Old Lady Eye exam.

I have basically healthy eyes for an old lady. I have cataracts, but they have advanced very little, although they may be hindering my small print reading. I have a magnifying glass I keep handy. I have a mole in the back of one eye that has to be monitored as it could change for the worse! And I have dry eye, mostly in the winter. To help that the Dr. asked me if I was interested in trying plugs. They plug the drain hole in the corner of your eye so that more tears stay on the eye instead of draining away down your nose. So I am trying them. I can tell they are there. It feels a little like something in the corner of your eye, which, of course, it is. And my eyes seem to water. Went to see the movie The Informant and the eyes pretty much handled it, but I may have them removed as they are a bit irritating. Incidentally, if The Informant is any indication of how our great spy efforts work, like the FBI, I think I am worried. Here is a guy who at first you think is just dumb and egocentric, but who turns out to be very smart and egocentric. It was entertaining, and now we know how Madoff got away with bilking millions from happy campers, and assuaging the Sec of his doing any wrong by Wall Street. What are we thinking! Sure, I will give all my money to this nice white haired man who promises me so much. What could happen!

When in doubt we ask WWMD. That is What Would Miggie Do! Miggie is the cat. She knows how to sneak around, spy on things and people, sleep in a wild rose bush, come in from outside, demand food, skipper across busy roads (so far), and recognize what good captive people we are when it comes to food and shelter. She only brings in an occasional snake, or mouse, and then it is like it she forgot! Oh, this is the house!

We could all become isolationists. Just take care of your home base, take care of your own, and squirrel away enough provisions to weather a down turn. We could also reach out to those in need, still taking care to cover your own behind, but if push comes to shove, where do you think the heart goes? To each his own! More and more, I listen to the palaver going on around me, locally, in the news, from near and afar, it is the truth that one person really can't do much else than live ones life according to one's own tenets, and hope for the best. Does anyone realize how much most of the topics of the day have been discussed, like health care, going to war, staying in war, leaving a war, illegal immigrants, church and state, and still it is just blah de blah de blah! One can only hope that humanity prevails sometime, and we save this marvelous experiment we live on, the planet. That we get back our clean air, and clean water, and a chance to live a long healthy life enjoying the natural beauty that surrounds us, if we would let it, eat salads, and obtain the salad principal to contemplate for survival for all! Aha, the salad principal. I am working on it! TBC

Poker Creek

PC is the designation for the Northernmost Land Post in the United States. If you climb up on the ridge that looms above the Crossing, you can see the border for miles, a cut in the growing stuff, wide enough to be obvious to the naked eye. There is a good breeze up there as well, so it is a good evening hike to zone out before locking up and sleep.

When we first got there, our first need was water. So we loaded the containers into the car, and drove up the road until we came to a culvert that had a good volume of water cascading out of the business end. We both had to hold the containers as they were big, the water heavy, and coming fast. Whup wandered around sniffing out interesting things. So filling the containers became the norm until a tanker came up and filled the holding tank. Wondrous was the fact that it was cold, clear and unpolluted water! We tidied up our lair for the summer. Whup settled in right away, and would watch and listen to the marmots that lived in the rocks up behind the cabin. There were weasels that showed up off and on, and ptarmigans. Later the place would be a mass of wild flowers. I tried to identify and photograph as many as I could.

We started our routines, and walks were part of them. There were black bears in the area, but we usually saw droppings rather than the bears. I am sure Whup could smell them wherever he sniffed. Behind the cabin, up the road, in Canada, was a good climb to what we called Cat Pass as there were a couple of abandoned Caterpillar graders on top. You could see a long way in both directions, and on off time we would walk the ridge North or South. On the other side was a winding road coming from the Dawson City and the Yukon River with a very steep grade. If we wanted a good stiff walk, we went down this for a bit, and then back up to the top, and back to the cabin. The dog always accompanied us, ranging out sniffing up lemmings, or bear scat. Later in the season would be huckleberries that I would pick with Whups help. He would sit above me and watch for bears, and I would pick. Honest, he would woof if he saw any below me snuffling up berries also. I would go back to the cabin then and leave them to their feeding.

Finally all the Custom people were at their posts. We were not told that the IO had a drinking problem. The Canadian was a young man, newly trained and new to the remote site, and liked to talk. TBC

Alaska Story Continued

At one point, we started noticing that the road looked newly churned up, but passable, and we kept going. It took us awhile, driving by old rotting dredges, tumbled down cabins, and more gravel road. We came to a junction that indicated that we could keep driving East, or go North to Eagle. Eagle is a native town on the Yukon River. Actually, I think there was only a sign that pointed to Eagle.

