Consider the Alternative

I wish someone had been there in the summer of 2003 to slap me HARD across the face. Wake up! You just graduated high school, you have to be an adult now. I also wish someone had been there to properly advise and prepare me for the challenges I would face wading through the process of higher education. Unfortunately the “guidance” counselors at my rural high school were less than forthcoming about the process, and I was the first person in my family to test the waters. Like most of my fellow graduates, I picked an in-state community college and enrolled myself  under the guise of a psychology major. (I mean I took one psychology class in high school, and my parent thought that I had a knack for “reading people”. How could I not succeed? Parent said I could do it!) Poor idealistic me. After flunking out of my freshmen year-not due to lack of attendance, I didn’t miss a class-the material was endlessly fascinating, I just despised the work, I took a year off. Deciding I needed a serious shake up I got a job in Alaska, worked, met some interesting characters and really had to start thinking about the difference between interests and aptitudes, the latter of which I had to look up in a dictionary. 

I went back to that same in-state community college on academic probation. I took one or two classes a semester still not know what I wanted to major in, but knowing that knocking out those general courses was important. I was utterly lost and I didn’t know myself well enough to know what I could excel at. The US recession hit and Alaska became an increasingly important part of my life. While people were losing jobs left and right and the population realizing it needed to tighten up those proverbial boot straps; I was making an obscene amount of money for someone who wasn’t even 25 years old yet. I was also spending an obscene amount of money, I wish someone had been there in the summer of 2008 to slap me HARD and tell me to save those precious greenbacks. I made more money that summer, than my parent made that entire year. My monetary comfort was ephemeral. After a verbal tongue lashing and less than positive end of season review from my superiors it was quite clear my summers in Alaska were over. 

I once again entered the classrooms of that in-state community college and took my first Art History class. Things really changed after that, not only did I have an interest in it, I had an aptitude for it. Feeling triumphant, if I wanted to major in it I was going to have to transfer to an actual university. I applied and got accept to one of the few prestigious (I use this word so loosely) universities in my state. I spent three years studying Art History and graduated with a B.A. in Art History in 2012. The time I spent studying there were the most insightful and defining of my entire education. I was expected to perform at a higher academic level and I was given the resources to do so. I should have pushed myself harder and really taken advantage of all those resources, but being closer to thirty than twenty I was tired, and just wanted a piece of paper that meant I’d finished something. I wish someone has been there in the summer of 2012 to slap me HARD across the face and tell me to be realistic. Even though I wanted to pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on a job well done, as I descended the steps of my university, diploma in hand. It dawned on me that I had no job skills that related to Art History. I had no work experience that related to Art History. I had no job in Art History. I simply had an interest in and an aptitude for Art History. 

As I sit here typing, unemployed and my student loans in deferment, I have come to some conclusion about my twenties, higher education, and what the next generation should know. About my twenties-I had many great adventures, met some really captivating people, wasted time, money, brain cells, but I actually finished something. About higher education-you only get out of it what you put into it. I was an average student and got an average education. About what the next generation should know-interests and aptitudes are fine, but really think about what you willing to give up for your interests and aptitudes. There is something to be said for a more practical, more useful degree; basically degrees that teach actual skills that equate to actual jobs.  Be realistic about how comfortable you like to live. What you want to be able to see and do in your lifetime. And what degrees and jobs are going to provide those comforts and adventures. This is your HARD slap. 

Living the Mundane-

Life is beautiful and good. And its always a choice to live it that way. Don't take it for granted. Always remember that at least one person loves and respects you more than you will ever realize. Be thankful for the simple things, indulge slightly, and challenge your strenghts everyday. Embrace love and family and friendships and remember to give more than you receive. Remind yourself to smile everyday. Everyone looks better with a smile on their face. Don't forget that you are one of many but still an individual. Be humble and gracious. Be outstanding. Forgive. Take risks and try something you think you can't do. Set boundaries to keep a balance. Be meaningful in everything you do, say, and feel. Be the change you seek. Speak your opinion. Be informed. Laugh when you fall. Don't take yourself too seriously. Learn from your friends. Teach something new to your elders. Let go when its time and be thankful for the lift, ride the wind of living and don't look back (for too long).
Just live.

