Henkimaa

Okay, so he’s a man now. Well, just as my mom would tell me I’d always her little girl, Jesse will always to me be “the boy.” Said with affection, of course. Of course. Yes.

Anyway, the boy called me up at work, & looks like he’s got a job! Not going to blurt our where out here publicly on the Internet, but it’s in a place whose work I respect, he’d be getting $10/hour, & he might be starting Monday. Or at least what the guy told him was, bring your Social Security card on Monday. So Jesse was going to head downtown to the Federal Building with every ID he could get hold of to see about getting a card to replace the one in the wallet that was stolen from him in school one day a few months ago.

He’s pretty excited. He’s eager to be able to contribute to rent & other household needs. And I think he’ll find it pretty exciting to have some leftover to do with what he wills, too.

Now that’s a thought right there, with these changes afoot. Assuming Rozz gets the finances together to actually go to SIOM, Jesse & I are going to be… well. Roommates. There’s still a family relationship, of course. And I reckon that as he begins to earn, I’ll be helping him figure out how to handle his own budget, for real. He did have classes in those kinds of skills when he was in school (sure wish they’d’ve done that for me when I was a kid), but there’s a difference between the theoretical from out of a workbook, & the reality of actually having an income, & actually having bills.

Meanwhile, looks like we need to have a celebration tonight.

Solstice. A changing of the year, from increase to decrease.

Well, that’s summer solstice anyway. Winter solstice goes the other way. It’s very yin-yangy, how the longest day holds the seed of the dark of the year, & the shortest day holds the seed of the year’s light.

It wasn’t until I came up to Alaska that I felt it. In the Lower 48 you notice how much lighter it is in the summer, & how much darker in the winter — but you don’t notice it like you do here. Even this far south of the Arctic Circle (which I’ve been north of only once), night never becomes as pitch dark at the height of summer as it does southward of here. And in winter, well, on some days I never see sunlight, just depending on whether I leave my office or not (I have no windows), or whether my coworker across the suite has his office door open (he has windows). So I notice it. And every solstice, summer or winter, I feel the seed of its opposing solstice in it. On a day like today, bright as it is, I feel a bit blue.

I was going to say that I wasn’t afraid of change, but that’d be a lie. I’m afraid of change, yes I am. But not so afraid of it that I can’t roll with it & be with it & sometimes even rejoice in it. Just like crisis: “opportunity rides on a dangerous wind.” Change isn’t always dangerous, though often enough it is. In any case, there’s opportunity inherent in there, be I only positioned to see & make use of those opportunities.

I’m afraid of the changes in our lives right now as Rozz prepares to be gone from here for three years, as we prepare for the less radical but definitely unpleasant task of finding a new apartment & moving. But I guess we’ll work it through.

My birthday was a few months ago, but I kept forgetting to take the personal holiday off that comes with it, as a job benefit, until now. End of the fiscal year coming up, don’tcha know, & these personal holidays are by way of “use it or lose it.” So I took today & went on up to Side Street for some writing.

Several changes in the offing or the actuality today:

First, I had to make a new hole in my belt because it was growing too loose. This is the second time I’ve had to make a new hole this year — I think the first was in mid-April sometime. This is evidence that my spare tire is becoming more spare, in spite of my weight still being the same. But with all that walking & biking & dancing I’ve been doing, on top of my change of diet (see Terveys for details on all of that), I’ve probably been putting on muscle that’s taken the place of lost fat. Muscle weighs about 3 times as much as the same volume of fat — i.e., muscle is much more compact. Though hovering for four months at the same weight is still kinda bothering me, so I plan to see if there are more adjustments I can make to how I eat & exercise. First & foremost thing being: picking up the dumbbells & barbell again.

Second, this isn’t really a new since we had decided on it a few weeks ago: we’re shortly to be moving. We’ve already put in our notice with our landlady for a move at the end of July. This is simply to find a more affordable place, as things have been too tight for too long. I hate moving, but there y’go: sometime you just gotta do it.

Third, I got a new cell phone. This is to replace the cell phone I fritzed out by wading up to my tits across a creek on Memorial Day with my cell phone forgotten in my vest pocket. And this time, it’s a Nokia, so I am finally being a good little Finn in my choice of cell phone.

Fourth, Rozz showed up at Side Street to give me the good news: she’s been accepted to the acupuncture school she interviewed with when we were down in Seattle in January. She had a second interview yesterday over the phone, & felt pretty nervous about one of the questions they asked, but that’s all forgotten now.

Now come the butterflies. Three years: assuming she can get the finances together to actually go, that’s how long she’ll be down there, with only three three-week breaks each year. I won’t be moving to Seattle, nor will Jesse.

