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We’re back from San Francisco where we’d gone to attend our friend’s (Kevin, aka Kdog) wedding. When it was in doubt whether or not we’d be able to make it down I joked with him and said, “No worries, dude, I’ll make your next one.” Trust me: I did not repeat the joke in front of his bride, Vanessa. He chose well, no? We enjoyed the wedding ceremony and the reception, both held at the Kohl mansion in Burlingame, CA. Dinner was good. The bride and groom were nicely primped, as you’d expect, and if I don’t say so myself Happy Wife (HW) and I cleaned up rather nicely as well:

Except… What’s that you say, my head looks like a beet? Yes, well, we’d been out in the sun all the day before, walking the northern reaches of San Francisco, around fisherman’s wharf, near Chinatown, etc.. We walked a grand loop that must’ve been been 7-8 miles, going and coming along Market street where HW remarked in a moment of surliness that she half expected to see a zombie with its flesh falling off. This, prompted by the all too frequent sighting of the frightfully psychotic denizens of Market street. Why surly? Well, in addition to my fried scalp, she suffered significant blisterage on her feet during the walk despite the fact she was wearing flats, which were evidently ill-suited for distance walking. She stopped at a Walgreens to purchase an assortment of band-aids, which were either too small for said blisterage or which fell off quickly because the adhesive would not adhere to sweaty skin. All the while my uncovered scalp continued to burn. We stopped at a bar for liquid relief where we briefly argued over the merits/demerits of using the maps app on a phone for navigation, versus googling in a browser for a map. It wasn’t so much HW disagreed with my logic that the former was better, she just wanted the damn — I believe other adjectives may have been used — browser on her phone to do the right thing RIGHT NOW.

By the time we found our way back to the car you’d have thought, judging by our mood and appearance, that we had just traversed the Gobi desert.

Note to newlywed husbands: When your bride of many years has blisters on her feet, is mildly dehydrated and beginning to see zombies, this is not the time to try to convince her of the merits of some arcane fact of technology. Better to just order her another glass of wine, smile and say, “Love you button.”

What else? Got back home and all was well in the house. Our friends Willy and Mel stayed here with Lucy and their dog Duke. Harry we boarded with a woman who sits dogs in her own home. A first time for Harry at her place, but it was only four days and we had reason to trust her. Well, HW picks him up early Sunday morning, brings him home where he’s understandably anxious and whatnot, feeds him, after which his stomach inflates to the size of a large watermelon. This is accompanied by signs of distress. End of summer tranquility. Panic ensues. WHAT NOW?! Recall we’d opened him up less than a month ago to remove tampons from his gut. HW whisks him off to the vet. Not our vet, of course, they’re closed on Sundays! These things ALWAYS happen on Sunday or a holiday. Only dogs know why.

X-rays, IVs, sedatives, special radiography consult. $$$$.  Diagnosis? Inconclusive. Great. Though the vet tech assures us by phone that Harry is now resting comfortably. Well, sure, but I could have put him up in the Hyatt penthouse suite downtown to rest comfortably with what you charged us, and had the doorman tell me he’s unsure what’s bothering the dog. I resisted actually saying this.

I insist Harry come home. HW agrees. He’s still loopy from sedatives but overall better than when we’d taken him in. Inflated stomach has deflated measurably. Out of the woods? Maybe. HW feeds him, then almost immediately regrets this decision after his stomach begins to re-inflate. More panicked calls to the vet. Walk him, they say, see if he’ll poop. HW walks him. Poop is made, though it’s minimal, and what there is appears to be half poop and half dirt. HW mentions to me he ate dirt earlier. Dirt? You don’t say.

Eventually we get him settled. He is resting quietly. I take the time to finish tending to the 111 things I need to do before the bike tour begins — THURSDAY. HW prepares us both a plate of dinner. It’s about 7:00 pm. We sit down to eat and watch the last two episodes of Fargo. Harry continues to degas, loudly. I agree with HW that anal vapor under the circumstances is a good thing. Peace at last.

Then Lucy begins to whine.

Arggh.

She wants treats because one of the medicines we give her (Prednisone) makes her hungrier than a spring bear out of hibernation. Pretty much constantly. HW gives her copious treats. Harry is now restless because Lucy is restless. Oy vey.

