Brave YaYa ventures forth to the Frontier once again!

Yes, even with the harrowing scrape with the volcano last year, my mom came up to visit us again this spring!

Finally we had some nice weather,

 ...and the inevitable illness that strikes at least one member of the family during her visit waited until the last couple days, so it was almost the best visit yet. Mom even got to visit Esther at school:

 And eat lunch with her in the commons:

The only real issue of the visit was that we discovered, on the day before her arrival,  that we were hosting some other, albiet extremely unwelcome, guests:

LICE!

Ah, the joy of learning what it means to have a child in school! 

And since Esther and I are so close, well....

Yes, I had them too. I came about a centimeter away from shaving my head.

And, I guess, since she was seeing us all do this to each other, little miss mimic had to get in the act:  

My mom escaped the plague.  As did Iris. Thank goodness. 

Some folks may wonder, why on earth are you putting this on your blog? It's gross and embarassing!  Well, if some very helpful folks hadn't put a bunch of free information about lice on their blogs and websites, I think I would have lost my mind. I probably would have pulled out my hair in tufts!  SO I'm going to share some tips and the sites I got them from with you....

First of all, I used to laugh when my students told me they treated lice with mayonnaise. It sounded like a big, fat wive's tale. Hower, I found out that any oily substance really does work in that it suffocates the lice and makes it harder for them to elude the comb when you are trying to get them out. I learned this method from a funny and informative site called the 5-Step Battle Plan.  It's got a really goofy video that is still really helpful and memorable. I am really grateful to the makers of the site (AND you can get a really great metal comb on the site -- the ones that come with the chemical kits are for crap, especially for those of us who have really thick hair).  

So, anyway, you have to leave the oil on for a substantial length of time, though, or it won't work, so most of the time it's reccommended that it's put on at night and covered with a shower cap -- hence Esther's cute washerwoman look:

Yes, it's messy, but man is it a relief to know that you're doing something that at the very least does not allow them to roam around your pillow at night. And it's non-toxic!  You know, even though I am more on the earthy side of things, I was totally willing to use the pesticide for lice removal once in our hair.  But then I realized when reading the instructions that the chemical does not kill the nits. The nits live on, happily, until you comb all of them out (nearly impossible, as they are SO tiny and blend in so well) or they hatch.  Therefore you would just have to keep using the chemical several times before it's totally killed -- and that's just gross to me, using a chemical over and over.  If you use the oil every 4 days, you'll catch and suffocate any lice who have hatched.

And here is a product that I'm excited to try (darn slow Postal service, it hasn't gotten here yet, but what it says on the website has me intrigued):  Happy Heads   They make a shampoo and other products that are made out of essential oils that supposedly dissolve lice exoskeletons.  And since they are natural, it's possible to use them preventively, once a week.  I like that idea since I doubt this will be our only run-in with lice during my girls' elementary school career. 

I also liked this site's take on the whole thing; it's some of the same info but a couple different suggestions: Ask Moxie  (You have to scroll down a ways to see the beginning of the article.)

Well, here's a sincere hope that you and yours never have to deal with such infestation!

Frigid

This is a picture taken from school out across the bay. The lumps in the far right distance are icebergs. Doesn't it look pretty out there?  Yeah, it's inaccessible right now. :(

It's so cold right now that walking from school to home (a distance of 500 yards at most) causes any exposed part of my face to get lobster red and throb all day.  It's so cold right now that when we walk on the wooden porch, it snaps and moans.  It's so cold right now that the impossible dryness that comes with it is causing all manner of skin ailments, including skin cracks that just won't seal up, no matter how much Weleda Skin Food I put in them.  It's really cold right now.

Most folks imagine that I'm used to this type of cold, but as my mantra expresses: Hooper Bay is the most perfect place on the planet, and one of the reasons for this is moderate temperatures.  The incredible cold that people read about in Jack London novels happens in the interior of Alaska, where there are trees and stuff.  While we get really crazy wild windy weather, we rarely get this kind of cold that we have right now. And when we do, it doesn't stick. And usually, it's the calm days that cause the mercury to drop.  This weather is defying all that.

What kind of cold, you ask? Well, for the past week, my thermometer has been reading between -2 and -10, and that does not take in to account any windchill. If the wind is calm, it's actually fun, actually cool to be outside in negative temperatures if you're dressed right.  The snow is so dry and packed that it feels (and sounds) like walking on styryfoam, and it's usually clear skies, so the stars are twinkling flashing multicolored magnificent.  It was like this last week, and I got a few early morning walks with the dogs in before anyone else was up, underneath the waning moon.  With the moon's sliver light, and the wierd snow to walk on, it kind of felt like what I imagine it's like to walk on the moon itself.

