June 4, 2004

• Lots of Shots

  Thursday was a good day for me, very full, interesting, and productive (for
  me, in the limited sense to which I’ve become accustomed).  Early this
  morning, the first thing Doug said to me after he’d been outdoors for a
  moment was that he could smell flowers on the wind.

  (If he smelled roses, it wasn’t the ones in our yard.  These buds are swelling, but none are open yet.)

  (Kinnikinnik is in full bloom, but these flowers aren’t very fragrant.)

  (Maybe Doug smelled the trapper
  tea.  He could also have been smelling tall lungwort, which grows in
  profusion along the bluff south of here-no pic of that this time-and is
  very fragrant.)

  I
  thought about grabbing the camera immediately and taking off into the
  woods in search of wildflowers, but prudently decided to take care of
  other things first.  It was my turn to drive the rehab van to the
  NA meeting this week.  That meant a trip down the valley, but first
  I needed to heat water and fill the shower bag and take a shower. 
  Before I did that, I changed the sheets on my bed so I’d have clean
  sheets to crawl into when I got home.

  That I had the energy and impetus to change sheets indicates that I was having a good day.  On bad
  days, just getting a shower and driving to town takes all my available
  energy.  I made it all the way through the walk, the
  drive to town, picking up my vanload of passengers at the rehab ranch,
  taking them to and from the meeting, meeting Greyfox at La Fiesta for
  dinner, and was in the supermarket doing my grocery shopping around
  9:30 PM when the fatigue finally hit and my legs went all weak and
  shaky.  That is a GOOD day, fershure!  Some days start out
  weak and shaky. 

  Both my regular tuxedo-clad guardian Pidney and her calico sister Muffin went with me on the flower walk.

  This blog may be choppy and disconnected.  I’m writing this part
  Thursday night–really Friday morning a bit after 1AM, as  my
  photos are being saved to the hard drive.  This way I can record
  some of my thoughts from the drive down the valley and the meeting while they are
  fresh.  Then when the pics are all saved, I’ll save what I’ve
  written and go to bed. 

  (As
  I predicted in my last photoblog, the swamp grass in the muskeg across
  the street has grown and now we can barely see the water.)

  (For
  weeks, tree cotton from the poplars has been blowing in the wind. 
  Sometimes from the corner of my eye it appears to be snowing. 
  Like snow, it drifts along the ground and gets hung up on branches of
  trees.)

  In the morning, if I get a chance, I will
  upload pics and finish writing this.  That could be a very big IF.  Doug starts another of his
  survival-style fanfic-writing tournaments tomorrow at 8 AM, but this
  one is different.  It is the first one that he is
  hosting/organizing.   For anyone familiar with D&D, it’s like
  he’s the DM this time.

  
  Doug has been working for months on
  game plans and details.  The Tarot deck he created was part of
  that effort.  The Major Arcana and court cards are to be awards,
  trophies he’ll give out at the end of the tournament.  For as long
  as it lasts, one to two weeks probably, my time at the computer will be
  catch-as-catch-can. 

  (One
  thing the tree cotton does that I’ve never seen with snow, is that it
  collects in spider webs and turns them from near-invisible to quite
  obvious, like that of the ground-spider on the left here.)

  Since Doug will be making an effort to keep his
  sleep schedule in synch with the other players, and we’re now coming
  into Midnight Sun season, I may find it suits my purposes to be up at
  night and sleep days.

  The road–
  
  
  (My first stop was the spring, as usual, to fill some jugs forGreyfox.)

  
  I had decided that since I’ve posted many pics from both ends
  of those trips up and down the valley, I’d try to make some
  intermediate stops (somewhere besides Kashwitna Lake where I often
  stop) for pics. 

  (Wild roses are in full bloom on the sunny side of the parking area at the Kashwitna River bridge.)

  It was mostly cloudy and when the sun came
  through the lighting was splendid.  Each time that good light,
  light traffic and a place to get off the road coincided, I
  stopped.  All these stops were before I got to Willow.

  (This [right] is the view of the Kashwitna River downstream from the highway bridge.)
  
