Baby, it’s cold outside.

It just so happens that we are having our eighth warm day of the year today, and you can tell. People are outside in droves, eating their lunch, walking around, or just sitting blissfully in the sun trying to make up for the massive vitamin D deprivation we’re all feeling. I was amazed to feel a breeze that didn’t make me want to curl up next to my space heater.

In general, people in Alaska are a hardy sort when it comes to weather. Sure, we complain to each other about the long bitter winters and dreary days of August, but to outsiders we generally remain stoic and resigned. After all, it’s ALASKA – you can’t really expect a lot of sympathy when it snows.

Except, of course, when it snows in July.

The officious people who actually keep track of things like this may not be willing to admit it yet, but the rest of us in Alaska already know: this is the worst summer EVER. According to a recent article in the Anchorage Daily News, we are on track to have the fewest number of summer days to hit 65 degrees. We might even break the record for fewest number of days to reach 60 degrees.

In 1970, there were only 16 days over 65 during the entire year. This year, so far, we’ve had SEVEN. And that’s with the fireweed blooming out, a sure sign that summer is drawing to a close. The hope of relief from rain and clouds is dying faster than you can say, “Where are my goddamn rubber boots?” And yes, it actually SNOWED in the Matanuska Valley last week, dusting the mountains of the Chugach range with white.

Is this some sick cosmic joke? Because if so, no one’s laughing. Although here is one Alaskan’s attempt to be positive about the whole kerfluffle, taken from the comments about the article:

I think this weather is good because if you’re fat you don’t have to worry about running around in revealing clothing, you can still put on your NorthFace shell and cover your fat self up.

Yeah, whatever. Let’s not even talk about weight. Hell, we all know that the only thing that stands between you and the five pounds you’re going to gain starting in September is the chance to work off last winter’s flab over the summer months, and that’s not going to happen when it’s raining so hard that even the mosquitoes are in hiding. I have calluses on my ass from sitting around doing nothing. My only consolation is that if the garden looks like something out of “Lord of the Flies” (minus the talking pig head), it’s because no one in their right mind weeds in the rain.

We’re talking a relentless deluge of misery here, people. Summer in Alaska, short as it is, should be sweet, not soggy. We should be outside hiking and biking and camping and grilling fresh salmon. Instead, it’s so cold, the dog has forgotten to shed her winter coat. I’m wearing fleece in July and sleeping under a down comforter at night. It’s so bad, I actually almost put on a Christmas CD one evening, just to make myself feel better. Everyone I know has some sort of ongoing cold or allergy, probably because you can see the mold growing in real time.

Which makes today’s sunshine all the more precious, and that’s why I’m cutting this blog short to get back outside, before it rains again.

A wedding invitation.

Yesterday, the Bug calmly informed me that I was ‘vited to his wedding.

“Wedding?” I said. “Who’s the lucky panther?”

“It’s a GIRL,” he announced. “Her name is SADIE.”

I racked my Vegas-addled brains. Sadie, Sadie, Sadie? No one at pre-school, not one of our friends, not a movie character… “Who is Sadie?” I finally asked.

“She’s really pretty. She has long hair and blue eyes. And she’s 31 years old.”

“Isn’t that a little old for you, honey?”

“She’ll wait till I’m 16,” he told me smugly.

I was starting to get nervous now. It sounded a little too plausible. “Where did you meet Sadie?” I asked, hoping I sounded casual.

“Africa!” he crowed.

“Oh, Africa. So where’s the wedding going to be?”

“Hawai’i.”

Sounds good to me. “And what are you having for food?”

“Chocolate cake. And pizza from the Moose’s Tooth.”

“The Moose’s Tooth delivers all the way to Hawai’i?”

The Bug puzzled over that for a minute. Then I asked him if he could show me a picture of Sadie. He ran off and returned with People magazine. “Here she is,” he said, beaming, and showed me a picture of Reese Witherspoon. My son, enamored of a blue-eyed blonde? Perish the thought.

“I thought you liked Princess Jasmine,” I said reprovingly.

“She’s marrying Aladdin, silly.”

“Do you even know what a wedding is?”

“It means you get married,” the Bug explained, all serious. “And then you have kids, and you can give them a time-out when they’re bad.”

“THAT’S RIGHT!” I said. “I’ll definitely come to your wedding, sweetheart.”

“Awesome!” He grinned up at me. “Wanna play animals?”

And I did, because at least for now, I’m still the number one girl in his life.

A Scoop Dat guide to Vegas.

Know Before You Go

Going to Las Vegas requires arduous preparation in advance. It’s really no different than endurance training for an Olympic event. Or, if you prefer, think of it as foreplay.

You will need the following items:

A paper shredder
A pack of cigarettes and an ashtray
A 12-pack of beer
Rock salt
A stack of twenty dollar bills

Start around midnight. In a closed, poorly ventilated, dimly lit room, light all the cigarettes at once and let them burn, or, if you are a smoker, start smoking. Drink the beer as fast as you can while running cash through the shredder. Do not sleep. In the morning, pour rock salt into your eyes and lick the ashtray clean. Repeat this process every night for a couple of weeks, gradually building up your stamina.

Learn the cliches.

Dealers and players use all kinds of cliches to describe various blackjack situations. I can’t tell you how many times we heard “acey-deucy” for the Ace/2 combo, “Crazy eights” for a pair of 8s, or “Upside-down?” for a 6 when you wanted a 9 or vice versa. There’s also the old “Double?” on a blackjack, and several of our dealers pretended they were going to flip a house blackjack just to freak out the players. Even better, one dealer pulled a 7-7-8 and called out “Twenty-one!”, causing everyone at the table to groan in collective misery. We were so used to being shafted by the house, we actually forgot how to add.

Some people dislike banter with the dealers, but not me. If I’m going to hemorrhage money, I figure I should at least get a little fun out of it. Though I can see why a dealer would want to remain impassive after dealing with countless drunks and fools, I’d rather be laughing as the house drains my bank account.

Another cliche we heard over and over: “Vegas is the adult version of Disneyland“. I don’t think so. At least, I never saw Minnie out hawking her wares in a G-string, or Mickey smoking a cigar with a hooker on each arm. Nope, if Disney had a vision for Vegas, it would be “Pleasure Island”, the carnival of sin in “Pinocchio” that turned little boys into asses by letting them smoke, drink, and gamble their way into servitude.

Vegas is no place for kids.

Sure, there are lazy river pools and blow-dried lions and other activities for the non-gambling and under-21 crowd. But do you really want your 5 year old daughter picking up photos of naked hookers off the sidewalk, or your 14 year old son watching a truck go by that promises “Hot Girls Delivered To Your Door In 20 Minutes!” (1-888-696-9696)?

Winning is limited, losing is infinite.

We discovered that the road to bankruptcy is paved with blackjack tables. I play $5 tables if I can find one, and I’m happy just to play for hours and walk away even, or even take a bit of a loss. Usually, playing basic strategy, the money pattern is like a sine wave – you go up and down, up and down. If you’re lucky, you might go on a little hot streak. But as we learned on this trip, it’s possible to lose, and lose, and lose, and never make a comeback. Between four of us, not one person came out ahead. It makes a day job look easy, and yet I’d go back again today. Let that be a lesson to you.

The beat goes on.

On Wednesday night, the mid-Strip area actually closed down when the Bellagio was mysteriously evacuated. The hotel emptied out quietly, without all the hoopla you might expect. For an evening, there were no cars in that area, and people milled about, watching curiously as the police directed road and foot traffic away from the perimeter of the hotel. There was no panic, no mass stampedes, not even a news camera as far as we could see.

We had no idea what was going on until the next day, when local news reported that a “suspicious package” had been found in the lobby. We speculated wildly, of course: bomb threat, casino heist, homicide? I half-expected to see Brad Pitt and George Clooney sprinting madly down the street.

I had just been thinking about security on the Strip that afternoon. If there’s anywhere you could be anonymous, surely it has to be in Las Vegas. Nothing is too bizarre or outlandish in the City of Sin. Who’s watching? But my husband reminded me that there are cameras everywhere, and somehow someone spotted an unattended suitcase in the lobby of one of the largest hotels in the casino.

Meanwhile, out on the streets, the touts still flicked their porn ads at hapless passers-by. Because if we let prostitution fall by the wayside because of a silly old bomb threat, then the terrorists have already won.

Viva Las Vegas.

In my dreams.

I had the most explicit dream the other night. My partner and I were getting ready for some serious action. We were outside, the sun warm on our skin. I was all roped up, knots good and tight, my heart racing with anticipation. “Climb on,” my partner called out.