*K-Ross

FLAMBOYANT WEEZY

Before I start the real topic of this blog, I should apologize to the 2 or 3 people who read this, for not blogging more often. I am truly repentant. That being said, here is:

FLAMBOYANT WEEZY

On this rather chilly and snowy sabbath day, I am ho

led up in my reading corner doing some extracurricular reading. In my Fitness magazine I stumble across a series of Olympic athlete profiles, a sort of day-in-life. With the Vancouver W

inter Olympic Games just a few days away, it's interesting to see how these athletes train in the hopes of taking home the gold.

I flip through the pages reading about figure skaters spending 8 hours a day on the ice, perfecting their triple lutz. Downhill skiers taking run after run, and logging hours in the gym working on their flexibility. The impossible diets luge competitors have to maintain, in order to fit into those death tubes, combined with sprinting practice. Snowboarders doing one legged squats, lunges, leg-presses, cardio, and eating organic....it's inspiring....WAIT A MINUTE?!?! Did I read that snowboarder profile right?? I re-read it. Yes I was correct, my eyes were not mistaken. I laughed out loud to myself. I was inspired to write.

Snowboarding is a relatively new Olympic event; and while I do think that it takes a great deal of talent/balance to be a snowboarder, lets face it at the end of the day those boarders-even Olympic caliber boarders-are back at their winter rental smoking a bowl playing beer pong. No time in the gym doing squats, no treadmill and no organic fruit required. This is probably how the day in the life actually went:

7 am: Sleeping

8 am: Sleeping

9 am: Sleeping

10 am: Sleeping

11:30 am: Cell phone rings, blurry eyed-look at the caller id, promptly toss phone across the room.

Noon: Up And At 'Em!

12:30 pm: Sitting on edge of bed packing a bowl. Take a few hits. Head downstairs relaxed.

12:45 pm: Survey the damage from last night's party. Roommates slowly start to populate the living area.

12:55 pm: Picking at pizza from last night. Washing it down with stale PBR leftover from beer pong & finishing off the bottle of Yukon Jack.

1:30 pm: While watching snowboarding videos with your roommates, in a cloud of smoke, talk begins to stir about getting out and shreddin' the pow that has accumulated over night.

1:45 pm: Talk about shreddin' the pow, turns into action. Smoke clears.

2:15 pm: Supplies ready, ipod charged, suited up, waiting in line for the lift.

2:30-5:30 pm: STFG: Shred The Fuckin' Gnarr

5:45 pm: Head to the bar. Drink. Eat. Talk about the day through a series of terms you'd need a

a translator for. Casually mention you'll be gone next month for awhile, "Rippin' Flake" in Vancouver.

10 pm: Head to your neighbors for a sick house party.

10:15 pm-2 am: Wicked awesome.....gets a little foggy around 1 am.....head home about 2 am.

2:30 am: Pack a bowl. Take a couple of rips. Hit the hay.

While I know the letter I write Fitness magazine, imploring them to check their facts, will be futile; at least I know the 2 or 3 people who read this blog will know the real truth. And at least 1 or 2 of them will either be amused or offended.

With Love, Fennifer

Dear Tourist,

We've been having a great summer don't you think? Minus the month of June when it didn't stop raining. Other than that, I'd say we've had a good run. August was a beautiful month, sunny days, clear blue skies, and time spent in swimming holes. Its been four months, time sure has flown by, however I'd like to discuss a few things with you.

First, we're past that point in our relationship when your tourist questions are entertaining. I don't mean to offend, but don't preface your tourist question with a smirk and the phrase, "I know this is such a tourist question but...." If you already know you are about to sound asinine, just don't say anything at all. Or perhaps ask your question out loud in a dark room; if it sounds stupid in there, it sure as hell is going to sound even dumber when you ask it of me. And of course never ever, ever walk into Thunder Hole information station and ask, Where is Thunder Hole?......That poker by the fireplace will be inserted straight into your back side and not be removed.