It's on these nights that we actually get to see the fickle northern lights, though sometimes it's in the wee hours of the morning and I'm never up then.

However, this week when it was already negative temperatures, the wind picked up to 30 mph, and that has caused it to actually feel like it's -50 outside, and maybe I'm wrong since I haven't ever lived in the interior, but it's a more dangerous, more cruel -50 than when it's just -50 and calm winds.  My lobster face says so.

So I'm not really used to weather that is too cold to function outside in. Usually, there is an activity that I like to do for every kind of weather -- I like to get out into those wild snow storms and such.  Plus whenever we've gotten snow this winter, the storm it rode in on has caused the temperature to rise to 32.5 degrees, which makes everything all mushy and wet, which just adds to the thick sheet of ice that is covering everything when the temperature drops like a brick again when the storm passes. So not only is it too cold to do anything outside, those 30 mph winds make for some interesting walks to school on the foot-thick ice. 

So we stay inside and bake, read, watch movies(when the girls go to bed), play board games, make up silly dances to Royksopp, talk on the phone, pretend to clean house and organize, put pictures in frames and scrapbooks, scurry the few hundred feet to the school to watch basketball games or participate in Yuraq (traditional eskimo dancing) in the gym, and BLOG!

In general we stay grateful for modern heating conveniences, though it always feels a little like living on the edge -- if the power went out, if we ran out of heating fuel... yeah, I can sense that the cold is a heartbeat away. It waits on the edges of the house, seeping in where I can't detect it and plug it up.  I think of people who were here before us -- what did they do in cold like this, in a sod house, fur clothing & blankets, and a little seal-oil lamp to heat the whole place?  Huddle together?  Yuraq to get their body temperatures up?  Although I think that it would be neat to experience a lot of things from earlier times, this weather makes me so glad I was born in the era in which I was born.  Plus, two yaks, my job would have zero application if I were yanked back 300-500 years (though I'd like to say my avocations would!).

Why Not to Postpone Packing the Emergency Bag

I was all set with my long to-do list Thanksgiving weekend, excited for days to accomplish things that have been wasting away on that thing for months.  Something I kept chastising myself for postponing was the chore of packing the Emergency Bag -- that is, the bag that stays full of everything we would need in event of having to fly to the hospital in Bethel at a moment's notice: changes of clothes, diapers, toiletries, travel toys & crayons, etc., as well as IDs and credit cards and things that I never need on a day to day basis here in Hooper Bay -- I only need those things when I travel.  Every summer after we come back from our travels, I need to reorganize and get everything in the leave-in-a-moment bag. I hadn't done that yet this fall, and recognized I was tempting fate leaving it unpacked.

Also Thanksgiving weekend I even planned a special snowmobile drive down to check out the frozen beach and let the dogs have a run and I would take pictures of it and blog about it! Especially since the snowgo is new to me -- a couple other teachers and I went in on it together and are sharing it, and I was excited about its purchase and the outdoor adventures we could do with it.  And please don't be picturing me hot-rodding through fresh powder like the snowmobile commercials, because it's more me puttering along looking for fox tracks as I go. 

But then it doesn't matter because it didn't happen. Because on Wednesday afternoon we crashed on said snowgo.  And then, wouldn't you know it, we needed the emergency bag, yes, the one that was not packed yet.

So now, instead of reflecting on a weekend productively spent with a nice outdoor adventure,  I'm going to post the story of our crash and and any pictures I may have squeezed out of the whole experience.

First of all, I don't think I've written about the most amazing thing that has come to Hooper Bay, yet (even more amazing than the windmills and the black plastic road)  :  The Sub-Regional Health Clinic, our link to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC).  It has been a long-awaited and highly-anticipated structure, here, because all time before this, we have only had a tiny trailer-esque health clinic staffed by medical professionals called health aides.  I wish I'd thought to get pictures of the inside before the clinic officially moved; we happened to be seen there a day or so before they moved over to the new building.  But here is a picture of the outside of the old clinic:

