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Happy Wife had her hands full with heavy items to go in the wash when I said to her, “Dear, please remember to set the spin cycle to medium with those things, otherwise you know what.” Mildly annoyed with my thinking she needed to be reminded of this, she came back with a most profound reply: “I can’t remember the last time I forgot to do that, dear.”

After a second or two we both laughed. I was sure what she’d said was a classic example of some well known circularity in formal logic.

Moments later, while making the bed, she got all Donald Rumsfeld on me. “You know,” she expanded, “There are things we recall we remembered, things we recall we’d forgotten, and things we can’t recall if we’ve forgotten.”

I backed out of the bedroom, slowly. Whoa. This is why I married this woman.

Needed the oil changed in the Subaru again. Brad, I think his name was, enlightened me on the pros & cons of using synthetic oil. Wait a second, “synthetic?” Isn’t that synonymous with man made? And if so, we should never fear an oil shortage again, right? We needn’t have to wait tens of millions of years for plants and critters to die, get buried, transform into raw crude, get discovered, produced, refined, and finally put in a can. We just make the stuff de novo — Brilliant!

Methinks I’m missing something here. Probably been away from the oil business too long.

In the end I settled on the synthetic, but wouldn’t you know it, only minutes after the technician took my car into the garage, I was called back to the service counter and informed that the technician had also found my air filter was filthier than a George Carlin standup, and a signal light (blinker) was out on the driver’s side, and so “Mr. Nibbe would you like us to take care of these items today as well?”

Oh sure.

$200+ later…

Wait a second…You’re probably wondering… $200+ for an oil change, an air filter, and a light bulb?

Let me tell you something about this light bulb business on Subaru Outbacks. 2011s anyway. Though I’ve come to understand it afflicts other model years as well.

(Subaru of America automotive engineers: Pay especially close attention!).

To do so let me back up a few months. It was then I discovered a headlight was out on the driver’s side of my Subaru. I went to the auto parts store, bought a new bulb, came home and figured in the time it would take my bread to toast I’d go in the garage and replace the bulb. No-brainer, right?

Bzzzt.

Come to find the plastic housing that needs to be turned (unscrewed) to get at the bulb was not only just barely visible once I’d lifted the hood, there was no way in hell a standard human hand could pass by the battery and all the other crap blocking the access required to replace the bulb. WTF? Ah, wait, I think, maybe from underneath. Nope. In fact I couldn’t even see the headlight assembly looking up while on my back on the garage floor. So WTF? I get out the manual. No help. So now what…Don’t tell me I need to pull the entire integrated headlight assembly out just to replace a damn bulb?

I go back inside the house. My toast has popped up, long ago, and now it’s cold. The butter won’t melt and I hate that. I call my friend, an expert Subaru mechanic, 25+ years. None better in Alaska. “Mark,” I say, “how many middle-aged white dudes does it take to change a headlight bulb on a Subaru Outback?” He laughs, knowingly. I chew my cold toast. Come to learn the answer is one, assuming the one middle-aged white dude knows the trick.

Trick? “Yeah dude, you need to get at it from inside the wheel well.”

“What?!”

“Yup. Turn the steering wheel hard right to get the wheel out of the way. Then remove one of the clips which hold the splash guard in place. Then slowly peel the guard back just enough to get your hand up and in there to unscrew the housing. Then you can get at the bulb. The guard may feel like it’s going to break when you fold it back but it won’t. But just be careful.”

“WTF! To replace a bulb?!”

Well, I still couldn’t believe it. Even though I knew Mark would never lead me astray. “If you can’t do it just bring it over to my house and I’ll do it,” he said.

I went back into the garage and tried again, but not the way Mark told me, not initially anyway. This was a mistake. What I tried first is I slid a screwdriver from the top down through the narrow gap and managed to forcibly unscrew the plastic housing, and then with a flashlight I could just barely make out the bulb in the socket, but when I tried (with the screwdriver) to release the retainer clip it broke. Sh*t. Only then did I abandon that approach and try to peel back the splash guard like Mark told me to do. But it turned out I removed the wrong clip (there are two). Consequently, I’m fishing my hand and arm through the wrong gap feeling for the back of the light bulb in order to pull it out. I did this about five times, sustaining, in the process, many life-threatening scrapes and tears to my skin before saying, “F*ck it.”

I drove to Mark’s house the following day. He showed me the correct splash guard clip to remove, had the new bulb in and everything put back in place in like five minutes. Show off. I treated him to breakfast for his trouble.

