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Our water heater is not what you think.

It used be you could walk into the basement or garage of any home and find a tall white cylinder, maybe twenty inches in diameter by five feet tall, filled with hot water. How did it work? Simple. There was a thermostatically controlled heat exchanger inside the cylinder in contact with the water to keep it at the desired temperature. One pipe brought cold water in, another delivered hot water out. The connectors had easily serviceable gaskets. Most units had a pressure relief valve and a drain hose in case it leaked. Gas or electric heaters were available. That’s pretty much it.

Now, have you ever heard of Rube Goldberg? No? Well, there, I linked it for you.

Old Rube had a number of talents but mostly he was known for his cartoons, in particular his depiction of Rube Goldberg Machines, which were:

complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways

Today, if you remark about an object’s design by saying, “Oh, man, that is so Rube Goldbergian,” you mean exactly that, the thing’s design is unnecessarily complicated and convoluted to achieve its function.

Back to our water heater. You can see where I am going with this.

Right.

We have a box in our garage screwed to the wall. It’s roughly the size of Goliath’s lunchbox. It heats water. That’s it. That’s all it does.

And yet to look at it…

… and I’m only showing you part of this contraption! — you’d say, “Man, that is totally Rube Goldbergian.”

It only get worse inside the box.

Therein you’d find circuit boards and connectors and valves and electrodes and expanders and other mysterious parts and pieces all connected together in an arcane mess of machinery. To what end?

To heat water.

But wait, skeptic, hold thine tongue!

The water heater is modern! It’s efficient! — why, should you care to read it, there’s an entire brochure given over to boasting of the unit’s myriad operational efficiencies. And it’s environmentally friendly! And it’s smart! — water is heated “on demand!”

Yet still you may be wondering, at what cost, dear homeowner, does this whizbangery come?

$537.00

“To purchase it?!”

No. To maintain it. That’s what I paid yesterday. Three years ago I paid close to the same amount to have it serviced. In five years we’re into this thing for ~ $1000.00.

What’s a homeowner to do but lament. In Alaska, especially with winter nigh, you do not want to achieve your cost savings by skimping on the maintenance of the machine that makes water hot. Especially since our house is heated hydronically (sub floor heat).

At least the service man was competent. His parents had named him after Alaska’s gemstone. Unusual — I kept wanting to call him Jason — but like I said, he was competent.

But it was one of those service calls where the phases of dis-assembly were punctuated with knocks on the door,” Mr. Nibbe, may I speak with you a moment?”

His face was grim. Uh oh, he’s found something else wrong. He had said when he first arrived and assessed the leakage I told him about on the phone that only the thermal expansion doohickey would need to be replaced ($165, and look here, lucky for you I just happen to have one in my truck!), but now, in the course of removing the thingamajig that connects the doohickey…. “Well, I think you can clearly see, Mr. Nibbe, that this really should be replaced as well.”

Over the course of his service visit there were no less than two separate knocks on the door.

Multiple reassurances ensued that he was not trying to up-sell me on things I didn’t need. I believed him. Because I want to believe in the ethical goodness of mankind. Plus, this man, this “gem” of a man, looked to me like a cross between Jim Carey and Chevy Chase, and who among us would ever suspect either one of them of up-selling?

Although — although! — he did say that if I’d like, he could also replace the gas flame regulator which, although my unit was presently operating fine without it, in his expert opinion it was only a matter of time before it failed. “And when it does, Mr. Nibbe, your boiler will shut down,” he said ominously.

Part $245, plus 1/2 hour labor to install; he’d anticipatively brought one along. But wait, it only takes ten minutes to install? “Minimums, Mr. Nibbe, we have minimums.”

I declined. I put my family in peril and declined. That’s what it felt like, standing there, looking at him with that “Are you certain you don’t want me to install it, Mr. Nibbe?” look on his face.

Warm in the house this morning. I can step onto the tile floor in the kitchen in bare feet and not be chilled. Love that.

But just wait, the very first morning the floor isn’t toasty warm it’ll be -20 outside, and with my luck it’ll be Sunday. Emergency service call to install a flame regulator — time and a half. Oh boy!

I took down gemstone’s personal cell number. “Call me,” he said, “if anything problems should arise.” Muhahahaha…

Q: What’s three thousand square feet and white all over?

…

Happy Wife brought the comfort last night, homemade chicken soup. And for me a grilled cheese sandwich — with thin sliced Claussen pickles, just what I’d asked for!

Go ahead, click it. Embiggen the savoriness.

Except you can’t really “see” savory, now can you?

Imagine a technology to digitize smells. A sort of scratch ‘n sniff for your computer.

