Birthday Boys and Bad Teeth

Today is Mike's birthday so for the next six months I will again be considered young until my birthday makes my age number larger than his and I'll be an old lady again.  We've been celebrating the day with laziness.  I thought about planning a weekend out, but decided that made little sense considering we just got back a week ago.  Instead I sprung for upgrades to first class for the trip back (which is so much cheaper at the gate!) and will be grilling steak and lobster.  Knowing I am death to all cuts of meat, he may regret the decision to let me cook tonight.  I guess only time will tell if I'll need to break open a box of macaroni and cheese as a back up.

The weekend has provided us another opportunity to appreciate and long for small simplicities no longer afforded us.  I bit down wrong the other night and chipped one of my front teeth.  I am a paranoid nutcase when it comes to my teeth (my recurring bad dreams all involve losing teeth) and would be seeking immediate dental attention back home.  Being here, though, I have to try to decide if my tooth is truly chipped badly enough to warrant a $140 plane ride out of the village to get to the nearest dentist about whom I know nothing.  I tried to be covert in my operations, but got busted trying to take pictures of my traitor tooth.  My thoughts are to call my dentist back home and, if necessary, e-mail pictures so that he can tell me if it actually needs work or that I'll be wasting my time and the dentist will say there's nothing to be done.  I'm hoping he will not laugh at me when I call him as much as Mike did upon hearing my plan.

Snow, Snow . . . please go?

The truck bed was full of snow before this last week's
worth of snow.  We may not find the truck now.

I'm reminded of a Peanuts comic strip where Linus said "Rain, Rain, Go Away.  Come again another day." and the rain immediately stopped.  He was a little unsettled by his unexpected success and even more concerned when it worked again in front of his sister, Lucy.  I've been working on a clever rewrite for snow, but I've not come up with anything terribly clever as of yet.  We flew out of the village early to miss a snow storm that seems to like our little village enough it's decided to make us it's new permanent home.  The snow has poured from the sky every day we've been here and the wind stays busy rearranging it once it lands.  Each morning Mike sweeps the snow off our front porch and I clear it from in front of the door at school and each evening I force the school door open through the new blockade of snow and Mike sweeps another 3 inches off of the porch.  We're expecting a heat wave this weekend as temperatures will shoot up to the lower 20s.  Right now we are staying in the single digits and negatives before we factor in the wind chill.  I distinctly remember people saying "We don't get very much snow" when we arrived this summer and I'm beginning to wonder what exactly their definition of "very much" is.

It's so crazy cold outside we have to scrape frost off of
the inside of the windows - that's just not normal.

Back in the Village



Some Missouri woods!

We've returned safe and sound to the village and are settling back into the swing of things.  We lucked out in our return flights (minus some TSA difficulties) and all was rather uneventful.  I hear the flight from Phoenix to Anchorage was extremely turbulent, but I slept through it all so I can't really say much about it.  I will confess to a sense of dread as I looked at our little plane on the runway as we were about to take off for the village, but Eugenio gave us a picture perfect flight from take off to landing and we managed to luck into the only flight into the village that day.  Jane, our school nurse, was not as lucky yesterday so we had a house guest last night as she was weathered in over here.  She's a super sweet lady who was very patient with my overly affectionate after having been abandoned by her family for two weeks kitty.  We tease Jane about being our local celebrity as her family has a homestead in Homer that was the subject of a 3 part series on Discovery channel titled "Alaska: The Last Frontier".  Jewel, the singer, is related to the family and talks much of her time roughing it in Alaska with no running water etc, but I get the impression she spent much less time there then she leads people to believe.  The show's been fun to watch, but they condensed 4 months of tape into three 45 minute episodes, so we know they left a lot of good stuff out.


Camouflage hat, gun in the rack & 4-wheeler in the back
of the hunting truck, and a rabbit vest in the seat =
Redneck Heaven
It's good to get home!

