Near and far

I can now say I have traveled above the Arctic Circle. Sadly, I cannot yet say I have actually set foot there. Last weekend, The Arctic Sounder crew flew to Barrow to get the lay of the land, meet some folks, etc. But the runway was snowed in and equipment was broken, so we flew as far as Pruhdoe Bay and turned around. Very disappointing. On the up-side, it bought me an extra day at home, which I squandered with vigor - painting all morning, running seven miles (huge victory since I haven't run much lately) and then joining Mike, Andrew and Judy to almost erect the first rafters of the high tunnel.
That night, we bid a sad adeiu to Judy and Oskar. It was wonderful having them here, and I hope things work out the way they look like they might and she'll be popping back through again soon. Tomorrow would work fine for me. It's so interesting that what used to be unbearably uncomfortable (having people stay with us) has become so natural, even preferred. It just seems to make sense - the whole idea of working together like that, sharing meals together, etc. I should have come of age in the 60s. I would have loved it.
Tonight, the kids came home after four days at Matt's. It seems like it must be more time than that. It's interesting how much more I miss them these days when they are gone. Maybe it's because they have gotten older, more interesting, less demanding. Or maybe it's just because I've grown up a bit and realized that raising my kids is where I belong, most of the time, anyway. At any rate, having them back was such a joy tonight. I got the fire roaring, made spaghetti and meatballs with Thea's assistance, of course, and did baths. Liam worked his way through his first try at twinkle twinkle on the fiddle, and when Thea got out, she danced to Celtic music in nothing but a hoodie towel.
Afterward, Liam asked me if he was part Irish. I think so, I said, a little. Well, he said, it's just that when I listen to Irish music, it's like I've heard it before. Interesting.

Winter has arrived

Two weeks ago, gloves were optional, snow formed into soft snowballs and it was pre-winter. Today, the thermometer on the car read 4F at McNeil. Yikes. Two layers of down are better than one and gloves are mandatory. The day we got those posts in the ground for the high-tunnel was truly the last day we could have done it so easily. the snow hasn't left once since.
Not that we've let that slow us down any. As the state dipped into an early pre-freeze, my friend Judy and her son Oskar showed up from Kodiak to help with the high tunnel. Oh my. Judy is one of those awesome Alaska women who can and will do just about anything. I love working with her because to her, what I'm doing makes perfect sense. Of course you are putting up a 2,000-square-foot tunnel. Who wouldn't?
So we bashed away at baseboards, lots of frustration, etc. Mike had found cable on craigslist and bought a whole bunch of it for rafter bracing like many other people have done. We spent one blustery day rolling out cable on the road and then drug it inside to assemble all the bolts and turnbuckles. Judy braved the snow and ice and relentless wind for several days tightening bolts and drilling holes. Things are moving forward, and I am so grateful for all the help. What makes a person show up and do something like that? I sure hope she buys that house so I can come reciprocate - hell, after this thing goes up, I'm essentially an indentured servant to a group of close friends for several months. But isn't that the best way to do things? I couldn't do it without the help - nor would I want to. I guess there is a wonderful feeling in knowing you did something on your own, but really, I'd rather dwell in the wonderful feeling of being part of your self-created community.
Meanwhile, the kids have been having a pretty good time playing. Oskar and Liam are about the same age and have always been good friends. Thea, well, she tries her best to keep up, with varying results. On Sunday, the whole crew came up and hung out at the house while we worked on the tunnel and Mike constructed a jig to properly fit the rafters before we tightened the bolts down.
The kids decided to sled down the road, but on the first run, I heard the tell-tale thud. Not good. They had run into the car parked on the side of the road and Thea was in the front. I knew it was bad right away - ran full tilt up to her, picked her up as her little mouth filled with blood,didn't look close until we got inside and I sat her down. Luckily, it was just her lip, her teeth are fine. But her poor lip - oh my. It swelled up like crazy. So the kids all got to watch a movie and by 3:30 she was ready to roll and we actually went skating for a bit. Strong girl!
Liam's so into the skating - he loves to zoom around. Getting pretty fast - though he still falls a lot. Got to get him on skis soon, too.
Anyway, another fun thing we did this week was dispatch two turkeys. That's how it is when Judy's in town. Things happen. Like two hours after she got there, she had arrived back at my house with two turkeys in the back of the subaru. Big turkeys. Hugomongous, actually. So we had to figure out how exactly to kill them. Ax? Knife? or, even better, a gun. I'm Canadian. We don't do guns. I did shoot a pumpkin once last winter, but that's another story. So Judy decides the best way to do this thing was to straddle the bird, holding its wings between her legs, and shoot it while I held on to the legs. Oh my. We did it, but wow. I dunno. It was something, really. The second one went better - not sure why. But Still bruised the wings. Then we plucked and gutted these hugomongous beasties. And that was the end of that day, by far.
One other thing of note - I've taken up racketball. Played four times, twice by self, twice with Mike, and it's great. Getting way way way better. Hard workout, though. And Mike kicks my ass.