The appointments for the day are always filled by 9:am, and the health aides are overworked, underappreciated, and stretched in 15 directions.  They are the people who keep the village sewn up at the seams, and yet they only get a few weeks of training a year.  Now there is a proper facility and many more medical professionals to support them -- we get itinerant physician's assistants, doctors, and dentists, but it's still the health aides who are the spokes of the wheel. Here are pictures from the grand opening barbecue of the facility we had in August, where the whole community was invited for a Halibut Barbeque, with other delicacies rarely known here (like salad!):

Above is Tuluk anticipating the great eats while we wait in line by the entrance, and below is Esther with her cousins Avery and Jasmine and her uncle Alex:

And the building is so freaking beautiful -- it's just like a real, normal medical clinic somewhere else closer to civilization. I took these pictures of the waiting room while I was waiting for Iris's appointment before all the calamaties began:

It even has a child play area:

So on Wednesday afternoon we had an early release from school, so we scheduled an immunization appointment.  It was time for Iris's MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) and Varicella (Chicken Pox) shots.  These shots make me nervous anyway because they are live vaccines and because anecdotally I've heard of many reactions to these shots -- but since we live in a town with no running water and a plane's ride away from a hospital, we do our vaccinations.

But, actually, all goes well that afternoon, Iris is not happy to have the shots, but gets it overwith, and she was running around the waiting room while we waited our mandatory wait time after the vacs.  My good friend Amy over at Pretty Babies gave us a call; her daughter Mary Grace wanted to ask Esther why she wasn't coming to her house for Thanksgiving, and by then it was time we could be released.  I had driven the new snowgo to the appointment, with Esther in front of me and Iris in the hip carrier, strapped to me. I only drove it so that I could get gas for it, since the gas station was going to be closed the rest of the week for Thanksgiving, and I had the trip to the beach planned, remember?

There is a significant dip between the parking lot of the clinic and the road if you don't hit it just right, and the way the snowgo was parked, since it doesn't have reverse, I would have had to physically drag the skis around to make it hit just right.  Why oh why am I always so lazy to do that sort of thing?  Well, whatever, I decided to go through the dip because I saw other snowmobile tracks go that way and I figured it would be ok.   Ugh.

So at the top of the dip, right at the edge of the road, I had to accelerate to get up on top.  Being only the second time I've driven the thing, I didn't know something crucial about it:  it has a belt that is too small and makes it leap into its acceleration at times.

So it did the leap -- it hit ice on the road -- and there was no stopping it.  Way too fast for belief, we skidded across the road and sideways-hit a metal pole that prevents people from driving over the above-ground water pipe on the side of the road:

Actually, my arm hit it, as I was trying like hell to turn the skis.  But I didn't even feel it at the time -- since my arm was around Iris, what I felt was Iris smashed against me as we ran into the pole. I was sure we were done for, especially when I felt the snowgo flip out from underneath us and dump us to the side.

Somehow Iris turned out, facing away from me, while still in the carrier, when we fell.  That's the moment her leg was broken. I think she took the brunt of the fall for both of us.  It's so wrong!  It's supposed to be me that takes it -- whatever hurt -- for the both of us.

Meanwhile, Esther was fine.  I don't think she felt anything but a nice little topple onto the ground -- but she was freaked out as I was incredibly freaked out, thinking I'd killed both of them.

Being a few feet from the clinic, we turned around and ran back.  I was too panicked to say anything so I laid Iris down on the desktop of the registration cubicle , and tearfully said, "We crashed!". 

Wow, those health aides can move!  It was pretty amazing how we were immediately surrounded and supported. The new urgent care room was well put to use.  It was clear pretty soon that Esther was just fine, and I was OK besides my banged-up arm.  They were able to x-ray my arm right then and there with the fancy, brand-spanking new x-ray machine that was installed in the clinic, and it was not broken. Here is the picture of the gnarly bruise several days later:

Not too pretty, but at least it didn't end up looking like this (sorry, fun with photobooth):

Because if you think my arm looks bad, check out the tilt in the pole, now!:)

So anyway, Iris seemed fine -- she was responding well to all their tests, all their movements of her body -- except that she was inconsolable, crying so sad and pitiful.  But that might have been expected since she had had immunizations (and she always goes downhill for the evening after immunizations) and also experienced the crash and watched her mom freak out AND had not napped well earlier.  So it was really hard to tease out what exactly was going on with her, especially since she would move all her limbs and joints just fine.  Here is a picture of us in the urgent care room:

So once she had calmed down and actually slept a little in my arms, and we had spent another mandatory waiting period, we were able to go (Tuluk driving us slowly on the 4 wheeler) home, where we were shaky and sad and freaked and went to bed as soon as possible.  However, before we went to bed we realized that Iris would not stand on her own.  We said we would reassess in the morning.

