Much ado about nothing

New Engluhndas are so curious about Alaska and what we did there during Christmas break. I wish I had something interesting to say in Skippyjon Jones’s accent, like:

a.  “Holy Hot Tamales! We sighted a polar bear roving near the famous John Baker’s poochito yard and it was the first time a polar bear had wandered into town from Barrow since 1978!”

b.  “Holy Green Gorillas! All three of my neighbor’s pet ravenitos got run over by a drunk snow machine driver on New Year’s Eve. Good riddance, they always pecked at our garbage and scattered it all down the street anyway…”

c.  “Holy heartburn! We shot sixteen caribou-itos and ate them in soup for two weeks straight.”      

d.  “Holy frozen frijoles! We stood outside too long on New Year’s Eve and I froze my dedo pequeno so it had to be amputated because of severe frostbite and now I keep it in a Mason jar by my bed like Ninny’s friend Mrs. Otis does with her gallstones in Fried Green Tomatoes and I’ll show it to you if you come over to visit.

But no. Everything went according to plan. It was too cold to do anything, as Paul Young’s The Shack aptly explains: “[Cold weather] releases you from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules.” All three of my dad’s cars and the four snow machines even took a holiday and refused to start in -47 temperatures. So we stayed inside and when we went to bed at 3 a.m. it was just as dark and cold as it was when we woke up at noon the next day, so we were doubly unmotivated—I was even too unmotivated to wax poetic about anything, unlike I did about last year’s red rubber boots.

But we did eat a lot of purple pancake-itos with the tundra blueberries my mom has stored in the freezer since August, and she cooked five course breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for us every day. And my dad constructed new cat toys from dental floss and dried ptarmigan heads so we could entertain ourselves by driving the acrobatic kitty to summersaulty attempts to catch the feathered clumps with her teeth. And Landon played Killer Bunnies with us, and Merella and Dario made us homemade soap for Christmas, and Willaby ran off to hang out with her boyfriend and play fake bowling on their Wii every night, but that’s okay.

Two weeks of doing nothing in a cold, dark, icky town in the middle of nowhere goes fast when you’re with people you love.

More pictures here, if you haven't seen these yet.

The family picture. Last year I had hair. This year I look bald.

We're at the beach! This is what it looks like in winter. In -56.

My house. All the houses in Kotzebue kind of look like this: plywood boxes with ugly paint.

Robot boys.

We flew here on these planes. I jokes.

Hello Mr. Bear.

This is what my dad uses to heat our house. Everything is shipped to Kotzebue on pallets. My dad drives around town on his snow machine and piles them in his sled and stacks them as high as the roof. He has the most enviable pallet collection in town.

My butt's not cold, not at all!

This barricade of boots does not keep the fat cat from eating.

The acrobatic kitty.