Exhaustion

Today, as I was lacing up Liam's skates, my hands seized up again, the fingers curling in toward my palms in a spasm that I could not control. As much chaos as I bring into my life, I do like to have some degree of control. After watching my mother's struggle with MS, her hands curled in just like mine today, it was not just my hands that were beyond my control - my emotions went there, too.
It's interesting having your entire livelihood rest on what your fingers can do. People are always commenting on how much I do and how rich my life is. Things like a simple curling of fingers, though, could undo it all. My success is built entirely on my ability to charge through the day with an intensity that exhausts me to my core. If I don't bring my whole self to every single day, it unravels.
This week is a perfect example. There was Monday - the hell day of Halloween X3 - a role in Théa's preschool Halloween party (wizard, of course), an event at the library for myself and 100 of the community's costumed and sugar-crazed kids, followed immediately by trick-or-treating with the Stineff crew - a tradition now the predates Théa's birth.
I love trick-or-treating with that bunch. It's grown each year and now there are dozens of kids swarming through the neighborhood - taking over the streets. This year, Liam was off and gone before I could even catch anything but a blurry image of his royal Luke-ed-ness (during the black period, whenever that was - feel free, Star Wars fans, to egg me for my ignorance.) Théa was princess Leia, though she would not wear the hand-crafted braid buns. She did have a great robe made from one of those crazy fuzzy blankets that I found at pick-n-pay last week. The robe flew out behind her as she ran - fabulous. Very Star Wars esque. Théa marched up to numerous doors and declared, "I can't have chocolate." Attagirl.
The best part by far though, is the fact that the kids take over the town. I remember that feeling as a kid - marching through the night with my team of fellow candy-getters, pillow case in hand, not turning back until every lit doorway was knocked on. For a hippie-spawn who was fed more sprouts and bulgar than anyone should have to endure, Halloween was as good as it got. All the sugar and crap I could get my hands on. Clue the singing angles, please. After the sugar-dash, all the kids returned to Matt and Andrea's house to count their loot, play and perhaps even eat a few non-sugar calories (yeah, right). Then home to try to unwind the unwindable, all the while feeling sorry for elementary school teachers everywhere.
So we survived that fiasco of a day, and then the kids went back to Matt for a night while I stayed up all night putting out another paper. Zoiks. This week was made all the more exciting by a wild wind storm on Tuesday that knocked off power for a couple hours, but luckily, it didn't take me off track at all. But...gotta get a handle on that scene. So much of my prep time gets eaten up by life, the library job, and the high tunnel. On an up-note, I hired a new writer and editorial assistant who is doing a great job - YAY!
Then, on Friday we got our first snow. About four inches of white stuff came down, just enough to remind me what a disaster would be on my hands if I didn't get things covered up. So Saturday morning, when morning finally got around to dawning at about 10:30 a.m., was all about cleaning up projects, pulling all the siding off the roof where it had been drying since, umm, August? and stacking it and covering it. Then off to shovel off the high tunnel parts before tarping them. I was seriously sore at this point. There should be a pre-winter shovel prep strength class offered by a nonprofit somewhere in this state.
But I promised the kids we would go swimming on Saturday. So we did that. It was awesome - Théa cannot stop grinning when she's in the water. She's just so happy and you can tell the sensation just blows her mind. Liam's getting to be a very good swimmer, too. Good thing - I've struggled with being a lousy swimmer all my life and it stinks. Théa got brave enough to jump off the side of the pool and go under water - she wears a floaty vest but it allows her to go under a bit, too. I could see the difference between the time I went in with them and when we got out. Very cool.
So today, Sunday, I woke to another six inches or so of snow. More shoveling. Yay. And I was determined to get some time in building rafters for the high tunnel. I had a goal of doing two before the promised skating afternoon activity. But then Mike and his friend Titus showed up. First Mike pointed out three things that I had done completely wrong because I had not read the instructions all the way through. How hard can it be, I thought. Harder than I thought, obviously. OOps. Note to self -read instructions more carefully in future. But then Mike's friend Titus showed up and the three of us got 15 done before I had to leave for skating. And they finished off the final four after I left. Heros. Total heros. What does one do for someone who's willing to devote oodles of their time to your effort. It makes me crazy - the inequity of it all. I hope he gets his own tunnel so I can reciprocate and if he doesn't, he's going to be swimming in veggies all next summer for his help.
So now it's the end of the day and tomorrow starts the newspaper marathon again... and I feel like I haven't even stopped fro a second. Tuesday, Judy and Oskar arrive, though, so that will help a lot. It's going to be great to see them, and get some help with the tunnel, and perhaps solve the mystery of why my birds are eating but not laying. Harumph. I'm always happiest with a full house, so it will be good.
Forward, MARCH.