Second, traveling is expensive. Especially in a slumping economy. That being said, if you can in fact go on vacation in this floundering economy, do not complain about the price of things. I can't remember the last time I went to a tourist destination and found things to be affordable and marked at a reasonable price. This relationship is never going to last if you are passive aggressive with how you're feeling. So, when I'm back there folding the t-shirts you haphazardly tossed back onto the shelf, don't make comments under your breath about how exorbitant the prices are. Try budgeting accordingly or buying fewer souvenirs that will mean nothing to you five years from now.

Third, when using a public bathroom it is never appropriate to leave any bodily fluids in, on, near, or around the toilet. I mean bathroom procedures are fairly universal whether at home or abroad. I suppose if you leave your bodily fluids in, on, near or around your toilet at home you might not realize that is totally uncalled for in a public facility. But I'm guessing like me and the majority of population, you keep things sanitary in the bathroom. In the future it would just be easier on me, not to have to clean up bodily discharges, unless they are my own.

Finally, I'd like to say that for the most part you packed well. You brought the extra socks you considered leaving at home. That rain jacket was a good choice, cause it rained pretty hard last Thursday and it saved you from buying an umbrella. Those sandals came in handy that night we went to dinner, and saved you from wearing those dusty hiking boots to such a nice restaurant. Those travel sized toiletries saved so much room, you were able to get the WPC and a t-shirt from Cadillac MT. That being said, next time you decide to hit the open road and get out of town for awhile; don't leave your common sense at home to gather dust with the week's worth of mail that's awaiting your return. Perhaps next time you pack up the kids and take the mini-van on a mini-adventure bring common sense along to ride shot-gun and make you look like less of an imbecile.

With Love, Fennifer

So there was this guy, and he died.

I’m back at my old haunt once again, but the 2009 Denali summer season has been an odd one so far. The weather was at first unseasonably warm, now the reverse is in effect. Time has dragged on from the very start like I’ve been here for years (even though it has only been 2 weeks) as things haven’t quite kicked off yet; it feels like the longest pre-season ever.

On the bright side, I enjoy my job as a dispatcher. I’m being paid a ridiculous amount of money to say “copy” on the radio. Of course, things go wrong: busses break down and toilets flood the communal bathrooms. We’re basically the 911 of Denali National Park, which carries more responsibility than I like to think about sometimes. My number will be up sometime soon when something really goes wrong and I have to solely respond to it.

I had the day off when a new guy from Utah, who was working at the Wilderness Access Center (where I did last year), passed away on Monday. He rode the bus up with us from Anchorage. Being 21, his first question was “where’s the closest liquor store?” which I thought nothing of, since everyone seems to be a raging alcoholic around here. Things seemed to go downhill quickly for him as soon as he got here. He was always very, very drunk during the daytime, and showed up for only two of the seven shifts he was scheduled for. He had a doctor’s note and test results pending for pneumonia and giardia, but went to the bar every night and often had a cigarette in hand. One afternoon I was leaving my room for work and watched him stumble onto his porch –directly across from ours- and sit down to cradle his head, dry-heaving. In the meantime, he was peeing in his shorts. It was a sad thing to witness, but annoyed me all the same to see someone waste a highly-paid seasonal job that people are literally clawing down the door to get. When I got to work, I asked whether I should report what I saw, but it didn’t go anywhere because the kid wasn’t on the clock.

A few days later he was terminated, but he seemed pretty positive about finding a job at one of the hotels as a dishwasher even though we all quietly knew he wouldn’t be able to hold that job down, either. The bags under his eyes were grey and the eyes themselves were glossy and vacant. I had this feeling about him that night that I expressed to Dana, that I didn’t think he would make it. As if to make things even weirder, “Venus in Furs” was playing on a loop in my head – a poignant scene in that Gus van Sant movie “Last Days”, about the final days in Kurt Cobain’s life. I think people have an intuition about these things, whether they are in tune with it at the time or not.

