We're not gonna

I can't believe it. Stevens is leading. I don't know what to say. Does anyone else know whether another state has elected a recently convicted felon?

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Stevens convicted

Just moved across the Anchorage Daily News alerts:
Jury finds Stevens guilty of lying about gifts

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A few trust issues?

"If I'm drowning in two feet of water, I don't know whether the rope that's thrown at me will be one that pulls me out or pulls me under."

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Back in track

Hallelujah! Two snows and several inches means they were able to roll the trails. It was ski swap at 10 a.m., errands all day and then five miles on my favorite loop. I can feel my stress levels diminishing already. No track yet, but it still felt great to be back in my ski boots, listening to the sound of my poles squeak in the snow. I even saw a fox on the back side of the hill. It peeked over its shoulder at me before bounding off into the bushes. A few strands of bushes and grass still poked through the snow, but it wasn't enough to cause any real problems. I don't seem to have lost any time over the summer. Mind you, I am slow as all get out anyway, but even without track, I was able to complete the loop in an hour. With track, I suspect it'll come down to 45-50 minutes.

Task one: Teach my walking buddy to ski. She has one rather bad experience with skiing. Still, she bought a passable set of skis at ski swap and is ready to give it a shot.

Task two: Teach the man to ski. He's much more fond of downhill, so this will be tame to him. There's also a distinct possibility that he already knows how to cross-country ski and is just screwing with me because apparently it is hilarious when I explain things to other people. Strike teaching. Maybe I'll steal his poles and shove him in a snowbank.

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Throwing the life ring

What do you do when someone you love is drowning in the life they have created for themselves? What do you do when you watch them, day in and day out, struggle and gasp, barely staying above the waterline and growing weaker by the second?

People make bad choices, I understand that. Many times, when we find ourselves drowning, it is because of those bad choices. I also understand the value of learning from those choices, of finding a way to solve your own problems. Still, it's hard to be the one on the shore, watching, when the solutions are so obvious, it's akin to wanting to shout, "Stand up, dammit! The water's only four feet deep."

At what point do you finally accept that the one you love simply will not put their feet down and wade out and haul them out of the water, despite the fact that they are so panicked that they might just try to drown you in the process? Walking away simply isn't an option, is it, if you truly love someone?

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Me-0, hose clamp-1

I think a little piece of me now lives in the basement next to the water pump. I mean that quite literally. I suspect a piece of what's left of my knuckle is now spending quality time with the hose clamp on the well hose. The damn water filter housing was being a bit more stubborn than usual, and I reefed on it a little harder than usual. 'Twas the perfect storm of force, resulting in me saying "fuck" a lot when I looked down and glimpsed the white of my knuckle bone. Enter teenage son, who helps me put the filter back together so that I can turn the water back on and stand sobbing hysterically over the bathroom sink, fighting nausea as I unsuccessfully try to sluice god-knows-what out of the ragged wound, all the while thinking, "This is utter bullshit. Why the hell wasn't Prince Charming down in the basement fixing the water? And where the hell is that guy anyway?"

Screw fairy tales. Screw hose clamps. Stupid stainless steel bastards. Long live narcotic painkillers.

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Matrimonial moments

Overheard: "F--K! I have a month until I get married. Do I have everything?"

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Oh, to be weak

I was in the midst of yet another home improvement crisis that I did not know how to handle and was declaring that I felt incredibly weak. And he said to me, "It's OK to feel weak, you're a girl." Now before you go bashing him as a thoroughly unenlightened clod, I assure you, he is not.

All that said, however, the truth is that when you are single, a mother and a homeowner, it really isn't OK to be weak. It's not a luxury afforded those of us who waded into the shallow end of the gene pool. There is no moral support. There is no shoulder to lean on. There is no financial support. There is no room for weakness. You are the mother and the father and the cook and the electrician and the laundress and the plumber and the mechanic and the nurse. You are the nurturer and the disciplinarian. You must keep a job and keep the house. When all goes to hell in a handbasket, guess who has to deal with it? Bingo! You. Don't waste your time looking for someone else to step up and do it for you, 'cause honey, there ain't nobody there.

It's the thing they don't tell you about single parenthood. It sucks, and it sucks at least half of the time. It's lucky that most have so little time, they don't notice how much it sucks. But make no mistake, weakness is not an option available to us. You stumble, and the fall can be catastrophic and impossible to recover from.

It is no mystery to me why so many single parents seek to get remarried as soon as they can, even if the relationship is less than perfect or the odds say it won't succeed. I can almost taste the sweetness of those six words, "Honey, you take care of that."

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Meh

Not sure what the heck is up. Maybe it's the change in seasons. Maybe it's the mountains of things I never did or got to do this summer. Maybe I'm just tired. Whatever it is, I have been struck with a terrible case of indifference as of late. I'm a country song. My give a damn's busted.