I pause Fargo. Lucy is let outside. Given more treats. Chicken strips this time (the ones made in the USA because of government warnings that the Chinese ones are unsafe). Ten seconds later she paws at the door, wants back in. I pause Fargo again as HW lets her back in. She wants more treats. HW obliges her. Harry changes positions and moans as he does so. HW says he still looks bloated.

Oy vey.

9:30 pm. BOTH DOGS ARE RESTIVE.

We go to bed. “Will you listen during the night and get up if he whines?” HW asks me.

“Yes, button.”

One whining episode ensues, about 2:30 am, but it’s short lived and his belly at the time looks to me to be normally sized.

I drift off to sleep.

Morning comes and my eyes feel swollen, like I’m looking through slits, turning Asian. HW examines me and agrees the skin beneath my eyes is swollen. Edema, she says, from having burned your scalp. Which is now flaking away. Put some ice on it she says, you’ll be fine.

She dresses for work, I make her latte. Harry is acting normally! Lucy is behaving normally!

HW comes down stairs, smartly dressed, kisses me goodbye and she’s off to work.

I cross my fingers and check the extended forecast (6/26-7/3).

Oh, please please be true!:

Off to the wedding as soon as Happy Wife finishes foofing.

Yesterday on our walk, someplace high near Chinatown.  Alcatraz looms in the distance:

Don’t forget: click pic to embiggen.

An old former friend…

Let’s start over. A friend and former colleague (Tom) of many years ago found me on linkedIn. Shot me an email and said let’s connect, an invitation I quickly accepted, and then lo and behold a few days later he shoots me another email to tell me he and two friends are coming to Anchorage to begin a motorcycle tour of Alaska. That’s Tom on the right, Neil middle, and Neil’s brother, Chris, far left, beside their Beemers. Happy Wife and I dropped them off here and wished them safe travel on their whirlwind tour of south-central Alaska. They rode north to Talkneeta last night, and then in the seven (!) days to follow: Denali and Fairbanks, the Richardson Hwy to Valdez, a one day ride to Seward (>400 miles) with a day of kayaking in Aialik Bay (Happy Wife was drooling at this), summer solstice in Homer, then back to Anchorage on the 22nd to fly home. Whew.

Tom and I met in ’85 when we were professional youngin’s getting our start in BigOil in Plano, Tx. When the layoffs hit he ventured northeast to work in hydrology, I stayed with the company and moved to California. We exchanged Christmas cards & letters for few years until eventually, as too often happens, we fell out of touch.

We had time for dinner and reminiscing before dropping them off. At the restaurant Tom reminded me of one of those times “one never forgets” back in ’86 in my Texas apartment. It was an amusing story, for sure, but nevertheless one that involved a recall of my ex-wife, related memories of whom I have been quite content to let lie quiescent these past 20 years. What ever happened between you two, he wondered. I replied with the short version, the very short version, which left him a bit wide-eyed as it does most people. Not that I have the most interesting divorce tale to tell, but because real life circumstances involving perfidy and regret never loose their appeal in storytelling.

“Besides,” I said as I flung my arm around Happy Wife pulling her close, “eventually I upgraded. Don’t you think?” A hearty affirmative nod, the kind oft associated with the exclamation, “Man, you ain’t kiddin’!”

I hope they have time to say good bye before they leave Anchorage on the 22nd to return home. Would love to hear their impressions of this place we call home.

Yesterday I cycled past an entrance gate to Fort Richardson, where Bowe Bergdahl was based before deploying to Afghanistan and eventually being captured and held by the Taliban in 2009, until his recent release. It set me to thinking about one of the many interesting books I read last year, The Deserters. It was a book that focused on the lives of three deserters in WWII, and had some general information about deserters, e.g. the life of crime many of them lead in foreign cities (e.g. Paris) after they deserted, how the military hunted them down, the time they served in prison when found guilty, etc.. There were over 150,000 American and British deserters in WWII. I had no idea the number was that high. I don’t know if Bergdahl in fact deserted, which I understand technically means he was absent with out leave (AWOL) or took an unauthorized absence (AU). What I learned from the book, however, is that desertion is taken very seriously in the military, a criminal action prosecutable under the code of military justice. What’s possibly worse, it can make you persona non grata with your fellow soldiers. Although if I recall correctly some deserters in WWII, when discovered by their fellow soldiers out on patrol, were actually helped by them. My impression was that was rare.

