I have been better, too.  I guess what I mean is I’m not doing too
badly, but I’m not going to lie and say everything is okay.

I’ve found one thing to appreciate about the fire.  Something in
the fumes cleared up my sinuses and I’ve had more olfactory acuity,
less anosmia, for the last few days than I’ve had in years.  It’s
a mixed blessing, but so are most of the blessings in this life. 
Every time I go outside for a while, as soon as I step back in the
door, I start sneezing.

My body is finally recovering from the post-exertional malaise. 
It tickles me to have that jargony short phrase, “post-exertional
malaise,” for the old familar phenomenon of days of brainfog, fumbling,
stumbling, interrupted sleep, muscle spasms, and general discomfort
following any physical activity.  I learned it recently, through
an email group associated with A Hummingbird’s Guide to M.E.

I reached some sort of personal milestone when I admitted to myself
that I might not ever get all the post-fire cleanup done.  I had
been looking at the scorched and peeling wallcovering behind the
bathroom counter, thinking about what it would take to fix that. 
Realizing I wasn’t up to that, I went back and sat down for a
while. 

Later on, I started noticing all the soot and residue from smoke, on
dishes in the cupboards, on boxes and jars in the pantry, on curtains
and my hanging Navajo rug.  I cleaned it off the computer monitor
and the PS2 monitor, and off the leaves of some of my
houseplants.  The next project, when I’ve recovered from that
activity, is to clean the rest of the plants.

I’ll take it a bit at a time, try to prioritize — living things,
residue in dangerous places, and places where the grime impairs
function first, and then the cosmetic stuff.  I picked up the
heat-shattered glass from the bathroom counter and floor, but I haven’t
yet gone into the back room to assess damage there.  Against the
other side of that wall the fire was climbing when Doug extinguished
it, is a shelf holding my art collection, a number of unframed works
that I have been given by the artists, traded for readings, etc. 
Frankly, if there’s damage, I don’t want to know, and if there isn’t,
why expend the energy to find out?

Expending energy — right…  I was tired before I started this.  It’s time again to go rest.

…almost forgot:  Someone asked what “hot as hell” means to
Alaskans.  Well, the low fifties Fahrenheit is t-shirt weather,
and when it’s in the seventies we start complaining about the
heat.  It has been in the eighties for about five days now. 
Of course, nobody here has AC.  We have a big box fan, and it has
been aimed out the bathroom window, blowing fumes away, ever since the
fire.  Cold sugarless lemonade from the fridge is my favorite
cooler-offer.  I’m going to get a tall glassful on my way back to
the couch.

Greyfox said a couple of days ago that I should write something here
because otherwise people would be worried about me.  One person
did notice my absence, but then she
and I have an amazingly close connection considering we’ve never met
and seldom communicate.  My thinking was that if I did write about
what was going on with me, it might tend to worry one friend or another.

I’ve had a difficult week or two.  Mostly, it’s just the M.E./CFIDS. 
Knowing that I had an unusually active day coming up this week, and
already being sub-par physically, I was conserving energy and staying
away from the keyboard and other strenuous activities.  Tuesday, I
went to the clinic for my semi-annual appearance to get the
prescriptions for the meds that keep me breathing.  Then, I went
the other direction, down the valley to Wasilla for the N.A. meeting
celebrating Greyfox’s third “birthday” clean and sober. 

It’s my clean date too, but my accomplishment was trivial compared to
his.  I just stopped growing and smoking weed (and breathed a sigh
of relief at the time), since I’d already quit my lifelong drug of
choice, sugar, half a year or so before.  Greyfox came off a long
life-threatening binge and quit alcohol, tobacco and weed all the same
day, in addition to cutting most of the refined sugar out of his
diet.  My hero.

One of my heroes, that is.  Doug’s another.  I have a fresh
image of him in my mind that will probably stay with me for the rest of
this life and might come back to me in future lives.  This
morning, he was standing at the far end of the hallway, in the orange
glow from the electrically-ignited fire in the bathroom, using the fire
extinguisher to put it out.