Of course, because I’d earlier broken the retainer clip (not sold separately!) we had to kludge a way to keep the bulb in place in its socket. We folded some blue foamy stuff into the cavity of the plastic housing before screwing it back on, figuring that would work to keep the bulb from popping out, and it did work, but at breakfast Mark said, “You know, that cavity can get pretty hot when the light’s been on a while. I wonder if that blue stuff is flammable?”

Uh oh.

Back at his house we went into the garage and held a piece of the blue foamy stuff above a lit match. Poof!

Uh oh.

Mark says, “Well, just run with it a while and check it. If it doesn’t melt or start a fire right away you’re probably good to go.” Then he asks, “By the way, where did you buy the new bulb?”

“Fred Meyer, why?”

“Oh. Those are cheapys. Probably won’t last longer than three months or so. The ones at the dealership are better, but way more expensive too.”

Great. When I got home I called him back and said the car had not started on fire. And oh by the way, we should have wrapped that blue foamy stuff in aluminum foil first. “Brilliant!” he said, “why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

Fast forward to a few days ago…the oil change, and yes please also replace the dirty air filter, and by all means that burned out signal light bulb too! I laugh and share my past experience loudly. Everyone within earshot at the service desk nods sympathetically. Half hour later it’s all done. $200+. “Sorry, Mr. Nibbe, I had to charge you the shop minimum for labor to replace the bulb.” His head droops.

He’s sad. I’m sad. Everyone at the counter is sad.

Then yesterday I’m driving Happy Wife to work in the morning and I notice the volume control for the radio, the one on the steering wheel, doesn’t work. Down volume works, but not up. Hmm. Well, it figures, the car’s out of warranty by months, but no biggy. The volume control, the one on the radio itself, is like literally two inches from my right hand when it’s gripping the steering wheel, and there are masses of people starving in Africa, so…perspective.

AND THEN, after I drop HW at work I notice — wait for it — the passenger side headlight is out.

Uh oh.

Sure, I know the trick now, but I’m busy, too busy to deal with this myself. However, it is bloody dark much of the day this time of year so I really need to get a new bulb, and so I make an appointment at the dealership for this morning. In I go at 9 am. I’m on my way up to the service counter when an exceptionally cheerful man, who I take to be the service manager, says, “Good morning, sir, how is everything going today?” Well, I tell him, just fine, except for my utter contempt for the auto engineers at Subaru of America!

Everyone at the service counter looks up. I slap him on the back, tell him I’m kidding, sort of, and give him the short version of everything that you’ve just read. Plus, I emphasize to him, I was just in a couple days earlier for an oil change and had to have the blinker bulb replaced. Which I paid for dearly. Sympathetic nods all around.

I don’t know for sure, maybe it was the gaiety of my demeanor despite the crushing charge I’d suffered days earlier. Or the service manager was feeling the generous spirit of the season. Or both. But he looked over at the man at the service counter who was checking me in and said, “Write WS4 in the “bill to” column on Mr. Nibbe’s ticket, will you.” He wished me a good day and went about his business.

“WS4?” I asked the man at the counter.

“Means we’ll bill it to the shop, or find another way to pay for it. No charge for you today.”

“This is like Obamacare,” I said, “I get fixed and somebody else pays for it!”

Kidding. I didn’t really say that. But I did give him a very big thank you. And wished him a Merry Christmas. I mean for goodness sake, they didn’t even charge me for the bulb. $0.00 out the door.

And guess what. As I drove away I reflexively went to turn up the volume on the radio with the steering wheel control and… it works again. Frickin’ spooky.

A fine clique of Cheeseheads, no?

I texted my niece (pictured) during the game: “Hey, I think I just saw you guys on TV!”

Oh, the spirit of youth. I might like to be young again. If I could go way back and start all over I’d like to think I’d do something different with my life. But I confess I have no idea what it would be, even assuming I had my druthers. Ask people that question and many will say they know what they’d do. I don’t believe them. It’s not that given another go at life people can’t imagine what they might like to do, or what they might try to become. It’s just that how we end up is every bit as much the result of our stochastic reactions to unforeseen circumstances as it is the cause of our linear intentions.

I can certainly think of a few things I wouldn’t change on the next go around, or certain events I would seek to hasten rather than having to wait for the right circumstances (and my reactions to them) to arrive. For an example, see my prior post.

Xanax. One milligram. You would’ve thought he was in a coma. I know we slept as though we were.

Glorious.