Well, I actually got out the Atlas and can sound more knowledgeable now. We were on the Taylor Hwy from Tok to the Eagle cutoff, and then on Top of the World Hwy to the border with the Yukon Territory. The next landfall was Action Jackson's, and a landing strip. Then three miles up the road was the border and our cabin for the summer. There were three cabins, two in the U.S. and one in Canada. The other cabin in the U.S. was for the immigration officer. We unpacked, and examined our surroundings. The Canadian was not there yet, nor was the IO. We checked out our facilities which consisted of a propane tank, a chemical toilet in the bathroom, and a water tank. The tank was empty, but there were big plastic water containers that we could fill. I will continue this soon, but have to go get dinner going, which consists of popcorn. TBC

Alaska Story

My husband had been working for Customs on the island where we lived, and thought about branching out to another place. He heard they had an opening on the border between the Yukon and Alaska, and applied for that job. He got it, and we planned to go to Alaska for the summer, not knowing just what we would get into, but looking forward to the jaunt. We drove up in our 1982 Audi diesel, small plastic kayak on the top full of stuff we might need, and the dog. We had someone house sit for us on the island, and took off ready to enjoy the trip and the summer. A different venue, so to speak.

Things were great, and we took the Cassier Highway, it supposedly being a shorter way to Alcan. We would stop and swim in cold lakes with the dog, look at everything we could, and at Campgrounds we would hear about the bears that tore someone's tent apart. We tried to stay in the motels that appeared out of no where on the way. We have slept in the car, but it was not great. The motels were really pretty scrappy and old, and you could hear critters tearing around under the floor screeching either in pain or in lust. Tour buses would roar past us, or send up dust in front of us, and at one gas station we were warned about the buggies. Oh, yah, OK, and what were those, and we were told, 'oh, you know, them buggies!' We found out on the ALCAN as we were flying along, oblivious to much other than the gravel roads were pretty smooth for gravel, and then we hit a drop off, no warned of, and steep. We felt like we were flying, but we did land fairly smoothly with a clunk, and started slowing down for more reasons then self preservation. No, the car was OK, but the gravel was now deep dirt! The dirt is probably what kept us from breaking the car in two. And ahead of us were graders, huge graders, and what we found out were buggies. They are those enormous machines pulled behind other huge machines that scoop up dirt, fill their hopper, and take the dirt to other places and dump that dirt. There were no flaggers, and anything, and then we saw someone waving at us to come over this way. They pointed to a rocky tilting road scratched out of the side of the road that was our detour. No one was in the least surprised that we had done what we had done as no one cared! Well, that would explain the wrecks we would see off the road earlier in our trip.

So we did manage to get through Alaskan/Yukon resurfacing of roads in the Far North. And onto Alcan, on the border between the Yukon and Alaska out in the muskeg middle of no where short black fir tree North. We were put up in a spare apt. for my husband's training so we could move on up to Poker Creek for the summer. This is the northern most land post in the U. S. Whoopee! There were interesting things at Alcan to absorb, like where not to walk the dog, etc, the dump area where one year they tried to raise pigs so they could eat the Post's garbage, but in penning them in, they made nice meals for the local bears. There was water very close in the muskeg and firs. So the dog and I stayed close. My husband did training, working at the Post, learning just what goes on at the Crossing. And he met the people working there, and what was what. On guy wore his gun, and was told, so if it went off it would should him in the jewels. There was a little neat lady who ran the Post Office, which was a tiny shack out in front if the Post Bldg. She had a great story about trapping with her husband some time ago, and being told that the little ground squirrels would make a good project. Her husband didn't last long. She trapped them all summer and skinned them and prepared the tiny pelts. When they took their catch to the trader in the Fall she was asked what were these things, and when she told them, she was informed that she had been duped! They weren't worth a plugged nickel. I think people could and would go stir crazy in that place.

The people who came through were mostly locals, travelers, tour busses, German's on motorcycles with fishing rods, German tour busses called Papa Bears, and Baby Bears, and hippies, and a few people lost wandering back and forth between the border Posts, which in actuality were miles apart. My husband got acar with two young fellows in it that wove their way up to the stop sign, singing, and laughing. They were both high on pot, and oblivious to much at all, and still had enough to be confiscated. When told that they owed a fine, and if they didn't have it, their car would be confiscated in place of the money, and they were on their own in the wilderness, they magically found the money!

We soon moved up to the boundary Post at Poker Creek via Tok, AK in our Audi sedan that had received much punishment on the road, and would receive more. We loaded up on groceries at Tok, and turned North on another really scabby dirt road, and wondered. When we stopped for a pee break for dog and people, we found a pile of caribou legs, fairly newly removed, that added up to 13. The dog was fascinated. Further on our travels the road disappeared. It had looked like it was scrapped in an orderly fashion, and then it looked like it just ended. We stopped, thought, and decided to creep along on what was before us hoping we would find the other part of the road. Maybe in 5 miles, after passing a car that had been pushed off to the side of the dirt, we came to another area that resembled a road. Soon we came to Chicken, and could stop for something to eat, although it was really a bar that was open. We got a piece of pie, heard people talking about the local bears, which were blond grizzlies, it sounded like, and big. There was a gas station there, outhouses, and the reason it was called Chicken is because no one knew how to spell ptarmigan, or so we were told. It could have been that you were a chicken if you didn't go on from there. But we proceeded, hoping the road would stay a road.