We both inhaled some toxic smoke, he more than I.  The house still
reeks of the residue.  I pried loose from the countertop, and Doug
hauled out to the trash can, a melted-down mass that had once been a
three-tier plastic storage-bin/organizer thing full of cosmetics,
toiletries, first aid supplies, combs, brushes, etc.  Among the
items in the immediate vicinity that were damaged or destroyed was a
catch-all basket that contained, among other things, eight or ten 12
gauge shotgun shells that Greyfox had found in the dumpster and I
hadn’t gotten around to putting into the ammo box.

The aroma in my house is a pungent blend of petrocarbons, gunpowder,
and perfume.  I think the loud pop we heard was the air freshener
can exploding.  The only other obviously exploded object back
there (the shells were just melted down around the pellets, cementing
them together) was a big tube of cinnamon toothbrushing gel.

If I were in better condition, I’d subject you to a detailed blow by
blow.  I’m exhausted and hadn’t really recovered from Tuesday’s
town trip before this crisis hit today.  Tomorrow, we have to go
to the spring for water.  It’s hot as hell here today, record high
temperatures for this area.  The muskeg across the road where I
sat on the edge last year and watched the tadpoles grow into frogs is
so dry this year that I walked out across it today while waiting for
the fan to clear the smoke out of the house. 

Last year’s swamp grass is yellow-brown and this year’s growth is
sparse and just a couple of inches high.  I heard a few frogs
chirping one evening earlier this month.  Last year their mating
calls were numerous and continuous for weeks.   …I gotta go
rest now.  Later.

Defensiveness is a telling behavior, a give-away, an indication that
one feels threatened, or guilty, embattled, personally attacked or
endangered.  If it is a consistent pattern in a person’s behavior,
it indicates low self-esteem.  Often, I respond to the
defensiveness of others without giving a thought to the fact that few
people understand that little bit of psychological insight.  I may
simply say something to the effect that I have noticed that someone is
being defensive.  If it’s one of my friends, a family member, a
client or a sponsee from a 12 step program, I might say, “You don’t
need to be defensive about that.”

There is never any personal animosity on my part when I point out
defensiveness, but it often arouses animosity in others. 
Sometimes they even become defensive about being defensive. 
That’s something I can live with.  Getting defensive about being
defensive is a sure sign that a person really needs to take a look at
his or her own mind.   I know that it does no harm to nudge a
person awake, to point out to them their own unconscious behavior and
make them, even if only for a moment, conscious of what they are
doing.  This, I have long ago accepted, is part of my dharma.

But I digress.  That little psychological rap came about because
I’d stopped to read my guestbook (impelled there when I noticed, on the
Xanga “footprints” tracker beta test, that a couple of visitors had
been to my guestbook today) before starting today’s entry on Alaska
Congressman Don Young’s defensive behavior.  I am not impelled to
send a letter to my congressman about his defensiveness.  It
probably wouldn’t make it past the protective screen of his
staff.  I’m sure they have been around him enough to have noticed
his defensiveness already. 

Don Young is Alaska’s only member in the House of
Representatives.  I’d like to say that he doesn’t represent us,
but that would probably sound defensive.   Honestly, I don’t
know how he keeps getting re-elected.  Nobody I know will admit to
having voted for him.  Years ago, some advertising person in his
employ came up with the campaign slogan, “Don Young, the congressman
for all Alaskans.” 

About that time, he had been involved in a number of incidents that
made many Alaskans want to disavow him, including his expressing a
callous disregard for the plight of our moose during a severe winter
when 95% of the adult population and virtually all the calves and
yearlings in this huge valley died.  A columnist at the Anchorage
Daily News amended the slogan to, “Don Young, the congressman for all
Alaskans except for you and me and the moose.”

For the last few days, we have been subjected to repeated replays in
the local media of a defensive-sounding rant he made on the floor of
the House in a debate on government controls on greenhouse gases. 
He sounds childish, declaring over and over that global warming isn’t
his fault. The ADN ran it, too:

One of his congressional colleagues was inspired to call him a member
of the Flat Earth Society.  I’m just wondering what his personal
stake is in this and why he is so vehemently denying
responsibility.  It’s a tell.  I’m sure of it.  He’s
guilty and he knows it, or he wouldn’t be so stridently denying it.