Posts up!

Each day this week has gotten progressively colder than the next, causing me no end of fear that I might not get these posts in the ground for the high tunnel soon enough before the ground froze solid. So on Thursday of last week, Andrew, who came to Homer as a Wwoofer and seems now like he is staying, came up and helped me put the first four cornerposts in the ground. The posts go in only two feet, so we got metal fenceposts that are 8 feet long and drove those into the ground about four or five feet with a post pounder. Then the hightunnel post - a very heavy hollow pipe about 2 inches in diameter, goes next to the fencepost. Those posts are driven into the ground by climbing on a stepladder with a sledgehammer or a maul and whamming them on top while someone below attaches a post leveler (another amazing tool that I am forever in love with) and watches for level in two directions.
The four corner posts went in pretty easily - it took us about an hour. On Saturday, Mike and I were going to set up the whizbang laser level and get the whole thing leveled out, but Mike managed to catapult himself into a trailer hitch, doing some pretty nasty damage to his back, so I spent the day keeping him company and advocating for ice and Advil and watching football (gack.) Sunday, my friend Eric had suggested I hold a bit of a pole-pounding gathering, so I called on my foolhardy friends (Marylou, Eric, Mike, Andrew and myself) and got to pounding. The whole process went fairly well - took about 4 hours, despite a couple stubborn posts, the difficulty of finding something to fit over the posts to protect them from being bashed in (we used a small metal weight with a bolt running through it as well as one of those brackets you put in the top of a concrete piling to catch the beam). It was amazing how unfrozen the ground still was despite appearances. A half-inch of crusty, frozen ground covered soft earth.
But, that's not to say it was easy, by any stretch. I found the whole thing very difficult, actually. There are 17 posts on each side - 34 in total. At one point, my hand locked up and I couldn't unfurl my fingers, which freaked me out, for sure. Andrew and Eric zoomed through those posts at about three for every one that Marylou and I did - sigh. At the end of the day, Mike was inspired to set up the first complete truss, though we did not put it up. One down, 17 to go.
At the end of the day, I went on my deck to take a look at the project. It struck me that this structure is going to dominate my land now. It is so huge, and every phase of this process makes it so much more real.
This morning, I woke to an inch of snow on the ground. Not surprising - it's actually quite late for the first snowfall, but I'm so incredibly glad that this phase of the project is done. It can freeze all it wants to now because the posts are in. I had my doubts this week that it was going to happen, but somehow I just seem to keep staying one step ahead of disaster, with a lot of help. I'm filled with gratitude, once again. Not a bad feeling at all.

The more you know...