Thanksgiving Day was a perfectly funked up day. I woke up feeling shaky and anxious, but I had invited 10 people over for Thanksgiving, and I didn't feel like cancelling, as it would just make me feel worse, so I decided to just get started and then I might perk up.  But I was not at the top of my game; everything I cooked was just a little off.  The rolls had burned bottoms, the pumpkin pie was bitter, the turkey got done an hour after we got done eating (I promise it was thawed!  Thank goodness John & MaryEllen brought turkey, too.), and there was a cranberry incident involving the kitchen floor and all of us walking around with the bottoms of our feet dyed purple.  But we got through it; it was fine. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food I had cooked, even if it was not quite the level of what I usually produce.

Iris still would not stand on her own, which was worrisome, but there was no swelling, no bruise, no redness anywhere.  We kept doing little tests on her, like me holding her towards me and Tuluk would come up behind her and touch or move various parts on her body and legs to see what got a reaction.  We could do whatever we wanted and it did not hurt her, seemingly.  So even though she spent the day scooting herself around, we couldn't isolate the problem --  we pretty much all agreed that it must be a reaction from the vaccinations.  Again, we decided to reassess in the morning. 

Friday morning was no question. I noticed during the night that while Iris kicked her right leg, her left would stay still. It felt hot to me, and so we called the clinic right away who told us, despite the fancy new x-ray machine that had cleared me of a broken arm Wednesday night, that I would have to fly with Iris to Bethel to x-ray her leg.  The x-ray technician has not been trained in infant legs at this point.

This was bummer news to me, because a trip into Bethel means several things.  First, there is always the chance that you will not be able to return the same day, because weather can change during the day and cancel the evening planes, especially since we were on weather delay in the morning already (usually the morning flights arrive in Hooper around 10:am; and we actually got out of Hooper around 12 that day).  The next thing is that the ER in Bethel gets really backed up and the wait times are extreme sometimes -- also a contributing cause to missing evening flights home and having to spend the night in Bethel.  The third issue is cost -- right now it is $209 one way from Hooper Bay to Bethel.  It's not pocket change, and it's not something that I'm likely to have lying around, and it also meant that I couldn't just bring Esther with me, and I've never left her behind.  And it was likely that I was leaving her for overnight, since I would most likely get stuck.  And it all came to fruition, just like I thought.

After we finally got on the ground in Bethel, I was lucky to have awesome friends Marta & Frank were waiting at the terminal to help us.  It was only a moderate wait (a couple hours) at the ER, and here are some pictures of our wait with Iris in her precautionary splint:

After Iris got her x-rays, the doctor summoned us to the computer where the images had come up.  He pointed to a little line above her knee and said, "That's a fracture."

Oh, the guilt. It was an avalanche, crushing, horrible weight.  I broke my poor baby's leg!

However, the doc had plenty of reassuring things to say.  It is a stable break, which is why it didn't hurt her when we were moving her leg around, and it is above the growth plate, so it won't interfere with how her leg grows.  Also that infants' bones mend so well at this age that the fracture won't be visible on an x-ray a year from now.  The nurse said that a common adage of bone doctors is that at Iris's age, you can put two bones in the same room and they will grow together.

However, there is a chance it could kink as it grows, especially since it will be hard to keep her from using it.  They chose a fiberglass cast (in a sparkling blue color) and put it at a certain angle to try to discourage her from using it, but you and I both know that it's not going to slow this child down for long.  She has already developed an adept butt-scoot, which thankfully has been cleared as an OK activity for her, because this is not a child who will sit still.

But in order to make sure that the bone is not "kinking", the bone doctor wants it x-rayed once a week.  And since we have already been through it that the brand-spanking new x-ray machine already installed in Hooper Bay is of no use to us, I guess that means we are going to have to be gifting the airlines with $400 a week until Iris's leg is healed.

