Highlight of My Day

Spring has been reluctant to arrive in this neck of the woods, and everyone I’ve talked to is ready for warmer weather. I’ve started looking for signs of spring during my morning walks with my puggle, Charlie.

I’m hearing songbirds! I’ve seen and heard robins chirping in the trees. I’ve heard the two-note call of the chickadee, and I’ve heard a mourning dove calling.

We’ve gone from walking on shoveled sidewalks to walking on sidewalks with no snow. Full circle! And in between, it was trudging through the snow in boots, and walking in the streets because the sidewalks were ice-covered.

One Sunday morning on our walk, Charlie and I encountered a number of people and their dogs out enjoying the sunshine. Our walk in the winter is generally done with a flashlight handy, and we see no one but the newspaper carrier.

Oh, the motorcycles were out in force on Saturday! I must have counted seven bikes on a short trip to Walmart. The riders were well-bundled, but I’m sure they were happy to be out. Also happy to be out were squirrels and rabbits! I saw them chasing around this morning. Normally I only see their tracks in the snow.

I’m not going to count seeing flip-flops in the stores, or garden sections popping up in the discount stores. That happens according to a date, certainly not the weather. And sometimes it feels like it happens earlier and earlier.

Yes, we like to make jokes about making sure we have the weekend off when summer hits, or having missed summer this year it was so brief. It’s our nature to joke about the weather. A co-worker noted that the big fluffy flakes falling would be “real pretty – if it were the middle of December.” I was advising people on how many shopping days were left until Christmas.

Last year by this time, we were out on the golf course. We like to think that maybe we did something good — that it was our reward for having a lousy winter. But Mother Nature does what she wants when she wants. And we just have to put up with it.

I took my mom to the library yesterday after her doctor appointment. I returned the book I’d found on my last trip there, and looked up the book that’s on the list for book club. Nope, still not available. I have options, however, so I’m not worried.

I always have the Kindle option, although I’m not going to buy this particular book unless I have to. I thought I’d seen this book at a thrift shop, so I’ll keep checking. It’s not a big deal. Mom picked out a half dozen books and joked that they might last her a couple of days.

What occurred to me as I was doing a mindless task here at work was how much I enjoyed working at a library. When I was a teenager, I volunteered at our local library, leading Story Hour, shelving books, checking out books, preparing new books for lending. I loved the smell of the new books.

Mom had mentioned to me on the way to the library that she’d tried reading a book on her Nook, but it just wasn’t the same. She missed the feel of paper in her hands, turning the physical page. I could appreciate her view. There are times when I’m reading a novel that I have to turn back and review — especially if a book has several characters. It’s a little more complicated to do with a Kindle.

After I’d been laid off from my job at the newspaper, I went to the public school district and worked as a substitute aide. One of my more fun assignments was working at a junior high library. Their assistant was gone for an extended time, so I was welcomed back each day for a couple of weeks.

Generally, working in a library is quiet. I like that. (And where I work now is normally quiet, too.) I like the quiet, because then I can hear myself think. You’d think that working for a newspaper would be a noisy job, but it’s not anymore. Computers are very quiet.

I love to promote reading. That was another reason I liked working at the newspaper. I was encouraging the next generation of newspaper readers — a valuable job that apparently didn’t translate to the bottom line in the publisher’s eyes.

Nowadays I get to promote reading with my sister’s granddaughter. I get to babysit now and then, and before bedtime, Little G brings me book after book, and we read them. Soon she’ll be reading them for herself, but she’ll still want the closeness of having a book read to her.

Working at the school library kept me limber, too. Books had to be shelved on ALL the shelves — the ones at the top, and the ones at the bottom. Books had to be moved on a regular basis, to make room on the shelves for new books or books brought back.

I got to prepare books for lending. That’s changed some. Each book is inventoried by computer now, rather than a hand-written ledger, and magnetic strips are added to the spines of books instead of paper cards and card envelopes.

Checking out has become much easier. Students handed me their school IDs and their books were scanned and handed back to them. Boom, done. Newspapers were returned to the stacks, chairs were pushed in to the tables, and returned books were sorted for reshelving.

And then another class came in. School libraries now have computers, but I didn’t get too involved with debugging them or updating them. Students were generally respectful of the technology, and sometimes needed help finding a good source.

The thing I learned most was about new authors for junior high students. If an author could sustain a series that held the interest of a kid, they were golden. And there were several series to choose from — some of them fantasy, some of them sports-related, some of them mystery. I didn’t get to read any of them — no time for that. But I did get familiar with the names.

One big eye-opener was the number of graphic novels out there. Basically they’re comic books in book format. The story is told through pictures and words — most popular were the anime books from Japan. The only way I could justify them was to tell myself that some kids learn visually. I get that. I just don’t know how complex a story could be if you draw pictures about it.

Visiting the library these days is still fun. There are more computers, DVDs and CDs where I go, but there are still books. And when I see a rolling cart with books piled on it, I just want to take a volume out and reshelve it. Would anyone stop me?

Some days I miss my son and daughter-in-law so much; it’s been a long time since they moved to Alaska. But they’re living the dream: our daughter-in-law is working in her field, literally and figuratively as a wildlife biologist, and our son is making money hand over fist, too. (OK, they’re also forced to spend it up there.)

They don’t have the luxury of shopping around for big-ticket items. Their shopping opportunities consistly mainly of flying to Anchorage and placing a bush order. That means they’ll pick out a bunch of stuff — usually fill their cart — and then fly home with filled bins. The rest of the order will be shipped out separately. What a pain.

