puzzle illustration

This is but a small illustration with a simple puzzle of why I NEVER GET CAUGHT UP ON THINGS AROUND THIS JOINT.

household noticings

It's dark outside now when Zoralee wakes up from her late afternoon nap. It brings back a very specific feeling...the feeling of waking up from a late afternoon nap and it being dark outside. Do you remember that from childhood? Oh, hmm. It just dawned on me, even as I'm typing, that perhaps this has happened in adulthood too, which is why the memory is so fresh. I do like naps, after all, so the chances are good I've awoken from a few in the dark evening. But I'm pretty sure I'm having this feeling from childhood, because I also recall that as I came to, I'd smell various supper smells, and I'd hear the news being broadcast. I'd be a little wobbly as I made my way to the light of the kitchen, and I'd have a warm sense of safety in my gut. So yeah, childhood.

Do your cheese blocks in the fridge mold and/or get hard, crusty edges? Have I got a tip for you. I read it in one of those long email forwards that has 40,000 household tips, half of which you're like, "I doubt that works" and the other half you're like, "Man, I wish I'd remember that, but I probably won't." Well, I tried this, and it works!! Wrap the open end of your cheese block in tin foil, and secure it with a rubber band. No hard spots. No mold. This bumps wrapping cheese in seran wrap, a plastic baggie, or a wax baggie totally off the podium.

Dishes are vagabonds, and I'm not sure they should be. First, we keep dishes in the cupboard for storage. Then they're used at the table or around the house. Then they are placed in the sink for either a full washing or a quick rinse-off. Then they go to a drying rack (in the case of sink washing) or to the dishwasher. That's four places. There are at least four totally separate places where kitchen dishes spend their time - anywhere from minutes to days. And we have to handle them every single time. I'd like for somebody inventive to cut that down to two or three. Can a dishwasher be formatted to also be the storage bin instead of using cupboards? Crud, that's how we use it a lot of the time as it is. Maybe if we had two smaller dishwashers, we'd always have one free for the next load, and we could leave the other full of clean dishes and grab them straight out for use. I don't know the answers here, but somebody could make bank re-designing the entire kitchen system.

McHugh Trail, second time, sunnier day, with Nic & Autumn

This is a post I have been longing to write, and more importantly, show pictures with! People, Alaska is ridiculous. I love it, and I'd love for you to love it too, if you don't already. We hiked McHugh trail the second time about a week after the first, and it was drop-dead gorgeous. I mean that. I felt like it would've been a-okay to drop dead right there, either by the overwhelming beauty or from some other cause (with the possible exception of being sucked dry by leaches).

The body of water you see is the Turnagain Arm. The ocean, man.

Every now and again, if you're lucky, you'll see a pod of beluga whales coming in with the tides.

This particularly bright Sunday afternoon, we drove to the trail past the road of my cousin, Autumn, and her husband, Nic, and we called them. Groggily they said, "[yawn]....Your call woke us up from a nap....[yawn].....but we want to come along!" Were we ever glad for that. Walking frees you from the weak and silly parts of life to talk about the good and whole and meaningful. Autumn is in training to become a midwife, for one thing, so there are always new birth stories to be enchanted by. But also, we'd recently seen with them the documentary "Food, Inc." about the way a handful of companies pretty much control the food industry of our country and aren't fans of small farms and people trying to provide for themselves.

RABBIT TRAIL: this is a whole 'nother post, or twelve, but we have GOT to get more interested in and serious about the very basic life issue of where our food comes from. Let's grow more of our own food, make more of our own things and entertainment, be our own people! We're all working on parts of the puzzle. Let's keep learning, and keep teaching each other! Let's regain the old skills, recapture the ingenuity and sense of responsibility for ourselves that made our country great. Let's slap ourselves out of drone-ville, taken by flickering lights and quick results, worshipping at the alter of convenience.

END OF RABBIT TRAIL, PRETTY MUCH: More recently, we've seen with Nic and Autumn the Michael Moore documentary, "Sicko." Also, we are working our way through the U.S. Constitution together, though we have to pause frequently to read a phrase again and feel like modern, literary dunces.

So you can see why, hiking with our friends this day, on a trail where a person starts at the sea and is free to climb as high as they wish, I longed to shout "REVOLUTION!"

break time and photo shootpottyin'feedin'Isn't this a neat one? taken by Jason (clearly)shoe-tyin'That little black dot on the horizon is a small airplane.

Do you see a special something in this last photograph?

Straight up from the setting sun, near the top of the photo, is the silhouette of a ptarmigan.

friends, kids, cards, and pumpkins

shakin' rattles





































This is Gauge, son of Scott and Amanda, a young family that we met traveling the Alcan a couple of years ago. It has been a real joy to get to know them. Hanging out with Gauge is like sitting down to eat a whole container of Ben & Jerry's "One Sweet Whirled" ice cream. He is a dear and a half. Very thoughtful and present. When he was a baby, Scott would turn the dial to talk radio so that Gauge would hear the give and take of conversation and presentation. We found that so interesting. When I heard Gauge first say Zoralee's name, with the blurred "r" of a barely three year old, I nearly melted.

After kid playtime was over this particular night, they set up Gauge's sleeping bag and pillow on the living room floor, and Amanda sang lullabies to him while I was one wall away in the bedroom singing to Zoralee. When Gauge and Z were konked, the adults played cards and talked of our travels. Isn't that a scene right out of our parents or grandparents' time? It totally makes me want to reclaim that as a regular occurrence - getting together to play cards late into the night with other adults. I'd kind of forgotten about the whole sleeping bag thing for kids.

Oh, here's something cute Gauge had said to Amanda that day. They'd gone to the store and picked out a pumpkin for him to take to preschool. The pumpkin had to be small-ish but heavy enough to be a challenge for a three year old to lift. The children were to take care of their pumpkins every day, carrying them outside in the mornings and inside at the close of school, and they were to pay special attention to the details of their own pumpkin, so they'd be able to pick it out of the pile. Amanda had bought an extra pumpkin and was making it into a dessert to bring over here. When Gauge asked her what she was making and she said, "Pumpkin Bread," that made perfect sense to him in light of all the care that had gone into his pumpkin so far. He said, "Oh! You're making food for my pumpkin!"