D’y'think that should have said, “tool”, up there?

Maybe.

I don’t know.  You tell me after you read this.

After Doug broke the handle on his axe, we discussed our options. 
One was to use other tools at hand, either the heavy maul we brought
from Elvenhurst or the one Mark left here, or one of several old axes
with cracked handles wrapped in duct tape.  In a pinch, if I
hadn’t been able to get out to buy a replacement for his tool of
choice, he would have made temporary use of one of them.  His tool
of choice is the axe he learned with at age seven:  a “boy’s” axe
with a short cruiser handle and light 3 1/2 pound head.  Using one
of the others would require learning the job all over again because of
the longer axis of swing and heavier heads.

He is very good with that little axe, putting into his swing the
body-learning of seventeen years of experience and some martial arts
principles learned in Tae Kwon Do and Karate lessons.  I  had
no objection to replacing it, and asked Doug if he had any preference
between buying a new axe and replacing the handle.  He asked me
what were the advantages and disadvantages either way.

I explained that a new handle might last longer than the old one had or
than one on a new axe might, because replacement handles are made of
the best straight-grained hardwoods and axe manufacturers aren’t always
that fussy about the quality of their handles.  He hesitated then
said, “I have to admit I know nothing about putting a new handle on an
axe.”

I said it wasn’t hard, that the handles have a split end and come with
a wedge to drive into that split to make a solid fit inside the
head.  I’ve put new handles in old axe heads, and remember the job
as quite simple and not too strenuous.

We had left the matter undecided pending my trip up to the hardware
store, where I would see what they had availble, compare prices and
make a choice.  No choice was necessary.  They had no
short-handled cruiser axes, and only one replacement handle of that
length.  I returned home with it and my other purchases, happily
planning to have the old head installed on the new handle by the time
Doug awoke yesterday.

When he got up around seven in the evening, I was still trying to get
the remains of the old handle out of the head.  That was a part of
the job I’d never had to do before, having only put handles into old
heads I’d found lying around with their handles rotted away. 
Initially, when I got home and realized what step one had to be, I did
some tapping and whacking with a hammer, hoping at least to loosen the
head.  No go; that head was firmly stuck on that old splintered
handle.

I got a cross-cut bow saw and cut the handle off flush with the bottom
of the head, and tried with the tools at hand to drive the handle from
the head.  Again, no go.  I looked over the job, thought
about what tools would be appropriate, and decided that the most
efficient course would be to clinch it in a vise, drill or auger a hole
through the wood, and chisel or gouge the rest of it away.

I don’t have a vise.  I left that at Elvenhurst along with the
workbench to which it was bolted.  It’s gone now.  If it
wasn’t Charley who took it, it had to be one of the sets of scroungers,
looters and vandals who’ve been hitting the place each summer we’ve
been gone.  Who took it doesn’t matter.  It’s not there.

If I have a wood chisel or gouge, I don’t know where to find it. 
I do have two electric hand drills that Greyfox found in the dumpster
at Felony Flats, but neither of them has a chuck key.  That’s
really no problem, because I don’t have any drill bits for them either.

“The right tool for the job,” was one of my father’s favorite
sayings.  Nobody in his household would drive a screw with a knife
or pound a nail with a shoe.  Well, actually, my mother would, and
that is when we would hear, “…the right tool for the job.”  My
father laid some strong conditioning on me in childhood for appropriate
use of tools.

I actually used that phrase just yesterday in reference to my oracle’s
tools.  In that department, I am well-set-up.  I have what I
need to answer any question that doesn’t offend my sensibilities or
defy universal law.  I even have tools that are reputed to answer
those other types of questions, too, but I decline to try it.

I have a fair selection of mechanic’s tools, also, and the skills to
use them but not the inclination except in emergency.  In
carpentry and woodworking tools, I have a tackhammer, a framing axe, a
clawhammer… and sandpaper… oh, and wood glue, too.  I know how
to use them, as well.  Most of my tools, however, are designed for
the intricacies of jewelry-making.

As I contemplated my lack of proper tools last night and considered my
options, I immediately rejected jumping back in the car, picking up
Charley and/or his tools and going to Ray’s house to use his heated
workshop space and well-equipped benches.  I wasn’t put on this
planet to make any male chauvinist’s day, though I’ll probably do just
that for a Xangan pig or two.  Likewise, I rejected tossing the
old axehead into the fire and burning away the remains of the wooden
handle, lest I detemper the steel.