Jumping Ahead

My bipolar daughter, as I mentioned previously, ended up in prison. She must have made the detectives rub their hands in glee as they decided to use her to catch drug people. She was so flaky and needy. I don't think she really was doing drugs as such, probably just passing them on. Her soporific was alcohol, much cheaper and easier to get. It also was like poison to her. It did not take much to get her crazy. I think she probably tried things, but she was probably a conduit for drug distribution.

When she had gone through a drying out program, rehab had gotten her pretty straight, and we then helped her find an apartment and paid a few months rent hoping this would get things going. It was there that she supposedly met someone who knocked on her window and therein started her drug distribution gig. Anyhow, she ended up in prison, the clanging huge metal door, and a quick goodbye to us.

Her time in the big house, Purdy, near Gig Harbor, was going to be five years. We had a lawyer of sorts, but it was all pretty pathetic, and routine, I am sure, for the officers involved. We as a family, rallied behind her, and her Grandmother even baling her out by using her house as collateral. We were away at the time all this happened, or we would have stopped that from happening. Her Grandmother was one who just loved all her family and would do anything to help. But since she was out and about, we all had to work at keeping her on the straight and narrow, which was pretty risky at times. If she skipped out on things, her Grandmother could lose her house, and we did not want that to happen. You get pretty fatalistic in your everyday life, and pray a lot.

Because things were so crowded at the time in Purdy, our daughter ended up in a closet as a room with another prisoner. She also told us she got to know the infamous Ruth who chopped up her ferry boat captain husband and put him in the cesspool. She started being her intelligent self as she couldn't get any of her addictive things going. When she made up her mind to do something, she could be so smart and cool and normal. She got involved in the things she could in prison, but really wanted out. One detail she was on was cleaning in the kitchen. She was under the greasy grill, with a dirty bucket, filled with dirty water, and scrubbing the grill with a wire brush. I am sure she probably did a good job at it, and being small, it was easy for her to be under there, but someone peered down at her through the grill and told her to speed it up! She called up to them, "a mind is a precious thing to lose!" She got in trouble for that.

We would go and visit when we could, and one time her Grandfather went with us. We had to be screened for bad stuff, and searched. Grandpa almost had to take off his trousers cause he kept setting off the metal detector. Her Grandfather was a retired Judge. How ironic is that!

Being set on getting out of prison daughter got as good as she could be, and got sent to a camp where they take teams of prisoners out to work on trails and parks in the woods. They told us she would be back at the big house in no time. She wasn't. She made it and they even let her out early for good behavior. I went to visit one weekend. We got to be in a trailer together, and talk and worked on knitting. I brought a cake because it was her birthday. It felt very weird being fenced in, but I tried to just relax. It is not to say that everything worked out for our daughter because she still had problems, but she did get married and had a son. The marriage was problematic as she met the guy in a halfway house, and he was an armed robber. So you see, things can actually get worse, or seemingly so, but she did not get into the trouble she had before. She just had more manic times and depression times, and times that were fraught with paranoia. It goes on! and next I will write about nicknames!

Current Event: The deer and the peahens

My husband and I ride our bikes almost every day. We have a regular route that we take that gives us six miles. There are those that think we were pretty much weenies for only doing that much for mileage, but it has a couple of hills in it, and at least we do the ride! The other day, on our usual route, one of the hills that takes us near a park, is residential, and backs up to the park. It is an interesting street as the deer and the people coexist very nicely, and there are a lot of deer. The last month has seen the arrival of fawns. So on our recent ride, we noted one yard had about six or seven deer in it, including maybe four fawns. The house owner was tossing apples to the deer, and they were partaking nicely. We watched for a bit, and then rode on up the hill. My husband had been taking deer pictures with his handy little camera, and having taken quite a few, up the hill we went. We take a drink at the top, and then we start back down the hill. Mileage, mileage! More deer were walking leisurely across the street both ways.

My husband said to me, 'wait, what is that?' Across the street among the deer traffic were six peahens, squabbling to each other, sounding like a bunch of demented chickens, and the deer were reacting like they had never seen such a sight before! We slowly drifted down the street on our bikes, and then stopped across from the peahens, who were up the curb and in the grass pecking around a tree trunk, and ignoring the deer. The deer reacted to any movement on the peahens part by leaping backwards or wheeling in the air, but not going far from the peahens. The peahens just kept cackling and pecking and moving slowly toward the woods.

