1) I spent last weekend in Las Vegas.
2) I have a new mandate at work. I’ll be covering the area’s largest municipal government.
3) My company finally ponied up health insurance. I see a dentist on Thursday.
4) My 2-year-old has swine flu symptoms.
5) The sun will be scarce where I live during the next four months.
6) I’ll get through it by skiing as often as possible.
7) Also, I bought a harness so that I can try out the rock wall at the gym.
8 ) I’ll let you know how that goes.
9) I usually hate my hair but I triple loathe it lately.
10) Lately, I’ve been wearing bright orange shoes.
Why does it feel like childless people lead more interesting lives?
All of my favorite bloggers have no children. They go to the gym, drag shows, plays and sleazy bars. Their experiences sound fun and fascinating.
Me? I go to play group, do my job and on the rare night that I’m in town one evening and grab a drink with friends, I leave early to go to the grocery store. Wild and crazy, huh?
Don’t get me wrong. I have zero regret about my kid. And she’s not that hard to raise. She sleeps until 9am sometimes. She eats her vegetables. She loves books. When she gets into trouble and I tell her to go to her room, she goes to her room and closes the door.
Still, motherhood has made me boring. I mean, I’m going to Las Vegas next weekend. Guess what I plan to dress up as? Santa Claus. My friend who is also going is planning to be a naughty kitty.
I need to think of a better costume. Maybe I should go as a roller derby chick. I could skate around the Las Vegas strip in my roller blades.
I spent Monday with the liberal/moderate candidate for mayor and today I hang with the conservative. She told me to bring a warm coat because the heat is not great in her car.
I’m an undecided voter so I relish the chance to spend a day with each candidate as I decide who to vote for. I guess this is one of the fringe benefits of being a journalist.
The race is between a well-connected Democrat and a home school mom who is a staunch conservative. Both serve on the Borough Assembly.
The Democrat has a long history in our town; a deliberative, thoughtful personality; the better resume; and a lot more financial support.
The conservative—some have called her a populist—has a lot of spunk and an outspoken, energetic following. She also seems more like the average Fairbanksan whereas some would consider the Democrat an elite.
Two of us are covering the race for the local paper. Somehow I’ve managed to claim the stories that are my favorite aspects of politics: the money, the endorsements, the personalities.
Jade turned two and somehow the partying went on for a week.
It started with a birthday party with her friends at the hot springs.
Then I made cupcakes for her day care, where they sang happy birthday. Then there was the dinner at a Mexican restaurant when the waiters gathered around our table and belted out happy birthday.
Various gifts came Jade’s way all weekend, including a toddler exercise bike.
By the time her grandpa came to Murphy Dome for dinner and to wish her a happy birthday, we were tired of singing and just handed her the present, a faux bear skin rug.
Now I have to potty train the kid.
I hope she doesn’t think all birthdays go on for a week.
I finally made it to the used book store and stocked my shelves with five titles that I hope will sustain me through a long Alaska winter.
Here’s the list: “Teacher Man,” by Frank McCourt; “Truth & Beauty” by Ann Patchett; “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert; “the Snapper” by Roddy Doyle; and “Almost There” by Nuala O’Faolain.
I hate how predictable these titles are. They scream, Yes, I am a 37-year-old middle class white woman with a college degree. Barf.
I started “the Snapper” and I love it so far, mainly for being not politically correct. The lead character is a pregnant woman who goes to bars and gets drunk. None of the other characters bat an eye about it. The story focuses on a big family living in Ireland.
I think I have all of Roddy Doyle’s books. He’s one of my favorite writers. “the Snapper” is almost all dialogue. Doyle is a master at writing dialogue and can totally get away with that.
A blast of warm air in Alaska brought near record high temperatures over the weekend. The thermometer in Fairbanks flirted with 60 degrees. This time last year, people were skiing.
Consequently, many walks were had on Murphy Dome, and the Bottle Washing Fairy is so inspired she is tentatively planning extended stays in the far north next year.
That said, it sounds like winter is being had elsewhere in the U.S. I’d like to share this story from the Christian Science Monitor.
For the record, I’m no global warming nay-sayer. I fear what could happen to the world if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. But I also think it’s important to consider the facts.
I’m hiding out in the garage. I have a houseful asleep upstairs. I should be too but I got home from work at 11 p.m. I covered a meeting on deadline. I’m always too jazzed to go to bed after writing on deadline late at night.
I’m in Alec’s man room, surrounded by safety glasses and shiny metal things. There’s a radio tuned into jazz music. I just heard someone upstairs get up and go pee.
By writing “houseful” earlier, I mean Alec, Lucky and the Bottle Washing Fairy, who came to be with us whilst celebrating her 70th birthday.
We had a moonlit walk on Saturday and on Sunday a turkey dinner with homemade bread.
Tomorrow is the municipal election. I still don’t know who I like for borough mayor and whether I can swallow the school bond measure.
The Bottle Washing Fairy, who is visiting from the Oregon coast, took this picture. It’s slightly unsettling to see Lucky through someone else’s lens.
This picture makes me want to cry. Something in her eyes. The picture tells me she is her own person, and I only get to have her for about 18 years and that’s if I’m very, very lucky.
I don’t know how her grandmother managed to capture this moment when my kid was actually still.
My most recent pictures of Lucky are blurs of activity.
Early this year, I bumped up my work schedule from 24 hours a week to 30 with getting some health benefits in mind.
My company manual says employees need to work 30 hours per week before they qualify for health insurance.
After the required waiting period, I went to human resources to request health insurance. I learned last week that I would need to forgo holidays, vacation days and sick days to get health benefits.
That’s because holidays, sick days and vacation days—paid days that employees are not expected to work—bring down the average.
Even though my schedule is 30 hours a week, my average is 25 hours per week.
So I don’t qualify for health insurance. This is deeply, deeply disappointing. I feel misled.
My writing in the paper has been hit or miss lately. I wrote a personality profile over the weekend that sucked. I wish they would have held it for more work. But the profiles run every Monday. I turned it in Sunday night. They cut the hell out of it and ran a lot of pictures.
I miss my old supervisor. My new supervisors are always busy and I feel guilty when I take their time. Another writer, who sits near me, said the same thing.
I think one of the supervisors doesn’t get me. He’s nice enough but I feel like I come across all wrong. I guess it takes time to build a relationship. Yesterday, I went to his office to respond to an e-mail he’d sent, and he stared at his computer screen during our conversation.
My old boss wasn’t like that. He’s an eye contact type of guy. And he usually seemed interested in what I was saying. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. But I felt acknowledged.
I desperately want health insurance. In the spring, I bumped up my hours to 30 per week so I could qualify. I’ve been working hard all summer. I was told I needed to maintain the schedule for three months before I qualified for insurance.
I went to see the human resources manager yesterday and now she tells me the waiting period is six months. WTF? So I found the e-mail she’d sent saying I had to wait three months, forwarded it to her and asked what she had meant. I’m still waiting for a reply.
Maybe I should just be happy to have a job. My aunt in Milwaukee has been looking for work for two years and is currently living in a Salvation Army homeless shelter.
I guess the family is hoping being homeless will make her try harder. Her letters are painful. She isn’t on drugs and hasn’t broken the law, but you’d think it by the way her son is acting. He discouraged the family from sending her money but I do it anyway. I also lean on her social workers. It doesn’t seem to help.
More than anything, what’s bothering me these days is the fact that there’s new day care providers at Lucky’s day care center every week. Can’t they hire and hang onto good people? Alec said he saw one of Lucky’s providers leaving the center in tears yesterday. When he went inside, the director was talking with a new girl about work hours.
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