Knowing I lacked the right tools, I started thinking over what tools I
do have.  A few years ago, having picked up several shed moose
antlers, I decided to try my hand at carving.  I bought a Ryobi
carving set consisting of a rotary tool with abrasive burrs and brushes
for polishing and little abrasive cut-off disks the size of quarters;
and a vibrating carving tool with various chisel-shaped
attachments. 

I had done enough carving with it to develop the necessary skill, and
to decide that I don’t enjoy carving as much as I deplore the mess in
my kitchen or the “dining-room” where I do my jewlery work.  The
case containing the kit was put away pending acquisition of a
workshop.  I dug it out, along with the sturdiest and most
chisel-like screwdriver I have, a sharp and sturdy tactical fighting
knife, and a can of Diet Coke with Splenda, a pale and pitiful
substitute for the drugs with which I once would have fortified and
consoled myself for such a task.

I sat down yestereve on my kitchen stool where the light is best, with
the axehead in my left hand (a barely adequate substitute for a vise)
and proceeded to carve the handle-stump out of the head with a v-shaped
vibrating chisel.  The work went quickly, in geological
terms.  I soon learned how far I could push it before the tool
became stuck in the wood.  Even sooner than that, I started going
numb in both hands from Raynaud’s phenomenon.

After one or two geological ages, I’d bored a hole into each of the two
sides until they met in the middle.  I don’t know how long it
took, really.  The last thing I want to do when engaged in boring
or arduous labor is to notice how long it’s taking to get it
done.  I started my life as a wage-earner when I was eight years
old and developed a stupid and nasty habit of equating time with money,
stopping occasionally to think how one task or another stacked up in
$-per-hour terms.  What finally cured me of that was gardening,
where my produce was costing me hours per dollar in its retail value.

After chiseling my way through the head, I started gouging away the
wood from around the bore-hole with my screwdriver and fighting
knife.  I got up once to find a pair of needle-nose pliers to pull
the shreds and splinters out.  At some point around then, I
cleaned up the tool spill from my cats knocking the Ryobi case off the
water bucket where I’d left it lying open.  The tube of cut-off
disks had popped open and they scattered like coins, except that coins
don’t shatter on impact.  The next time they knocked it down the
noise startled me and I left it lying on the floor, having thoughtfully
packed away all the parts in their compartments and latched the kit
shut.

I was close to finished when Doug got up.  I was in the process of
trying to burn away a few stubborn shards of wood still jammed (and
probably glued, I finally concluded) in there by putting little chunks
of trioxane (Army surplus:  “fuel: ration heating: compressed
trioxane”) in the hole and igniting it.  I had moved to the old
cast-iron griddle on top of the wood stove for my fiery work. 
When Doug came wandering out fresh from sleep, I had just managed to
put out the carpet fire that resulted from the axe-head’s toppling over
and spilling flaming trioxane. 

That was interesting.  Whacking at it with a fireplace tool to
“smother” the flame splattered the liquid fire.  I was chasing
little blue flames around for a while.  Koji showed interest, and
the cats apparently didn’t like the smell of burning carpet.  If
you’re starting to feel any regret, sympathy or pity over the carpet,
don’t bother.  I’m not the first person to burn holes in it, and
as long as it surrounds the woodstove and receives the muddy bootprints
of everyone who enters here, I’m not likely to replace it with an
unsullied rug.  In this dump, that would be like putting a new
paintjob on a wrecked car.  A new roof, yes, I’d go for that if I
could afford it.

Once I had cleaned out the hole in the old axe-head, I found that the
new handle didn’t fit.  My fighting knife was effective in shaving
it down to fit, and I got some good use out of an abrasive belt for a
power sander that Greyfox got from the dumpster… I mean he got the
belt, not the sander.  To me, it’s just odd-shaped
sandpaper.

[edit:  almost left this out, and it's probably the most telling
point on which to judge whether I used the right tool or was the right
fool]
While I was whittling away at the too-thick axe-handle, standing in the
kitchen with blood sugar in the minus numbers due to my having
forgotten to eat, I had a little flash of insight.  As I reported
it to Doug, the only thing that was getting the job done was my
obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I was OCD-powered!   It
worked.  Finally, after a brief break to nuke some Thanksgiving
leftovers and eat standing by the sink, I got the head on the new
handle.  Now, before you start thinking that the job and the story
are done, there’s more.

It was such a tight fit that the slot for the wedge was pinched tight
shut, no way to force the narrow edge of the wedge in there.  I’d
carved away so much wood that I began to feel I’d compromise the
handle’s strength, so I used a method I’d seen used before.  I
drove three wood screws into both ends and the middle of the slot where
the wedge was to have gone.  Doug used the axe last night and his
only problem was that the new handle is slippery, giving him less sure
control on his striking angle.  We’ll work that out, I’m sure.