Consider: You’re browsing the Internet one day and you happen upon a picture of chicken soup. You click it to make it larger. This downloads the digital image to your computer where it is then rendered in your browser, as happens now. But imagine if, in addition to the digital image, a digital smell associated with the image was downloaded as well, say a unique digital smell representing somebody’s chicken soup. Further, imagine your computer (or smart device) was equipped with an effuser, a hardware device capable of rendering digital smells, just like the screen on your computer (or phone) renders digital images. Now, instead of just seeing the picture of the chicken soup on the screen you literally smell the savoriness coming from the effuser as well. A kind of high tech Odorama. (For an old tech example see John Water’s film Polyester).

Now, as with any new technology, there will be abusers. Sure enough some dude’s gonna digitize his fart and associate it with a picture of a dozen roses or something. We’ll have to deal with that kind of nose porn. But we already have filters for viruses. I see no reason we can’t do the same for smells: “WARNING!, the attached .WHIF file smells awful!” Inevitably, though, some peoples’ devices will get infected. Some could be serious. Imagine: Every time you try to delete a bad .WHIF file it only makes the situation worse — before long your whole house smells a ripe baby diaper.

You can imagine that once Google gets a whif (haha) of this technology we’ll have smell searches. Or smells will be used to suggest shopping preferences: “People who liked this odor also liked…”

The possibilities are endless.

A: If you guessed the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters you were close. Correct answer was our backyard. Freak snowfall sneaked up on us last night.

It’s true. The ears of corn are gone from stores.

Wait, are you wondering the same thing I am?

Why “ears” of corn? Why not hands of corn, or chins of corn. Buttocks of corn?

The ancients were indeed a mysterious people. And then came Google:

“Ear” comes from the ancient word “ahs,” which meant “husk of corn.” In English, sometimes the ear also is referred to as a “cob” or a “pole.” The ear is the spiked part of the corn plant that contains kernels, the delicious yellow tidbits we love to nibble on in the summertime.

Ah hah — that explains it! Now I know what my New Englander friends were trying to tell me the winter of my visit — “Cahver yah ahs, Rahd, it’s cahld outside.”

So, what is a husband to do? Having been charged by Happy Wife with dinner prep for Tuesday evening, the store shelves bereft of Ahs of Corn, yet still desperately wanting to prepare her the grilled corn recipe from this one:

Speaking of delicious tidbits to nibble on in summertime. Had the ancients been introduced to Giada we would not now be referring to them as ears of corn. KnowWhatImean? <nyuk nyuk>

Anyway, where was I. Oh right…

I went to my grocer’s freezer section and purchased frozen Ahs of corn. Brilliant!

I’m serious. Giada’s grilled corn (w/Parmesan) recipe is the bomb . Or, as my great nephew would opine: Amaze Balls.

Behold my rendition: Giada’s grilled cream corn w/Parmesan, spice-rubbed, grilled Alaskan halibut, oven-crisped prosciutto and an arc of cucumber:

Plus California Cabernet, vintage ’12.

How’d I do?

(Reminder: certain images on this blog may be embiggened by clicking on them).

What else, what else…

Oh right, the weather.

Unseasonably warm. Not quite warm enough for this anymore…

(Whoa! Gams of corn. Am I right?).

…but pretty warm. Like upper 40s by day. Yesterday it reached 52. During our daily walk at the park yesterday Harry was briefly beaten up by Otis, a somewhat spastic Rottweiller mix with a bad temper. No harm done. Like I said, it was brief. By the time I got close to intervene they’d already separated. Seconds later Otis’s cherub-faced upright came wheeling by on her mountain bike, oblivious, it seemed, to what had gone down — “Come pretty Otis, come!”

Yeah, I got your pretty Otis right here, girl.

Mood: edgy.

Not much else of note going on. I am We are anxiously awaiting to hear on the status of a certain application I’ve submitted. Prefer to leave you wondering at this time. Once we know, especially if the outcome is favorable to us, you’ll know.

Bye for now.

Don’t judge US!

To boot, the very next night we accompanied friends to the Long Branch Saloon for burgers — beef! — and fries. I was told the buns were homemade. So there. Took a statin before bed to tie the score: Atherosclerosis 1, Me 1.