Xanax was so successful we thought to reduce the dose by half, and because of Happy Wife’s alarm that she prescribes a whole quarter milligram for her human patients. As expected one half milligram was about one half as effective as one milligram  (I’m a pharmacologist — I think I know why!). The following morning Harry was up and bleating at 4:30 am. Better than 2:30 am; less desirable than 6:30 am. So we’re thinking we may go back to one milligram.

Yesterday HW & I celebrated the 10th anniversary of our (re-)introduction ten years ago. Duh, right? We’re both far more squishy around 12/04/04 than our wedding day (6/03/06). I was living elsewhere in Anchorage at the time, 12/04/04, just me and Rufus, anxiously waiting to hear which, if any, of the seven graduate schools I’d applied to would invite me for an interview during their recruitment week. I was at work one day finishing up a project when a friend and colleague (Marty) suddenly appeared in my office wondering if I might be interested in dating someone. I wasn’t. I was hopeful I’d be off to school soon; not a good time to begin a new relationship. I was about to wave Marty off when he said, “Do you know someone named Nancy?”

Full stop. I spun around in my chair and locked on him. “Describe her,” I said.

…

Backtrack to 2001. I’d first met a “Nancy” at a wine tasting and was quite taken with her, and, it turned out, she with me. Unbeknownst to her I followed her home after the tasting. Which was, technically speaking, stalking I suppose, but only because I was curious where she lived. Oh, and I should mention that earlier at the tasting a friend of Nancy’s had invited everyone at the table to his house the following week for Thanksgiving dinner. So it was early the following week that I was at work and couldn’t stop thinking about her. I called the number where she worked, asked to speak to a nurse practitioner named Nancy (I didn’t even know her last name), got her on the phone and asked if she was going to the Thanksgiving dinner. She said she was, and so I went too. We got along swimmingly there. I remember that during a moment of excited gesticulation in the living room she (or was it me?) spilled a glass of wine on her blouse. Off it came (unfortunately in the privacy of the bedroom), replaced by a loaner from a friend. Funny, innit, how we remember these details. Anyway, at evening’s end I drove her home. It was winter, cold outside. But I’d never felt warmer. Or more anxious. What would I do when we got to her house? If she invites me in? At the time I was in another “relationship” — scare quotes says it all — and a hapless victim of misguided loyalty. It didn’t happen, thankfully. Or so I thought at the time. We pulled into her driveway, I thanked her for a fun evening, she me, and then she stepped out of my truck and closed the door. I might have shook her hand. Ooh, daring! I didn’t even walk her to her front door. I know, right, what a schmuck. In my defense, though, I knew I’d be helpless to control my impulses were I to find myself, say, caught up in her arms? So I self-arrested. Like I said, misguided loyalty. After that, for the next three years, we never saw or spoke to each other again. Three years.

…

Marty described Nancy to me.

“A nurse practitioner, right? I said. “Yes, I remember now, we met several years ago. What about her?”

“She wants to know if she can call you.” I stared at Marty a second, thinking back to that night in her driveway, the tasting, the grace and beauty of her smile, the glow of her hair, the ease with which we talked to each other.

“She wants to call me? Now? Like tonight? Yeah, sure, of course, have her call me.”

I need to be honest in my recall here. The implied casualness of that, “yeah, sure, okay” completely belied my inner excitement.

That turned out to be the wisest Of Course I have ever uttered in my entire life. For the record I did have to call her. I waited at home for the phone to ring as I studied for my final biochemistry exam, and eventually it did ring, but when I picked up it was Marty, “Did she call you?”

“No.”

“Crap. She’s too scared is all. Just call her, okay?”

“Okay.”

And so I did. And from that night forward we have never been apart.

You may dry your eyes now.

Oh, the travails of old dog companionship. Wasn’t it just a month or so ago, while Lucy was still with us, he was sleeping contentedly through the night? We’re pretty sure it was. Now? Well, somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00 am we hear him downstairs, bleating. It’s usually Happy Wife who gets up and goes down to let him outside. Most often he’ll take a pee and then lay down in the snow in the middle of the yard. And stare, at nothing in particular. Or bark a few times at the northwest corner of the fence. But there’s nothing there. Eventually he gets cold and comes onto the porch and lays on his bed for awhile. After a time he paws at the door and wants back in. Happy Wife will get up from her makeshift bed on the couch and let him in. Once he resettles she can slip back up stairs without him knowing and come back to bed with me. Most nights, not all, he will then rest quietly until about 5:30 or 6:00 am. Then, copy/paste, except it’s me who’s on duty this time, wanting to let HW enjoy a little more sleep.