I slept in that next morning, and woke up when they found him. People were scrambling around in a panic. He had asphyxiated in his sleep and when one of the drivers attempted CPR, the kid had already been gone for hours. Park Service Law Enforcement stepped in and handled things until the ambulance took him away to Fairbanks. They found 8 empty handles of liquor in his room, and he’d only been here for 10 days.

It all wouldn’t have been so traumatic if he wasn’t my neighbor across the way. All day long I saw him lying there on the floor, lifeless and stiff, people with gloves hovering over him taking measurements, yellow tape around the dorm. It was the first fresh dead body I’d ever seen. Death confronts all of us at some point and when it does, it takes time for anyone involved to process. I’ll spare everyone the platitudes from here on out. I just can’t get over how young he was, or how tormented he must have been, or whether his actual intention was to drink himself to death. It’s been a few days now and things have seemingly returned to normal, but I find myself looking at his empty dorm room, thinking I see him out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t know him well, and can’t help but feel guilty about thinking of him as an irresponsible kid that didn’t realize how good he had it. But it’s strangely consoling to realize that his time was simply up on this earthly plane, and that’s just how cold and final things are.

Premise: Bleach is Bad. Discuss

By Caitlin Salisbury

Dear friends,

Do not use bleach when cleaning. It is a terrible, terrible, idea. I do not mean to belabor this issue, but the more people I potentially reach with my message, the more brain cells I can save – which is a service to the collective whole of humanity. Some say that people are drawn to causes because of a person or an event that has touched them in way like no other – and I think I have finally found mine.

After an indulgent cleaning frenzy yesterday, I woke up a different person. I had a splitting headache and was slow in speech and action. This general slowing down of events probably made my boyfriend happy, but I felt a strange void – the void that could only result from a frontal lobotomy. I took an online IQ test the other day, and given the results, it felt as though the halfway intelligent part of my brain simmered down to my scored Arithmetic level, which hovers dangerously above room temperature. I had difficulty formulating complete thoughts, though I did gain supernatural empathy powers for the guests on today’s Maury Povich.

You see, I went a little crazy in the heavily-fragranced and chemical-filled isle at Walmart and bought all kinds of scented candles and some Arm & Hammer bathroom cleaner. My mom’s visiting this weekend and I don’t want her to think I’ve lost my obsessive-compulsive edge. My philosophy with regard to cleaning product has always been this: the natural stuff is all nice and good for the environment; but will it kill HIV? I don’t think so! Will it eradicate all of the E. Coli and Lysteria gracing my food preparation areas? No way, Jose! I go with major duty killer. When I’m done with a bathroom, I like to see an entire layer of skin peel off of my working hand. It’s proof of its beautiful, corrosive efficiency.

But given the extent of my hangover for last night’s fun, I am reconsidering my point of view.
I guess I huffed some bleach by accident, and got pretty messed up on it, man. It makes me wonder about people that are actually addicted to inhalants, like this one show I watched on A&E called “Intervention” (which ranks a close second to “Ghost Shows - Category” in awesomeness). There was a well-groomed young woman who was addicted to chemical duster, and would go out to hardware stores and buy out their entire stock. She’d sit on her couch, pet her cat, take a hit, and then drool on herself for a couple of hours. She’d come to, and then it was wash-rinse-repeat. (She, for obvious reasons, wasn’t a fan of the actual “intervention” part of the show, though. I cried when animal control repo-d her cat.)

I have hypothesized before that I might be sensitive to chemicals added in cleaning products. One time I was cleaning my old apartment in Jackson Hole and thought it would be a great idea to clean the radiators with this natural looking orange stuff I bought. I thought it was milder than other brand-name agents because it smelled like oranges that had gone bad–for many years - and it was my logic that dead, decomposing things would make good decomposers of grime and filth; compost in a bottle if you will. It cleaned like a charm, but I woke up at 3 a.m., just long enough after the heater kicked in, and emptied the contents of my stomach in my extremely sanitary bathroom.