We watched for awhile laughing at the sight, and observing deer behavior, who were not paying any attention to us. I think we could have walked right through the whole group of them and they wouldn't have noticed us. It was a case of existing or being invisible to the birds and the deer. Ah, how nice it is to know there are places that this can happen. Someone will get perturbed and put a [stop to it] I am sure. One can only hope not. If I weren't afraid of the dark, I would creep up into that park to listen to the night noises by all that is living there. Or I could take one of my Fairy Dust Balls with me, which by the way, don't seem to be doing the glow that was promised. Probably why they were on sale in my Gardener Catalogue. I am such sucker for anything that says fairy!

Now I have introduced being afraid of the dark, which is not entirely true but I do suspect there are creepy crawly things out there after dark. Especially at 9500 feet in Colorado. There are bears, foxes and coyotes. Well, there coyotes here in my place in Washington by the water. Every once in awhile you can hear them ky-ying to each other as they cruise Skyline looking for stray puppies, and locked out cats or rabbits. But not for awhile. Be safe peahens, and sleep well small fawns. My fairies will look out for you.

More Being Young

Christmas: I think my Mother really needed to make Christmas a special time. It was important to have the right size tree, and sort of a ritual to decorating with all the ornaments that reached back through the years. My brothers and I had to wait up the stairs while my Dad oohed and ahed over what was under the tree. Special to the whole family were boxes from our relatives in California. They always sent Graber's Green olives, and oranges, and cute little gifts. It was connecting to my Mom's side of the family. My Father's side lived in Seattle, and we saw them often. I would stay with Grandpa and Granma when my parents went away for a weekend or longer.

Grandpa would play games with me, let me take all his cigarettes out of his cigarette keeper so I could use it as a cash register. I would cut out paper money, and have him buy things so I could charge him and give him change. His favorite record was "I Love A Lassie" sung by Harry Lauder. I would listen to that record with him, sitting on his lap. Granma [or Mema], always fed me alphabets with butter, and creamed peas with butter. I found out much later that the peas were actually pea soup undiluted. I loved that and think of it as comfort food.

We lived up on Queen Anne Hill, and Granma and Grandpa lived on Capital Hill. Mom always drove the same way, and we would pass a house with an upstairs window that was put in as a diamond. It was a small square window tipped up on point. Mom told me that Nikos Kazantazakis lived there. I had no idea what that meant but I surmised in my little girl pea brain that it must have been someone mysterious and weird because of that window. Now I think it may have been an author. One time I had to stay with my grandparents for a week, and they put me in school which was a block away from the apartment on Capital Hill. I had to sit in the front row in looking at the teachers desk and the teacher. All I can remember, and it was not anything I learned, was being asked by the boy sitting next to me to pass a note to the girl sitting past me on the other side. The teacher had left the room, and before she left she told us not to talk, and to sit quietly and do nothing. She asked if we had done anything when she came back, and someone told her I had passed a note. I was speechless. I was told to stand in a corner. I could hear quiet laughing. I had been set up! I was humiliated and miserable. I never forgot that event. Scarred for life. I felt stupid, and was because I obviously did not learn anything. Nor did I make a friend. I don't think I told anyone in my family either.

So, living in Seattle, on Queen Anne Hill, I was pretty much on my own a lot. My brothers were older, and I had friends who lived near and would ride bicycles with me, play dolls with me, and paper dolls. I read by myself, and I liked doing that in my room curled up on my bed. Two friends who would play with me were Valerie and Carrie. My memories are faded, and I wish I could remember more of that time. But I do remember the household things. My Mother spent a lot of time in bed. I did not understand it, but I did know where to find her. My Father was in the South Pacific in World War II. We then had a wonderful woman named Maude who sort of ran the house. I knew to go to her when I needed things, food, or comforting. Maude was the one who told me my Mitsey dog had been hit by a car and killed. I also had a cat named Mittens who I treated as a four legged baby and would dress in doll clothes and then forget her. She would just sleep in my doll bed with a dress on, until she would drag herself downstairs thumping her back legs in that doll dress. Mom or Maude would find her and free her from the clothes.

Reading was very important to me. I read the Nancy Drew mysteries. I read the Book of Knowledge from end to end once when I was sick in bed. I had Scarlet Fever when I was about 7 or 8, and had to stay in bed for a month. Mom would bring a book a day up to me and I would read about everything alphabetically. I was a Brownie then, and had been stuffing envelopes with red feathers, a charity campaign, and felt woozy. I guess I keeled over with a fever, and was taken home to bed. The Dr. came to the house to attend to me! Wow, different times. I read the book about the Brownies, the little gnome type of brownie. I also read some books that my Mom gave me about some weird stuff I can't remember now, but there was a yin and yang symbol on the cover of the book.

To Be Continued!