Monday Afternoon in Fairbanks

I took two of the three boys to a veterinary appointment today.

Guy is literally tearing his hair out from a staph infection. This is the second spring now that he's done this:

So now I've got a soothing spray and ten days' worth of Cephalexin for him, and he gets to stay inside while we're at work, though he does have to wear this:

Beenie has a gunky ear, so he got a bottle of cleaner that will get squished around in his ear once a day until his next appointment in three weeks.

Oh--gross aside. The doctor said he didn't see any mites in Beenie's ear, but that the gunk looked odd and he wanted to be careful; hence the re-check next month. Then he told me about a dog he had been treating last year for ear mites, who kept not getting better. Then when they put that dog under anesthesia, the air going through the dog's nose created an unwelcoming environment for the nose mites that were there. And the mites all came out of the unconscious dog's nose and were wriggling around on the table. "I read about nose mites in school," the doctor said, "but I'd never seen them before. And they can travel from the dog's nose to its ears, and it turned out that that was what was wrong with the dog. Nose mites, not ear mites." So I am following Beenie's regimen to the letter.

On my way home after their visit, I saw this stopped at a red light at the corner of University and Geist:

It might be hard to see, but there are two wheels in the back, and the trailer is hitched between them. He also had Canadian plates.



The first part of this post has nothing to do with the second, except that one happened right after the other. I was feeling pretty good because the boys were so well-behaved at the vet's, in spite of the presence of small dogs and a cat, a probing camera and skin scrapes. "Are all of your dogs so big and calm?" one of the techs had asked me.

When I saw this motorcycle guy, and my first thought was: At some point, don't you have to concede and just get a convertible?

But then I realized that this dude might be my new hero of sticking to your guns. Maybe I do want stability and a lot of stuff, but I'm still on a motorcycle, and I'm riding it all the way to Alaska!

So with solstice nearly upon us, I want to wish everyone a good summer, including my doggies who both already feel better. And to the motor-tricycle dude I say, Ride on, friend, ride on.

The Wayward Huskies are moving!

Woah. It's been a little while since my last post. In fact, this is my first post of 2012. Hooray! Happy New Year!

A few things that have happened in the last six months:

• The Toyo stove (the only source of heat in our cabin) died during a -50ºF/-45ºC cold snap in January.
• I went on a few trips for work: Once to Anchorage, AK; twice to Portland, OR; once to Houston, TX. (And I have two more work trips coming up: Another to Portland, OR; one to Austin, TX.)
• Earned MVP status on our airline again. (Sweet!)
• We bought a cabin.

This last one is the only thing that's really at all interesting. We bought the place right next door to where we're living now; the same people built both cabins, and they're very similar. When my husband and I moved in to our current cabin, we rented it from a couple. Then the couple divorced and split properties; he's still our landlord for now, and we bought from his ex-wife. Both cabins are standard-issue crappy Alaska cabins:

The only thing beautiful about it is that it's ours, and we can change whatever the heck we want about it.  It's most definitely a fixer-upper.

So this summer will be filled with projects. The cabin in half-dry, which means that there is hot and cold running water, but no septic. (Technically, there is septic, but it hasn't been connected in years and years and we will likely just entomb the tank.) My husband's goal this summer is to install a graywater system. My goals are more modest but also more numerous. They are:

1: Re-paint the bedroom.

The bedroom used to be this lurid green:

And is now (mostly) covered by this ghostly primer:

It's on its way to being a pleasant (I hope) yellow. But boy, painting is slow, dull work!

2: Fix the backdoor.

At the moment, there's a suggestion of a door, but no apparent hinges, and it's padlocked on the outside. (The key to the padlock may well be in the septic tank.) I'll just tear the thing out and install an actual door.

3. Build steps out the back.

So we don't step out into mid-air.

4. Build a Scout-and-Guy pen out the backdoor.

This should be relatively easy, and then we'll be able to let the dogs O-U-T without leashing or necessarily accompanying them. Heaven!

5. Fix the existing dog pen for the other dogs.

This pen will be nice because it's so much bigger than their existing pen, and we won't have to line the whole thing in plywood because it's not sited atop a mud pit.

6. Build a composting outhouse.

V. excited about this. There are two decrepit open-pit outhouses on the property (why? why?!), and though I'm not terribly outhouse-squeamish, I don't want to go near these things and I will probably just tear them down and fill in the pits. But we still need to do our business, so I'm investigating sustainable ways to do this.

So things have been busy and the dogs and I haven't been out as often as we'd like. I did snap a quick photo of them after one of our runs this spring:

Notice that Beenie has slipped out of his harness partway, which happened after we'd stopped, thank goodness!

It'll continue to be busy, but I hope to find balance with work, the new house, the dogs, and life in general. I'll end with a video I shot (from the safety of the truck!) of one of our neighbors. This little guy knows all about balance, and I would do well to learn from him: