It was a fun weekend. Very, very busy. But fun. Lots of family time, time enough with friends...it was one of those weekends that was so jam-packed that it seemed longer than it was, and at the same time it was far too short. We went out to eat every night, played lots of games (including frisbee golf), and spent hours laughing with each other. It was great.
But you know how I'm always saying there are weird and bizarre people in Alaska? I know that there are strange people everywhere (I grew up near Seattle after all--have you been to Broadway on any average Tuesday?) but there seems to be a special kind of weird in the people up here. Some move up here because of it, some lose inhibitions by living here. However they crop up, Alaska definitely has a higher-per-capita portion of weird. Well, when we were out at a well-known hotel's bar/lounge the other night, chatting away, the group sort of next to us got up to leave. It was another large group of people focused mostly around a couple. I figured it was either a graduation or a wedding and heard one of the older men say, "Enjoy it, young man. It only happens once." As they were passing by our table to get to the door one old man, who looked like Santa Claus, leaned down to Shane and said something in his ear. Shane looked at me with wide, laughing eyes, whispered something back to the guy, and then waited until the group had departed before dissolving into laughter. We were all asking him, "What did he say?" and Shane finally gasped out, "He told me, 'You see that girl across from you? [meaning me] I almost didn't recognize her with her clothes on.'" First of all, WTF? Secondly, WTF!! Santa's trying to destroy my reputation...to my husband and his family! Who goes around saying stuff like that to and about people they don't know?! Santa Claus is a dirty old bastard, apparently. I asked Shane why he didn't hit him and Shane said, "I can't hit Santa!" Apparently what he'd whispered back to Santa was, "Yeah, I have a hard time recognizing her with clothes on, too." Thanks, dear. He told me that and when he saw that I was about to hit him he reminded me, "Two weeks! You won't get to see me for two weeks, so you can't be mad at me!"
Over the weekend our friend J came over and asked me how I felt about Shane's being gone so much. I'm not really sure how to answer that question, since it's such a mixed bag of emotions, but I shrugged and said, "Well, it's just what we're going to do." Then he said, "Oh. Because I know quite a few marriages that have broken up because of schedules like this." Thanks for the comforting words of wisdom.
With all of this, is it any wonder that I had a dream in which I was trying desperately to reassure Shane that I would never, ever cheat on him?
He's up at work now, but the business continued for me last night with two softball games in the strong winds, rain, and at one point hail. We won our first game 22-2, but lost the second 12-5. Both games were good, and I think I played fairly well. I didn't catch because the team captain had forgotten the face mask. I did have a couple of nice hits, though. I forget at the beginning of every year that "I like the high ones". It forces me to swing up rather than my usual level swing. If the ball's on the ground I don't have the power behind a hit to make it go through the infielders, but if I swing up I can get it just beyond them most of the time.
I've been doing my best to kill my plants. I forgot that summer squashes aren't as cold-hardy as I like to think they are and killed two of them this weekend by leaving them out overnight. (The peas did just fine.) Oh well. I can always start more.
We got the garden tilled, though! It took Shane a lot less time than he thought it would, and after he was done with the tilling I went out and made the freshly turned, workable dirt into lovely rows. Tomorrow, I'm going to plant my carrots and parsnips, since the seeds will be fine. It's (frustratingly) still to early to put anything else out there, except perhaps my peas (which desperately need to be trellised) because we're still getting a bit of frost at night. This spring has been so odd, with the early snowmelt and then weeks of still-cold weather. Usually the snow melts just in time for summer to start. Not this year.
The reason the early snowmelt is so worrisome is really because the snow cover is so necessary for so many things. What about the arctic creatures which rely on thick ice and snow for a while yet? What about the fact that the snow actually helps to reflect some of the sun's warmth back out of our atmosphere? If the trees had greened right after the snowmelt I would have thought that it was pretty much a wash as far as global warming. But to have over a month without snow and without leaves and greenery to pull carbon out of the atmosphere? Not good. There are so many signs of warming happening up here, and it pisses me off that "there are doubts" among people in Washington D.C.
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