I would love to be able to report to you that our lives are busy and excitement filled. You know the kind of report I speak of. All of us have at least one cloyingly cheerful acquaintance who once annually goes burbling on about the husband’s recent promotion, the family’s ensuing relocation to Wherever, the effortless progress of the children (two is a sweet number — imagine Noah & Sophie) passing their grades. Both of whom are gifted. Which anymore only means they handed in their homework on time. And don’t forget the gratuitous pic of the family cat. Missives of this kind typically arrive around Christmas time. This is done on purpose, to leverage the gratefulness inherent in the season and sucker you into believing just how “magical their year has been!” Moreover, anticipating that certain readers will nevertheless remain skeptical of any report of year-long felicity, photographs are frequently included as evidence. (On the backside, to save paper. This is also done with intention. Staying connected need not mean despoiling Our Earth!). Hardcore types may go so far as to hire a professional photographer to capture the evidence: “Here we all are in a snowball fight in Aspen!”

Pablum. Utter pablum.

Having said that, it is probably not too early for me to begin penning the once annual “Nibblet.” Now in its fifth consecutive year. And it’s free! I changed the name; it used to be called The Nibbles. Care for a stroll down memory lane? 2011. Pablum free!

… Will You Do the Fandango!

That time of year. Moose are in rut. And right in our back forty for cryin’ out loud.

That fella clearly doesn’t understand that NO means NO. Or, more likely, as Happy Wife suggested, being that’s a pretty puny bull mamma probably has her eye on a bigger bubba down the street somewhere. In Mooseville, size matters.

Going to pick up Sweet Pea this afternoon. A small plastic bag. We intend to place it her beneath Rufus inside the basket on the hearth, where he’s been at rest ever since he passed in 2012.

Lately, I’ve been googling phrases like, “average length of a novel” and “average length of a chapter.”

Not because I want to impose any stricture on my writing, but merely because I’m curious to know what the numbers are. From what I gathered, the length of your average novel is in the range of sixty to ninety thousand words. Chapters, about five to six thousand words long. If true, and I’m average, I’m nearly finished with my first chapter.

Crisp, bluesky days up here lately. A little more snow on the mountains, but nothing in town so far. Happy Wife put a small pumpkin on the windowsill, and some Indian corn on the front of the house. That time of year. Come morning there’s frost on the grass, which is still green. Leaves are still on the trees too. Mostly. Kaya — remember Kaya? — continues to prefer our front lawn to crap on. I don’t say anything about it to the neighbor. Neither does Happy Wife. Moose crap on it too. Who you going to complain to about that? Besides, picking up dog crap is a snap compared to moose skat. You might argue that’s no reason we should tolerate Kaya crapping on our lawn. I suppose that’s true, but you see Jim, Kaya’s upright, our neighbor, is still stinging from having his wife of 30+ years leave him. Well over a year ago now. To complain to him that his dog craps on our lawn would feel petty somehow. There are people half way around the world, innocent people, getting beheaded. I think I can pick up some dog pooh now and then.

My favorite of these two — Sweet Pea & The Tan Man. Sounds like the title of a children’s book. Maybe I should.

Both are now perma-linked forever on the right hand sidebar.

Not much new. Still just taking up space. Although slowly a sense of purpose trickles back into our daily lives. Inevitability we move on. The slopes turn yellow and red. The nights are once again dark, and getting colder. Come morning there’s a skin of ice on the water bowl outside. Garden hoses and lawn mower have been stowed for winter. There’s Termination Dust on the highest peaks of the Chugach mountains. I used to like that, “Termination Dust.” Now I hate it for its association.

I’ve started writing a book. No, I’m not going to say what it’s about, except to say it’s a novel. I’ve no idea how long it will take to complete. I’m a rank amateur at this. I will say I am so far pretty pleased with how the first chapter is coming along. My approach to writing something of this scope, to the extent I even have an approach, is to edit over and over again until I think it’s right, before moving on. It’s deliberate on my part, but subconsciously I may be doing it to put off the challenge of thinking about where the story will go next, i.e. the plot.

Anyway, it’s one advantage, I suppose, of being an amateur writer, you have no deadline, no agent calling you on the phone every week demanding to see evidence of progress — “Mr. Nibbe, just when is it that we can expect the next blockbuster from you,” — impatient finger tapping table — “hmm?”

For all of your kind thoughts, both here and through the outpouring in email, thank you. It means a lot to us.

Walked with Harry today at Kincaid Park, just he and I. The trail was fast becoming covered with yellow and orange leaves. Breezy, and chilly — I could feel the change coming. Like most weekdays there was hardly a soul there, maybe saw one person. Felt Lucy, though. How she loved this park. Must’ve walked hundreds of miles with her there over the years.

So many miles; they should name a trail after her.

I once made a conservative estimate of how many miles I biked/walked with Rufus in 11.5 years. Would you believe as many as from Los Angeles to Atlantic City, New Jersey. And back?

Other than that nothing felt familiar today. I once asked a friend how he was doing in the days immediately following his difficult divorce. He said it felt like he was doing nothing but taking up space. That’s what this grief feels like to me.

