And the Rains Came

When I woke up yesterday it was pouring rain out, pouring. And with all our snow that made things a bit tricky. The streets are flooded with water over a nice two inch base layer of ice because the storm drains are plugged with snow turned slush. Funnily enough, I found it absolutely impossible to be cranky when the weather was being so foul. The Disreputable Dog and I half skated through our walk. Obviously I'm a bit rusty on winter habits - note to self: remember to put your Yak-trax (grippy things that stretch over your shoes) on before ANY walk. I'm beginning to remember the semi-crab like walk of winter in icy places, with your weight low in the hips, the feet kept wide, scuffing ever so slightly against the pavement, er, ice, no sudden high stepping steps which will surely bring one crashing down.

The Direputable Dog playing sleigh with my niece

The ignominy of falling here is not just that moment when you know suddenly that there is nothing you can do, that your feet (or bike) are going to go out from under you, nor from the painful landing on a hard surface, trying to catch yourself with something other then your knees or elbows, but from the landing in a puddle and not only being sore and bruised but also being soaked to the skin. Last year the Disreputable Dog & I were walking in the dark in a downpour just like the one we had yesterday and that continues today when we met a man coming the other direction who in response to my greeting said "Good thing it isn't raining out, isn't it?". He made my day he did. I couldn't stop laughing. And you know, it's been one of my favorite sayings ever since.

"Smoke" on the water

And my current situation is a bit like that isn't it? I want to thank all of you kind readers for all of your empathy, kindness, and ideas. I am excited about the possibilities for change. I know good things can come of it. I also know that this is a good time to evaluate my anxieties and my passions and try to focus more clearly on where I see myself down the road. I am trying to focus on all of that but every know and then, as on Monday, I just get overwhelmed, or maybe it's underwhelmed and then I focus on the timing (January is a lousy month to be looking for jobs either in this state or in this field of work and it's a lousy time to move and for some reason seems to be the time of year that I often experience major life changes), and on the fact that I haven't heard back from most of my application yet (well, they do take awhile), and all the what-ifs. However, I do know at heart that I am extremely lucky. I have a good education, I have a lot of skills, I have passion, I have the support of loving family and friends, and I live in an age where I can look for jobs anywhere as long as I have access to the internet.

Aurora borealis from Fairbanks

I'd like to tell you all, too, the day before the US Thanksgiving, that I am thankful to all of you for being here in this space where I can sort of talk aloud about the what-ifs. I think part of why I am questioning my path so much is because some of my experiences over the last two years have included such vast professional betrayals (and I'm not talking about funding) that it makes me question my fundamental premises for being in this career. I can't, at the moment, go into the specifics of what happened, but I am thankful you give me a positive space to explore my options. While it is always a better feeling to leave a job at the time of one's choosing sometimes it's good to be pushed. Now I am presented with the chance to more clearly define my dreams and passions and to explore them and that's also very scary. Wonderful and scary all at the same time. So thanks for being there with me, for reading, and commenting. I appreciate every little bit of it. You are all fantastic.

Shoveling the Boat

Snow shushes beneath my feet as it falls through the grate of the dock ramp to the water below. Thick fat snowflakes quickly coat my eyelashes, wet and white. The Disreputable Dog has gotten used to this route now although, like me, he is probably still wondering how we got ourselves roped into shoveling this boat. I mean, we don't even shovel at the house with the exception of the two steps. The rest will get packed down by feet and if I must drive I've got 4-wheel drive and can usually get out eventually. Even when it snows 5 ft in one snowfall (which it hasn't yet this winter) I don't shovel. The calm snow globe world has disappeared and I can hear the crash of the waves whipped into a frenzy even here in the calm protection of the bay. It's not a good day to be on a boat, I think. The sky is flashing lightning, which I don't think I've ever seen here, but it's muted by the clouds and there is no thunder. The wind is pulling at my scarf and my hat and I am glad that there are no exposed places for it to suck the heat away from me.

Soon I am warm enough from shoveling the heavy snow off the boat. Ever notice that shovels seem to have in-built heaters? My dog lies happily in the snow with his head resting on the side of the dock keeping an eye out for sea lions and seals but none appear. He is shedding his summer coat for the winter one right now. He loses about a dog a day. This time of year no chickadees hop over to pull it out for their nests (which, amazingly, he tolerates) and when I take the boat brush to him he luxuriates in it. Finally we are done and we walk back along the abandoned tourist shops. I like the dock sides a lot more in the winter when I have them to myself. No busloads of tourists unloading, no hundreds of pounds of fish being photographed and filleted. These shops are cute but they don't sell anything a local would need and so they are all shut and shuttered for the winter. The mountains loom over the sail masts as the soft snow quickly fills our lone footprints across the boardwalk and we head home to hot apple cider.

Rain Gear

"It's over" he said. He was referring to the season of summer. It was a common conversation yesterday when it was pouring down rain. It was raining hard yesterday like someone was throwing it from the sky. If you went out for even a minute you got wetter then you would have gotten standing under a high pressure shower in your bathroom and the streams were running high, the waterfall that pours into the bay had turned brown & I watched as the stain of silty water spread into the salt water leaving a defined cleaving line between brown water and blue-green water. It was a fine time to test my newly re-waterproofed rain gear.

It's wet out there! We're staying inside!

I'd been suspicious of the water repellent re-wash that you see in outdoor stores now. It seems that with outdoor gear acquiring a more fashionable veneer it also acquired a new set of rules of how to treat it but over the weekend I noticed that my rain gear was starting to hold water & I was getting wet as a result. I suppose that's what happens when you practically live in your rain gear for two years and when it is almost always repelling water. So I decided to try the water repellent re-wash since I figured ten bucks was certainly cheaper then buying new gear and guess what? It worked! It really did. Luckily I washed it on Monday when the weather was fine and it was ready to go yesterday.

Today I saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree holding it's wings out in the precise posture one sees in bronze eagles used for car ornaments. I'd never actually seen an eagle do that but it made sense because the weather had actually, and surprisingly, cleared and s/he probably needed to dry out a bit - even eagle feather rain repellent would have been tried yesterday.