Here are two video clips by special request of Aunt Rachel.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
update #4 from road
Jason is there! Traveling mercies granted. He made it to Wasilla around 8:30 p.m. and stayed the night with K&J. This morning he headed in to Anchorage to drop some things at our cousins' place and then go to class. It's an overcast day, the first in awhile, and the pickup idle is doing something funny, but he says he'll try not to take those things personally. He sounds healthy, upbeat, and happy to be there. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, friends.
Jason heard there has been swine flu activity in Anchorage, "so, please don't come until I feel it out and let you know if it's safe." he says. He's worried about Zor being on the airplane and getting exposed to germs. It's a good thing Zor has both of us because we worry about completely different things.
Jason heard there has been swine flu activity in Anchorage, "so, please don't come until I feel it out and let you know if it's safe." he says. He's worried about Zor being on the airplane and getting exposed to germs. It's a good thing Zor has both of us because we worry about completely different things.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
update #3 from road and home
At the time of this writing, Jason could be within an hour or two of Anchorage. I spoke with him at 6 p.m. our time as he was nearing Tok, Alaska. He figured he had about 350 miles left and could make it all the way tonight if he stayed alert and had no vehicle trouble. He made it into Whitehorse last night on fumes, and this morning when he needed to re-fuel, the money transfer had gone through. Yay!
Our phone conversation was jutted and cryptic, and came in two installments as usual, so you folks up there will probably hear the more significant details about his trip before I will.
Biggest news here is that Zoralee started clapping today! It was a skill that progressed over the second half of the day. She was playing the piano this afternoon, and when she'd stop, my mom cheered and clapped for her. She got the hang of that real quick, and started turning around for applause after shorter and shorter songs. Soon she was only playing a couple of notes and looking at Grandma with a grin. "You're gonna have to do more than that!" Grandma said.
Still no clapping herself, but she was digging being clapped for. Then tonight she and I were in town visiting my grandparents, and Grandpa Gene was playing his guitar and singing to her. She was bounce-dancing on her feet, then awhile on her knees, and sitting, and all at once she started clapping too. There was even enough contact to hear it! Tiny, precious little claps. It was so cool! Gosh. You catch a few firsts as a babysitter, and I've babysat a whole lot, but living to the rhythm of a growing human, your growing human, it's different. You get lulled into the song and go with it for awhile; it's normal; it's daily. And then a new guitar lick kicks in, and you think, "Ohhh, this is how the song goes. How could I have forgotten about that guitar lick?" I bet walking will be a whole new counter-melody. This stuff drops in from nowhere. I pray for stillness enough to listen to the song that is Zoralee and appreciate each part as it stacks on.
She is going to be a stellar clappist.
Our phone conversation was jutted and cryptic, and came in two installments as usual, so you folks up there will probably hear the more significant details about his trip before I will.
* * * *
Biggest news here is that Zoralee started clapping today! It was a skill that progressed over the second half of the day. She was playing the piano this afternoon, and when she'd stop, my mom cheered and clapped for her. She got the hang of that real quick, and started turning around for applause after shorter and shorter songs. Soon she was only playing a couple of notes and looking at Grandma with a grin. "You're gonna have to do more than that!" Grandma said.
Still no clapping herself, but she was digging being clapped for. Then tonight she and I were in town visiting my grandparents, and Grandpa Gene was playing his guitar and singing to her. She was bounce-dancing on her feet, then awhile on her knees, and sitting, and all at once she started clapping too. There was even enough contact to hear it! Tiny, precious little claps. It was so cool! Gosh. You catch a few firsts as a babysitter, and I've babysat a whole lot, but living to the rhythm of a growing human, your growing human, it's different. You get lulled into the song and go with it for awhile; it's normal; it's daily. And then a new guitar lick kicks in, and you think, "Ohhh, this is how the song goes. How could I have forgotten about that guitar lick?" I bet walking will be a whole new counter-melody. This stuff drops in from nowhere. I pray for stillness enough to listen to the song that is Zoralee and appreciate each part as it stacks on.
She is going to be a stellar clappist.
Monday, September 7, 2009
update #2 from road and home
At 1:00 p.m. this afternoon, which was the last I heard from him, Jason was at Fort Nelson -about 100 miles less than half way. It was a three minute call, a hang up, and then a ten second call, because our cell phone battery is shot to crap. I hardly learned anything.