Not that I want anything to compromise Iris's health, and of course the money is nothing if it means she'll be healthy, but it still is a huge financial undertaking, not to mention the other things listed above -- especially leaving Esther behind.  However, at the time of this post, I'm not giving up yet.  I still have some paths of inquiry to explore,  so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.  Till then, here are the pictures of poor little scoot-scoot in her cast:

 (She's not allowed to crawl, but she can pull it along, which she's doing here)

And finally, with her sister, the queen:

Oh, yeah, and on the homefront,  Esther had a fabulous time staying home while we flew to Bethel, making cookies and going to the school gym to watch basketball with Tuluk, and with Melody and Katie, going to Katie's son's birthday party. She was no worse for the wear when I returned home Saturday morning.

BUT then as if we didn't have enough going on already, pretty much the moment we got home from the plane on Saturday, Esther woke up from a nap (which she never takes) with a rocket-high fever and signs of what we thought was swine flu, but the folks we got it from were tested positive for Influenza A, so I guess that's what we've got.  Tuluk fell prey to it on Monday, and for the past two nights Iris has been battling it.  No fair to have flu AND a broken leg all in one week.  And I refuse to go down -- somebody has to keep this crew alive! :)

Of course this set me off into high overcompensation-mode and had me dragging out all my (child safe) herbal and nutritional remedies.  One of the tests run on us after the accident said we all three were slightly anemic, and so I latched on to this as something I could fix, so I tortured my poor children some more making them eat wierd combinations of vitamin C and iron-containing foods ("Here, have a spoonful of molasses right after you sip this home-squeezed lemonade" Blech!), before I got hold of myself and calmed down.  (While I get that iron and calcium compete in the body for absorption, why is that both calcium and iron are often contained in the same foods? Anyone out there nutritionally savvy that can answer that question?)

Thanks for sticking with me on this long and involved post!

My efforts towards producing produce have been productive!

Now that the ground is frozen and the snow is starting to cover everything, I feel the need to be nostalgic about my forays into tundra gardening.  And to share my excitement over something new that literally drops into my life every week that makes, well, not everything, but pretty much most things, feel OK.

So the raised bed garden box was a project I started nearly 3 years ago, in the unusually early spring we had in 2007.  We had just moved to the new housing, and I was feeling the need to make it homey.  As the snow melted, it became evident that the ground around the new houses was littered with construction trash -- screws, pieces of wood and drywall, cigarette butts, and gross things I never could figure out what they were, that I assume were just tossed aside during the winter construction, in the rush to build the housing, and by the time spring came there was no one left to clean up.  So I started my beautification project, and that project led to planting of Alaskan wildflowers all around, and that project led to my clothesline, and that project led to my garden box.

It was fun to have an excuse to go down to the beach often for supplies (logs, etc),  and to use found materials (such as nails and wires), and to have an outside project while then-toddler Esther played in the dirt, as she always wanted to do.  I had no idea what I was doing, having only been informed by a few web searches.  But sometimes it's fun to have a project in which nothing too much is riding on it, and so it doesn't matter if I make mistakes and can learn through trial and error.

I didn't get anything planted that summer, but I read that letting a box settle for a year was helpful anyway, so I felt pretty good about it.  I ordered two big bags of soil, but other than that I filled it up with seaweed and other things I found on the beach, to enrich it.  I also started my compost project that year, as well, with an old washer found at the junkyard. I love composting. It's just one of those things that makes me feel good, even if I'm not really good at it or do it super well. I have ideas about how to do it better, but it's just one of those projects that is forever on the list.

So then the summer of 2008 I was pregnant, and didn't do too much with the garden bed except put the compost from the previous winter into it and mix it up and cover it with a tarp. Tuluk helped me dump the compost bin and it was still kind of smelly and he almost lost his lunch. It made me pause and realize who was going to be changing all the diapers in the near future. Ha!  Anyway,  then when I returned with Iris, everything was already frozen and snowy, so it was put off for another year.  But I think the extra time helped the compost enrich the soil. 

So this summer, I thought, what the heck!  I'll give it a shot.  I had some old seeds that needed to be used or tossed anyway, and so if they didn't grow, no big.  The question I have always had about this garden project is when to plant, because June is generally 40 degrees and rainy, and end of July/August is the time when it gets warm if it's going to get warm at all, but then I've only got about a month & a half till first frost.

Plus I generally travel in the summer, so when to tend it? How to protect it from marauding dogs and children?  Elders I've spoken with about gardening here said that earlier in the century, about the time of the reindeer herding, there were some gardening projects (maybe started by the missionary teachers? I don't know) here, and they had to be surrounded by large fences to protect them from the dogs.  Well, I haven't gotten to that part yet; we'll see about how I would make a fence in the future -- I think it probably would be necessary, because dogs seem to be drawn to the box as if it's a magnet -- not for eating the veggies, but for using the bathroom! But I think the danger was early in the season, rather than when the veggies were full grown.