P.S.
Our orange tabby Nemo’s first kitten died.  She continued to have
contractions and her belly has diminished in girth over the past few
days, but other than one bit of afterbirth I found on the floor, we’ve
found no sign of subsequent kittens.  I can feel at least one more
kitten in her belly, but she’s not obviously contracting today as she
had been yesterday.

The first one lived long enough to nurse and for her to bond with
it.  Yesterday and the day before, she kept trying to hijack
Hilary’s half-grown kittens.  She’d try to drag them into her nest
by the scruff of their necks.  I  have subsequently seen two
of them suckling on Nemo, who has abandoned the nest and spends most of
her time on the sofa, either in my lap or beside my legs.  This is
entirely new behavior for her.  She has always been stand-offish,
never a lap cat before.  My theory is that the same oxytocin load
that bonded her to the kittens has bonded her to me, since I was
present through it all.

I thought I was beginning yesterday to get over the latest fatigue
overload.  I took it easy most of the day.  The only eventful
part was orange tabby Nemo having her first kitten.  She was
restless and uneasy, and kept trying to get into the cabinet under the
sink.  I suppose from her perspective it would have made a safe
den for her litter, but neither Doug nor I liked that idea. 

She finally dropped the kitten on a towel we laid down in the corner
between that cabinet and the kitchen stove, then let us move her and
the baby into a box in a dark sheltered area under some shelves in the
living room.  So far, there’s just the one kitten, orange like its
mother.  We were pretty sure she would be a good mother from the
way she baby-sat with Hilary’s litters.  She leaves the box to
eat, drink and use the litter box, and when the kitten cries she
hurries back.

I crawled into bed with a book to read about ten last night. 
That’s when the strenuous activity began.  It was the nightly
ritual of mosquito whapping.  As darkness descends, they buzz
around the reading lamp in that corner, and dive-bomb me. 
Occasionally one will get into position to be clapped inside the
book.  Each time I notice a half dozen or more of them clinging to
the ceiling, I stand up on the bed and whap them with my book. 
Paperbacks work best for that, and I try to avoid reading hard bound
books this time of year.

After about the third or fourth leap up to whap, I got out of bed and
went into the kitchen for a “sticky strip,” the transparent window bug
catchers that have become the high-tech replacements for old-fashioned
flypaper.  I stuck it on the inner surface of my lampshade. 
I reached up in there several times to shoo the skeeters that had lit
on other portions of the shade toward the tanglefoot.  One of
those times, a faux pas unplugged the circline energy-saver fluorescent
tube in the lamp, and I had to go find a flashlight to get the plug
reinserted.  Need I say that I was more fatigued when I woke this
morning than when I first crawled into bed to read last night?

Before I finally turned out the light to go to sleep, the tanglefoot
had trapped half a dozen mosquitoes, and I had whapped, clapped and
slapped maybe fifty or so.  Nature is relatively kind this time of
year.  This first hatch of the season is always the ones we call
“bombers,” big and slow.  It allows an easy transition from the
winter mode when a tickle on exposed skin warrants no more than to
brush back a stray lock of hair or scratch the itch, into summer mode
when every tickle is a potential bloodsucker and must be greeted with a
slap.  When the nasty little hardbodies with the potent sting
hatch, it’s not just a slap, but a slap-press-roll motion.  If you
just slap them, they shake themselves off, blow you a raspberry, and
fly away fast.

As nature is kind to us, so are we kind to her.  I have used no insecticides since I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring about forty years ago.  In a comment to yesterday’s entry, bodiddly
pointed out that having mosquitoes means our environment hasn’t been
poisoned.  That’s one of the reasons I love living here A couple
of years ago, when a neighbor sprayed his yard, the overspray on the
breeze made me ill.  Multiple chemical sensitivities is part of
this immune syndrome I have.  I have more reason to be thankful
for my sensitivities than to regret them..  Whenever the state or
the railroad proposes spraying herbicides or
insecticides, many of us protest.  Sometimes our protests have
succeeded.

