unknownfate

I have joked and bemoaned here before about how Barrow is at it's absolute worst in February. Just a few days ago, I said something about not being sorry to miss Barrow in February.

Yesterday there was a news article about a man arrested for beating up some kids in Barrow, but none of us recognized the name of the man when it was released. No other names were released. Today, I got some grapevine information and if it is true, the two kids were the three and one year old daughters of a coworker of mine. The grapevine says that the three year old is dead and the one year old is brain-damaged. Nothing official has been said and Facebook is silent on it, so I'm hoping that this crazyrunawaygossip and it isn't true.

The older girl was in the preschool class next to mine last year. The cutest, smiliest little girl ever and it just makes me sick to think of her being hurt. Thinking of her being killed has me pacing the house talking to myself. I made myself sit down, but I can't leave it alone. I'm just shocked and horrified, praying it isn't true, and ashamed at how grateful I am that I'm not there right now. I don't know what to do or even if I should do anything since I don't know how much of it is true.

True or not, if you have any good thoughts to spare, send em up North. They're going to need them.

Two in one week! Unheard of! But you can see the digging I would have to do if I did have to go to work today. And my neighbor always parks behind me so I can't just gun it and plow out. Someday I might anyway. That'll learn 'im.

I like to regale people with tales of Barrow and then say that it really isn't that bad.

Today, it was that bad.

I got stuck in a snow drift because the wind was going so hard I couldn't tell blowing snow from stationary snow. Just ran right into it. Felt kind of stupid, but I walked back to my house to call for some help. About an hour later, a help came and after a few tries, got me out. (now that I'm thinking about it though, I don't think I got my tow rope back from him...) However, then I had a new problem. I didn't know where I was. He had pulled me past the intersection I meant to turn on and I still couldn't see anything. I ended up passing it and going down a whole other road and almost getting stuck again. And that freaked me out. Disorientation is scarier than it sounds.

I couldn't see out the windshield, so I had to roll down the window, which meant I was being pelted with snow and ice and debris and I could only see a little ahead of the car and the looming shapes of houses around me weren't familiar. Where the hell was I?? Where had that strange man dragged me with my own tow rope before disappearing into the storm? I couldn't tell. I couldn't see! I was afraid to get stuck again and I couldn't see to keep from getting stuck again.And I'll admit, I was starting to panic.

If anyone tells you they saw some crazy gibbering person with their head stuck out the window driving through a snowstorm on Ahmoagak Street, it could've been me.

So I stopped and I got out and staggered through the snow and wind to get to the nearest house. All the lights were out and I didn't see a house number. How could they not have a house number?? So I lurched on to the next and then I saw a stop sign. Over it, was a street sigh. Hallelujah. I was around the corner and three houses from home. (Right next to where I had gotten stuck the first time.) I just had to get the truck there. By now I'm soaked from all the snow plastered on me, but I ran back to the truck, started praying, and hit the gas.

I made it back through that first drift, almost passed the intersection again, but swerved into it anyway, almost got stuck in another drift, and then almost couldn't get into my own driveway because a new drift had formed over it while I was gone. But I made it.

Meanwhile, my front door had blown open again and there was another inch or so of snow on the floor there, but I was sniveling and hysterical by that point and had to calm down before I could care about anything else. I called work and said I would not be in after all. I'm pretty sure I'm lucky to have made it home at all.

But not really. It's still frickin' cold.

So last night, I was lounging around reading and internetting and my nose kinda tingled so I gave it a casual swipe with a nearby tissue. And then yelped like a kicked coyote because it felt like I had stabbed a shard of glass into my nose. It really hurt! The only thing I can compare it to would be a wasp sting about a quarter inch inside my nostril. Never one to suffer quietly, I screamed like James Brown and then dissolved into snivels. My poor Mom had no idea what I was screeching over and as the tears welled and the pain faded, I was able to tell her what it felt like but not what had happened.

What had happened? Was that darn alien implant acting up again? What could it be?? Suggestions of tweaked nerve endings or maybe a touch of frostbite have been mentioned, but does anybody know where sudden stabbing nose pain comes from?

The frostbite seems plausible. I had been snorting down -50 windchilled air through this poor nose all day. It’s pretty cold. We got this email from our transportation office this morning:

"Please plug in your vehicles, if they freeze up we have to pull them to the shop to thaw them out. We are having extreme cold weather and the vehicles should not be cold started. Help us prolong the life of the vehicles by plugging them in and letting them run for at least 15 to 20 minutes with this extreme cold weather. Also please drive very slow as the tires will also freeze giving the squared tire effect, if you don’t drive slow until they become rounded again they can pop off the rim.
Thank you for doing your part. Try to stay warm…"

Hah! Aliens don't stand a chance.

I was trying to explain Piuraagiaqta to slayersyrena and the closest I could get was sort of a small town Mardi Gras for whaling season. Piuraagiaqta is a spring festival to celebrate the kick-off of whaling season. It's really not that much like Mardi Gras. For one thing, everybody is bundled up (Windchill was -30 today.Brr.) there's no booze, and about 479,674 less people. Also, New Orleans is famous for its food and music. Barrow, not so much. If you're lucky, the high school band will play and the fire station will sell hot dogs or something.

There was a parade, but I missed it to go to the library book sale. The wind was to nasty to hang around an hour to catch jolly ranchers anyway.

A box of cereal is $11.35. Just a plain old box of a healthy, multigrain cereal. Nothing fancy. $11.35. I know what I'm asking for for Christmas...

Found this on my doorstep this morning. It appears to be a caribou leg. All the tracks around it are mine, so I don't know if a person put it there, or a dog dragged it over, or it just fell from the sky at some point in the night.



Perhaps it's some sort of threat from a tundra-based mafia? (tonight, you sleep with the caribou) I have to say that the thought of it falling from the sky, dropped by who knows what, seems the creepiest option at the moment.

I was at the bank today, and a guy came in with a walrus skull. Tusks and all. It looked so old and weathered that my first thought was that it might be a smilodon. They still find mammoth parts up here every now and then, so why not a smilodon? But when he moved his arm, I could tell it was a walrus. Crusty as it looked, I was surprised they let him carry it into the bank. Of course, this is the bank where there was a sign on the door reminding sno-mobiling patrons to remove their ski-masks before entering.

This was a wild week. I called in sick yesterday when my stomach hurt so bad. I don't know what that was about, but it's gone now. And my kids were completely off the charts in crazy behavior. All week long. It was unreal. We looked all over for a calendar with moon phases to see if it was a full moon, and it wasn't. Maybe it was the change in barometer. The weather went from appalling to unreasonably good and now we're back to nasty.