Trailer Wife

We have been without internet for the last week. Unsurprisingly, this has caused quite a bit of teeth-gnashing, bickering and general agony for our household. What did we do before checking email sixty or seventy times a day filled our days? Not to mention keeping up to date with the old blog. So... I called the University technical support this morning, quite indignant, looking for answers.

The chap on the phone was a little evasive, and finally gave me the number of a technical security officer to call, assuring me that the problem might be solved there. Technical security?? So I call, and am told that our line has been disconnected do to a copyright infringement complaint.

UH OH.

Of course we've all heard the dire warnings and public service announcements about illegal downloads. But who really pays attention to those things? It's just so easy to find the entire season of True Blood, download it, and rip it to my ipod (it's the only way I can get my ass up at 5:30 and to the gym... the promise of a new episode waiting for me on the elliptical machine). Everyone is doing it, right?

The security officer (whose name is Chirk, by the way, which rhymes with...) informed me that bit torrent downloads are illegal, punishable by huge fines and prison terms, and that I am basically a terrible person. While he's yammering on, my heart is racing, flashes of Sam being summarily fired for internet impropriety on University bandwidth. The phone cradled against my neck, I am frantically trashing all torrents, software and files that might incriminate me. But after the short lecture, Chirk bade me to send him an email promising that I have deleted the pirated file and swearing I will never go near a peer-to-peer site again before he would reinstate our internet connection. And though I am a little suspicious that he might have been jerking my chain a little, and had no real authority to do such a thing, it worked. Back to itunes for me.

The zinger about it was that the file I was busted for downloading was an album I don't even want to admit here to having been interested in! What a waste. Note to the torrent-savy: Music is targeted MUCH more than tv or video. So don't seed that shit. Not if you're on a network with a enthusiastic security tech.

Anyways... other than flirting with a life of internet crime, the days are pretty boring. The snow falls for a few hours, and then melts. It's very anticlimactic. My class is going well, despite my almost constant embarrassing outbursts in group discussion. My first story has been workshopped and I wasn't laughed out of the room - so that's a relief.

A high point this week: I went to my first "Zumba" dance workout with a friend (the fact that I have someone to call "friend" almost more exciting than the workout). Zumba fuses latin, belly, and hip hop dancing in one cardio-packed hour. Having no rhythm, and no previous dance experience of any kind, it was, in a word, entertaining. But the surprise was that I really enjoyed it (as long as I avoided my reflection in the mirror and the accompanying shame).

A low point this week: Not sure what's worse... that Gus chipped his front tooth or that it took me two days to notice. I'm pretty sure it happened when he dove off of the chair we have positioned in front of the window. It's become a regular thing with him - climbing. This morning, as I was chatting with Chirk, he quietly pushed the ottoman over to the end table, climbed on top and, when I finally noticed, stood several feet off the ground looking at me with a combination of defiance and pride. I said a little prayer that he'll forestall walking until he's 3 or 4.

In the post-Revolution French Republican calendar, the autumnal equinox was "New Year's Day." I've always agreed with this notion - that the beautiful withering of fall seems like more of a beginning than some random day in the dead of winter. And it seems oddly appropriate in Fairbanks today, because we received our first (albeit wimpy) snow shower. I tried to capture it in the photo above, and if you look really closely you can see blurred flakes. It didn't stick, but the forecast calls for more of the same this week, and I am secretly (and foolishly?) looking forward to a winter white landscape.


With the snow comes a new perspective on Alaska. Up to now, the weather really hasn't been that much different from Oregon - or Scotland for that matter. And so, life didn't seem that much different. But this morning, sitting on the porch gazing sentimentally into the rainy, slushy drizzle, I suddenly felt myself to be very far north. Very far from the world as I know it. I have no idea what winter (read: darkness, boredom, unimaginable cold, isolation, weight gain, etc) will bring. In my customary way, I have become very cavalier about the whole thing. But right now I'm feeling slightly under-prepared. Out-matched. Panicky.

We were minding our own business on Saturday morning when, out of nowhere, this white limo appears in front of the Honors College next door. In case you can't read the magnetic signage slapped on the side, it says "ARRRRficial 2009 Talk Like a Pirate Day Limo." When I got over being stunned that some one paid money for such a thing, I was accosted by two or so dozen geeky academics in costume. One man who frequents copper lane (he's a physicist, which is almost enough said) was wearing a satin overcoat, red tights and Tevas, a table scarf on his head and a wimpy felt eye patch tucked under his bifocals. It was kind of wonderful.