God, I love rock climbing dreams.

As a kid, I was never particularly athletic, or even coordinated. I was pretty active, but in a random kind of way. I rode my banana-seat bike around the neighborhood, played kickball, and roamed the woods at the end of our street. But as far as actual sports, I was mediocre at best. In my case, it was the 100-yard stumble, not the 100-yard dash. I downhill skied badly for years, played half-hearted field hockey, spent a few years in a neighborhood soccer league with a spectacular 0-11 record.

Then I moved to Alaska, where there are two kinds of people. There are the people who live their lives as if Alaska is no different than, say, Newark, buying muffins by the pallet at Costco and driving to the mailbox across the street. They run down mountain bikers with their SUVs and write letters to the editor complaining about the moose population ruining their gardens.

Then there are the folks who live here because they think it’s just plain fun to blow out a kneecap running uphill on scree, or to wade across a river breaking the ice layer with their bare thighs. This group of people boast of their injuries the way other people might brag about their stock portfolio. Just being near them is enough to make you tired.

The summer before I had the Bug, my friend Jyoti and I trained for a half-marathon. Understand, before I blindly committed to run 13.1 miles, I had never run more than three consecutive miles in my entire life. Jyoti assured me that if I could run 10 miles, I could run 13 miles. I assured her that even assuming I could run 10 miles, that didn’t mean I could take ONE SINGLE STEP more. Still, we trained for 6 weeks, and I ran a damn half-marathon, if you can count crawling across the finish line weeping in agony.

When I told my family back in Boston about this amazing feat, they were appropriately impressed. “Thirteen miles!” my brother-in-law exclaimed. “That’s like running to friggin’ Plymouth!” And as far as my family in India was concerned, I could have been an Olympian.

But from people in Alaska, I got comments like “Why didn’t you just run the marathon?” and “So, are you going to shave ten minutes off your time next year?”

So when my friend Liesel invited me to a session of the “Rockin’ Women” class at our local rock gym years ago, I wasn’t all that excited. The last thing my ego needed was to be surrounded by a group of muscle-bound women doing one-arm pull-ups with ease.

That changed instantly once I got on the wall.

I LOVE climbing. I love the way that concentrating on my next move silences all the voices clamoring in my head. I love the slow, steady sense of control; I never did like hurtling downhill on skis. I love being able to conquer my fear of heights (and I do have a serious fear of heights, thanks to my father once pretending he was going to drop my baby sister into Niagara Falls).

And I love the unique relationship I have with my good friend and climbing partner, Pam. Pam and I are different in a lot of ways. But we’re perfectly matched as climbers, because we’ve developed the kind of complementary rapport you can only build with someone whose life you truly hold in your hands. It’s a beautiful and unique kind of intimacy.She knows when to push me and when to recognize that genuine note of panic in my voice. I can tell if she’s nervous just by the way the rope feels in my hand.

We’ve climbed indoors and outside, our best day being a 900 foot three-pitch climb in Red Rock Canyon. The first time I anchored myself to a rock wall with my feet dangling in the air, birds flying BELOW ME, I thought I would die, if not of terror, then of happiness.

Climbing showed me that I didn’t have to be mediocre, that it took more than just raw talent to get really good at something, and that I could love an activity that hurt like hell and reap the rewards. Speaking of rewards, did I mention how buff my arms are when I’m climbing? Let’s not deny the vanity factor here. When I was in top shape, I’d drop and do 30 fingertip push-ups at family parties, just because I could. How many women actually mourn the loss of their calluses?

Since the Bug’s birth, my climbing time has been seriously curtailed, and I’ve felt the loss both physically and mentally. Hence the climbing dreams, in which I am flowing upward, slowly and seamlessly, every move precise. Or else wearing a really sexy tank top that shows off my super-cut arms…

Name that phobia.

After being gone for three days, I was all prepared to write a nice, pleasant Alaskana blog about our lovely weekend in Hope at the annual Wagon Wheel Festival – a quaint two day event with a pancake breakfast, a cake walk (my mother won two prizes in three tries), a 5K race, gold panning and a raffle.

But that’s going to have to wait till tomorrow, because I made the huge mistake of checking my e-mail first, only to find this photo series from my sister: Faith the Dog.

I may never sleep again.