  At the construction zone in Willow, when the flagger stopped us Vic
  Hoskins in his 18-wheeler was right behind me in the middle of a line
  of about 20 cars.  The flagger was a man who has worked that
  construction crew several years.  Early one morning last summer as
  I waited at the head of the line for the pilot car, he walked over to
  the car to schmooze.  Seeing Alcoholics Anonymous,
  the “Big Book”, beside me on the seat, he said, “I didn’t know there
  was that much they could write about drinking.”  I just said,
  “It’s not about drinking, it’s about not drinking.”  He gave me a
  funny look and walked back up to his post in the middle of the road.

  The man is a “functional” alcoholic.  It’s on his breath and in
  his sweat, in his careful walk and slurred talk.  Having known so
  many of the other kind of drunks, who go totally off the rails and
  can’t keep a job when they’re drinking, it sometimes surprises me to
  see one who can drink steadily and go on working.  Greyfox says
  that for many men the job is the last thing to go.  Long after
  they’ve lost family, possessions, health and whatever, they keep
  hanging onto their work.  Today, he wasn’t in a conversational
  mood.  He needed a smoke.  I saw him absently pat his chest,
  then look down and notice that he had on just a t-shirt without
  pockets.  He looked around a little disorientedly and went to a
  nearby pickup for a jacket that presumably had his cigarettes in
  it.  All the time he managed to keep his sign turned with the
  “stop” side facing our way and the “slow” side the other way. 
  Good at his job, he can do it with a minimum of thought or effort.

  The shot on the left is the highway northbound from the parking area at Grey’s Creek)

   When we got moving again the string of cars stayed bunched up much too
  closely for the speeds we were going, all the way to the first of
  several passing lanes.  Then Vic Hoskins and several cars behind
  him made it around me, but not around the double-trailer rig that was
  stuck behind the slow car (only doing the legal 55 MPH) at the head of
  the string.  In several places there was excellent lighting and
  beautiful scenery, but in that traffic I did not feel like pulling over.

  (Grey’s
  Creek is a pretty little stream.  What I didn’t photograph here
  was the litter on the ground between the parking area and the
  creek.  There was a lot of fresh, colorful debris from someone’s
  private fireworks show, probably left over the Memorial Day weekend,
  and probably by some townies [Anchoraguans, most likely] out for a
  holiday.  There was also a pile of human feces and a used plastic
  tampon applicator.  Don’t get the idea from my pictures that my
  corner of Alaska is pristine;  I just prefer pretty
  pictures.  I did pick up some of the waste, and left it better than I found it.)

  Having discovered when warm weather arrived and my jong johns were put
  away that I’m still losing weight and the jeans that fit last summer
  are now too big, I’ve been checking the thrift shops for Glorious
  Vanderbutts.  I found two pairs today, size 12, one black and the
  other OD green.  I also found yet another ergonomic office chair,
  cheap.  This is the third that Doug and I have had since we got
  this computer.  Of course they were on their way to being worn out
  when we got them, and we just finished the job.  This one is more
  comfortable and more solid, apparently in better condition, than either
  of the others.  Maybe it will last.  The tilted seat and
  kneeler of these ergonomic seats are very important for me, making the
  difference between comfort and pain, between being able to spend hours
  at the keyboard and still walk afterwards, or having my legs fall
  asleep (in a regular chair) and quit functioning after a few minutes.

  The meeting was better than average.  Nobody suggested a topic so we went with the daily meditation from Just for Today: 
  the 8th and 9th steps, making direct amends where possible and indirect
  amends otherwise and in addition to whatever we might do to make things
  right with those we’ve hurt.
  –my shots are finished saving, and I think I’ve left enough clues here
  that I’ll be able to pick up the thread tomorrow, so I’m going to bed
  now.

  ——–

  (Friday morning as I slept, Doug
  got a rare shot through the window of the feral cat we call Crooner,
  sunning himself on top of the old blue truck.  We hear him frequently and
  see him occasionally, usually fleetingly from behind as he makes his
  break.  The old truck is a good place for a catnap.  The dents in the
  roof of both cab and camper catch rainwater for them to drink.)
  

  nine-something AM–Doug’s tournament has started and I read his
  intro.  As usual and as expected (by me), my kid has put his own
  spin on things, given it a little shot of difference. 
  It almost made me want to participate, but fiction writing is such
  WORK, compared to just letting my thoughts run out through the
  keyboard–and fanfic, where the characters are prefab and the universe
  they’re interacting in is determined by the DM–and with the
  competitive angle thrown in–it is so much easier just to blog.
  

  • 5:03 pm
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