Turns out, the guy who created TLAPD hails from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and had made a special trip up to Fairbanks to celebrate! So I instantly felt connected in some weird way. On the schedule was a pirate linguistics breakfast (which was taking place at the Honors College), a book signing at Barnes and Noble, a parade of pirates down University Way, all ending in a Pirate Ball in the Wood Center that evening. I badly wanted to go, if only to document the events in ironic black and white. But Sam couldn't get into the spirit. We went to Lowe's instead. Hmmm.

I've had a few days like these...



Thanks to Nicole for the link. It was a laugh sorely needed.

Okay. Try to look past the (mind you, adorable) tot and focus on the trees behind him. Yellow! YELLOW. Yellow everywhere. One night I went to bed and the trees were lush and moodily green. And then I woke up the next morning and they were this crazy shade of Big Bird Yellow. I've been trying to capture their intensity all week, but I think it might be impossible. Because part of the Yellow experience in Fairbanks is the fragrance of the suddenly autumn air (Pinot Gris, to my nose), the hooting and calling of busy birds preparing for the flight south, and the soft sighing of a music-video style wind that billows my hair in just the right way. After 28 years spent in Western Oregon, land of the (formerly) most beautiful fall landscapes in the known universe, I am, in a word, agog.

Smeared against the stately evergreen, these swaths of vibrant yellow seem almost indecent. The shock of it has been such a lovely surprise. Everyone I meet tells me that there hasn't been a fall so warm and long in years. Of course, these pronouncements are immediately followed by dire warnings of what is to come. Snow by October, they promise.

As a side note, the week we left Scotland Aberdeen was hit with Old Testament style rainfall. So I'm pretty sure that the god's are gracing our every move.

For a few days, I really thought we'd hit the swine flu jackpot. Just in time for my 4th wedding anniversary, I fell very very ill. Thus, no blogging. No writing. No fun.

But the house has, thankfully, recovered, and the H1N1 hysteria (thank you frantic internet searches) has passed. By some miracle, neither Sam nor Gus got the bug as badly as I did. And, knock on wood, things have returned to normal on Copper Lane.

I have been working like a dog on my first graduate workshop piece, leaving me both exhausted and in varying degrees of panic. It's been more than a year since I was in a college class, and man am I rusty. I am also, as it turns out, shockingly socially awkward. I spent the first class ducked into a corner, speaking to no one, assuming that everyone else (all having been acquainted as new members of the MFA program) were looking in my direction and wondering if the old lady got lost or something. It gave me flashbacks of my first day of tenth grade, which did not help matters. And then, while we were discussing a story by a writer slated to visit Fairbanks this spring, I decided to make a smart, cynical but open-minded, breezy, brilliant comment. Just went I opened my mouth, with all eyes on me, I had one of those half-cough half-sneeze half-throat seizure things, where you have to cough uncontrollably for five or ten minutes, eyes streaming, nose running, gasping for breath. I died. DIED. And then I came back to life and died again of humiliation.

Needles to say, my witty comment was left unsaid. I'm hoping to redeem myself in tomorrow night's class, if I work up the courage to show my face.

More blogging soon.

One of the blogs I read regularly, Mighty Girl, challenged readers to come up with a "Mighty List," of 100 things to do before you die. This lucky chick convinced Intel (yes, that Intel) to sponsor her list, and they are now paying for her to complete it this year. So I pretty much hate her.

Feeling decidedly uninspired lately, and a sucker for listing of any kind, I sat down tonight and did one of my own.