My feet have hardly been warm for a week or so.  Two events
coincided today to give me warm feet:  the temperature outdoors
shot up from around minus twenty degrees to mere single digits below
zero, and I had to go out so I put on my Canadian Army mukluks (thank
you again, Ren).  
Doug broke the handle on his axe yesterday.  I had planned to go
north to Sunshine and pick up my refills at the clinic anyway, so I had
him brush snow off my car, shovel the driveway, and plug in the engine
block heater before he went to bed about the time I got up today.

The big new hardware store at Sunshine, just off the Y on the Talkeetna Spur Road.

The clinic didn’t have my refills ready, but I went anyway, to get the
new axe handle and stop for milk.  The little local store was out
of milk.  These things happen out here in Alaska… ah, hell,
these things happen even in Anchorage.  I remember in the
mid-1970s a barge went down in a storm on its way north from Seattle,
and all the stores in Anchorage ran out of things like dog food and
toilet paper.

Except for the meds and the milk, which until the axe handle broke had
been my reasons for going, I got what I went for and more.  Thanks
to the mukluks and a combination of coats that Greyfox had found
discarded at Felony Flats last summer, plus my trusty old hat and a
pair of glove liners inside some neat polar fleece things that convert
from mittens to fingerless gloves, I stayed warm on the trip. 
Those coats, I can’t praise highly enough.  Over my sweater I wear
a Duofold reversible polar fleece jacket, dark blue on one side (the
side I show) and teal on the side I hide, with a layer of Gore-Tex
between.  Over that, a hip-length lined shell of silky-feeling
black, a simply elegant windbreaker and butt-warmer.

The
building next door, which used to be the hardware store, and had a
karate dojo upstairs for a while, now is the State Trooper substation.

When I got home, I didn’t bother changing my footwear.  I don’t
usually wear mukluks in the house.  It’s hard enough even barefoot
or in slippers or moccasins, to avoid stepping on cats, tripping over
my own feet or hanging up while trying to step over the gate that keeps
the dog from the cats’ apartment in the back of the house. 
Outdoor footgear is for outdoors, I think.  Bare feet is my
perennial preference, but I’ll make an exception if the weather is cold
enough.

It has been quite cold enough in here during that mini cold snap just
past.  The water stored on the floor in the buckets we use to
carry it from the spring had formed a layer of ice at top, bottom, and
all around the sides.  The cat’s water froze in the hallway, and
that in Koji’s feeding station out here, where they all drink (much to
Koji’s dismay and occasional demonstrations of canine
possessiveness).  The water dishes aren’t set directly on the
floor, either.  They are elevated on four inches of styrofoam
house insulation, because cold floors are a winter reality in here.

I am definitely NOT
complaining.  I will not complain about this dilapidated old
trailer or any of its inconveniences or discomforts.  You get what
you pay for, and this trailer, like our priceless Thanksgiving turkey*,
was FREE.  The turkey was a premium for buying a lot at Fred
Meyer, and the trailer was a gift out of the goodness of the heart of a
man whom I seriously doubt has that emotional tenderness commonly
called “heart”.   Who knows what motivated Mark to hand over
the title to this place to me?  Hand it over he did, and I knew
with a sinking sensation when he did it that I’d be saying goodbye to
my old home at Elvenhurst.

I still own that property that I named Elvenhurst the first summer I
was there putting in gardens, seeing odd things out of the corner of my
eye, hearing little voices on the wind, and finding strange stone rings
and such.  A lot of my library and various sorts of junk are still
there on that property, as well as the squalid dwelling that we called
home before Mark left us here in his old place caring for his
cats.  One reason I’m not complaining about this place is that
it’s a definite step up from the old place.  It is roomier, and it
is on the power grid. 

We have electric fans now to move around the heat from the
woodstove.  Our woodstove at Elvenhurst is bigger and more
efficient than this little thing here (too big, heavy and unwieldy to
move, darnit), but, as you may know, heat rises.  Without a way of
stirring it up, in cold weather a thermocline forms, an observable
interface between the cold air on the floor and the warm air
above.  We used to be able to gauge the degree of cold by the
height above the floor of the thermocline.  At minus thirty
Fahrenheit, it would be chin high, and at forty below (C or F, forty
below is forty below) it would be over my head.

Charley built me a loft just big enough for a futon, about head high
right beside the woodstove in the wannigan at Elvenhurst.  We
called it my nest.  When Doug was small, I hung a hammock over one
side of it for him.  He could burn off some of his hyperactivity
swinging in it, or wrapping it around himself and spinning, rolling it
over, giggling and squealing as I sat beside him reading or writing.

All three of us practically lived on that nest in winter when Doug was
a preschooler.  Venturing down from it for a trip to the kitchen
required suiting up as someone from, say, Kansas, might suit up to go
outdoors in winter.  Over there, we kept our water supply in a
steel drum whose side touched the woodstove, and moved those items we
now keep in the fridge here up or down depending on the temp, to
whatever height would keep them cold without letting them freeze. 
A few times, that meant hanging them from ceiling hooks.  The
freezer was an ice chest in the great outdoors.

So, of course I’m not going to complain about things on the floor
freezing here, when at the last place I lived things on my kitchen
table would freeze.  The time I spend under blankets in Couch
Potato Heaven, facing the PS2 monitor with my back to the woodstove, is
for comfort and fun, not for survival.  The futon that used to be
on my nest is now on the floor in Doug’s room and he says that after he
gets it warm at night it’s okay even in the coldest weather.  It
would be foolishly ungrateful of me to complain of cold feet when I not only have such nifty mukluks to wear, but also have those memories of being cold all over every time I crawled down from the nest to stoke the fire.

Remember:  I’m reporting, not complaining.

*JadedFey
asked about the quick-cooking turkey.  Directions on the package
said cook at 325° for way too many hours and an hour longer than that
if it was stuffed.  The way I’ve done it all my life, the method
from The Joy of Cooking, is to preheat the oven to 450°
to sear the surface, turning the heat down to 350 as soon as you put
the bird in.  Their recommended cooking time was 20 minutes per
pound unstuffed, 25 minutes per pound with stuffing, to a safe internal
temperature of 190°F.

I started out thinking I’d do it according to the package directions,
then I realized how late we’d be eating and remembered that Greyfox
wanted to get home before dark.  The bird had just gone into the
325° oven when I had that thought, so I turned the electric oven up to
“broil”, seared the bird and got it good and hot, then turned heat down
to 350°, set the timer for way too little time for the turkey but just enough to conform with Greyfox’s plans.

My plan was to check the temp when the time ran out, and maybe
slice
some of the more well-done parts off the outside and return the rest to
the oven.  I  had a bowl of excess stuffing that I’d
microwaved, so that was covered and everything else was done.
 That turkey should have taken about nine-and-a-half hours by the
book.  It was less than half that much time when I took it out and
checked its internal temp with the meat thermometer and found it
miraculously done just to a perfect 190°.  Actually, even before I
checked the temp, I felt it was done, because it just smelled right.
 

It still tastes right, too, on the sixth day, fifth day of leftovers,
and there are still some gravy and stuffing to go with the meat.
 In a few more days I’ll be down to sandwich slices, and when
that’s all gone, there’s a bag in the fridge with legs and wings to
boil for soup.  Mmm mmm….

My recent pair of photo blogs elicited a few comments on the depth
of the snow.  These comments have elicited from me a little shot
of reality:  folks, this is still November.  The snow has
just begun to accumulate.  Average on-the-ground depth (compacted,
not as measured while it falls all fluffy) around here in a normal
winter is something between two and three feet.  I got snow in my
boots crossing the ditch this weekend.  Before long, I’d need
snowshoes to cross that same ditch because the snow there will be more
than waist-deep on me.

What really brought me here today was the sociopolitical scene. 
Last week, Steven Pearlstein wrote in a syndicated column his
recommendation that the U.S. sell Alaska back to Russia because we
receive more money from the Feds than we return to the U.S. treasury
through taxes and other revenues.

I heard Pearlstein being interviewed about this on NPR.  He was
asked if he knew that Alaska comes in second to New Mexico on that
list, and if he was proposing to sell New Mexico back to the
Mexicans.  He said no, because his father lives in New
Mexico.  The general tone of his responses in that interview
suggested that he was less than totally serious in his proposal. 
He did seem to realize the gravity of the matter toward the end, when
he said he probably wouldn’t be visiting Alaska any time soon, at least
not using his own name.

Greyfox and I talked about this in our nightly phone call.  Our
conclusion was that the U.S. might face an armed revolt if they even
considered that.  Many of my compatriots here have long agitated
for secession from the Union, and I don’t suppose they’d be very happy
about being sold out to a country that, when it was at the peak of its
power, was their primary enemy.  Alaskans as an aggregate tend to
be more chauvinistic, activistic, and well-armed than their fellow
Americans.