Anyway, what rankles me about this Bergdahl case is how it’s being treated in the press and by the certain members of the Obama white house. People like Susan Rice, who jumped to claim Bergdahl served honorably, you would think would keep her mouth shut until the circumstances of his capture are made clear. Plus, I’ve heard other commentators on CNN and elsewhere claim, “We must do whatever we need to do to bring our soldiers home.” That sounds nice and honorable, but I doubt these people would have thought that way about WWII deserters of the kind described in the aforementioned book. So if Bergdahl did desert, why should he be seen any differently by us or treated any differently than WWII deserters were, i.e. as criminals? To save face for Obama?

What justice Bergdahl will meet if he is in fact found to be a deserter I don’t know, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, having traded a criminal for five bad guys hardly seems like an event worthy of a celebration in the Rose Garden.

Remember, clicking pictures usually makes them BIGGER.

More friends came to visit us recently. We enjoyed a little lunch at Zudy’s cafe in Seward yesterday before returning to Anchorage. Zudy deserves her recent shout out if for no other reason than her homemade Key Lime pie! Not only yours truly’s favorite dessert, but favorite food, period. Happy Wife discovered this on our first date night over nine and a half years ago now, the night she invited me to her house and asked what I would like to have her make us for dinner. Key Lime pie! Okay, I can make that for dessert, she said, but how about dinner? Key Lime pie!

Okay okay, how about mushroom ravioli? And so it was, she made us both, even squeezed (squoze is not a word) the tiny key limes herself. I brought the wine and my charm. Dessert that night, it turned out, involved more than Key Lime pie, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

As the four of us are variably into the 2nd half century of our lives, our conversation naturally turned to whether or not we’re going to make it out of this alive. We all agreed we wouldn’t. Nobody gets out of life alive. What about medicare part D? Nope, you’ll pay and pay but it will not save you from the inevitable. What if we get a supplemental policy! Nope. It may help reduce your out-of-pocket copay but eventually it will only make you poorer faster. I found the discussion disquieting. By then all of us were looking down, watching our feet and rolling our toes, each of us lost in thought and wondering, I suppose, what would be our individual fate.

I talked with my mom on the phone for about an hour and a half (hi Mom!). She and my father recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary. What’s that sappy song by Captain & Tenille, “Love Will Keep Us together.” I looked it up and discovered it was co-written by the equally sappy Neil Sedaka. To avoid the risk of giving you a Brainworm I won’t even ask you what your favorite Neil Sedaka song is.

Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain…

I’m sorry!

Seriously, though, how else to explain 62 years of marriage, to the first and only person you ever married? Remarkable.

Pleasant weather lately but a tad on the cool side. We did get some much needed rain that helped douse the wildfire that had been burning out of control on the Keani peninsula. Smoke is gone now, and I’m glad for that, especially since we’re just weeks away from the great Alaska bike tour. Oh, it’s going to be deliciously fun. Happy Wife, my lead sag driver, has promised to purchase a moose pooper to dispense candy at the sag stops, and suggested we hold a drawing on the last day of the tour and give it away. “Perfect!” I said, “This is exactly the kind of out of the box butt thinking I expect from my crew.”

Imagine trading prisoners is like trading baseball cards. It appears Obama may have just traded a Ruth, Robinson, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Aaron, for a Pete Rose.

According to Wikipedia:

“worn in the belief it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading.”

Apparently the effect wears off, though, because repeated applications are necessary every three months or so. Note the aura of white light above her head, indicating, I suppose, that the tinfoil is working.

Went out for a short ride today to clear this seemingly immoveable ball of phlegm from my chest. Kinda worked. My apologies to the driver who passed by me just as I turned street-ward to let go with big yellow-green Gooey-Louie. This was shortly after I’d finished cursing the a**hole who thought smashing glass on fresh pavement was sooo kewl. If I were King, punishment for this offense would be cleanup by tongue only. Second offense would include a week of public shaming. Sorry, I am easily moved to intolerance and petulance when I get sick, and Happy Wife noted, correctly I think, that I also become doubly needy of praise. Hmm.

Chest sounds like I swallowed a rattle. Head feels like a lead balloon. Feeling weaker than a one shot Margarita. Went to Walgreens to purchase agents of symptom relief because, of course, there is no cure.

Title?

“Why, I’ve no idea what that means.” You may be saying to yourself.

Hint: Consider the word portmanteau:

portmanteau – a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings.

Examples include: smog (smoke + fog) and brunch (breakfast + lunch).

…

As you ponder that let us first consider the weather. What would we do without weather when looking to ice break a conversation. A rather unusual spring up here so far. In a word: DRY. The fire I mentioned in the last post is still blazing away on the Kenai peninsula. In terms of size, it’s supposedly second only to the one burning in Arizona. The wind is once again carrying the smoke over Anchorage, and judging from the thin layer of “dust” on the car this morning, ash as well. Filtering sunshine, the smoke ‘n ash cast an unearthly gray-orange pallor over the backyard. We’d stepped out onto the deck this morning, Happy Wife (HW) and I, to enjoy our coffee. The wind isn’t all bad; it does serve to keep the mosquitoes away.

What else, what else… Oh, right. The bike tour is coming up and there’s a million things to do: Rent vans & trailers; secure lodging for 22 in three separate locales; complete online driver and first-aid/CPR courses; plan daily rides; scout daily rides for road condition; answer countless emails about Alaska; buy bike racks, coolers, drink dispensers, food & snacks, bike tools, spare tubes and tires, etc.; coordinate shuttle support; meet with sag crew & plan lunches; pay deposits, request reimbursement; update spreadsheet — et cetera et cetera…

And that’s only what’s been accomplished so far — there’s more to do before showtime!

…

So, the portmanteau. Have you guessed?

Tampon + ectomy = Tamponectomy.

Say What?!

Well, we arrived home the other day, came into the house and all was well. Until… until I heard the concerned voice of HW emanate from upstairs, “Uh-oh.” Come to find the trash basket in our bathroom had been “disturbed” and the contents strewn on the floor. However, certain previously disposed of contents related to feminine hygiene were missing.

Harry.

Were we surprised? Yes and No. Yes, because he very rarely disturbs anything in the house when we’re away, in fact he’s never seriously damaged anything. No, because of what HW said, “I should never have thrown those away and left them there. I should have known they’d be irresistible for Harry.”

And so evidently they were. At least five of them we’re missing, maybe six.

Induce vomiting? I thought not, might make the problem worse. A quick web search of the condition indicated I  was right.

So off to the vet Harry and I went, he to get an x-ray, which quickly confirmed the presence of foreign matter in his stomach. If said matter expands as it hydrates it could cause blockage and lead to a bad outcome. Or he could pass it. Or he may not. We could put him on fluids to encourage passage. Of course that may cause a blockage in his small intestine. Laxatives? Might help if the foreign matter was all in his colon, otherwise not. Okay, how about endoscopic foreign body removal? Might work, except the foreign matter could lodge in his trachea as we pull it out, assuming we can grab it.

In other words, surgery was the best option. AGAIN.

Sure enough, once the veterinarian opened his stomach, there they were, three used tampons.

But there were five — at least!

“The others are likely on their way to the colon,” the vet said, “I squeezed what I could out of the small intestine toward the colon. It looks clean. He’ll likely pass the rest in a few days. He’s out of surgery and doing well. You can come pick him up before six o’clock.”

You squeezed the matter through his small intestine during surgery? Like making sausage?

“That about captures it,” she told me.

HW picked up Harry and brought him home. He was still groggy and unsteady on morphine. While she was at the vet’s office waiting for Harry she inquired at the counter where they were intending to build the new Nibbe Wing. The heft of the medical files on Harry and Lucy alone merits a separate file cabinet.

Once home Harry grumbled a few times but mostly he just slept. Next day we removed his IV and the rest of his bandages. By day’s end he was back out on the deck, laying lying down enjoying a spring day, while we remained vigilant for his next pooh. One turd later, nothing. One day later, this morning, more pooh, which HW said looked and felt (through the bag) like clay, but still no evidence of the other two you-know-whats.

The expectation feels like waiting for a package to arrive by mail, only different.

The expense? What can I say, it’s a helluva way to get miles on your Alaska airlines Visa, but they all count same.

Big fire raging on the Kenai Peninsula. No rain in sight. Even Anchorage looks like the inside of a cigar bar.

Riders: If you’re looking in, remain calm. There’s plenty of time before the fun begins. We’ve capable men and women up here fighting this beast.