George the Bug

After getting home from work early today so that I could be here when the phone guy came to the house to install my land line, I ventured out to Fred Meyers tonight for the first time, specifically to buy a car windshield scraper and a pair of slippers.  As it turned out I found neither.  Nobody could find any semblance of a windshield scraper in the store.  And as the lady in the shoe department told me "we don't have any slippers - winters' over".   I wanted to ask her if she had been outside lately, but that seemed like a pointless exercise borne out of frustration, so I just moved on.

I did end up buying a pair of Xtratufs though - the boots that I see on the feet of what seems like every second person in this area.  I guess I can call myself a real Juneauite now.......

The weather has certainly called for such footwear.  Today was similar in weather to yesterday, only much worse.

I had to be at work very early again this morning, and not long after sunrise I ventured out of my office in search of coffee.  I took these pictures while I was out, and at that particular moment of the morning the sky was almost completely clear and it looked as though it might be a beautiful day.

 

By mid-morning the weather prediction for the day had come true, and the rain and snow combination began to kick in.  And by lunch time the weather was nothing but an angry and aggressive combination of cold, rain, sleet, snow and wind that left the roads a mess and the lakes filled with waves and whitecaps.

While the phone guy was at the house I unpacked a box of TN belongings that my Mountain Boy had sent up to me.  The box is the first of many that I will be receiving over the next month or so, and this particular box contained all kinds of useless household things that are mine, and that provide familiarity to my now unfamiliiar world.

Pictures of both me and my boys, old fashioned cookie cutters, old fashioned irons, old wooden levels, other old-timey decorative things....... 

Things that are familiar and loved by me, but at the same time also feel a bit strange to have in my possession again, because for the past two months I have been living on the "necessities" - not the "niceties" of life. 

The one item in the box that caused the biggest pleasure for me was George the Bug: 

George looks like he was made by a child in the 5th grade, but he was actually made by my youngest son when he was a senior in high school.  He is the same boy who is now into 3 1/2 years in the USAF and is now into his second tour of Iraq.  Son #2 gave me George before he graduated from high school, and this goofy looking bug has sat on my desk at work ever since. 

When I unpacked him I smiled.  When I realized that George has made it from TN to AK in one piece I smiled again.  And when I realized that on Monday morning George will be sitting on my desk in my office here in Juneau I smiled again.

When you feel lost and alone, you take pleasure where and when you can find it.  Today I found it in a number of ways - in the establishment of a land line that puts me in greater touch with my LC, and which makes me accessible if either he or one of my boys needs me.  I found it in a pair of rubber boots that I greatly needed and that I unexpectedly got on sale.  And today I found it in George.