I don’t often regret my choice not to hang out in the bars at the local
lodges, but this is a topic on which I’d surely enjoy hearing the
opinions of the lodgerats.  This is what Alaska Ear had to say about it:

That crack, “restore some sanity to the annual
appropriations process,” refers, of course, to our Congressional
delegation, particularly Senator Ted “Porkbarrel” Stevens (R,
AK).  Politically interested Americans know enough about him
already, probably more than they want to know.  But few outside our state have even heard of Ted’s son Ben.

A recent opinion piece
in the Anchorage Daily News gave Ben’s latest scandal a humorous
spin.  I’m conflicted over the idea of laughing off idiocy,
arrogance and graft, but on the other hand, I suppose laughing is
better than grinding my teeth or loading my gun and going
stalking.  The author poses as a prophet here:

For those of you about to head south to open
up your townhouse in Palm Springs, here are my insights to save you the
trouble of worrying about what you might miss while gone:

The state’s new
jet has been a luxurious
change for the governor and convicts [our governor's closest associates
include some convicted of ethics violations] who no longer have to
suffer
turboprop lag. The jet has the flush toilet, which prompted its
purchase and its prize-winning name: Incontinental Airline.

Although the governor has been making enemies
over the jet as fast as rabbits make rabbits, he still considers his
new ride as money well thrown away.

Not to be outdone by Alaska Airlines, which
painted one of its planes to resemble a king salmon to publicize the
allure of throwing away public money, I predict the governor will have
his jet painted with the image of a sheep. This will signify his
pulling the wool over the Legislature and fleecing the citizens of
Alaska.

Sen. Ralph Seekins, R-Fairbanks, actually
suggested this past session that it should be a crime to file an ethics
complaint against a legislator and then tell someone. But since Seekins
is a politician who wants to be governor, you have to take everything
he says with at least 10 pounds of salt. This guy is so conservative,
his cell phone has a rotary dial.

Because Seekins believes the problem is not
unethical legislators but publicity about unethical legislators, I
predict he will file a bill to outlaw all reporting during legislative
sessions, including committee meetings, caucuses, hallway huddles and
lobbyist-sponsored getaways.

In an unusual show of bipartisanship, House
Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, will delegate more responsibility to the
minority party this coming legislative session. The Democrats will now
be responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Sen. Ben Stevens, R-Anchorage, will finally
disclose what he does to earn thousands upon thousands of consulting
dollars every year from Veco. In response, 400,000 Alaskans will file
an ethics complaint, but Seekins will make sure no one knows.

If local politics in the boonies don’t bore you, there’s more.

ktuu.com
has an article (profusely illustrated) that eloquently illustrates many
Alaskans’ ambivalence between repugnance at Ted Stevens’s arrogance and
fear of what will happen in our state when he’s no longer in the U.S.
Senate.

Some of my readers, those who read both
sites, know that I have been working.  I have more work to do
there, too, an unusual backlog for which I am grateful and glad. 
I’ll let that distraction serve as my excuse for serving up this prefab
blog today.

[edit:  Thanks to Zimbo's heads-up, I posted this and its prequel,  on weekly_Photo_Challenge for this week's challenge, The Elements.]

After posting the one little shot of today’s sunshine,
I put on boots, hat, coat and gloves (glove liners, can’t handle the
camera in real gloves), and went out again.  My objective
originally was to get a comparison shot looking southward from the
driveway.  I couldn’t get anything facing directly into the sun,
so I backed off behind the woodpile and got a shot with trees blocking
most of the glare.

The southward comparison shot was, really truly, all I wanted to go out
there for, but it was sunny all around, and I noticed a young spruce
tree bending under the snow load just inside the strip of trees between
here and the muskeg.  I got snow down my boots going over the berm
and through the ditch to get this shot.

Having gone that far, and thinking that snow in my boots was as bad as
it was going to get, I saw the sun shining on the trees across the
muskeg and decided to follow the path through the trees the rest of the
way and get a pic of the sunny other side.  In ducking under the
bent spruce, I slipped and fell on my butt, getting snow up under the
back of my jacket.
But I got the shot!

Koji had gotten all excited when he saw me going out, and wanted to go
out with me.  I might have stayed out there longer, making a fool
or an icicle of myself, or both, except that I heard him whining to get
back into the warm house.

My hands are okay, now.  I had to warm them before I could save
the pictures and do this keyboarding.  But my feet are too close
to the drafty floor and whenever I try putting one of them up on the
kneeler of this ergonomic office chair, the thing gets perilously close
to going over backward.  I just have a few more minutes of
cold-floor endurance, because the griddle is hot and all the
ingredients are out and ready to be made into pancakes.  A fresh
pot of coffee will brew while the pancakes are cooking, and then I can
get my feet up under the blankets in Couch Potato Heaven.