I wrote this about three or four weeks ago.

——————

It occurred to me this morning why wait til she’s gone, write of her now, in the present, still here, with us, nearby me now lying on the floor, on her left side, to avoid pressing against the big ball of cancer on her right shoulder.

Lately I look up more often from what I’m doing to reassure myself that her breaths still fill her lungs, to see the quiet rise and fall of her abdomen, the steady grace of her form. Her breaths are rapid but I’m not concerned it’s the cancer, she’s always breathed this way, every day since we first met over ten years ago now.

She was two years old when Happy Wife (HW) rescued her; at least that was the estimate. Dogs don’t have rings like trees do so dating them is guesswork. Some people dislike the term “rescue” but in Lucy’s case she really was rescued. The women at the shelter were overjoyed when HW agreed to adopt her. By then Lucy was into her “extended” stay period and they feared if someone didn’t come for her soon… well, rules are rules, shelters have only so much room, new animals are arriving all the time and each of them wants a chance, too, complete with a photo on the website of their little supplicant face — Won’t you please adopt me? Meanwhile the Unchosen move further down the list, until, eventually, they scroll off the bottom.

But that was not to be Lucy’s fate.

The first months in HW’s care Lucy was a challenge, especially at bedtime she was inconsolable, ceaselessly restless. On and on for weeks this went, sleepless nights, until HW finally called her mother in tears wondering out loud what she had done with adopting this crazy dog. To this day she remembers her mother’s consoling words: “Dear, Lucy is just a special needs dog.”

Why of course, maybe one of Lucy’s special needs is Xanax! This was tried. But Lucy had a paradoxical reaction, Xanax made her even more anxious and restless. One time under a normal dose she began aimlessly darting about the house, jumped onto HW’s bed and without breaking stride leapt off the other side and flew head first into a dresser. This did in fact calm her briefly, and while you might say it was proof that the drug had worked, clearly it was not the way the drug was supposed to work, and in any case the effect was short lived — Lucy quickly shook off the collision and returned to her nighttime expressions of anxiety.

Eventually her anxiety was brought under control by amitriptyline and she matured into the biggest bundle of sweetness you can imagine. Even still, in the early years there were times when I grew frustrated because a bathroom or bedroom light had to be left on overnight because Lucy was afraid of the dark and needed a safe place to sleep. It was at these times when HW would calmly remind me of what her mother had said.

Just now she got up off the floor and walked over to me, standing next to my chair, looking up at me with her soulful eyes, wondering if it wouldn’t be too much trouble if I could pull away from my writing for a few seconds to let her out the door in the backyard to pooh, and then I’ll just curl up in a little ball in the dirt right here beneath the window, me and my cancer, where you can keep an eye on me if you care to. I won’t bother you the rest of the day, Papa. Promise.

And I want poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick for Every Single Time I ever complained about a light having to be left on overnight.

I open the door for Her Grace to let her out. I give her two chicken treats, her favorite. As many as she wants, as often as she wants. One of the drugs we give her (prednisone) has made her ravenous. We don’t give her drugs to get rid of the cancer, that’s futile now and has been since we conceded months ago the disease was systemic, merciless against our many tries to get rid of it. No, she’s in hospice now, chicken is palliative. We give her the drugs to reduce the cancer’s symptoms, to keep her as comfortable as we can for as long as we can.

I think it was when the four of us — HW, I, Rufus & Lucy — went to Cleveland for four years that I started calling her Lucille. That, or The Streak, for the way she could move through a dense woods, leaping over dead fall — you’d see nothing but a flash here and there of the white and brown markings of her incomparably beautiful coat as she chased down a white-tail deer, merely for the fun of the chase. And her coat and markings really are beautiful, it’s the feature of hers most often mentioned by strangers who stop to comment on how pretty she is. We’d laugh because in the same amount of time it took Lucy to chase after a deer a mile or more and return to us, Rufus was just getting his first olfactory alert — Deer!

If it is true dogs can be good friends, those two were, without question. Never fought once and they always hung together, even when it seemed they were lost without hope. When we left the house for work in the morning, they stayed in the house together, always.