In redeeming news from yesterday, I remembered later that he said the drive was beautiful and that [sniffle] I would've loved it.
* * * *
As for us here on the homefront, Zoralee figured out today how to close the bedroom door, thereby locking herself in and having the run of the place. Once I gave her a couple minutes of freedom, and when I went in to see about her, she was standing there looking at me with a chicken feather sticking out of her mouth. Where on earth she found it, who can say?
This is her in a quirky hooded sweatshirt that I got at the thrift store before she was born. By a coincidence, I made my first origami crane today. I think the two of them go together, even if she doesn't. 
Sunday, September 6, 2009
update #1 from road and home
Hm. Well, things haven't gone 100% gorgeously, either on the road for Jason or here at the house for the rest of us. It seems that the friendly gal at the Jasper National Park booth who charged him the $9 entrance fee gave him back a receipt and wad of pamphlets but not the debit card. Jason realized this unhappy fact far enough up the road that it would've been really inconvenient to go back. He got ahold of her by phone to make certain she indeed had the card. She did and was sorrey.
A grocery store allowed Jason to use my debit card number to buy food, so he has survived the day on that. Meanwhile, Mom and I have had a nice afternoon on the phone and computers trying to figure out how to get funds to Jason in another country by various means over a holiday weekend - wire, paypal, bank-to-bank transfers, etc. Whilst I was on the phone to John at our Alaska bank, I suddenly heard Peanut the Chihuahua start screaming upstairs. I ran up and saw that he was on Mom's lap at the computer, she finalizing a paypal transfer. Mom quickly explained to me, and I to John, who had just listened to the whole schpeel about my husband being stuck in Canada with no money, that we had a screeching Chihuahua whose toenail was stuck to my mother's watch wristband. "I'll have to call you back, John!"
I dashed about and found the toenail clippers, which I used to snap Mom's watch off. Lawdy. I tell you, Peanut's cries were like a fire alarm going off in your ear. During the dashing about, I saw that I'd left the stair door open and had an additional mid-crisis panic attack that maybe Zoralee had escaped our notice and fallen down the stairs. No; Mom had her eye on Z the whole time, and Z had her eye on Peanut, wondering what in the tar was going on. Poor guy; earlier in the day, the same Peanut had caught his leg on low hanging barbed wire!
I called John back and learned that no, the money couldn't be brought into our account early; the people who pushed that particular button wouldn't be doing so for several days. [side note: if you've seen Kevin James' "Sweat the Small Stuff" routine, this was exactly like when the phone company tells him they won't be pulling the switch to turn on his phone until Thursday. He asks them if he can come down there and pull the switch himself...] I had a splitting headache after everything. I took two advil and laid on the couch with a heating pad on my neck.
Things were just calming down and Zoralee was playing nicely when all the sudden she screamed. Mom saw a bee on the top of her head, so she swiped it off and smooshed it. We never could find a sting mark, but we watched for allergic reaction. She seems fine. She's also fine after being side-swiped by Gunther as he ran by to get to the door.
* * * *
10:15 p.m. Was just talking to Jason in Grande Prairie. He has gone 700 miles today. I found online that the Walmart there has a Western Union, so he dashed to it but arrived five minutes after closing. He has $5, with which he will buy as much crap from McDonalds as he can and keep driving.
Weeeeeee!
A grocery store allowed Jason to use my debit card number to buy food, so he has survived the day on that. Meanwhile, Mom and I have had a nice afternoon on the phone and computers trying to figure out how to get funds to Jason in another country by various means over a holiday weekend - wire, paypal, bank-to-bank transfers, etc. Whilst I was on the phone to John at our Alaska bank, I suddenly heard Peanut the Chihuahua start screaming upstairs. I ran up and saw that he was on Mom's lap at the computer, she finalizing a paypal transfer. Mom quickly explained to me, and I to John, who had just listened to the whole schpeel about my husband being stuck in Canada with no money, that we had a screeching Chihuahua whose toenail was stuck to my mother's watch wristband. "I'll have to call you back, John!"
I dashed about and found the toenail clippers, which I used to snap Mom's watch off. Lawdy. I tell you, Peanut's cries were like a fire alarm going off in your ear. During the dashing about, I saw that I'd left the stair door open and had an additional mid-crisis panic attack that maybe Zoralee had escaped our notice and fallen down the stairs. No; Mom had her eye on Z the whole time, and Z had her eye on Peanut, wondering what in the tar was going on. Poor guy; earlier in the day, the same Peanut had caught his leg on low hanging barbed wire!