I guess there was a reason I printed out the 65 Ways to use Baking Soda to use for cleaning. I’m going to use this method in the future. Those old housewives ain’t be playin’, ain’t they?

Update: Baking soda works like a charm, and has fast become my agent of choice. It doesn’t release highly noxious gases. Plus, it creates a wonderful paste that is abrasive enough to clean even the most stubborn of porcelain bathroom sinks. Even better: you can use the remaining paste from the sink to brush your teeth, then use the remainder of THAT to wash your vegetables of residual pesticides, and maybe then cook up some crack (if time permits). Baking soda is basically the Wunder Kind of all cleaning products. It is to cleaners as Mozart was to Classical Music: a little sassy ,naughty, and flirtatious, but always ingenious!

As if I haven't made it clear enough, I am done with Winter. Done with the snow and balls-cold drive to work in the morning (where the temperature gauge usually reads below 0), that is, if we can even get the truck started. I am tired of the slippery, icy driveway. I jumped with joy when I saw the first hint of gravel peeking out from under the compacted snow. A glacial ice field has grown to enormous proportions just outside the front door thanks to roof slides, and is now only a foot away from our entrance. We call the route to the door the "walkway of death", as the likelihood of slipping on the ice or being impaled by hanging icicles outweighs one's chance of survival, and lord knows I don't want to end up like Christina on Grey's.

I know I have the tendency to complain a lot, but I have come to accept that this is my nature, and self-acceptance is more important than depriving myself of the compulsive need to whine. I'm sorry that I have trouble putting up with mediocrity. I really am. I'm not always a pessimist; I have love for many things on this earthly plane at the moment. I love the convenience of the portable french press coffee maker my manager bought me in support of my boycott of the coffee house near work (see blog entry: "I want to cut her"). I love watching ghost and paranormal-oriented shows on Hulu, though at this point I have exhausted all of the episodes but have discovered a new favorite: "Lie to Me". It's great; it's an overly analytical show about facial expressions in criminal profiling. I LOVE it. My world may be small at the moment, but it is filled with things that are great.I also love watching Burmese cats meowing on YouTube. There was the cutest one ever with two of these cats cuddled up with a new-born baby. They're purebred yet, again, I will not settle for some mediocre street cat born in a dumpster........ well, ok, I would if it were left in a basket on my doorstep, but that's beside the point:

http://www.gotpetsonline.com/pictures/gallery/cats/shorthaired-cats/burmese/burmese-0024/

You may think I jest, but over the years I have come to think that it is my fate in life to start a cat farm, where the beautiful Burmese breed can wander freely and meow to their hearts' delight. The Farm might be called something like "Caitlin's Cat Cash Crop", but I won't settle on anything before I draw up the business plans:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2082719_start-animal-sanctuary.html

The cats will be bred first and foremost for loyalty, intergrity, honesty, and high cheekbones. Synonymous traits, you may argue, but each is unique in connotation.

Stay tuned. I'm thinking cat farm with a bed and breakfast on a large area of land, somewhere nice (it's environmental cat-tourism). We will have an acupuncturist on staff to help remedy guests' allergic reactions caused by excessive cat dander, as well as small Burmese children whose tiny, sanitized hands will pick out any hair that may have landed in the soup du jour. Upon departure, the guests may pick one of our highly socialized cats to take home with them for a substantial fee, after they have passed extensive credit and background checks. Our on-staff psychoanalyst will have to determine that adequate bonding has occurred between cat and prospective owner as to ensure the cats' quality of life. We will have a mandatory open adoption policy, so that I can routinely visit the kitties I helped bring into this world. A private jet will provide my transportation in visiting my cats in all corners of the world, and I will take the cats on field trips and try to get a sense of whether they are happy in their current living situation. If not, "mama bear", as I will call myself, will pack the cats onto the jet and fly back home to the ranch, where they can continue to contribute by fertilizing the organic sustainable community garden. It's really that simple.

-dillycait