Regardless, it was a success!  I tossed the seeds in about the middle of June, and although nothing had popped up by the time I left for our summer travels, by the time I came back the first week in August, I had great growth!  The spinach and kale was pretty fabulous.  The broccoli had already gone to flower, but we ate it anyway.  And the squashes seemed like they would have grown, but they just didn't have time. 

However, now that we sucked all the nutrients out of the garden experiment that we could and it's all under snow now, we still have access to fresh, organic produce, something that is unprecedented in all my years here.  It is definitely an expensive undertaking, but considering the cost of wilted, squishy, unknown-origin produce in the store here in town (and that's when it's available), and considering the cost and effort I put in to getting frozen fruits & vegetables out here as well as dehydrating fruits & veggies in the summer, it really pays off.

Who knew it could be possible?  I'm now a member of Carnation Washington's FULL CIRCLE FARM CSA! And I've converted many members of the teaching staff as well.  I'm actually kicking myself that I didn't research it earlier, because the farm has been shipping to rural Alaskan communities for a while -- many of them -- it just never crossed my mind that it could be possible.  It totally changes our quality of life -- my family is eating fresh, crunchy, ORGANIC things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Again, I ask, Who knew?

Basically the farm packs it on Monday mornings and ships it Alaska Airlines freight, which means it goes in the belly of a big daily freighter (I think?), and then it goes on the passenger planes out to Bethel (half of which is just cargo anyway), and then on the small plane with the company Hageland Aviation that comes here three times a day.  Most of the time it gets here by Tuesday evening, its scheduled delivery time, but there are times, mostly because of weather, that it gets delayed because the plane gets delayed -- however, that's been the minority of weeks.  Then it gets dropped off at the airport, and our very nice vice principal collects it for us, since he's often down there meeting the plane anyway, or our extremely nice plane agent Peter, who brings it to us out of the kindness of his heart, because it's not in his contract to haul freight to town from the airport.  There have been some weeks when I've been worried it would be frozen, but, really, for the most part it arrives in an amazing fashion.  AND Full Circle Farm guarantees everything -- so even if it's a loss for them, they credit or replace whatever has arrived badly.  They even will ship eggs!  Free-Range, natural eggs!  No more hormones or products of chicken cruelty for us!  Hoorah! 

With the quantities of subsistence food coming through my door, and the weekly deliveries of a produce box, who needs the store?!  AND who needs to leave?  I love my life. :)

The Flood Hath Commenced and Receeded...

Double Rainbow over the flood waters, in front of the windmills, the store, and the fuel barge.

Our annual flood: perhaps counter-intuitively, it's something everyone anticipates and gets really excited about. This year's flood was just right -- arriving on a Saturday morning, cresting on Saturday evening, and it was over by Sunday morning.  (the only thing that was a bummer was that if it happens on a weekday, we get an early out of school!)

 I don't know if it qualifies as a tsunami or not, because it's not started with an earthquake, but by really strong winds and really high tides.  It's a regular fall occurance, so it must be related to the jet stream or currents or fall storm patterns or something (anyone know more and want to enlighten me?).  People in Hooper Bay say that winter can't begin until it floods -- I mean, and it's a good thing, because if it flooded after things began to freeze, it would undermine all the solid, safe ice forming on ponds and sloughs that make it safe to travel by snowmobile. 

But, as a weather junkie, I am very much into the flood. It's a cool wild weather event, and no one gets hurt, very rarely is any property damaged, and then when it's over we can go on with our lives. To get these pictures, I got drenched to the skin (even through really good raingear) and pelted with hail, and blown around the road on the honda.  That's what I call fun! (especially since I got to go to my nice warm home afterwards and get all snuggled in with my fluffy slippers.)This is taken from my backdoor, which usually just looks out on tundra:

The next day, we went to the beach to see the wild waves, to see if anything exciting got washed up on shore (I'm still hunting for one of those old glass floats that used to hold up nets).  I found a torn bit of old net that had cool barnacles on it and took it home for a decoration in the porch.  But we still had fun seeing the wild beach:

Complete with wild monkeys:

 At Esther's dad Roy's house, where Jasmine and Avery live, Fancy and Draco's sister Taki had 5 puppies.  Check out Fancy and Draco's cute nephews and nieces!