shed where the snowplow was that he had operated before getting the kitchen job, and then made the rounds of the greenhouse and the snow-covered gardens.  Then he led us to a long dormitory building.

In the cubicle he called his “house”, where every available bit of wall space was plastered with nude centerfolds, and a bookshelf held classics such as The Story of O, he handed a cardboard box of various items to Steve.  Out of the box, he pulled a beautiful ceramic Hotei buddha on a wooden base with a sand-filled brass cup for an incense burner.  The figure’s robe was gold and the facial features were delicately painted.  Steve complimented Chuck on his work, and on the skill he had developed in the craft shop.  Chuck asked him to take the box home with him.  Steve explained to me that Chuck would be getting out the following weekend, and would be staying at Steve’s apartment while I helped him find a job.

Steve ended up forgetting the box in the back of the state car that night, and it went home with me.  The beautiful Hotei incense burner (he is the patron of oracles and psychics) is on a shelf in my home right now.  Over twenty years later, our son Doug found his dad’s old plastic hippie costume in a box, discovered that it fit him, and wore it to the Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival.  Ol’ “Chuck”, whom I soon started calling Charley, lives about a mile away from here now, in a cabin owned by Greyfox.  He’s just about the best friend I have who’s still alive.  I will be having a lot more to say about him.

Mainstream media cover the world political scene, big crime, natural disasters, and such.  I love it when I find a place to get news of positive change in the world.  Here it is:

Inspire The World Campaign

Adbusters: Buy Nothing Day

As soon as I woke this morning, Doug was apologizing for not getting his chores done while I slept.  It seems he had been distracted by a new online game where one pushes a cyber-guy downstairs, and the best yet random thingamabob generator.  This time, it is inventions.  Most of them are strange and/or amusing, but here’s one we can all use:

Design #4286160885

It’s a pillow that automatically updates your weblog when used!

The Prior-Art-O-Matic

Then there is this versatile device:

Design #576382166

It’s a crematorium that runs on a single AA battery, tracks infra-red and inflates balloons.

The Best Therapy is Group Therapy

The therapeutic modality used at Open Door Klinic, with clients and amongst ourselves at staff meetings, was supportive, non-judgmental counseling.  The other time, in the psychicatric ward at Tachikawa Air Base Hospital, the therapy group was likewise low-key.  This set up for me false expectations as to what I’d be getting into in the therapy group Steve recommended to me.  The style of hardcore healing done at Family House heroin rehab center, and at their outreach program, Family Rap, was Reality Attack Therapy.

Any defensiveness, evasiveness, denial, hostility, withdrawal or other recognizable psychopathology that a facilitator or group member notices is confronted.  If I say, “You just said that it didn’t bother you, but I think it did,” and you immediately pick up on it and spill the stuff you’ve been stuffing, it’s okay.  If you tapdance, stonewall, try to use misdirection or try to turn it around onto me, then the other facilitator or another member of the group confronts you on that, only not as politely as the first time.

If, instead of bigging up and spilling it, you continue to “run” when being confronted (run is one of the words like spin, haircut, sit down, bag, work, etc., that acquired new meaning for me at Family Rap), eventually you may have three or four people yelling your secret truth at you from around the circle.  The only rules are that everyone stays in his chair, and there is  no violence, no physical contact at all until the final group hug.  To work in group, one would end up often with tears and snot dripping from one’s chin.  Gawd it felt good when it was done, though.

None of that was known to me when I went for my intake interview.  The interview was in a room at the back of the Anchorage City Gym, once, I think, the City Hall, and then a school.  The room would have made an adequate office, or very small classroom.  We sat in school chairs, writing-desk chairs, mine up against a wall and the two of them facing me across the small room.  It was Theresa, cofounder of this Anchorage branch of Family House Foundation (there was also one in Seattle, from which she graduated), and wife of the executive director; and Craig, a graduate of the program, now working for the foundation as staff at the rehab center.

Craig and Theresa asked me questions about my life and work.  They asked searching questions about my stillborn baby and the recent abortion, my two jobs, my marriages, kids, crimes and incarceration.  I gave a few wry smiles and allowed that I’d had some hard times but I was all right now.  Then they asked about my work and my voice broke a few times when they asked about some of my most frustrating cases, but I kept my composure.  Then they asked me about my love life and I said something about Stony.  And that was where they broke me down.

I was so in denial about that relationship, so disappointed, disillusioned, broken-hearted and seething with anger over it, that anyone would have seen it.  They were trained professionals.  They needled me in all the right places and I howled, boohooed and blubbered.  They handed me the box of tissues off the floor between their chairs.  Then they started dumping, working, letting off steam about the frustrations of their life and their work.  It was a gracious and obvious quid pro quo.