[edit:  Thanks to Zimbo's heads-up, I posted this and its companion piece, Encore with Pratfalls on weekly_Photo_Challenge for this week's challenge, The Elements.]

A few days ago, on the twenty-third, I took some photos of the new
heavy snowfall – heavy as in weighty, not particularly deep.  It
was a gray, overcast day and all the pics are monochromatic. 
Today, it is clear and sunny and there is even deeper snow than when I
took these shots.

So, why, you may ask, did I not go out and take newer, brighter, sunnier pictures instead of posting these. 

One:  I dont want to let Merfuffle retrogobble get the best of
me.  When we had the power outage that day, I lost what I had
written and apparently lost a bit of my memory, too.  When I got
the computer back up, I’d forgotten about these pics.

Two:  When I was out there shooting these, it was relatively
warm.  This morning the sun rose gloriously (in the south, which
still after all these years is interesting to me, since where I grew up
the sun always rose in the east) on a scene where the temp was about 20
below zero F (that’s almost minus 30 C). 

Some people think I’m crazy just to live here.  I’d really be nuts
if I let the prospect of some pretty pictures lure me out on days like
this.  Wait a minute… I have gone out and taken pictures on days like this.  Oh, well….

our woodpile

a young tree in the front yard, bowed under the weight of snow

a limb of an older tree feeling the weight

spruce trees in our yard south of the woodpile

roadside willow bushes across the way

the uninteresting sky southward from the end of my driveway

Okay, just now I zipped out and snapped one shot from my porch, proof
that I’m still crazy after all these years.  That’s not as low as
the mid-day sun will be next month, but it’s low enough for me.

I am thankful:

…for a twenty-three pound free turkey, even though I wasn’t sure it
would get cooked through on time so that Greyfox would get to eat
some.  When he got here and learned that dinner might be delayed,
he was prepared to make do with “all the trimmin’s” and pass on the
turkey to ensure his having a safer drive home in the snow.

…for The Joy of Cooking where I found a faster method than the one on
the turkey label, and a meat thermometer that assured me the bird was
safe to eat a couple hours sooner than the suggested cooking time.

…that Greyfox not only came for dinner, but brought cat food and
groceries, and a DVD full of raucous laughter for Doug and me.

…that even though the roof that Doug and I repaired this summer
started leaking during the night last night as the recent snowfall
melted up there, it is only leaking in a couple of places.

…that as soon as Doug finished his Thanksgiving dinner, he headed for
the roof to, “get some of that snow shoveled off before the tryptophan
kicks in.”

I haven’t had my after-dinner coffee and pie yet.  I’ll have
pumpkin pie this time, after dinner settles and there’s a fresh pot of
coffee made.  Doug and I both had peach pie for breakfast, and
Greyfox took a slice of peach with him in his
portable-feast-in-a-bag.  This leaves almost a whole pumpkin pie,
minus only the thin slice I cut last night just to make sure it was
edible.

I was up until 2 AM, and figured that either a cooling woodstove or
full bladder would wake me in a few hours so I could get the bird into
the oven.  I figured wrong.

The phone woke me around 9:30, Greyfox calling to tell me…
something.  He had hung up before I was really awake enough to
know what he was saying or what I said.

The fire had gone out, so my first priority was to get it going
again.  After that, I pulled the neck and giblets out of the
turkey, put them to boil while I diced the cornbread for the stuffing,
then I made stuffing, stuffed the turkey and got it into a preheated
oven by 10:30.  It’s a big bird.  It could take 7 hours to
cook.  Greyfox had planned to have lunch here and start back home
around 3 PM so he’d be traveling in daylight.

Now I have to go get dressed.  I’ll probably be back here later with an update.

My mother was the person who trained me and “broke me in” as a retail
clerk and soda jerk.  She shared with me all the wisdom she had
learned from years of working as a waitress.  In addition to such
things as, “the customer is always right,” and, “look busy even if you
aren’t,” she said there were two subjects one should avoid discussing
in public:  politics and religion.

What set me thinking about that just now is that I’ve had both topics
on my mind lately, and have been listening to political protest songs
on the radio.  There’s a whole new generation of very good protest
music now, for very good reason.  The current political
establishment must be protested.  It will take more than an old
parental injunction to muzzle me.