Yes, I know.  I KNOW, in a right-brained rational sort of way, that the heartwarming story of this brave and resourceful dog, who was apparently born without front legs, is incredibly inspiring and moving.  However, this photo – somehow lifted directly from the file in my deep subconscious labeled “ABJECT TERROR” – pretty much makes me want to poke my eyes out with a blunt chopstick:

The truth is, if in real life I saw this dog coming up like that behind me in that “Rosemary’s Baby” way, I would probably scream until my thyroid ruptured.  Why is it TIPTOEING?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a recurring nightmare involving dogs that walk around on their hind legs like humans, JUST LIKE FAITH.  I’m not talking about cute little trick poodles hopping around in pink tutus.  I’m talking about a nightmare in which I go up to a house and ring the doorbell, and a Doberman with an evil stare and sharp yellow teeth answers the door, standing upright, and says “Yeeeeeeeees?”.  If any dog could do that, I’m betting on the Doberman. 

I have other weird phobias, too.  I can’t stand certain repetitive patterns or pattern-like things.  Honeycombs are right at the top of the list, followed closely by fish gills (opening and closing, opening and closing…) and the holes in sponges.  Even looking too closely at a strawberry can give me the heebie-jeebies.  All those SEEDS.   Who put them there?  What the FUCK? Or a lotus seed pod? Jesus Christ. It makes me want to crawl right out of my skin.

Don’t even get me started on coral.

My brother, knowing of this fear and wishing in typical helpful younger-brother-fashion to cure it by giving me something even WORSE to think about, once told me about a kind of frog [Edited to add: actually, the dreadful Surinam toad] that hatches its babies out of pores in its back.  If I actually saw something like that, I’d probably have to be involuntarily committed.  Or maybe I’d volunteer, just to get some anti-psychotic drugs.

I’ve also got a big thing about small teeming things, like massive amounts of maggots.  Barnacles, too – the way they’re all clustered together with those little half-open shells.  Clustering in general is bad.  The Bug has a picture book with a bunch of swallow’s nests clustered on the side of a wall.  Tell me THAT doesn’t send chills down your spine; just looking up a link to a photo of these nests gave me dry-mouth and a light-headed feeling.

I also have a deep and instinctive horror of unexpected nuts in brownies. It’s like finding a tooth or something equally unpleasant. And what about suddenly encountering italicized text in a book? You know, where you’re all tucked up in bed reading, completely immersed in the story and What’s that strange scratching at the window? Probably a dog standing upright, that’s what.

I’ve tried with no success to find names for these phobias. Fear of an erect canine? Fear of orderly strawberry seeds? Surely I can’t be the only person in the world who lies awake at night chanting silently, “Don’t think of fish gills, don’t think of fish gills...”

On the other hand, I’m not afraid of snakes.  In fact, I LIKE snakes.  Take that, Indiana Jones. Rats, too, as long as they’re not foaming at the mouth.  I’ve conquered my fear of heights by rock climbing.  I don’t fear germs, which is good because I get sneezed on by the Bug at least seven times a day. My husband has an irrational (in my opinion) fear of moths, or as he likes to call them, “hysterical flapping motherfuckers”, which means I’m the one who traps them by hand and tosses them out the window. It’s not like I’m a coward or anything.

My BIGGEST fear, right now? Fear of not being able to sleep. And that’s certainly a reasonable fear, especially since tonight’s dreams are sure to be about dogs walking around carrying barnacle-covered beehives. Sweet dreams.

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Blog Update (Blupdate?): I found a name for the phobia described in “Name that phobia.”: it’s called trypophobia, or “fear of holes”. It can be much broader than that, though, and so far has only been documented in women. Analyze THAT!

Some things that really bother me (in that skin-crawling, brain-tingling, stomach-churning, panic-inducing way): honeycombs, tripe, clusters of seeds, the underside of octopus tentacles, coral, onion cells viewed under a microscope, cross-sections of bone, seed pods, fish gills, pores, swallow’s nests, barnacles. Apparently there is a youtube video of THE FROG, the one whose eggs hatch out of its back, but you’re going to have to find it on your own, because I’m shuddering even thinking about it.

And some things that SHOULD bother me, but don’t: holes in cheese, mesh, lace, bubble wrap, sea anemones, the surface of the moon. I guess irrational is the very definition of a phobia.

In any case, at least one of my phobias can now be eliminated: the fear of being the only person to have this phobia.