Sunday, Sunday

"Three feet of ice does not result from one day of cold weather"
Chinese Proverb

Nobody's Going Anywhere
Most of the weekend we were weathered in here. No mail, no movement, no hum of incoming airplanes only...

Gentle Tundra Breezes blowing through my house!
Blasting through my house is more like it, it reminded me of last year when I thought my little trailer might be snuffed off it's unstable stilts and sail away across the flat icy landscape. Confident however that the work they did on my foundation last fall could take on whatever this winter would blow at us, I let the howling lullaby sing me to sleep. Little did I know as I was snugly tucked away under my covers a not so snugly deep freeze was settling into the rest of my once cozy abode. I awoke to my eyelashes frozen shut and my breath crystallizing around my head. Sure enough the house was still standing but somewhere in the frigid of the night the furnace all but gave up, surrendering to a few weak intervals of kicking on and then shutting down like a sputtering engine. The temps in the Kuskokwim Delta plummeted 70 degrees below zero with the windchill, suffice to say I felt it! I quickly grabbed for my trusty cell phone, careful not to let too much of my salvaged body heat escape my blanket, and called Principal Eric. "My house is frozen," I whimpered. "Are you out of stove oil?" he questioned. "I don't know. It sure feels like it," I responded through chattering teeth. "Okay, I'll be over in a minute to check it out," he assured me, "Turn on your oven in the meantime." "Alright," I muttered knowing that would involve me having to exit the only warmth I currently felt.

Alternative Heat Sources
So to our left my immediate back up. Open the oven door, crank it to 500, stand close and warm hands. To our right the prehistoric Preway oil stove which in my household has only ever been used as a lovely table (but don't let it fool you). Principal Eric got it lit on the 5th attempt and within hours it had my house piping hot, NO JOKE! The catch? There's no real way to adjust the temp. Yep, at its lowest setting the Preway had my trailer scorching at an easy 95 degrees. Last night I slept with my bedroom window open! Today our wonderful maintenance man Bob checked my furnace issue and says it is resolved I'll be back in the land of milder temps in no time. What a weekend. My little Preway heater incident reminded me of the Porcupine Mountains, where we used to take our students backpacking. We would rent little rustic cabins to stay in about 1/2 way through our trip, always a welcomed treat after a week of camping. These bare bones structures just happened to come equipped with what those who came before us deemed "the Iron Dragons" based on journal entries they left behind. After lighting those cast iron stoves that heated the little cabins to beyond sauna level, we understood where the term "Iron Dragon" came from. Needless to say everything that was wet when we arrived was dry again before we left.

Thawing Out
So after the Preway warmed the house you can imagine my confusion when I realized that my hot water pipe in the shower was somehow still frozen solid. Deciding not to let it get me down or keep me unclean I proceeded to fill the bathtub with hot water in buckets from the kitchen sink.

Wafer Cookies and Moose Stew
Jerilyn and Steph came over for coffee Saturday and we had the best cookie wafers (thank you Amanda) ever. I felt like I was at a coffee shop:) I cooked up some Moose Stew too and tested it out on Fannie. She gave it the two thumbs up! If you were here I'd have invited you to try some:)

Kuskokwim 300 Results
Congrats to Paul Gebhart who came in first and Mike Williams Jr. of our very own Bethel came in second less than a minute behind Paul! What a race!

"And in the morning, It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and has a gloomy and threatening look. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." Matthew 16:3