I keep hearing from and about people who think the proper response to
the way this country has gone to the dogs is to let the dogs have it
and move out.  How dare they?!?  How can any person of
conscience turn tail and run from such venality, aggression and lies,
playing into the hands of the lying, thieving oppressors?  Can’t
you just hear prez shrub, his minions and his mentors snickering as
they watch the dissidents leave?  Do the cowards think that any
place in the world will be safe if this country’s government is allowed
to remain in such grasping, bloody hands?

Recent polls show that the majority of Americans disapprove of the
current administration, and yet the majority of Americans sit quietly
as demonstrators outside Crawford, Texas are arrested under new
unconstitutional laws devised to ensure that the megalomaniacal greedy
maniac doesn’t have to see or hear their protests.  Which is
worse:  a small coterie of powerful madmen using their power for
their selfish and misguided ends, or millions of saner, wiser, kinder
folk who know better, letting them have their way?

When I was a child, a couple of dozen major Nazi war criminals and many
more minor ones were tried for their crimes at Nuremberg.  Many of
them resorted to what became known as the Nuremberg defense:  “I
was only following orders,” or, alternatively, “I didn’t know what was
going on.”  The war crimes tribunals didn’t consider that an
adequate defense, and many of those people who took Hitler’s orders
were executed for their obedience to evil.  It’s just a thought….

And, on the subject of religion, here’s my seasonal wish:

At the first Thanksgiving, the Puritans thanked God for saving them
from the Indians.  This Thanksgiving, let’s pray to God to save us
from the Puritans.

Am I ready for Thanksgiving?  I don’t know.  I’m not ready
for bed, although that’s really where I belong now, considering my
condition of mental and physical fatigue.  My plan for the rest of
this day… and surely for a bit of tomorrow, too, since it’s nearly
midnight here now, is to finish this blog as the little heater warms
the bathroom, then fill my plastic camp shower bag with warm water from
Kermit, the big green pot on the woodstove.  Then I’ll take a
shower and get into clean jammies and slip between clean sheets for a
while and hope I wake capable of cooking the holiday feast.

I had a plan this morning, to get as much of the pre-prep done as possible.  That plan went out the window when my daughter called.  I talked for hours to her and my granddaughter, catching up on what’s gone on while they were incommunicado.

Since we hung up on that conversation, I have baked two big pans of
gluten-free cornbread for the turkey stuffing, made gluten-free bean
and corn pastry for the two pies I then baked:  one peach, one
pumpkin.  I diced the celery and onions for the stuffing and put
them in water in the fridge.  Tomorrow, I’ll drain off the water
and use it to boil the neck and giblets, and use the resulting broth to
moisten the stuffing.  Then, while the stuffed bird roasts, I’ll
chop the giblets for the gravy and prepare the rest of the meal. 
That is, I will do those things if the turkey has thawed by then. 
That is one big cold turkey!

I think I will do all that tomorrow.  I hope I can do all that
tomorrow.  I hope I can keep going until the meal is served. 
If I have to crash into that wall of fatigue, I just hope I get that
bird out of the oven first.

---

On a whole ‘nother topic, wanna see my aura?

#1 – RED 4	#5 – Logical Tan 4	THE TANS	#12 – LAVENDER 4
#2 – ORANGE 4	#6 – Environmental Tan 4	#9 – GREEN 6	#13 – CRYSTAL 7
#3 – MAGENTA 4	#7 – Sensitive Tan 5	#10 – BLUE 7	#14 – INDIGO 12
#4 – YELLOW 5	#8 – Abstract Tan 4	#11 – VIOLET 12	#15 – RED OVERLAY 1

I feel like shouting this, and for so many reasons…

I have just done the most inspired and satisfying reading of the past
year or so.  There’s a story behind it.  It is unlike the
common run of readings I do on KaiOaty,
which are done for strangers, bloggers here on Xanga about whom I know
nothing or only little bits I’ve picked up from their blogs.

This reading was for someone I have known a long time, someone very
important to me.  She first sought (and substantially ignored) my
professional advice about fifteen years ago.  After a professional
exchange of letters became more personal, I met her (on a leg of the
Big Field Trip about which I haven’t yet written) and we became friends.

You might “know” her too.  I daresay that more Xangans know my Anam Cara Sarah – Sydney – JadedFey
- RawFlame – oOMisfitOo, than know me.  She has been around here
longer than I have, is a genuine Xanga Relic, and she’s not abrasive as
I am, so she keeps her readers longer than I do.  She’s the one
who persuaded me to blog, and to blog here.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from her, full of distress and
the sort of questions that I usually answer with readings.  Unsure
whether the questions were rhetorical or not, I wrote back and asked if
she wanted me to do a reading on them.  In fact, I asked if she
would let me do a reading on them.