I’m not foolish enough to promise that I won’t complain about the
mosquitoes again this year, but you may consider this a big, overall
complaint about the bloodsuckers.  I just killed my first skeeter
of the season, and I’m gloating over the fact that I got one of them
before any of them bit me.  It’s usually the other way
round.  In Alaska, we have a number of jokes about our climate and
environment.  Many of them start out, “In Alaska, we have two
seasons:”

Last week, a man passing through on the highway in a rental car was
killed when he hit a moose on the stretch of highway near the spring
where we get our water.  He must have been going pretty
fast.  It tore the roof off the car.  Presumably, the moose
was killed, too, but that wasn’t mentioned in the news stories.

After a series of sunny days, we finally let the fire go out in the
woodstove yesterday.  Today is cloudy and cool, so it’s not
particularly comfortable in here, but not bad enough to warrant
starting a new fire.  It’s not life-threatening to the tropical
houseplants, and I could put on extra layers for warmth. 

One inconvenient factor in letting the fire go out is that my big cast
iron mug warmer is now the coldest object in the room.  I now pour
just a half a cup at a time from the insulated carafe, so I’m not
forced to choose between drinking cold coffee and getting up to nuke
what’s left in the cup.  Another downside to summer is the lack of
readily available hot water.  Without running water or an
automatic water heater, we use big cookpots on top of the woodstove to
keep a warm supply on hand.  Now, when I want hot water, I have to
heat it.

Okay, that’s it.  That’s my annual lament at the turn of this
season.  I feel relatively blameless for bitching about mosquitoes
and a big, cold and usless hunk of cast iron taking up space in my
living room, as I’m exulting in the greening of the outdoors, the
chirping of the arctic wood frogs in the muskeg, and the lengthening
daylight hours.  I tend not to bitch about the onset of winter,
because it means no more mosquitoes.  Besides, wouldn’t it be
stupid for someone who chooses to live here to bitch about the cold?

I could use a little advice on Xanga netiquette if anyone has
any.  Somebody with an identity I don’t recall having seen before
has asked me to be his or her friend.  It could be someone I know
quite well, with a new identity.  It could be a spammer trying to
get as much site traffic and as many friends as possible.  I’m
inclined to ignore it, and not even check out the inviter’s site. 
Am I being rude to so cavalierly reject a friendly overture?

For  spinksy:  today’s sunrise was at 5:15; sunset at 10:37.

For  bodiddly:  I’m with you on hoping I get healthier.  I have good days and bad days.  The chronic illness I have, ME/CFIDS,
is extremely debilitating but only rarely fatal.  Yesterday, I got
about a quarter of my houseplants watered.  Today I’ll try for
more.

Greyfox alerted me to a story in the Anchorage paper about two
filmmakers from the UK, doing a documentary on the city’s wildlife:

I wouldn’t have known that Xanga was down yesterday if it hadn’t been
for a plaintive phone call from Greyfox.  He waited around the
library an extra hour or two, thinking that the site would be back up
when they said they would.  He wanted to get on to check comments
and join in the discussion of our collaborative effort on native-american-spirituality-tradition-and-mythology, but didn’t get on until today.

I had given myself a couple of days off, on the theory that if I rested
the muscles I use staying upright on this chair and clicking these keys
and the mouse, they might ease up on the weird sensations.  It
would be pain if I thought of it in those terms, but I go behind the
pain and what I feel is heat, tension, pressure and, weirdest of all
and hardest to endure, an electric buzz that’s composed of tingle, rapid tremor, and heat.  My muscles feel pumped up like they used to get after a workout.

After two days of rest, I was feeling somewhat better today until I got
up and active.  In less than half an hour at the keyboard the buzz
is back.  Even before I got on here, my legs had folded up under
me, leaving me clinging to a countertop and yelping in distress. 
I didn’t even get all the houseplants watered before my legs wore out.

I’m out of the pills that keep me breathing, so I need to drive up to
the clinic today.  And that will do it for me.  When I get
back from Sunshine, I’ll play Phantom Brave for a while, then I’ll read
until I sleep.  Maybe I’ll have enough energy to eat once or
twice, too.  Maybe not.