We’ve talked about this for a long time, so we have some preparation. How to keep our relationship alive & strong when we’re separated by a two or three hundred dollar plane flight. But yeah, it’s still a bit scary.

I was on my bike at the intersection of Northern Lights & Lake Otis, waiting to cross Lake Otis. This is a busy intersection, so it’s not one I mess with: I wait for the light. Along came a pickup truck, right up beside me, signaling a right turn. The driver, a middle-aged woman, was primed to go. She was one of those drivers who is itchy to go — she kept releasing the brake so her truck would jump forward a few inches. I remembered something I’d read a couple of weeks ago, probably on the Municipality of Anchorage’s “Ride [a bike] to Work Day”: make eye contact. Be sure the driver is aware of you before crossing the intersection.

Good advice, I thought, when I saw her truck jump forward another couple inches. So I looked at her. She looked back at me. Eye contact. Good.

The light changed, showing the walking figure that indicated that I or any pedestrian had the right of way. But also, the pickup jumped forward again.

So I looked at the driver again. She looked back at me. Eye contact, & a hand gesture: go. So I went.

I biked down Lake Otis, made my shortcut across the UAA campus, got onto the sidewalk up Providence Drive, & — a few minutes after my encounter with the pick-up — was there on my bike at the intersection of Providence Drive & UAA Drive, waiting to cross UAA Drive. This, too, is a busy intersection, not to be messed with. So I sat there waiting for my signal. Along came a small white car, crosswise to me, its young female driver intent on making a right turn. She pulled right smack in front of where the sidewalk ramps down to the street for wheelchairs & bikes & other sidewalk-sized wheeled conveyances — right smack dab in my way. She craned her head to the left, watching the oncoming traffic for a break so she could make her right turn.

She didn’t see me at all. Not when she arrived, though there I’d been sitting, on a blue bike with a blue windbreaker & a blue bike helmet — pretty damn obvious, really. But she never looked to her right. She was only concerned with the oncoming traffic to her left. Eye contact? No such thing here.

The light changed in my favor. But the driver didn’t notice that anymore than she noticed me. I started shouting, trying to get her attention: she was in my way, & she wasn’t aware of me to begin with. Her windows were rolled all the way up (it was a cool morning), & perhaps her radio or stereo was on too loud; at any rate, she didn’t here me. Then I made my mistake: I edge my bike off the curb in front of her car, still shouting to get her attention.

She saw the break in traffic she was looking for, & let her foot off the brake. Her car moved forward a foot, maybe two. Maybe she even had her foot on the accelerator. Then she turned to look where she was going & finally — finally! — she saw me, her mouth a round O of shock & surprise as she slammed on the brakes to barely avoid hitting me.

I was relieved to find myself still upright & astride my bike, but I was plenty angry too. She rolled down her window, apologizing, but I’m afraid that I wasn’t very receptive — I was shouting, “You need to look both ways!” & “It was my right of way & you were right in my *#@&*$# way!!!” etc. I told André at work later, “That driver needs a remedial driver’s ed course… but I guess maybe I gave her one.”

But it was me too. She would have been in the wrong had she hit me. But though I had the right of way, it wouldn’t have done me much good if I was a pancake splat on the road. She needed to look both ways; I needed to have eye contact. Before I put myself in the path of her car.

Update: The much briefer Start Walking version of this story, along with a rundown of just how rundown I felt today, can be found at Terveys.

It’s been plenty warm for the past week, and I haven’t been wearing shoes at all. Instead: sandals. But since I’m also doing an awful lot of walking, it means my feet get pretty dirty. This is the result of today’s walk to & from Kaladi Brothers at Title Wave, my regular Sunday writing venue (& more news on writing progress in Field of Words), which on the way back included a little trip along a dirt trail by Westchester Lagoon. Rozz was with me. Thanks to taking a longer route to/from Kaladi Brothers than our normal direct route, we both walked over 10,000 steps without a lot of extra effort (more on that in Terveys, today’s Start Walking news).

The air was clear today after last evening’s smoky atmosphere — due, I learned from a glance at the front page of the Anchorage Daily News, to a fire at Pt. McKenzie. I haven’t read the story on it yet, to know what caused the fire or how big it was or if it’s completely out. But it’s a reminder that, yes, we are now in fire season, & yesterday’s is undoubtedly not the only smoky sky we’ll experience this summer.

Now I’m home, my feet are clean, I’ve done a bit of picture processing & blogging, & now it’s time to close up & go back to spend some time with Rozz.

Some good news on writing progress; full scoop in Field of Words.