Except when…

One day a violent thunderstorm passed over East Cleveland. I’d left a kitchen window cracked open before I left for work, maybe a couple inches from the bottom, mostly owing to the futility of trying to close the damn thing — with the countless coats of paint on it, it was almost impossible to move up or down. We later guessed a series of violent thunder claps came so low over the house that they must have sounded like they went off in the attic, and if Lucy has special needs there’s also one thing she doesn’t need — sudden, loud noises. So when the storm came in low and the thunder cracked she probably panicked. When HW got home later in the afternoon and walked in the house, no Lucy, just Rufus. In her mad sweep of the house to locate Lucy she happens to look out the window in the backyard. There’s Lucy, standing in the pouring rain, drenched — and I mean drenched — fur flattened to her skin and looking skinny as a mud puppy. In her panic she’d gotten out of our house somehow, ran into the neighbors’ backyard where the grandmother spotted her out the kitchen window, alerted her daughter who thankfully recognized Lucy and kindly got her on a leash and put her in our backyard (fenced). But how had she escaped the house? I get home and HW tells me what happened, and then I see the kitchen window — you know, the one a grown man could not force up or down? — open maybe six inches with a gaping hole in the screen behind it.

To this day I’ve no explanation for how she could have forced that window open that far and have managed to squeeze through the gap and push on through the screen. Special needs. Special powers.

I’m looking out the window now but I don’t see Lucy. It’s early September, a partly sunny day, pleasantly warm for this time of year. She’s probably curled up in a little dignified ball of white and tan at the base of the currant bush, a shaded refuge from the sunlight flickering through trees. Weird, isn’t it; she’s afraid of the dark but will seek it out at the first sign of flashing light, or even at what she’s learned causes it. Pull a camera from your pocket and she’s running for cover.

The final homecoming in Anchorage was in 2009, the four of us variably satisfied for having done the Cleveland thing. It felt good to be home. The four of us did the drive together as far as Seattle and never once did either dog complain. We put HW on a plane and the three of us drove the rest of the way to Anchorage, Lucy riding shotgun. She laid on a raised platform that HW had rigged up for her on the passenger seat, composed of a scrunched up dog bed, a sleeping bag, and blankets. She laid on that with her head resting on the dash, her nose pointed toward the future you might say, and would stay that way for hundreds of miles. Many a dog’s virtues capture my envy, patience and calm not the least among them. Lucy had both in spades, except, of course, in the dark.

She’s been the steadiest of companions always, but especially since we returned to Alaska. The rivers and lakes and streams and mountains are like one big dog park up here. No fences, no areas designated for big dogs versus small, no playtime rules to abide, just boundless spaces in which to roam with our four-legged friends wherever, whenever, and however we want. Spring summer winter and fall. If there’s a finer expression of freedom I don’t know of it.

There was a time after Rufus left us but before Harry arrived when our walk in the morning at the park was just Lucy and me. You never want to admit to favorites but she really was the finest canine companion I’ve ever had. Independent, fearless, friendly without exception, always close by. It seems like a simple thing, a walk in the park with your dog, but I can assure you a great deal of therapy occurs, too. For that I am especially grateful for the steadiness of Lucy’s companionship.

I wonder what will be left when she’s gone. Like losing a right arm I suppose. The pain of absence will arrive as phantoms, memories of presence which cannot be unlearned. Like when Rufus died in ’12, for too long I heard his bark in the backyard and turned expecting to see him. It will be no different in kind when Lucy goes to the Rainbow Bridge. But believing she is there, cancer free, with Rufus and all the other dogs that have graced our lives, I hope will help to chase away the phantoms.

——————

Coda: Saturday, September 27th, 2014. Lucille passed today. She’d finally succumb to the cancer. HW and I knew it was time when her legs failed her and not a trace of spirit was left in her eyes.

The emptiness in our house is as big as the hole in our hearts.

Godspeed, our sweet girl, godspeed.

Stepped outside to fetch the mail and saw this on the neighbor’s porch. Right then he comes out his front door, sees me and says, “Hey Rod, wondering if I could speak with you a second.”

He steps off his porch and begins coming toward me. Slowly, like predator to prey. I begin to back away, one slow step at a time up my driveway, keeping my eyes trained on him. I shoot a long look at the bloody bags. He pauses briefly and turns to follow my stare. I’m still backing up when he turns back around and continues coming toward me. “Hey Lee,” I finally manage to say, my back up against the garage with nowhere left to retreat, “haven’t seen your wife or three kids the last couple days.”

He’s still coming at me, a twisted smile on his face, and he’s so close I can almost touch him when I see him reach for something in the back pocket of his coveralls. It must be big or awkward or both because he struggles to remove it. I can’t quite make out what it is before he…

And then something grabs my arm and is shaking it. “Honey, you okay… honey, wake up.“

I open my eyes grab her wrist and jerk her toward me — it’s Happy Wife. She says, “You poor thing, what was it?” I push her aside, leap out of bed and run to the window. I look across the cul-de-sac. The bags are gone. But they were there. I saw them there. I’m sure I did.