I called John back and learned that no, the money couldn't be brought into our account early; the people who pushed that particular button wouldn't be doing so for several days. [side note: if you've seen Kevin James' "Sweat the Small Stuff" routine, this was exactly like when the phone company tells him they won't be pulling the switch to turn on his phone until Thursday. He asks them if he can come down there and pull the switch himself...] I had a splitting headache after everything. I took two advil and laid on the couch with a heating pad on my neck.
Things were just calming down and Zoralee was playing nicely when all the sudden she screamed. Mom saw a bee on the top of her head, so she swiped it off and smooshed it. We never could find a sting mark, but we watched for allergic reaction. She seems fine. She's also fine after being side-swiped by Gunther as he ran by to get to the door.
* * * *
10:15 p.m. Was just talking to Jason in Grande Prairie. He has gone 700 miles today. I found online that the Walmart there has a Western Union, so he dashed to it but arrived five minutes after closing. He has $5, with which he will buy as much crap from McDonalds as he can and keep driving.
Weeeeeee!
and he's off
Gone away from me 
Gone away from me
Life is long
My love has gone away from me
- Ray LaMontagne
Off he took, my love, just at dawn, for Alaska. Three long driving days it'll take him to get there, or maybe a tad more, in which case he hopes to wheel in for class Wednesday morning.
It was so very difficult for me to not jump in with him. This is a trip we really love and usually take together. How will he ever make it without me, you know? Won't he want to weep when he takes a quick dip into the Liard River hot springs or stops for a mocha at the coffee house in Whitehorse or gets a kick out of our Canadian neighbors' phrase and perspective variations? But traveling 2,400 miles in three days with a nine month old, wiggle worm of a baby sounded like just enough of a drag to warrant going by plane.
Jason was content to head off alone with his thermos of coffee and iRiver of music. Plus he'd downloaded three books from the library to listen to (Did you know that can happen?! It's free, and you can legally burn them to cd for personal use!). To give you a feel for his road trip, the books are these:
Babylon by Bus: Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq,
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country, and
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Maybe he'll do a guest blog telling about them. Ha. I wish. Not so much the written word communicator, that guy. If you're reading this along the route, hi honey! At least leave a comment for the gang about what book you're listening to, and how it's going. 
You can see there the 50-gallon drum of diesel he took to save fuel costs, but otherwise this is one of the least hillbilly looking outfits we've ever configured for driving the Alcan. All the stuff we took, including his work tools, fit in the backseat, with a few things in the pickup bed. I feel that our possession choices for this stint were good: sparse but well-rounded. We'll see if we still feel the same way in the middle of the Alaskan winter. I am particularly proud of taking only one box of kitchen supplies, as that's hard to narrow down. Four spoons, knives, forks, and plates, two different sized pots, one cast iron pan and a combo fryer/pressure cooker pan, a casserole dish, a cookie sheet, a few coffee mugs, and a dozen of the most useful utensils, like a can-opener and a spatula. We didn't take any water glasses; we'll have more of those as soon as we buy jars of pickles and eat the pickles. Otherwise, that's why God invented thrift stores.
You can see there the 50-gallon drum of diesel he took to save fuel costs, but otherwise this is one of the least hillbilly looking outfits we've ever configured for driving the Alcan. All the stuff we took, including his work tools, fit in the backseat, with a few things in the pickup bed. I feel that our possession choices for this stint were good: sparse but well-rounded. We'll see if we still feel the same way in the middle of the Alaskan winter. I am particularly proud of taking only one box of kitchen supplies, as that's hard to narrow down. Four spoons, knives, forks, and plates, two different sized pots, one cast iron pan and a combo fryer/pressure cooker pan, a casserole dish, a cookie sheet, a few coffee mugs, and a dozen of the most useful utensils, like a can-opener and a spatula. We didn't take any water glasses; we'll have more of those as soon as we buy jars of pickles and eat the pickles. Otherwise, that's why God invented thrift stores.*
One cute note about packing. I was going through Zoralee's sack of clothes a second time to par down. Jason saw a pair of her soft shoes I'd left out (which she hasn't even started wearing yet), and said, "Ohhhh, surely I can find a place for those! They're so little and cute." Shucks. Wrapped right around her finger, he is.
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