We tried Benadryl before bedtime. Didn’t seem to help restore his normal sleep cycle. Neither has Amitriptyline, which he’s also on. And Gabapentin for neurological pain. And Rimadyl, an anti-inflammatory.

I Googled “restless dogs at night.” Melatonin may work! Or Xanax! “Have you considered Selegiline?” Why no, I hadn’t. Says it helps some dogs in the throws of cognitive decline — nighttime relentlessness, reversed sleep cycles, barking into space. That kinda thing.

I offer my findings to HW as I prepare her morning latte (w/Eggnog — it’s that time of year!). She agrees we should try Xanax. He responded to it favorably before, she reminds me. Remember, we’d taken him to the vet to have him degassed and he came back home looking and behaving all panicky? Oh, right.

The advice I found included the caution not to scold a dog in cognitive decline. It’s like scolding an Alzheimer’s victim because he doesn’t understand. And equally futile.

Sometimes, usually on the weekends, when we sleep a little later and he’s been let outside (and back in) twice during the night, we’ll come downstairs and find him in “his” chair, zonked:

Whatchya gonna do.

My Michael Keaton moment:

I’d told asked Happy Wife to stay still. Now and then wives do not fulfill the humble requests of their husbands. Thus the wind swept face. We stopped here after I picked her up from work, earlier than usual.  Three women seated at the bar across from us each had a hearty pour of a deep red liquid smoldering in a glass in front of them. Words were exchanged, the glasses lifted high and mightily, clinked together and the liquid decanted with gusto down their gullets. What had they wished for, I wondered. The look on their faces struck me less as a felicitous celebration and more a vengeful release — “Take that sucker.” Perhaps a long and bitter divorce finally had been settled? A lawsuit concluded in one’s favor? Absolution from a moral judgement?

HW and I sat, talked, drank and ate. Nothing much, a happy hour appetizer, Quesedilla’d chicken I think. Texts were exchanged with HW’s brother. He and his family live in Fairbanks. He was evidently in a festive mood himself, referring to me, qua brother-in-law, as the “lighthouse of his life.” I felt unworthy of this affection. The “siren upon his shore,” maybe. Though I have no recollection of ever having led him astray.

HW has finished the Maple cheesecake and I have de-cellared what I hope will be a well-paired New Zealand Pinot Noir, our contributions to Thanksgiving dinner being hosted by our friend at his house later today.

What have I to be thankful for?  For you stopping by here, that’s what.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Google News yesterday: “Tiger Woods Hires Swing Consultant.“

Ambiguous.

Morning at our breakfast table: A small earthquake occurs and immediately Happy Wife darts away from the table and into the bathroom.

Also ambiguous.

As many of you already know I will be parting ways with my present employer come January. Wring (sic) out the old, they say.

Thus far I have been spared the usual pushing and shoving that ensues by those who are paid to take notice of these events, your hunters of heads, talent scouts, etc. etc., when a free agent of my Letteredness reappears suddenly on the labor market. To the contrary. You can hear a pin drop in my inbox.

I have my hypotheses. In no particular order, I am old. Whereas I used to be a young beast of burden, a capable farm animal sturdy and strong in my yoke putting furrows to field, the seeds of my vitae coveted by many — come work with us! — etcetera etcetera, I am now viewed with the same sentiment afforded a rescue to be brought inside the barn. Of all my hypotheses talk of this one greatly dispirits Happy Wife. And who can blame her. But cheer up, I tell her, the real reason might be the finest pastures (e.g., where we now live) are not coincident with the homes of the cultivators (employers) who would judge me too early for the barn. Not that they’d extend themselves and offer to pay to relocate me (or Us) to greener pastures, nevermind that in that regard (at least so far) HW and I are about as flexible as an icicle. Or it may simply be anonymity — I’m not strutting my stuff enough. Or a combination of all three. Or others I’ve overlooked. Or I’m merely impatient.

I did apply to the university. A tenure track job. It really was a fantastic application despite 1) what they (the search committee) may have said about it, and 2) their final decision.

Look on the bright side, I tell myself, unemployment has afforded you the opportunity to get to know the beasts in your own green brown pasture. Why, how many people can look out their kitchen window — and I mean right outside the window (I could’ve almost touched this beast) — whilst hand washing the morning’s dishes and see this:

He was finishing up a pee just as I started recording. Lovely, right? His girlfriend (I’m assuming) is back there by the raised beds. Listen carefully and you can hear Harry’s report from the backyard once he got a snoot-full of ’em, and later, me, giving an apparently pitiful rendition of a chorus line from Bohemian Rhapsody. This bad boy wasn’t the least bit amused. That expression on his face, it’s almost as if he’s saying: “You, sir, are no Freddie Mercury.”