My once-editor Joel Gay used to constantly remind me of a saying ... you know what you know, and you think you know what you don't know, but you don't know what you don't know. In journalism, we are often leaning on statistics to make sense of the world - and the statistics say that Alaska Natives are by-and-large a disadvantaged group. What I found last weekend when I attended the Alaska Federation of Natives Conference in Anchorage was something entirely different. I found thousands of people who were proud, passionate, and poised - beautiful, well-spoken, insightful and incredibly connected to one-and-other. I have never seen so many people hugging each other. Goodness! I was humbled by it all and inspired, too.
Getting to the conference, however, in my post-Olive reality, was another story. Matt's been out of town visiting family for a couple weeks and I've had the kids, so I had to piece together a hodge-podge of people and events to take care of it all. It almost would have been easier to just take them with me, but I'm glad to have had the chance to experience AFN and take it all in without the distraction of motherhood. Plus, I got to visit with Jerzy and Paula in Anchorage, and that was fantastic.
This week also marked the culmination of a month of triple-dipping on the work front - freelance jobs, topped with the library job, topped with the new gig for the Arctic Sounder - zoiks. But somehow, by leaning on a lot of friends and eating a lot of crappy food, and neglecting my children to some extent, I made it through. It feels a lot lighter now, though it's still a lot, and the library job needs some attention, for sure.
It's also been a busy time in high-tunnel world. The tunnel arrived the same day Olive announced she was leaving so I haven't even blogged about it. 5,000 pounds of steel took less than an hour for six of us to unload, and then we had a lovely dinner and celebrated the victory of getting the structure here all the way from Ohio. Now, of course, there's that small matter of assembly. So I have 120 days to get this thing up in the air so I can get reimbursed.
The first step is to lay the whole thing out. It's pretty important that it go up level to maintain stability, and we spent some time working on that. Then searching for fence posts that we can sink into the ground and lash the posts to - we found some in Soldotna for cheap - yay! Then the matter of setting up batter boards and finding the square commenced. Holy crap. That is not an easy process. Mike and I spent two (cold and rainy) days slogging around the perimeter of the high tunnel pad moving strings and finessing it into square. Making matters worse, it is very, very muddy right now - the kind of mud that sucks your boots off and renders you somewhat unsteady at all times. Not bliss by any stretch. I finally put down boards around the perimeter to make a path. Then we marked off where the posts should go meticulously with a plumb bob and a piece of wire. The next step is to sink everything into the ground. That will be very, very interesting. I'm more than a little intimidated. But for now, time to write a paper. Onward!

Adieau Olive

After four months, Wwoofer extraordinaire and a member of our family forever Olive is leaving tomorrow. Liam and I both shed a tear or two tonight (Théa surely would, too, if she understood, as she still asks for Olive's friend Isa.) It's tough because these people become such parts of your lives, and of course you know at some point they have to go on with their lives, but you'd really rather if that happened later not sooner.
I was describing to someone the whole situation with Wwoofers and how wonderful it was the other day, and they said they would feel like they needed to be a hostess. It's funny because I know I used to feel that way but somehow that shifted. Maybe it's because I am so grateful for another adult around to have conversations with and share a cup of tea. Maybe it's because it's so wonderful to watch your kids having great experiences with wonderfully inspiring young people. I don't know, but never in the time Olive has been here has it once felt uncomfortable or an inconvenience to share my home with her. That's pretty amazing. And I am so grateful for all the help she has given me - she has pickled and jammed, weeded and squashed slugs, cooked, cleaned and cared for my children, run to daycare when I suddenly realized I was late picking my child up while on deadline, done grocery runs and made me countless cups of tea. Olive has a huge and generous heart and a strong spirit, and I hope more than anything that she stays in touch and maybe someday comes back.

Liam turns 8

Eight years ago, I was arriving home with my newborn son right about now. Of course, I am incredibly proud of my son, his unique way of moving through the world, his sweet, generous nature, and the way he deeply feels everything from a piece of dramatic classical music to the value of a snuggle. He is an intense human being. I am in awe.
His birthday always makes me a bit reflective. Eight years ago, I had little idea what a journey motherhood would be. I thought it was going to be one way. I was wrong. Being Liam's mother scrambled my entire way of thinking. My very purpose in life shifted dramatically - maybe too dramatically in some regards - to Liam and his needs. At first, they were constant. Now, less so. If left to his own devices, Liam could survive on his own at this point pretty well. But he still crawls into my arms every morning and asks for a morning snuggle. I'm grateful for that. I know at some point here, he is going to grow past those tender moments. But as long as I can, I'm going to keep filling his cup with the very finest brew of love I can conjure up. And I don't regret a single second of the last eight years - they have been the best of my life. Here's to motherhood, and the amazing little infant who took me there eight years ago.

In other news - the great high tunnel adventure is moving along. Jeff Middleton came and flattened my land this week. It's huge. Awesome. As in gape-your-mouth-and-wonder-what-you-are-doing awesome. And almost the same day, Farmtek called and said my tunnel had been shipped. Zoiks. It's on its way, for real. Now I'm finding myself falling asleep with a 69-page book on hightunnel construction on my chest. What have I done.

Jobs are nuts. Life is crazy. Getting crazier all the time. Hanging on by fingertips at times. But hey, it's not boring. That is for sure.