perspicacious.org

Please know that I write this entry at the risk of sounding pathetic. So don't mock me.

I've been home all week, and the apartment is as clean as it's ever been. I am a pretty good housewife– who knew? I've even cleaned the garage and the porch. Yesterday I cleaned the bathtub.

I'm actually substitute teaching this year, but this is the first week of school and nobody's faking a cold just yet. Soon, I bet. So for right now I have some hours at the fabric store. Not too exciting, but it's easy work and they always need help. Today I'll be unloading the shipping truck, which seems like a valid use of my time.

What else have I been doing? Putzing around, pressing flowers and leaves, making paste paper and making accordion books. R is laughing at me for being lame and bored, but I think she likes having someone around who makes mini cheesecakes and mini pizzas. Let no one say I'm not making good use of my free time.

Hopefully things will pick up soon, before I can run through my repertoire of cleaning and craft ideas. If not, it may be time to take up crocheting.

Mummy, I don't want to live in the apocalypse anymore. (Live webcams of Fairbanks here and here.)

Lovely view of the smoke from a hillside near my house. This is what we've been dealing with since late June. *cough* *cough* We've all had stinging eyes and burning throats for a while now.

I have no idea how planes are taking off, since you can't see from one end of the runway to the other. Supposedly it's not so bad taking off, but if you land here the cabin slowly fills up with smoke as the plane takes in air from outside and pressurizes it for you to breathe. Yuck. There have been many times this summer when no one has known how big the fires are or where they're spreading to because it's too smoky out for planes to fly overhead and check.

I believe that this is the worst Alaskan fire season on record with over 5 million acres (7,800 sq. miles) burned so far. (I did that conversion at this website, where you can also convert square yoctometers and femtometers, if you're interested.) That's an area larger than the state of Massachusets. The smoke stretches far into the lower 48– as far as Montana? Don't quote me on that.

With weather like this everyone is just waiting for winter to start. It actually looks much worse out today, though some of the ickiness may be from fog. We've had many days with visibility of less than a mile. I'd guess that right now it's around 1/4 mile. Sometimes flakes of ash fall outside. If you spend any time outside you end up smelling like a campfire. The sun is a creepy red ball behind the smoke. Fairbanks is great, want to come visit?

Fortunately, wind change is predicted as soon as tomorrow. Hopefully, hopefully.

Back from Anchorage and waiting on phone calls. I'll let you know when I get one. My little van made it there and back with no problems– we even slept in it in Seward. Not particularly cushy or comfortable, but quieter and safer than a tent. The tricky part was getting all of the stuff out of the back so that there was room to sleep. Good thing I have no backseats.

The van waited until we got home to give me problems– when it refused to start and stalled when it finally did. I called my dad for advice and apparently I got some bad gas in Anchorage. 5 gallons of good gas and a bottle of gas drier did the trick– thank goodness since I have no money to spend on repairs.

The trip was loads of fun. Basically it involved a whole lot of eating and drinking, and eating and drinking some more. Throw in some shopping and that's what we did. Oh, and we also went down to Seward and saw the Sealife Center and a neat glacier. I put up some pictures here if you're interested. Next time I'm going to try to get R to go to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, south eastish of us near the Canadian border.

The wildfires that have plagued us all summer (I toyed with the idea of shutting down camp a couple of times, and even had parents called with a "If you'd like to pick your child up you may" message). The big fire that was about 20 miles away from camp is still going on, a new one just started to the south, and one northeast of us is giving us the worst smoke I've seen since early July. It's nasty out there. It looks marginally better right now than it did this morning, but still gross. Nothing like being shut up inside with no ventilation.

If you need me I'll be vacuuming the apartment and cleaning the kitchen in my pajamas.

Noteworthy: This entry marks four years of online journaling for me. You'd think after all that time I'd have something to say.

And after all this time, what is there to say? I sell myself short to give you a bare bones update, as this has been one of the most difficult, exhausting, frustrating, and successful months I've ever had. It meant four straight weeks of 18 hour days, with no stopping even on weekends off. And I cried because I didn't want to go to sleep and have to get up at 6:00AM and do it again.

I tried expressing all of this to the Girl Scout Council director yesterday, maybe not the crying part, but the part where I knew it would be hard but wasn't fully prepared for the whole 18 hour days with no breaks, get up and do again it the next day thing. She sort of blew me off, but can I just tell you that I'm not overly sad to be done with that place? I'd been working on camp close out stuff since we finished on Saturday (a huge binder with a report and copies of everything I'd done– she didn't read it, and the budget), and I was just ready to be finished.

Back to camp. I never did hire a full staff, but I found enough people available for a week or two weeks that I had a full(ish) staff for each week. This worked out as well or better than I could have hoped, with so many people just diving in without any real training. We spent the first three weeks of camp at the same site as last year, with its little lake and row of small cabins. It's a very small and cozy site, but really nice for keeping everyone in the same place and keeping track of what's going on. We had walkie talkies, but never really used them because you could always just yell across the lake if you needed to.

We spent the fourth week of camp at another site, much larger and hilly with few open spaces. We spent a lot of time trekking around to and from activities, but they also got to swim in a really nice lake, canoe and rowboat, climb and rappel on a great climbing tower and go on a fantastic (straight uphill– no switchbacks or anything) hike.

At the end of camp I felt this great sense of accomplishment– that I made all this happen (OK, with lots of help from other people). Nobody got seriously hurt, nobody went home sick, the girls did fun things, nobody really complained about the food or went hungry and our days were full of fun activities where the counselors really just had to get the girls moving and not worry about planning. So if I feel slightly unappreciated by the council now, well, I know that I did it.

What now? We're going to Anchorage and the Kenai next week for a vacation, and then something fantastic will come up or I will substitute teach. And the leaves will change (pretty soon, as Canada geese are already overhead), and the snow will fall and I'll be happy at home with a good book and a nice cup of coffee.