 We enjoyed our time in Missouri visiting with friends and family and relaxing in our own house and are missing it all very much.  Mike fed his addiction by adding yet another firearm to his collection and is a very happy critter.  We also found time to ride four wheelers (known as Hondas regardless of brand in the village), do some rabbit hunting, camp out in our living room and be lazy, and make cookies with two very special and sweet little boys.  We also completed some necessary errands like paying property taxes and going to the dentist, but that is a sore subject.  I had a cavity while Mike did not - grrrrr!  Two weeks went by far too quickly for us, but it usually does so we're thankful for the chance to hear some southern accents and have a brief moment in time in a location where one can pee off his front porch in peace without worrying about hitting kids on the playground below.



More Travel Adventures

We are chilling in the Anchorage airport waiting for our morning flight to Kenai to begin the voyage back to the village.  Our layover here was supposed to be 6 hours but got cut to 4 hours due to delays in Phoenix.  We don't mind the delay, but I imagine those individuals waiting for the plane here to fly to Phoenix were a bit annoyed.  Most of our flights went well, if a bit bumpy along the way, and were on time.  The Phoenix plane started out on time, but hit a few snags between boarding and take-off.  While, I'm sure TSA and the Phoenix police department will have detailed time lines for their reports, I've created one of my own to include some of the details they will undoubtedly leave out.

5:00 pm - Arrive in Phoenix
5:10 pm - Eat supper
5:45 pm -  Discover the gate for our flight has changed
5:50 pm - Get comfortable at the new gate location and wait for boarding at 8:20
7:20 pm  - Discover the gate for our flight has changed, yet again, and backtrack to the same gate our last plane arrived at
8:00 pm  - Buy water for the 6 hour flight at the extortionary airport price of $2
8:10 pm - Run to the bathroom one last time before boarding so that I can someday die without ever having used a plane toilet
8:20 - Board plane
8:40 - Pilot announces there is an issue with take-off, but does not yet have any information, when he does he'll relay it
9:20 - Pilot announces there was a security breach on the plane and we'll all have to deboard and go through security again
9:25 - Threw away previously mentioned bottle of water as you cannot get liquids through security
9:30 - Deboard plane and get separated into 2 groups
9:35 - Escorted by about a dozen TSA officials to the security area - total VIP treatment
9:40 - Return to gate to wait to reboard plane, take the opportunity to go to the bathroom again to avoid the aforementioned horror of using a plane toilet
10:15 - Reboard plane
10:30 - Take-off for Anchorage

New lesson learned: Carrying decorative rocks in your carry on luggage will result in a search at security.

Christmas Break In

Can Christmas itself get put on Santa's naughty list?  After a long day of travel we came home Saturday night to find our house had been broken into by Christmas so I'm thinking it belongs on the naughty list.  Our entire house was decorated for that devious holiday that tried to skip us over with a Christmas tree and lights glowing.  The deer mounts even got into the spirit and were decked out in celebration.  I will confess to a bit of jealously here as I have tried to decorate them before, but have never been allowed to.  Mike was not here, however, when my parents decorated the house so he could not object to my mom's efforts.  All I have to say about this breaking and entering is my parents are awesome!!!  My mom also came over Sunday with turkey, dressing, pie, and all the other traditional holiday fixings so we could have Christmas dinner before exchanging our gifts.  We have two weeks at home and I'm afraid it will go by very quickly, but we are thankful for the chance we have to see our families and enjoy being home.

Sleepy in Seattle

So I'm sure I could rewrite some song to creatively express our trip, but I'm too tired to think of any at the moment.  Mike had to come up with our clever title for me today since I had nothing beyond "Tired".  I'm glad we only have 2 more hours to kill in the airport before getting on the last plane on our way home because I am definately too sleepy to think of creative ways to pass the time.  All of our flights have been on time and gone smoothly so we are very thankful for that.  We are also thankful they have a very nice USO in the Seattle airport so we could sneak a nap in a couple bunks they provide for soldiers and their families while traveling.  They even offer wake-up service so you don't have to worry about over sleeping and missing a flight.  In a few more hours, though, we'll be in our house with our adorable little puppy and it will all be worth it.