Hey, at least the weather is pleasant — so damned pleasant that the
first big mosquito hatch is out.  Up north, above the Arctic
Circle, it’s the season of the midnight sun!

I got some work done, and read a few of the pages I had
bookmarked.  Then I found something very useful that I hadn’t even
been looking for and went off on a side quest.

After a bit of that, which was mind-stretching and brain-straining, I
surfed Xanga a bit for a little break and saw a quiz I hadn’t done and
that led to this:

You Are Animal

A complete lunatic, you’re operating on 100% animal instincts. You thrive on uncontrolled energy, and you’re downright scary. But you sure can beat a good drum. “Kill! Kill!”

You Are an Excellent Cook

You’re a top cook, but you weren’t born that way. It’s taken a lot of practice, a lot of experimenting, and a lot of learning. It’s likely that you have what it takes to be a top chef, should you have the desire…

Your Values Profile

Loyalty: You don’t really value loyalty. In your opinion, friendship should be earned. If you don’t agree with someone, it doesn’t matter how close you are. You’ll let them (and everyone else know) exactly what you think. Honesty: You value honesty a fair amount. You’re honest when you can be, but you aren’t a stickler for it. If a little white lie will make a situation more comfortable, you’ll go for it. In the end, you mostly care about “situational integrity.” Generosity: You don’t really value generosity. Your needs always come first, no matter what. And you’ll possibly help someone else out… But only if it helps you in return. Humility: You value humility highly. You have the self-confidence to be happy with who you are. And you don’t need to seek praise to make yourself feel better. You’re very modest, and you’re keep the drama factor low. Tolerance: You value tolerance highly. Not only do you enjoy the company of those very different from you… You do all that you can to seek it out interesting and unique friends. You think there are many truths in life, and you’re open to many of them.

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct!

Your Quirk Factor: 70%

You’re so quirky, it’s hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there’s little about you that’s “normal” or “average.”

You Are Scary

You even scare scary people sometimes!

You Are 92% Happy

It’s unlikely that you know anyone happier than you. You know how to be happy, no matter what life throws at you.

You Have a Melancholic Temperament

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you. Given enough time alone, it’s easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times. At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You’re not going to mow over everyone to get ahead… But you’re also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it’s an ugly place. You just don’t get ugly yourself – unless you have to!

Your Fortune Is

Just because men have one, doesn’t mean they have to be one.

Your Life Path Number is 9

Your purpose in life is to make the world better You are very socially conscious and a total idealist. You think there are many things wrong with the world, and you want to fix them. You have a big idea of how to world could be, and you’ll sacrifice almost anything to work towards this dream. In love, you can easily see the beauty in someone else. And you never cling too tightly. You are capable of great love, but it’s hard for you to focus your love on one person or relationship. You have a lot of outward focus, and you tend to blame the world for your failures. You are often disappointed by the realities of life – it’s hard for you to accept the shortcomings of the world.

You Should Be A Virgo

What’s good about you: you have a quiet determination and aren’t swayed by emotions What’s bad about you: you are an insane perfectionist and easily find faults in others In love: you are obsessed with making your partner happy In friendship, you’re: helpful and giving – eager to be a true friend Your ideal job: poet, flight attendant, or natural healer Your sense of fashion: casual, upscale, revealing, conservative – you look good in all of it You like to pig out on: a well prepared five course meal

Today I’m doing more reading than writing.  I also intend, later,
to go through another batch of my memoirs, making “sensitive” ones
protected as I did yesterday, and bringing more links back out of
hiding.

This is for you, from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter
them in forest and meadow.
Would that the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys,
that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the
fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that
fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls
separate your hearths from your fields.

And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what
is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the
mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and
stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that
enters the house a guest, then becomes a host, and then a master?

Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your
larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of
the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like
fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks
grinning in the funeral.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped
nor tamed.
Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that
guards the eye.

You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your
heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls
should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your
secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose
door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences
of night.