Lazy mode in three locations: WM Apache - Blue Bird, jet, fire, dog gets teeth brushed; Wasilla - Allie's poem; Carmen and guests; India - girl in temple

Boy! This is the worst case of jet lag ever. It should be all gone by now, but this is the hardest day yet. I can barely function. I went to sleep fast last night and slept soundly for about two hours, then came wide and desperately awake about 2:00 AM and that was it. I stayed in bed, hoping to go back to sleep for another six hours or so, but just stayed awake. This is not how one gets over jet lag.

So I continue in lazy mode, but I exercise just enough ambition to remind readers that I now have three story locations to thread together: White Mountain Apache, India and Wasilla.

So here is a picture I took in Carrizo, Arizona, the Apache community where Margie was born and her mom and several siblings still live, along with other relatives.

People make a lot of bread here, from fry bread to tennis racket bread to tortillas and some other kinds, too. Blue Bird flour is very popular and Blue Bird flour bags are most useful.

Margie stands behind the bag.

A jet, passing over the White Mountain Apache Reservation community of Hon Dah, where Margie's sister LeeAnn hosted us.

White Mountain Apache fire crew truck, Hon Dah. 

LeeAnn brushes Alfie's teeth.

OK - Wasilla: Today I had breakfast at Abby's again. Margie was in town, babysitting.

Allie poured me a cup of coffee...

This is the picture of her poem that I did not run two days ago because I did not want to publish her poem without her permission. Today, she gave me her permission. Allie just won a local poetry slam. Abby's niece Amber did the art work. 

In the afternoon, I pulled up to the drive-through at Metro Cafe. Carmen posed with her brother-in-law, Ron, and Carol, a very good customer. Barista Elizabeth politely tried to get out of the way, but didn't quite make it in time. I took some more after she did, but I like the picture better with Elizabeth in it than out of it.

Girl in a temple at Chittaurgarh Fort, Rajasthan, India. I was not going to post any more of my India photos until I had made a decent edit of them all, but I still have not begun to edit and I want to keep India present in this blog until I can edit and figure out my stories. I don't think this picture crucial to any of the stories I most want to tell, so here it is, in lazy mode, just to remind readers that I was just in India and have some India stories coming.

If I decide later that this picture should be part of one of my stories, then I reserve the right to include it, anyway, but I don't think that will happen.

Chicago now sleeps where Pistol-Yero once did; the big thaw seems to have begun

When I was in India, I wrote about how Pistol-Yero would curl up and sleep right by my head each night. Chicago would normally sleep somewhere near my legs. Jimmy would tend to sleep right on top of me, although he would shift around a bit throughout the night.

I have been home for two nights now and everytime I have woken up, I have found my nose practically buried in Chicago's fur. With Pistol-Yero gone, she has moved to the head of the bed - right by my head.

Chicago never liked Pistol much. She would often hiss at him. Pistol seemed to enjoy that. In fact, he would often encourage her to hiss at him. She never figured that out.

Today, I had to put Pistol in Jacob and Lavina's freezer until we can get his grave dug, because we can't count on the weather to keep him frozen anymore.

That hurt.

It seems I must have brought some of that heat from India back to Wasilla with me. It is still fairly cool in the mornings when everything is frozen good and solid, but by late afternoon today the temperature had climbed to 38 F (3C). Snow was melting like crazy.

So it seems breakup is underway. Of course, it is still a little dangerous to say something like that. Next week, Wasilla could go right back into the deep freeze, where it seemed to be the whole time I was gone.

I kind of doubt that it will, but there have been past years when I kind of doubted and it did anyway.

There is no guarantee yet, but there are signs I might be able to make it back to the Arctic Slope soon. I can guarantee you that even though it will definitely be spring there, too, it will none-the-less be still be what most people in most places would call deep freeze.

It will be good to go back. Very good.

I hope it actually happens.

Now, it feels to me like the impact of my jet lag is getting worse, not better. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I can hardly type. It is only 10:30 PM, very early for me, but maybe I will go to bed soon. Then I will probably wake up at 2:30 AM or so.

That's what's been happening.

I think this blog will be a lazy blog for two or three or four more days to come, yet.