Rearranging John Denver Again

I want to be singing "Leaving on a jet plane" but instead feel like rearranging the song to "Sitting in the airport".  We flew out of Kenai at 5:00pm and I must say that is the way to get to Anchorage.  What is a terribly long, uneventful 4 - 5 hour drive was done in 30 minutes - woohoo!  Unfortunately today that just means we have time to sit in the airport waiting for our flight to leave at 12:30 tonight.  We'll arrive in Seattle at 4:45 in the morning, but won't catch our next plane to St. Louis until 11:15.  We looked at all the flight combinations and this was the very best we could find so we took it, but we'll be looking for creative ways to entertain ourselves in the airport.  I thought of my B lunch friends as I did my part to stretch time by taking a good 15 minutes to pick out all the white lettuce from my salad in the airport restaurant.  I also killed some more time by making paper hats with my napkin and dressed up my ketchup bottle.  Mike decided at that point it was time to leave before I could come up with any other creative ways to entertain myself so I was unable to create any other attire for my now fashion-forward ketchup bottle.  I may be developing a back-up career option for me.  If people will buy decorative covers for rolls of toilet paper, why not buy a few items to allow your condiments to feel a little special?

This goose is heading south for the winter!  Well, two weeks.  No one else seemed convinced that Jesus' birthday is so important it should be celebrated for a couple months, so two weeks is what we get. 
We will fly out tomorrow night and hope we have already exhausted all of our travel bad luck.  We arrived in Homer to find the hood frozen again - and since we have to prime the fuel lines to start the truck that is a bit of a snag.  We worked that loose and got situated to find the batteries were dead and we eventually had to call the tow truck to come jump the truck.  We also had to have a local delivery truck jump the truck again this morning, so we got new batteries a little earlier than planned.  Hopefully all will go smoothly from this point on so that we can enjoy a much needed visit with family, friends, Browning, our house, and some time in rabbit fields and the deer woods (it is still bow season after all).

While we were originally scheduled to fly out of the village today, we flew out of the village yesterday instead.  The weather forecasts were looking unfriendly so we decided not to chance it.  Having heard there were no flights today, we are very glad we made that decision.  I am disappointed to miss the Christmas program at school today as I know our kids worked very hard to translate "Silent Night" into Sug'stun (their native language) and wanted to hear them sing it in both languages and share the story of the World War I Christmas truce.  I will be sure to lay the blame for this bad weather on the shoulders of one particular student who was hoping we would not be able to get out of the village for the break.

I have another student, though, that I will be forever indebted to for taking care of Little Miss Sunshine.  She's so patient with me that she's even agreed to talk to my kitty (she's allergic so she can't pet her) and turn the TV on for a few hours for her so she won't feel so terribly lonely.  One of the teachers from the neighboring village is also planning to come over and visit with the kitty as well since she had to leave her babies behind in Oregon and is missing feline company.  Hopefully my furry purry will survive the next two weeks without her family.  James and Carol's cat moved to the village dump and refused to return home for several weeks after they returned from an extended trip so I'm hoping my little kitty doesn't decide to take drastic measures to express her displeasure at our absence.

Strong Magic

Wind blowing snow off Mt. St. John

I'm beginning to think I may have to take my snowflakes down if I'm going to have any hopes of getting to go home for Christmas break.  I wasn't too concerned about magic snowflakes here because they don't have snow days in Nanwalek and I didn't wear any of them, which is the key difference between a plain snowflake and a magic one.  Apparently suspending a large number of them from the ceiling is much more powerful than wearing them on my shirt like an idiot because it has snowed every day since I hung them up nine days ago.  Since yesterday brought sunshine and outside adventure, I had hoped removing the snowflakes would be unnecessary, but it's been snowing pretty heavily today so they will probably have to come down if I am ever to make it out of the village again.

We did take advantage of the sunshine while we had it and enjoyed a great day outdoors yesterday.  We've been wanting to get out and enjoy nature, but it gets dark too early to do anything after school and it seems every day we have off the weather is terrible and we cannot.  We got to take a drive up the trails, gather some pine cones for a wreath project, and enjoy watching some local bird wildlife during low tide on the lagoon.  I must also admit to learning the hard way, that some parts of the lagoon are apparently never dry, thus not good places to walk even with waterproof boots as the mud suctions anything and everything down and is quite reluctant to release its prey.