Mid-Winter stretch

It seems like spring is light-years away, and yet it is officially only a little over four weeks to the spring equinox. Snow has been falling regularly for several weeks, usually 6 - 10 inches at a time, so that now we have several feet of ground cover down in the Anchorage bowl. Up at Alyeska the skiers are having a banner year and in-town cross-country is excellent.

I would like everyone to close their eyes now and imagine me in my snow suit, cross-country skis snapped on, sun shining down on me pushing my way through narrow ski trails winding their way through spruce forests plump with piles of white powder. The air smells clean, fresh, and crisp, and I am eagerly pushing forward to see what adventure lies at the other end of the trail.

Ok, you can open your eyes now. The reality is suburban Anchorage, tense city dwellers on far too much caffiene sick of winter and icy roads and impatient with incompetent driving. I alternate each day between working at my stressful 9-hour a day job, riding herd on various kitchen remodel contractors, wringing my hands over teenage foolishness, and trying to contain the flood of paper that threatens to wash me out of my office. I dream frequently of being hundreds of miles away - 225 to be exact - sipping coffee and eating sticky buns at the two sisters bakery, looking forward to a visit to the Homer Brewery or a ski through the park. Sigh. Will winter ever end?

We had a most exciting morning today, one that left me glad for life and grateful for everything. At 5 am my daughter Megan woke us up screaming something we could not understand. The adrenaline surge brought me out of bed and out the door so fast I forgot that I did not have any clothes on. At first I thought she was yelling at our new puppy, Bear, who is sleeps in her room and is still trying to get used to his new home. He is often awake at all hours of the night, whining, woofing, scratching, and otherwise making a racket that keeps her awake. That wasn't it though.

I stood at the opened door of her room in a confused fog while she continued yelling. The smell of burnt plastic made me realize something was very wrong. I flipped on the light to see smoke coming out of an old power strip on her floor that had burst into flames and was still pumping nasty, gray smoke into the room. I ran into the room, traced the cable back to the wall and jerked the plug out of the receptacle. Fortunately nothing else was burning so I threw the burned strip on the front porch and went back inside to see what had happened.

She said she was awakened by the popping and sparking of the device. Sparks were shooting a good foot or more into the air like minature fireworks. We couldn't figure out what had happened but thinking about it later in the day I had my suspicions that our puppy might know something about it. I finished checking the floor around the spot and found nothing else of concern.

As we were leaving her room to go back to bed I discovered that Bear had left us a brown surprise just inside the door. In my alarm I had pushed the door open right over the top of it and wiped it across the carpet about a foot. After going in and out the door several more times it had gotten thoroughly ground into the carpet leaving a thick brown swath of poop about 4-inches wide. In disgust, I spent another 15 minutes spraying and scrubbing and cussing the damn dog until the carpet was relatively cleaned up.

We finally got the house calmed down and everyone back to bed about 45 minutes later. When I woke up a few hours later I couldn't help but think that we had been spared a much worse ordeal. Somehow it made the day all the more special and winter a little more tolerable. And maybe it was all the adventure I needed, for now anyway.

Hope you are all well.