Grandsons: after an absence of more than five weeks, they reappear in the blog to play in the snow, pet Jim the cat, sit on Carmen's lap and don an India Indian suit

Margie informed me that Jobe was standing outside the door, so I opened it up to see if it was true. Sure enough, it was. More than five weeks had past since we had last seen each other. He looked at me with an expression of disbelief, a slight smile upon his face.

He held this expression for a very long time. Then I picked him up and carried him around for a bit.

I actually saw Lynxton and Kalib before I saw Jobe. I had stopped in at Metro Cafe to say "hi" to Carmen and to down an Americano. As I was sitting there, Kalib and Lynxton burst through the door, along with their parents, Jacob and Lavina. Jobe had fallen asleep and so stayed in the car where he continued to doze.

Carmen quickly scooped Lynxton from Lavina's arms and pretty much kept him for herself for the remainder of our visit. Although she had smiled and pleasantly entertained her customers throughout, this had been a bit of a trying day for her. Lynxton gave her spirit a boost.

It remains difficult for me to believe that Pistol-Yero is not going to appear at any instant and leap onto my lap, or my keyboard, or sleep by my head at night. I know he is wrapped up and in a box waiting to be buried, but still I keep expecting him to show himself.

He is not here anymore, but Jimmy is and so is Chicago.

We were going to try to bury Pistol-Yero today, but the truth is it was going to be too much of an ordeal, given the frozen earth and the depth of the snow in the cemetery where the fur-clad animal members of the family lie.

There are many places in Alaska where communities wait to bury their winter dead until after breakup. I am told that March has been a very cold month here, with sub-zero F weather (0F = -18 C) on an almost daily or at least nightly and morning basis, but it appears that the thaw is about to begin in earnest.

So we are going to wait for two or three weeks and see if it will be a little easier then.

Melanie is doing a job on the Arctic Slope and won't be home for three weeks. Hopefully, by then, it will be a little easier to make a grave out back.

A little after noon, I took a walk and Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy followed. The air was brisk when we left, the temperature still well below freezing although later in the afternoon it would go above. I did not wear a jacket, because after all my time in the heat of India and then Phoenix, I wanted to feel the cool air.

It felt wonderful!

Kalib plays in the snow.

After we returned home, Lynxton took a bath.

After he got all cleaned up, Lynx tried on his India Indian suit that his Aunt Sujitha bought for him. Everyone was quite pleased, because the colors were just right for him and he looked pretty damned handsome. Suji bought such a suit for me, too, and I wore it to her wedding... as you will see when I reach that part of my story.

So far, I have made no progress at all. 

I have some problems to solve and I am just flat-out jet-lagged and jet lag makes it difficult to solve such problems.

Jobe and Kalib are back in Anchorage and they should be going to sleep right about now. This is what they looked like when they dozed off here.

Rex came too, and so did his and Cortney's dogs.

Allie at Abby's writes a poem and takes my order

Saturday morning, I took Margie to breakfast at Abby's and was surprised to be waited on by a new waitress, just recently hired - Allie.

Allie of Abby's.

Allie is a poet and she is not only strikingly beautiful but quite bright. She is only 16, but has graduated from high school and is enrolling at the Mat-Su branch of the University of Alaska.

She is a writer and poet and plans to continue her studies until she herself is a college professor, teaching students who, for a couple of years, might not be much younger than she will be.

Although I brought my camera with me, I had forgotten to put a memory card in it and so I had to fall back on my iPhone 4s. I was a little worried, because there was a broad spread in dynamic range between the highlights and shadows and I knew that the iPhone could not handle that spread.

Even so, it did pretty good for a phone.

I took more pictures today and I really intended to include them in this post, but I shot them in my regular camera and it is just too late and I am just too tired and jetlagged to download, edit and process them. 

So I will save them for later.

And don't forget - there is still plenty left to come from the five-week trip I just completed, both from India and White Mountain Apache, Arizona. It will be at least a couple of days yet before I start again - maybe even a week.

Allie has a poem hanging on the wall at Abby's, decorated by her own art work. I took a picture of it and was going to run it, but then I suddenly realized I would be publishing her poem without her permission, so I held off.

Breakfast, by the way, was truly excellent - way better than the greasy spoon breakfast I had in Phoenix.

Logbook entry: I'm home...