Each of them told me a little of the story of how he or she came to be running a residential heroin rehab program.  And they told me thanks, please come back Thursday evening at seven, room 108 in the basement.  I snuffled and tried to apologize for breaking down, and they told me that was what I was supposed to do, and they were amazed that it had taken so long.  Theresa looked at her watch:  “Twenty-seven minutes.  I’ve never had anyone go that long.”  We all laughed.  It was something I felt I could get into.

I got into it smoothly, easily, quickly.  My empathy made it easy to detect running or hiding or spinning or copping attitudes, and I was good at confronting them.  When it was my turn to work, I was willing.  I worked out my feelings for Stony and let that go.  I dumped a lot of frustration and fear from work.  Then I got around to the big stuff:  killing my father.  For the first time ever, I spoke through tears and a throat that kept spasming shut and cutting off my voice, of my anger after a spanking, and the wish next morning after his heart attack, as the ambulance pulled away, that he would die.  BIG, sobbing, shuddering *SIGH* of relief, then I looked up and saw expressions of awe and love all around the circle.  Yeah, I could get into this.

Theresa and I started facilitating a women’s group on Saturday afternoons.  When Open Door got another grant and hired three new outreach workers, one of them, Skip, turned out to have been through a program similar to the Family House rehab.  He and I started facilitating a group on Sundays, in the light and sunny upstairs consultation room at the clinic.  Skip was a junkie from New Jersey and a soulmate of mine from ‘way back—Atlantis and Egypt.  He also had the first cat I ever saw that would use the toilet and flush afterward.  Skip’s house became the clinic staff’s party house.  It was on the bluff overlooking the harbor, great views day and night.

Skip was an effective counselor, and an especially good choice for his job:  outreach.  He would go to the corners where the hookers hung out, to the places where homeless street people took shelter, to the alleys behind the 4th Avenue bars, and find clients for the Klinic.  Then a close friend of his was murdered in a sleazy neighborhood motel.  Another close friend was present in the motel room, unconscious, when the body was discovered.  He was eventually prosecuted for the murder.  Both men had been clients at the clinic.  Our clients are not supposed to be our friends and vice versa, the rules say, but that one is often honored in the breach.  Peer counselors are, by definition, part of the community they serve.

The whole staff was questioned.  Because I had spent hours on the phone counseling the victim, and had known the suspect from his hanging around the clinic, drinking coffee and reading magazines, I was questioned intensively, repeatedly.  Confidentiality was never an issue because the victim had never said anything to me about being or feeling as if he was in danger, nor had he talked to me about the suspect.  I had seen him and the suspect talking to each other at the clinic, but never heard any of their conversation or noticed anything out of the ordinary.  Alcohol and various drugs were involved, obviously, but the motive, as far as I know, was never understood.  With alcohol and an assortment of other drugs, probably no motive would have been needed.

Skip started decompensating when the murder came out.  He knew and cared about both men, one dead and the other in jail.  Nobody knew what had happened or why.  Then the cops started grilling us trying to find out what nobody knew.  In group, Skip worked around the edges of his anguish and anger, but danced away from the heart of it.  He’d talk about what was going on, but not about how he felt about it.  He wouldn’t bring up the subject of addiction, heroin, cravings or relapse, although they were hanging right out there and I kept tossing them at him.  He was already back on the needle, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes when I asked him how he was doing with his abstinence and recovery.  Within weeks he was gone from the clinic, and from Anchorage.  Within months, I heard he was dead.

I wouldn’t have gotten through it all intact without my Thursday night therapy group.  It gave me just the right balance of a safe place to vent my feelings and plenty of evidence that I wasn’t alone in my troubles.  My associates in that group included a trauma nurse, a psychiatric nurse, a fire department division chief, the parole officer Vicki, and a public defender.  The only thing we all had in common was the mutual need for the process, for the pushing and pulling we did on each other, to work out the kinks.

That was where I learned my blunt, direct approach, where I shed my shame, my secrets, and a lot of my fears.  The training and conditioning I got from the give and take of Reality Attack Therapy has been a boon to me, and often a shock to the friends, family members, and clients who have experienced the way I adapted the principles I learned there to other aspects of my life.

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A little earthquake update:  as of 8:23 AM Wednesday, along with gazillions of smaller quakes, there had been twenty-three aftershocks exceeding the 4.5 Richter threshhold to make the BIGQUAKE list, since Sunday’s 7.9.   The oil pipeline is shut down indefinitely, and I have not heard any trains go by, so the railroad is surely still down pending track repairs.  Most of the highways that had closed are now open at least one lane, with temporary repairs.  The human toll:  one elderly woman broke her arm falling dowstairs on the way out of her house during the big shake.

Has anyone noticed that my blogs tell about the forties, sixties, seventies…and leave out most of the fifties?  This has been a pebble in my shoe for months.  My angst-ridden adolescence was a time I preferred to forget, as much as possible, as soon as I was through that crisis and secure in my identity.  In my recent marginally functional state, with asthma, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue imunnodysfunction syndrome (AKA fibromyalgia) and systemic Candida albicans, (and ogawd… that shifting collection of on and off, remitting and relapsing symptoms of autoimmune syndrome) I haven’t felt quite up to tackling my teenage years…until now…maybe.

I’m feeling better physically, just a few days into the new regime of five-times-a-day handfuls of vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, and coenzymes.  There was spring in my step today, and there hasn’t been any spring in my step since my respiratory crisis three years ago.  Yesterday, I felt perky enough to do about twice as much work as I’ve done in a single day for years, and to dance around a bit while I was working, with nouveau flamenco in my headphones.  It was probably too much activity too soon.  My steps were something between hobble and stumble before an early bedtime.

Today, after about the same amount of work as yesterday, I went up to the high school to vote, with a stop on the way to see if Charley wanted a ride to the polls.  Doug treated us to lunch in Sunshine Restaurant at the Talkeetna Y, then we came home, picked up the empty buckets and jugs, took a bag of food to the feral cats across the road, then went to the spring and filled the buckets and jugs. 

When I got out of the car at home, the stiffness that after such a trip usually makes getting out of the car both difficult and painful, was gone.  I had only a little burn from lactic acid in my long leg muscles, no more than I’m accustomed to by lunchtime any day, when I’ve done no more than sit at the computer, and get up two or three times for coffee.  Oh, and I did that today, too, in between the early work and the trip to the polls.

It’s 5:23 Tuesday evening.  I’m relaxed, tired and happy.  Other than one little episode of asthma at the spring, when Koji and I were on opposite ends of his leash, trying to go in opposite directions, there have been no asthma attacks, glycemic rushes, inflammatory responses to allergens, no brain fog (oh, and that’s a biggie) nor adrenaline rush/exhaustion reaction.  A practically perfect day, all things considered.  I might even have enough energy left tonight to put a new layer of duct tape on the bottoms of my grungy old once-white yeti-feet booties, just in case I need to run out tomorrow morning without taking time to put on my boots.

I have one more memoir blog in the can, about the spring following my first winter in Anchorage.  It is out of sequence with the Fur Rondy blog just posted.  Between them, as yet unwritten, is the Family Rap group therapy episode.  I’ve written myself into a corner between the adolescent angst and the traumatic healing crisis in which it was all resolved finally.  Something tells me I won’t be able to stay away from Xanga even if I don’t resolve this bind right away.  If all you get from me for a while is photos and fluff, don’t worry, it’s only avoidance.

If you want to join my group therapy blogring, I’ll create one.  All you need to do is give me feedback, something to encourage me to revisit the angst and anger and humiliation and pain of the past, so I can get on with this gut-spilling process.  Oh, and also… tell me which of my current blogrings to drop so I can start the group therapy ring…please?  The only reason I have ever even considered starting another Xanga account was so that I could be in more blogrings.  I wannabe in everyone’s clique.

Apparently, my new nutritional regimen is effective.  I have not felt this well in years.  If you speak astrologese and have read the astro-data blog, you may recall the curse/blessing pattern in my life.  Intensity is the thing that modulates, life goes from quiet to busy for me, never from good to bad.  When one thing falls apart in my life, something else comes together; it has always been that way.  Every cloud in my life has a silver lining; every rose for me has a thorn.

Now, at a time when my body, which has been severely dysfunctional, is working better and hurting less, my mind is in turmoil.  This comes as no surprise to me.  It’s all connected.  I let a lot of the mental/emotional bullshit slide because the physical bullshit was taking all my attention, and now I have to deal with it.  That’s in real life, here and now.  In my memoirs, it’s that other issue, another mental hurdle to clear.  Stay tuned.  I’m at a cusp.  I recognize it.  Life’s getting interesting on all levels.

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Postscript, Wednesday, 6AM:

Surprize!  After writing this last night, I stayed up and before Greyfox’s video double feature of the day was over (it was Death to Smoochie and Murder by Numbers), I had started writing the group therapy episode.  It’s in the can, plus one that comes right after it.

There was only one surprise for me in our local election.  Bev Masek, our State House representative, despite a conspicuous absence from legislative sessions and the campaign trail, was re-elected.  Just a few weeks ago, she made an appointment with an Anchorage TV news crew for an interview to talk about her absences from work, and she failed to show for the interview.  My fellow Alaskans, IMFFHO, carry their party loyalty too far.

Oh… and it surprised me, too, as we left the polls yesterday, to learn that I got a vote for State Senator.  The incumbent was running unopposed, and to avoid voting for him, Greyfox cast a write-in vote for ME!  He said it was down to between me and Turd Ferguson.  I won that one, anyway.