I didn’t hear back from her for ten days or more, until I went to clear
out my spam filter at the ISP this morning and found the email that had
been sitting there all that time.  She wanted the reading, but
hadn’t thought of asking for one until after she sent the first letter,
and didn’t ask then because she couldn’t afford to pay me
anything.  *sigh*

So, with Sarah’s permission, and in my best altered state of
consciousness, I addressed Sarah’s issues to the Universe and laid out
nine cards of the Enochian Major Arcana.  I don’t know whether the
reading will help her.  That will be up to Sarah.  All I know
is that I connected this time at a depth I rarely achieve.

To put the icing on the cake and a cherry right in the middle on top,
after I’d clicked “submit” and waited for it to load and reread it all,
I noticed that it had posted at 4:44.  The significance of that
will be lost on most Xangans, but not on Gglimmer and me and probably a few others.

I haven’t a clue whether anyone would have an interest in or gain any
insight or even entertainment value from it, but if you want to read
it, it is here.

In our household, the word, “vigilance”, probably gets more usage than
in most other households.  In the lexicon of mainstream America it
is almost obsolete.

The word holds some special meaning for us.    Two and a half years ago, I started going to AA with Greyfox
even though alcohol hadn’t been a problem for me in decades by
then.  Then I persuaded him to go with me to NA because the
attitude was prevalent among those AAs that any sort of drug use or
addictive behavior was okay as long as one didn’t pick up a
drink.  I knew that alcohol is a drug and that Greyfox’s
addictions encompassed more that just alcohol.   I also felt
more at home among the dope fiends that with the drunks.

Greyfox said that in that first NA meeting, as someone read the Twelve
Traditions, these words leapt out at him, “We keep what we have only
with vigilance….”  That concept, more than anything kept him
going back, even after he became disgusted and disillusioned with the
AA group and stopped attending.  The importance to him of
vigilance can be gauged by how often the word comes up in
conversation.  It is almost daily.

Vigilance has kept my darlin’ clean and sober all this time, and he has
been applying it to other aspects of life such as general health and
well-being and relations with his neighbors and his cats.  He
reminds me of the importance of vigilance every time he catches me in a
lapse.  I can’t complain about that.  He is totally correct
in his emphasis of the importance of vigilance.  Vigilance
combines the two personal powers that E. J. Gold says are the only
things we can truly call our own:  presence and attention. 
Vigilance is mindfulness in the moment, attentive awareness to the
all-important NOW.

I have come to equate vigilance with responsible mature behavior. 
If I had maintained my vigilance better, I wouldn’t have gotten the
yogurt on my glasses this morning and burned the pancake as I cleaned
the lens.  If I was more vigilant regarding my asthma meds and
nutritional supplements it would diminish some of my physical and
mental dysfunction.  Staying mindful of where and how we step,
what and how we lift, and how we handle hot and sharp objects, could
prevent many of the small but bothersome injuries that Greyfox and I
both sustain occasionally.

The latest occasion on which Greyfox had cause to forcefully remind me
to practice vigilance was an excellent example.  I wasn’t just
mindlessly inattentive, I was deliberatley tuning out ambient
sound.  The kittens had been romping and rioting and I was trying
to write.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that before I sat down
to write I had checked the woodstove and found that the fire had been
neglected so long that it was almost out.  After I put in kindling
and a couple of split chunks of wood, I left the damper open and the
door just cracked a bit to let in more air.

The fire caught and the stove whooshed, rumbled and crackled and all
that sound was lost to my ears along with the kittenish thumps,
rustlings and cries.  When it finally impinged on my consciousness
and I jumped up and went in there, we had a raging creosote fire in the
stovepipe and it was melting little holes in the steel pipe as I
watched.  Now, my stovepipe is patched with furnace cement and
bandaged with aluminum foil, because it’s too cold and snowy to let the
fire go out and replace the whole thing.

I haven’t attained the felicitious state of easy vigilance I
seek.  For me there is always an element of stress and tension in
vigilance.  I think wishfully of being free to relax
vigilance.  That’s immature and irresponsible of me, I know. 
So is the fact that I don’t maintain vigilance flawlessly, that I often
do relax it to the point of danger or harm.  There is so much to
watch:  my own actions and words, thoughts, beliefs, the things
going on in the world around me that have impact on me and mine. 
How I am going to keep adequate track of all those things, I don’t
know.  If I am to do that, I may need to “pull in my sensors” in a
sense:  keep my attention here and now, while keeping those
sensors on alert.  It’s tricky, and it’s tiring.  Maybe with
practice it will become a habit and a lighter burden.