1. Ride an elephant
2. Make a quilt out of Gusser's baby clothes
3. Go to Germany with my sister
4. Learn how to ride a horse
5. Build a piece of furniture
6. Write a novel
7. Get a story published in the New Yorker
8. Speak conversational french
9. Summer in the Italian Riviera
10. Grow a garden
11. Give a random deserving person $100
12. Take a gourmet cooking class
13. Paint a portrait of myself
14. Attend Mom's Weekend at Gusser's university
15. Buy myself an amazing piece of jewelry
16. Get a full sleeve tattoo
17. Have short hair for a year
18. Wear a sari in India
19. Public reading at Powell's Bookstore
20. Vacation on Loch Muick with the Dukes
21. Design and build a house
22. Enter and finish a 10k race
23. Midnight dancing on the Summer Solstice
24. Stand on top of the Empire State Building
25. Safari in Africa
26. Finish a Sunday NYT crossword without cheating
27. Sleep in a hammock on the beach
28. Learn how to sail a boat by myself
29. Road trip through the southern states
30. Read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel
31. Read the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Gus
32. Attend an opera in Milan
33. Go spelunking
34. Have a personal audience with the Dalai Lama
35. Do a Boudoir photo shoot
36. Learn how to pick a lock
37. Bungee jump
38. Take Gus to Disney World
39. Write a screen play
40. Stand on the Great Wall of China
41. Visit Anwar in Pakistan
42. Take singing lessons
43. Jump off a bridge into the Santiam river
44. See the fjords in Norway
45. Host a glamorous Christmas party
46. Learn how to belly dance
47. Stomp grapes in Napa
48. Record my grandmother's memories of childhood
49. Sleep in a teepee
50. Ride in a helocopter
51. Visit the Outer Hebrides
52. See the Palio di Siena
53. Construct a drive-in theater in my back yard
54. Own a Le Crueset pot
55. Look through an enormous telescope
56. Hold a political office
57. Own a pet
58. Write for a newspaper
59. Work in a factory
60. Get my godfather stoned
61. Go ice fishing
62. Hot springs skinny dipping
63. Hike the Pacific Crest Trail
64. Wear a kimono
65. Write a song
66. See northern lights
67. Finish my wedding album
68. Create a cool baby book for Gus
69. Volunteer in a nursing home
70. Return to Scotland with Gus
71. Own an original piece of art for every room in my house
72. Go back to Vernazza for our 25th wedding anniversary
73. March in a gay pride parade
74. Go dog-sledding
75. Take the Inca trail to Machu Picchu
76. See the Valley of the Kings
77. Be able to do the most difficult yoga postures, and make it look easy
78. Go to the Grand Canyon
79. Sleep in an igloo
80. Visit an expensive psychic
81. Produce a home movie of my life
82. Learn how to use a pressure cooker
83. Visit the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic
84. Take Gus trick-or-treating
85. Shopping spree at Powell's Bookstore
86. Be an extra in a film
87. Send a message in a bottle
88. Sit on a jury
89. Go wine tasting in South Africa
90. Find one of those secret behind-the-waterfall caves
91. Spend Christmas in a tropical place
92. Take a hot air balloon ride
93. Fly first class
94. Ring a church bell
95. Open a used bookstore/coffee shop
96. Memorial day reunion in Pacific City
97. Create a fitting tribute to my father and his crazy family
98. Be the "cool" aunt
99. Be unafraid of making grand gestures
100. Anonymously fund a child's education through college

So I think I am possibly the last person in America to get that Tina Fey is funny. I resisted the 30 Rock craze like everything else popular and award-winning. That's the closet elitist in me. And like everything else (Harry Potter, Ikea, tofu), I eventually succumb only to rave like an idiot.

One of the splurge purchases (if you can call $1000 on a Sears card splurging) we made after coming home from Scotland was a nice TV and a Blue Ray player. Because who needs a couch when you have Terminator 2 in high def? And one of the features of this blessed machine is a live link to Netflix, where you can download and stream TV and movies from your queue. God I love technology! So - we are FINALLY catching up with (what turns out to be) some of the funniest writing on television.

"Never go with a hippie to a second location," was second only to the Teen Wolf Bar Mitzvah music video (both in season 2). Holy Hell.

But it's only been a year. Today we are celebrating Gus' first birthday, again. Before we left Oregon we had a little shindig for him so that my family could be there for his all-important photo op.

Today it is just the three of us. We had a leisurely morning and went to Pioneer Park (formerly Alaska Land) for lunch. One of the things we've grown accustomed to in Fairbanks is something called "Alaska time." Basically, you take the time it normally takes to get something done and multiply by 5. We ordered a burger and a chicken strips basket at a rustic little shack in the park, and waited a full 40 minutes for our order to appear at the sinister-looking pick up window in the back. 40 minutes! I was trying so hard to be cool about it... "we're not in any hurry," etc. But by the time we'd been waiting for 30 minutes I was swearing loudly. The other patrons just sort of looked at me and shook their heads.

