Last night we went to a "Wild Dinner" at Cheryl's house. The idea is to share the fruits of our harvest. Susan and George brought pickled red salmon and smoked salmon, blueberry bundt cake and cranberry coconut cookie bars. Cheryl and Tim boiled halibut to make mock lobster. Bev and Gary brought caribou meatloaf and shrimp cocktail. We brought sweet and sour salmon, wild rice with dates and walnuts and Halibut Cove Saltery bread. The food was great and before we knew it, it was 11 pm. Thanks Cheryl and Tim for hosting the party in your beautiful house on the Chena River. They are going to be renting rooms as a B&B this summer...I think it will be Riverside B&B.
Today, Paul and I starting preparing/packing food for the AT. We bagged up about 6 dinner combos using the FoodSaver and wonderful smells are wafting up from the dehydrator. We went to Sam's Club and bought blackberries ($3.67 for 14 oz.), peppers (6 for $5) and broccoli (3# for $5). We checked with the Kilo-A-Watt and we are using about 268 watts/hr., so at the $0.24/kwh that we are paying for electricity (adding in all the fake charges) we figure that it will cost about 50 cents for the 8 hours needed to dry the food. Although all this prep is expensive, time-consuming, worrisome and challenging, we're also feeling anticipation, excitement, possibilities and challenge. We still have 3 more months, but once the holidays start, we won't be as likely to lay everything out. SC isn't the only one who makes a list and checks it twice!
Through our 26 years of marriage, we have done many things together to stretch and redefine what it means to live with someone with different chromosomes. If you are contemplating marriage, I suggest you choose something from this list to do together to see if you might get along for the long run.
* hang wallboard- it helps if there is a 14 inch height difference between you and your partner and if there is a saucy preteen lying on the couch reading who refuses to pick up the screw gun when it drops to the ground from between your knees.
* scrape and paint the bottom of a 40 ft. fishing boat between tides
* assemble a pool table or child's kitchen set on Christmas Eve without waking the children using directions (but only as a last resort) written by someone only marginally literate
* peel enough logs to build a cabin
* do all your banking by snail mail (especially if you only get mail once a week)
* raise children
* live for a month (or more) on a 40 ft fishing boat with 2 children, including one teenager who hates being there
* buy a quonset hut for $5000 and spend the next 6 years cleaning it out
* quit both your jobs without knowing where you will go next to provide for the 2 aforementioned children
* put a boat (that is heavier than you thought) on the roof of your truck (that is taller than you thought)
Sound fun. Yah, you betcha. I imagine we will be adding "hike for 6 months together" to this list.
I heard and read some scary things today. I read about the racial hate crimes that have been a backlash to the Obama win. Also, at a local sports shop, gun sales are skyrocketing in anticipation that the right to bear arms will be "negated by an Obama administration" and people will need to have weapons hidden around. Oh, my gosh- just what we need when the economy sliding into an abyss, young people are dying across the ocean in a "pre-emptive" war, and the achievement gap between the US and other countries is widening. Some days it is just difficult to stay hopeful.
How is this week looking? I will be teaching a class on eLive and going to Juneau on Thursday night to help with a workshop using Yup'ik border patterns to do geometry with kids. I want to finish Christmas shopping and start work on a short play. My "project of the week" will be cleaning out the cupboards under the sink. Such is life on the "Last Frontier"...oh, and did I say that I would be walking 4-8 miles/day? Outside? It's supposed to be -25 on Tuesday night. I'll get back to you on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment