Just Put Me in the Kitchen

What happened today was we went to Home Depot and bought large pieces of pressure-treated lumber to frame the firepit we're building in the backyard and while there bought some new light fixtures for the upstair's rooms. While Jim put boards in place and dug trenches I was installing the light fixtures - I touched the wires together, they showered sparks into my hair, I screamed and Jim ran upstairs (turned off the power) and took over. It smelled horrid, and I did end up putting one up - I'm not that easily detered.

Of course, no project is ever complete without at least 2 trips to Home Depot, so went back to return a fixture that was faulty. We stopped at Carl's Jr. on the way home to get hamburgers - so perfect to eat hamburgers when working on home projects. Got home, and my burger was so disgusting that I threw it in the trash along with spitting out my first bite. It was squished and stale and tasted of plastic. I totally pouted and just drank some wine for dinner, coldly comforted by the words of a sommelier I recently interviewed - he said, "Wine is international food." Viva der vin. I explained to Jim that besides this burger being truly horrendous I've been reading Ruth Reichl's "Garlic and Sapphires" which describes amazing cuisine - haute and basic - in such delicious detail that I can practically taste the truffles, black bass, short ribs and melt-in-your-mouth sushi. Yet, I've been completely uninspired to plan and then cook a meal of this caliber right now. Perhaps it's the summer indifference to being comforted with food, to employing cooking as a past time, I am not sure. But after that absolutely abhorrent fast food I am longing for a delicious gourmet meal, specifically planned and lovingly made.

Tomorrow we go out to my parents' to work on phase two of the lake landing area - last weekend Jim and dad put in the stairs up from the lake, now it's time to build the dock and the ramp. I'm thinking about how they work so well together, similarly grunting and joking and measuring then remeasuring as though of the same buildy mind, conferring on specs in low voices and anticipating next steps that I am not so needed. Instead I move rocks to frame planters and line pathways, plant things in the ground, and make sandwiches and pack coolers to bring down to the lake for the workers. I'm thinking tomorrow that I'll plan something, shop and be specific and loving and picky and cook up something delicious - and do this with my mom. She appreciates what this all means, she's the one who taught me it all in the first place, and maybe sometimes I even feel like I get to teach her something when we're in the kitchen together these days. Plus, I'm less likely to set my hair aflame in the kitchen than while doing manual labor, and I like my hair, so cooking it is!

Summers in Alaska are Crack

I know it's summer (practically) because I'm sunburned and covered in mosquito bites and feeling pretty happy. Sunburned because of that first-heat-of-the-season exuberance in which I totally lose my mind and forgo the sunscreen I'm generally religious about applying, and I wear tank tops and spend hours outdoors roasting myself - all probably something akin to citrus-deprived sailors eating too many limes for the vitamin C and nonchalantly letting their mouths pucker with sores. Happy because I'm flush with the vitamin D, tan, getting fit and that's the seductive thing about summers in Alaska...

After 6-7 months under snow, freezing your ass off, tucked away inside feeling dark and cabin feverish, getting pasty and flabby, rueing the day you moved to this god-forsaken northern icehole, thinking it will never end and then come April, seemingly overnight (literally), the snow is gone and there's grass and a 20 degree increase in temperature. And it gets greener and flowery-er and warmer and less clothes are needed to be outside and I want to clean and plant and dig and organize and build and not sleep. Alaska's summers are crack.

And so in this addictive manner, wholly absorbed and oblivious to anything that came before and anything yet to come, I get to live in the moment for about 5 months with bare legs and late nights around the backyard fire pit. So sucked in to the beauty that is Alaska in the summer, I forget to dread the winter and then it comes, as ever always, and then a few months into it it's "what was I thinking?" time once again because I'd forgotten, being so totally brain rewired by summer sun and air and activity. But see how I'm aware and writing about it even now? I'm onto you, you wacky crack-y Alaska summers!

That's all thoughts for later, though. Recently and in this glorious 75 degree weather - I spent the weekend with mom and planted LOADS of flowers at her house. Witness:

The flowers we planted.

HOT sunny day and new stairs going down to the lake. It was so fun to finish working in the yard all day - hot and sweaty and dirty and aching - then take a chilled bottle of wine down to the lake and sit and talk with mom for an hour while looking out at the water with all the ducks and loons and jumping fish. (I hope they never sell that place, at least not until we can afford to buy it!) After that - into the hot tub.

The view our wedding guests will have! We'll take off the chair swing and decorate the frame like an arbor with flowers and greenery. So beautiful with the layers of earth, water, trees, mountains and sky.

Another view of the new steps, plus a pot we planted. Petunias and marigolds.

Strider! I looooove this dog! He's giant and totally lovable, and I really want to dognap him and make him mine. Or at least harvest some of that slobber and clone him. All the neighbor dogs come over to play, kept us company while outside working - waiting with their balls to throw and begging for treats and just wrestling with each other. Yet another reason to love Alaska life.

Jim and I went to dinner tonight to celebrate my big coup - making a job for myself in Alaska, the radio show and included business - today was the official start date for us after nearly a year of working on getting on the air and getting funded. We did both, and now we're in pre-production, first show on August 31. Woot! So I says to Jim - "I caught myself driving the other day while thinking that I really belonged here." He smiled and said, "You'd belong anywhere." And I said, well I know, maybe I know, but I really felt like despite growing up here and not knowing that I'd ever live here again and then finding myself here and making a new life and still not knowing how I fit, I really felt like I'm good here. Driving in my yoga pants, flip flops, and tank top, cranked up music, flying past mountains and so much sky and passing all those giant ubiquitous trucks on the highway, I finally felt like I had just as much right to be on the road as they did, so move out of the way, because I fucking live here, mothertruckers!

It's something of a relief and a rejoice for him, I know, for his wife to want to be here because he loves to be here even though he'd move anywhere for me, and I cherish that. And it's the same elation for me - I want to be useful and good and satisfied, feel like I belong and like I am contributing something that I am good at giving. I am getting there, closer than ever right now, we are so happy together, and finding everyday that we are better individuals because we are.

I'm really excited for all my best friends to be up here in less than a month - Kari and Radiah and Sarah and Kent and Matt and Jamie and so many others, and my family and Jim's family, plus all of our dear local friends who are mostly Jim's friends from nearly 20 years back who've made me one of their dear friends, bless them - and to have them near and we'll dance together and talk and get married for reals at this crazy thing we've planned and then after they go home I will, we will, still have so much to look forward to. I just feel like a blossom in this early summer.