When we finally finished lunch (which, I must admit, was delicious, mostly because the fries were WAY overfried), I took Gus on the old-fashioned carousel. He liked it at first, until the horses picked up speed. And then he crawled up my neck and howled. As much as I wanted him to smile sweetly for the camera (held by Sam on the sidelines), his death-grip on my neck was almost as good a memory. He has grown up so fast this year, but in moments like these, with his face buried in my hair, he feels like a baby again.


One year ago, we were sitting in the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary maternity ward, sharing a dinner of McDonalds burgers and (underfried) fries with our sweet friends Amanda and Gavin. To assuage our fast-food-guilt, Sam and I congratulated ourselves on thinking of such an American meal for the debut of our American Boy. Amanda, heavily pregnant herself, exclaimed at the sight of us with her customary (and much loved) pith: "Holy Shit." I totally knew what she meant.



My labor had been short, and I remember feeling bamboozled, sitting with Our Son in a little plastic box next to my bed. Pregnancy is so disarming... you wait and wait and wait until, at some point, you're not sure this culminating event will ever actually happen. And then it does, and, in the most definitive way imaginable, you are.... NOT READY. I didn't love being pregnant, but gazing into Gus' tiny, disgruntled, wrinkly old man face, I would have happily traded a few months of bloated peace for his sudden, enigmatic presence. We spent hours studying each other warily. I remember one moment in the middle of the night... he stirred in his sleep, waking me up, and turned his head to look at me through his clear plastic box as if to say, "Oh. You're still here, then?" He pursed his lips, sighed through his scrunched up nose, and went back to sleep.

A year later, it still feels surreal. Sometimes, when I'm walking alone, I'll forget for a moment that it happened... Sam, Scotland, natural childbirth (that's right folks, I didn't even take Tylenol). The wife person and mommy person will melt away, and I'll greet this old, original self with something like surprise. We'll reminisce about people we knew, places we'd lived. Moments that only we can recall. Like that day in 1994 when I drove, alone, to the top of Washburn Heights to watch the sun set and listen to Pearl Jam. The way Harvest Peach Yoplait tastes while standing in front of the open fridge on a hot day. Or when, after my first day on the job at Hasty Freeze, I fell asleep in my grease-stained clothes and had a terrifying dream about deep-fat-fryers and bare feet.

I feel wistful, coming out of these little spells. But never regretful. Because something happened this year that I never would have expected. Once I got over the shock of his arrival, I found that I was utterly and irrevocably conquered by my tiny offspring. I am at once enslaved by this love, and also inspired to be the best possible version of ME, in all my incarnations. I named the kid August Wolfgang, for Christ's sake. I've got a responsibility to make sure he can outwit the little schoolyard shits who will inevitably make it an issue.

But then again, if he stays THIS good looking his whole life, he won't need any help from me.

And by that, I mean the act of fleeing. Geese are cluttering the Fairbanks skies these days, meandering in messy south-bound order. Being such a newbie northerner, it's hard not to feel a little foolish and abandoned. As if these honking masses are calling me to my senses. But on days like today, winter seems very far off. It's been approaching 70 all week, with glazed-pottery-blue skies and the overwhelming scent of cut grass (mowed for the last time?). And while it is extremely pleasant, the anticipation of winter, filled with both curiosity and dread, looms large.

I've been reading a few Alaskan blogs lately, gleaning both local wisdom and blogging techniques. Scribbit (www.scribbit.blogspot.com) is a good example of the kind of successful blog I'd like to eventually grow into. If you're interested in blogging, Alaska, or the practice of barefoot running, go take a look!

I just spotted the gnarliest tranny in my fav little FBX coffee shop. Seriously, I thought at first that it must be a joke. This lady could have been a lumberjack in a former life--chiseled forearms, cut calves, gourd-sized adam's apple. She sat alone, thumbing through a copy of Glamour magazine, pushing the crumbs of a bran muffin back and forth on her plate, her knees modestly pressed together below a short jean skirt (frayed) and ankles crossed (those pumps MUST have been a size 13). I looked around, thinking that there might be a crowd of roughnecks nearby with a video camera. A bachelor party, maybe. Everyone else in the place was trying as hard as they could to stare inconspicuously.

And the winner is.... "Frozen Mice."