Winter in Fairbanks

Winter in Fairbanks is: Enjoying the warm snuggles of loved ones while sitting around the glowing hearth...My mouth watering over the pleasant tang of last summer's smoked salmon while my nose twitches at the aroma of fresh baked bread cooking in the kitchen...Laughing together at old stories of adventure from summers past. Nestling among warm blankets while enjoying a good book. These images sooth my head as the cool breeze of autumn enshroud me and the sun dips ever lower in the sky. HOWEVER, these anesthetizing images are ALL CRUEL LIES, LIES LIES!! Don't let such BS fool you.

By the time February rolls around the true pain of the season racks my bones. The following is a true accounting of my home-life last weekend. (Really its a long winded RANT that hopefully will expel it from my system.) Read On if you dare...But if you find that I have included you in my accounting of events please realize that the emotions expressed are no more accurate in describing reality than the ones which "soothed my mind" this previous autumn. My hope is that they will bring a laugh to your lips and I certainly don't mean to burn you with my cabin fever steam.


BZZZZZZZzz. Pulling myself from the tropical beach surf I"m fishing in dreamland I grope in the darkness for the aggravating alarm clock. Extending my center of gravity beyond the warmth of my covers earns me a somersaulting tumble out of bed onto my ass along with two nice gashes on my shins as they scrape the corner of the night stand. My fingers manage to find the "off" button on the infuriating, buzzing box before I am able to obliterate the thing with my fist. Friday morning...The beginning of another beautiful day in paradise!

Pulling on my pants and wool shirt I glance to check the outside temperature being displayed on my laptop's glowing screen. Minus 55 degrees, a little colder than when I went to sleep. I stumble into the bathroom, relieve the night's pressures, brush my teeth and take the handful of pills that the doctor has ordered me to consume in my morning ritual of Paying homage to eternal life. I wander into the kitchen, grab a cup of luke warm coffee left over from my daughters' earlier departure and head out the door to feed my Berretta its morning pint of power steering fluid. The blast of cold knocks the sleep from my eyes better than the coffee and I manage to get the Berretta groaning with life. The steering fluid almost lets me turn the wheel but the limited control really doesn't bother me as I drive to work... It is impossible to see more than about 25 feet through the milky ice-fog anyway.

Noon-time arrives...It's time to go home for lunch and let the dog out so that he doesn't crap on the floor. I can tell the sun is shining because the ice-fog is now luminescing and aggravating my low-grade headache. I leave the car idling in the driveway in the unreasonable hope that its interior might warm-up to a point where I won't see my breath when I get back into it. The door-knob of the house burns my ungloved hand as I turn it and Scrub, not recognizing me in my fur hat, barks and sheds clumps of dog hair all over the kitchen as I enter. Kicking his hairy ass out the door to do his bushiness I open the refridgerator in hopes of finding some pastrami and salami for sandwich fixings. All I find is some slimy chicken that has been moldering inside since the last time my wife went shopping. Now I remember...I had asked her to pick up some pastrami but she had returned with only chicken saying, " I looked all over the store for pastrami but they didn't have any so I got this." Grumbling to myself I grab the slimy chicken and head to the bread box. No bread!!! Screw it, I haven't done enough work to deserve lunch anyway. My frustration worsens my headache so I send my boss an email informing her that I won't be in for the afternoon. What the hell.. I have about 1500 hours of sick leave accrued anyway and I won't ever get to use it unless I get lucky and get cancer or some other long lingering malady...Not much chance of that, since the friggin doctor makes me take all those damn pills every morning!

Settling in for an early start on the weekend I turn the radio on. Bush is drawling on in a Texas accent, reassuring all the good Americans that their blood is buying Iraq democracy, not oil for his buddies. Condalisa Rice is babbling that despite all their protests, the Palestinian democracy will elect a government that will kiss and makeup with the Jews rather than nuke them from the face of the earth. Our good Alaskan legislature announces that under the priorities of their agenda they will link pot-smokers with meth-lab managers and thus put them behind bars irregardless of how the state constitution is writtnen. However, they are not sure if they will have time this session to deal with less important issues like the the natural gas pipeline or the billion dollar shortfall in the public retirement fund. Turning off the radio I lie down in hopes of combating my headache.

"Bringgggg...Ring...Ring."

"Where the hell is that damn telephone anyway? Hello..." I say, after finally finding the handset buried under a pile of old news papers.

"Hi Uncle Tom?...This is Chris. My mom and I are working on filling out some application for a scholarship and wonder if you would write a letter of recommendation for me"

"Ugh...Yah...Sure I can do that. What scholarship are you applying for?"

"Ugh hold on a minute...Ma, what's the name of the scholarship?..Mumble,rustle,mumble,mumble...Uncle Tom? Its some scholarship program for tuition at UAF or something and I guess I need letters of recommendation from three people and one of them needs to be from a non-educated...Ugh..I mean a non-educator person, so I thought I would ask you.

"Sure Chris, I will write one for you. When do you need it by?"

"Ugh...Mom...When do they need it by? Mumble, squeak, mumble...I guess they need it by next Wednesday or something. If you could finish before the end of the weekend that would be great."

I hang-up the phone and think, "Hmm...This is the honor student that once pulled a glowing red-hot beer can out of a campfire with his bare hands because his cousin had suggested he do so. This is my nephew that I haven't seen for a couple of years because he has been barricaded in his cave of smelly under-wear playing video games. This is the nephew that avoided taking gym class in high school by taking it as a CORRESPONDENCE class. This is going to be one interesting creative writing project this weekend!! Maybe I should just have his mother write the letter and I can just sign it. " Realizing that such spiteful thinking is probably the product of my foul mood and not really indicative of my true feeling towards the boy, I direct my thoughts to other matters.