“Yeah, well, at least I ain’t missing an antler. So there.”

Dish Network, our TV provider, removed CNN from its list of channels. Some sort of contract dispute with Turner Broadcasting which licenses CNN. So now instead of CNN on channel 5551, there’s MSNBC. Like FOX News, only in the opposite political direction, MSNBC appears unabashedly one-sided. CNN leaned left, too, but I thought certain of their broadcasts at least tried to achieve fairness. Nevertheless, we are left having to get our TV news from local channels, or PBS, which we usually enjoy. Say what you will about PBS, but those people are as stone-faced objective as any you’re going to find on TV when it comes to reporting the news.

I did have MSNBC on briefly yesterday while I ate my sandwich — Black Forest ham, cheese, and a thin-sliced Claussen pickle on toasted Pugliese bread. Okay, and a handful of Fritos Scoops. So sue me. Anyway, I listened to a debate complaints about the Keystone XL pipeline on a show hosted by reverend Al Sharpton. He’d invited certain congress critters onto the show to weigh in. Honestly, I forget which ones, except they were all Democrats who strongly opposed the construction of KXL because it would run through the United states carrying exceptionally “dirty” oil. That much is true. But the one objection that struck me as foolish, one which was brought up again and again by different opponents and stated by some as the biggest reason why KXL should be rejected by the Obama administration, is that refining this oil and burning the fuels will generate more greenhouse gases and worsen global warming. Certainly the extent of that worsening is a matter of debate (not that any of these opponents would have agreed), but no question there would be some additional greenhouse gas generated. Unfortunately for the opponents, the Keystone oil is going to be produced, refined, and the fuels eventually burned anyway. Stopping construction of KXL will not keep the oil in the ground. TransCanada, who owns the resource, is already producing the raw crude, and, in fact, sending it via rail car to United States’ refineries, a mode of delivery much more prone to hazardous spills than a modern pipeline is. Beyond that, TransCanada is involved in at least three other projects to sell the oil abroad, one of which will involve putting the oil on tankers leaving Pacific Coast ports. Historically speaking, another rather dangerous way to transport heavy oil.

Why none of these facts were brought up by the reverend to challenge the arguments being made by the congress critters is baffling, especially since it took me all of one Google search to find them. Wait, what’s that? “MSNBC is bloody biased, Rod!”

I see. And here I thought it was only that Other network, the one with the pretty women, that was biased. Got it now.

Looking outside it’s as if the world has its arms folded, tapping its foot and checking its watch, “Any day now.” The trees are leafless. The grass is desiccate brown. Hibernators have gone to their shelters. Year-rounders brace themselves. The air is cold, the mountains restless, the sky a dingy gray. The sun? Ha! Nothing more than a dim orange smudge o’er the southern mountains this time of year, where it makes it o’er the mountains. And where it doesn’t, or it’s cloudy — Fuggetaboutit. Around the neighborhood tarpaulins cover boats and trailers and other summertime conveyances. Anchorage denizens lumber about, hooded, gloved, booted. Waiting. Every body and every thing, it seems, is waiting.

Overheard banter in the elevator: “I heard snow by Friday.” “Nah, they’ve been saying that for over two weeks now.” A hearty, mocking laughter goes up. These are the skeptics. For them forecasters are no more than witless soothsayers. Very often the skeptics are correct and so it justifies their philosophical swagger. The laughter has not died when the doors open on floor seven. The three who board wonder what they missed, sorry they did. Lightness and laughter are summer’s expressions, winter demands its solemn reflection. You take your relief where you find it this time of year. The doors close and the elevator continues its descent. Near floor two someone offers the culprit may be global warming. Ding: Lobby. Some shrug, gather themselves and exit. The shrug says it all. These are the conformists. They want to be on the right side of consensus, of course they do, but unlike the guffawing skeptic most prefer to remain quiet about it, just in case.

Keeps coming.

8:30 am again, this time from our backyard. I never jade to a pretty sky. A sucker for one really. Set against the haunt of Black Spruce — priceless.

Looks even cooler when embigened. Just sayin. It’s not like a single mouse click is going to be a major impediment to the important progress of your day.