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Sometimes it actually works

Apparently, an Internet slide show, a screwdriver and a cheapo socket set really are enough to qualify me as an appliance repairwoman. Go figure.

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Praying to the porcelain

In this case, it was porcelain on steel, in the form of my immobile washing machine tub. You see, normally, they fill with warm water and do useful things like agitate, spin and drain. Mine? Not so much. I was clued into the problem when I tried to push down the lid switch and parts of it started falling off. This is bad because without the lid switch, there will be no agitating of the clothes, no spinning of the clothes and no draining of the water. None. Nada. So, I was left crying and swearing last night at the foot of my full-of-clothes-and-water washing machine--now reduced to little more than a bloated paperweight with the potential for serious swamp syndrome--wondering why the hell things have to be so bloody difficult 99 percent of the time.

Tonight I'll use my considerable appliance repair expertise, gleaned from a slideshow on some fix-it site online, to tear apart the damn thing and put a new switch in. Oh yeah, this ought to be interesting. I wonder how hard you have to pitch a screwdriver to get it to stick like a dart in a sheetrock wall?

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Put a rock on my ...

I came home from work today and was greeted by a lovely sight. That's right: a whole dump truck load of D-1 nicely spread the length of my driveway. If I ever doubted his devotion, those doubts are long gone. Keep the chocolates, honey. You wanna show me you love me? Bring me a nice blend of rock and fines, you know, the good stuff that packs down really hard.

Now that's true love, baby.

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Got wood?

Oh stop. Not that kind. My friend and I spent the day loading up two pickups with firewood for the winter. I suspect we will both pay dearly in the morning, but we were quite proud of ourselves for our efforts. We did really well at pretending that we knew what we were doing. Alas, we were so hard at work that we did not take the time to document our in-the-field efforts, but is suffices to say that we discovered that cutting notches in trees actually works, as does gravity, and that when you push really hard on a tree, it seems to fall away from you, which is a good thing, because there were a lot of rose bushes and roots on our "oh-carp-the-tree-is-falling-toward-us" escape path. Oh yeah, and I didn't cut anything but wood with the chainsaw, which is always the marker of a successful adventure with power tools. Yep. We are certified. Rugged Alaska divas. Training complete. No boys allowed (though the diva in both of us probably wouldn't argue too terribly hard if said boys were to say, "Honey, it's OK, you go shopping, we'll cut the wood.") But we'd probably go to Home Depot.



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Flabbergasted

Nearly 60,000 people in my state primary elections yesterday voted for a longtime senator who happens to be under federal indictment. His trial will take place during the general election campaign. I really have to wonder: Why is that OK with people?

This guy has been caught up in the same net that has sent several state legislators packing on a rail, the public howling in indignation, even before they were convicted of anything.

Is it fear? Yes, the guy brings a lot of cash to the state, but really, who's to say our next senator won't be just as effective, or even more so. And rest assured, frightened sheeple, there will be a "next senator." Nobody lives forever. Like all of us, our senior senator will eventually succumb to time and then someone new will take his place.

Is the electorate taking the "innocent unless proven guilty" high road? I doubt it, as masses of human beings rarely seem to take the high road on anything. That said, certainly that facet of our justice system is an admirable one. Here's the thing, though: Being innocent and entitled to your liberty, prior to conviction, is one thing. Nobody is entitled to be an elected official. That happens with the consent of the people. That is a privilege. And I fail to see the wisdom in choosing to be represented by someone who, at the very least, has lost a great deal of credibility.

Best case scenario: He's acquitted and serves the remainder of his term with a cloud of doubt over his head.

Worst: He's elected. He's convicted. And the people gave away their right to choose someone to replace him. (Yes, there will always be the next election, but the power of incumbency, even after an appointment, is not to be dismissed.)

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Whatever shall we do?

Overheard:

Woman 1: "If Parnell wins, who's going to be our light gov?"

Woman 2: "Maybe they can have Don Young."

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O Canada!

So, how many of you out there will be moving to Canada if our wise electorate decides to send our esteemed--and under federal indictment--senior senator back to Washington. C'mon, don't be shy.

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Old habits

I can't help myself. It's 7:55 p.m. The polls close in five. And I've already got the Division of Elections results page up in the other tab.

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Noooooooo

I couldn't believe my ears this morning, at least until I looked out my office window and saw the perfect vee of geese flying overhead. I guess that shiver as I stepped outside today wasn't my imagination.

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Need some assistance with that?

This from the Fail Blog:



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I'm in a committed ...

“Sometimes you meet somebody and you have what is known as a ‘relationship,’ and things can go great and if it goes great then you have a great ‘relationship.' Sometimes it doesn’t go so great and I call that a ‘relationshit.’”
--Dane Cook

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