My youngest daughter comes home and heads straight to the basement where she dumps her smelly wrestling clothes into the wash machine. By the time she comes back up-stairs she is already engrossed in lovey-dovey conversation via cell phone with her boyfriend who is away at college. (The same cell phone for which I had seen the bill two days prior and for which my wife swears is a much smaller than bill we used to get before we got this "great new calling plan"...As if this will be good news to my ears. ) Leah interrupts her mush talk long enough to inform me that the water is barely trickling into the wash machine and Wonders if our pipes are freezing or something. After making a quick check that our pipes were not on the verge of bursting, I set myself to the task of making dinner.

"What are you hungry for?" I ask.

"Oh...I can't eat. Weigh-ins are in the morning and I need to drop .8 pounds. But can someone bring me Subway tomorrow at the tournament in North Pole? By the way, can you or mom give me a ride to school tomorrow at 5 AM? I don't want to leave my car in the parking lot all day long with it being so cold...It almost didn't start tonight...Oh yah, can you also go out and see if you can get it plugged in? I thinks there is snow crammed in the holes of the extension cord because I couldn't get the little prongs to stay in." She tells me this as she removes her thin jacket and kicks off her tennis shoes that she wore home. "Oh yah...I think I'm getting sick or something. Man I hate getting sick...Especially before I need to wrestle."

The door bursts open and Rachel blows into the house with a billowing cloud of frost. "Where's Mom and why can't Leah learn to park her damn car? She's parked behind you and I can't park on the other side because blah, blah, blahh...And I can't use that extension cord because ...blah blah blah blah! How smart to you need to be figure out how we gotta park? ...blah blahh...My truck heater isn't working worth a damn. Michael is supposed to change the thermostat but he is being a butt...And I can't wait 2 months to get it fixed...blah blah...He won't work on it because he won't let me pay for it but then he blah blahhh. Where the hell is mom anyway? She is supposed to get off work at 4:30 and its after 7."

The door opens again and my gorgeous wife stumbles in with bright red cheeks beaming from behind her frosted glasses. She wears the ratty, gray, woolen skull cap that doesn't leave the top of head between Thanksgiving and Mother's day. Her green uniform pants are tucked into her Christmas-red, Loben felt boots which she sleeps in throughout the same time period. "Any ideas for dinner?" she asks as she plops the newspaper down on the ever-growing pile that already are scattered across the kitchen table.

"Hmm, how about some slimy chicken with noodles that have had the piss boiled out of them" I think but wisely do not say.

"I can't eat." Leah unwisely states.

"I'm going to have you committed for anorexia...blah blah blahh...You can't wrestle if you don't eat. I'm going to email coach Ritchie and tell him that the Alaska Nurses Association says..blah,blah blah..." Mom disgustedly rambles.

" I had a packet of instant oat-meal at lunch and two raisins after practice and...blah blah blahhh...Bring me Subway tomorrow...I am not a freaking anorexic... Why didn't you holler at Jeremiah when he lost 40 pounds in 2 weeks for wrestling??..."

"Where did you park Mom?...Why can't anyone around here learn to park damnit...Now I need to go out and move my freakin truck and the heater doesn't blow any damn hot air...Michael is being a butt...Won't let me pay...I don't have any money but if you or dad pay I'm gonna tear-up the damn check because I already mooch too much off of you guys...bla,blah,blahhh!"

Ahh...The silence of a winter night. I retreat outside to untangle extension cords, shuffle cars and try to get the "little prongs" on one stubborn extension cord to stay plugged into glob of receptacles emerging from Leah's car hood. The "prongs" refuse to cooperate even after I heat them with a lighter and spray starting fluid into the receptacle they should mate with. Frostnip quickly nibbles my knuckles and in desperation I rip the "ground" prong off the cord. The two remaining "little prongs" now happily mate with the icy glob of receptacles. The ruckus in the house has been replaced with the whine of some constipated actor on TV and a pile of slimy chicken and noodles simmers on the stove.

"Dad,,Dad, wake-up. Are you going to take me to Lathrop so I don't need to leave my car in the lot all day?" I stumble out of bed and wipe the gunk from my eyes. I pull on the same pants from yesterday and sniff the arm-pits of my shirt before putting it on. In the bathroom I perform the "ritual for eternal life" but accidentaly drop one pill to the floor. It lands in a clump of dog hair. Ritual is ritual so I pick it up and pop in may mouth. Saturday morning...Just another beautiful day in paradise!

The drive to Lathrop is as uneventful as any drive at minus 50 degrees can be. The seats in Leah' Geo Storm are frozen granite hard and their lack of cushion causes the top of my head to be press against the roof. The breath from the two of us crammed into the small car quicky ice-up the windows but the ice-fog outside is so thick that we hardly notice. Most people instinctively slow down when driving in such conditions but our trip takes us past the main gate of the local Army base. The GIs and their family members must have their eye-balls implanted with infra-red sensors as part of an experimental weapons program and thus can see clearly through even the thickest ice-fog. They race about at a minimum of 65 mph in case Bin Laden or any of his rag-heads are lurking among the snowbanks. ( There must be quit a number of those rag-heads in the area because I frequently observe GI cars spinning about and diving directly into various embankments. ) It's still early in the morning so I manage to avoid any such military missions and drop Leah off at school where she will board a bus for transport to North Pole for the tournament.

Ahh yes...Winter in Fairbanks...Just another day in paradise!!!