As a born shopper, I’d find that very frustrating. Amazon refuses to send them some things, so our son has them shipped to our address, and then we resend packages up to Alaska. I have no idea what the criteria is for not sending some items. It doesn’t seem to follow any pattern our son has been able to determine.

That’s how remote they are, and that’s why we treasure their phone calls to us. We put them on speaker so both HighGuy and I can chime in. They have their phone on speaker, too, so we get to hear both their voices, as well as our granddog’s occasional barks.

It was on one of these last calls when Jason told us about a coworker. Jason works at Northern Air Cargo, one of the airlines that serves a large part of southwest Alaska. His coworker  and his wife have to depend on a car that was given to them by her employer to use.

The car has been used as a police car and a taxi, so I can imagine how beat up this car must be. He said that it doesn’t even need a key to be started, and they don’t lock it up because that would be more trouble than it’s worth.

No one locks car doors in Bethel because they don’t want anyone to break your car window to get in. Can you imagine the hassle of trying to get something like a car window fixed? I don’t think they have body shops on every corner in town, or even a Safelite franchise. One of the reasons our son and daughter-in-law bought a Jeep was because most of the repairs could be do-it-yourself.

Jason told me that this car had been stolen — twice. And recovered both times. That’s because the roads in town don’t go anywhere. Literally. There aren’t any roads that lead into or out of Bethel, Alaska, so you can’t grab a car and take a joy ride to Juneau.

I find that so funny. Picture this: You go out your front door and your car isn’t in the driveway. You call the cop, and he knows which car you’re talking about because he knows who you are. He’s spotted your car in the parking lot at the airport, so he’ll come pick you and drive you over there so you can take it back.

It hasn’t been taken too far, so it’s not out of gas. There’s really not that much to get upset about; it’s just darned annoying.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to walk on top of the snow. People from warmer climes are going to wonder what the heck I’m talking about. I’ll explain.

When snow falls from the sky, it piles up nicely. We shovel it and snowblow it out of the way. Sometimes at night that new-fallen snow can look really pretty — sparkly. But those who shovel aren’t necessarily entranced by the sight. They just know it’s something more that has to be moved.

When snow comes from the sky with lots of wind, we say it comes horizontally. And sometimes it does literally just that. Snow with that much speed behind it doesn’t pile up nicely. It drifts and swirls and is rarely sparkly. It forms drifts that are like concrete. Think sand dunes with attitude. When you step on one of those drifts, however, it doesn’t slide from beneath your feet. It squeaks.

Yeah, really. It squeaks. I don’t know if it’s the boots or the snow particles complaining, but it makes a particularly memorable noise. Think of what a golf ball sounds like falling into the cup. You could tell that sound anywhere. This is the same idea. Snow during extremely cold weather sounds different than snow at the melting point.

I don’t make Charlie the Puggle go for walks when the weather is below zero. He snuggles down on the couch under his blanket and pouts. But when we let him out to the fenced back yard and he comes back in running, we know he understands. Sometimes he comes back in on three feet rather than four. Yes, I’ve tried putting boots on him, and that’s another story.

Today it was exactly zero degrees, so I figured we’d give it a try. There was no wind — not a whiff. That’s a rare day in North Dakota. It was still dark at 6 a.m., but by the time we got home at 6:30, the sun is starting to appear.

Poor Charlie. He can’t reach the trees to leave p-mail, so he has to resort to tinkling on the sides of the snow where it’s been shoveled or blown out of the way. Snowblowers generally leave a little snow on the ground, and that’s fine with me. There’s a layer of ice on the sidewalk that I’d rather not walk on.

A few of the sidewalks are shoveled right down to the pavement. Wow, those folks must have clean houses, too. Other sidewalks are clogged with snow that’s drifted in the recent wind and no one’s bothered to clear it away. I’m afraid our sidewalks fall into that category. Both Charlie and I could walk on top of it.

I don’t know what it would take to get that stuff moved — shovel or snowblower. It’s hard. I found out just how hard.

Our driveway is narrow. Even during the best of conditions, it can be hard to navigate, especially when you’re making a right turn into it from the near lane. You have to aim for the telephone pole right there and make a hard turn. When it’s lined with snow, it’s even harder. And then add a little ice in the driveway to make things really interesting.

Normally this winter, I’ve been aiming for the telephone pole and making a hard right on four-wheel-drive so I can just push my way through the snow. I’ve rearranged that snowbank numerous times. The city garbage truck also rearranges that snow because they back into the driveway to reach our Dumpster.

Tuesday was the day after a winter blizzard warning. The snow had been blowing around so much it’s rightfully called a ground blizzard. Stiff winds for a couple of days had turned those soft snow piles into hardened banks. I made it through the drift to get out onto 25th Street which is an emergency route, so I knew it would be clear sailing after that.

Getting back home was a little trickier. Some of the side roads had been plowed and some of them hadn’t. I had my Kia in four-wheel-drive and didn’t even think about how hard the snowbank next to the driveway was. I slowed down and prepared to make my right-hand turn. I aimed for the telephone pole and gunned it.

I heard some crunching and figured I’d significantly rearranged the snowbank. I have a Kia Sorento, so I have pretty good clearance. Unfortunately the snow is almost as high as my car. I pulled into the garage and peeked at the front bumper.  I’d sacrificed a hunk on the bottom, where a fog light would be installed if I had them. I took off the loose pieces and pictured myself gluing the pieces of fiberglass back together like a puzzle in the spring.

I found a few more pieces in the driveway, and I’ve rescued them. Maybe I’ll have all the pieces, maybe I won’t. Until then my car looks as if it’s missing a tooth.