Moose Quest - part I

Living in Alaska has its pros and cons. One of the pros is the fishing and hunting. Unfortunately, I did not get my share of the fish this year, and so, the mission to fill the freezer for the winter has turned us toward moose hunting. I have lived here seven and a half years and have yet to take advantage of the big game hunting opportunities offered to the residents of this state. I've always imagined hunting to be, well, scary and hard. Turns out... it kind of is.

These are the chronicles of my quest for my very first moose.

The first thing I did, was go get myself a new Bowtech Diamond compound bow... in pink camouflage. You know, so I can blend in easily with all the pink out there in the wild. It's important to blend in. I'm betting it would also come in handy at the Crabtree & Evelyn annual Pink sale. It has been several years since I've owned a bow, so I thought it would be good to get in some target practice, just to make sure I still knew how to shoot. Did I mention it had been a while since I owned a bow? The first thing you should know when you shoot a bow that you haven't sighted-in yet, is to aim at a spot LOW on your target. This knowledge came to me after I lost my first arrow. It is somewhere in my neighbors yard... I think.

Once I was all sighted-in, (a fancy term for getting your bow to shoot where you are aiming) my next step was to learn about field dressing a moose. I spent a few days reading the pertinent information provided in "Dress 'Em Out" The complete guide to field dressing, transporting, and processing big game, upland birds and waterfowl. I also watched DVDs and YouTube videos about field dressing and processing large game animals. And while the information I gleaned was quite graphic, and very thorough, I cannot help but feel that the real thing is going to be soooo much worse. Why so pessimistic you ask? Well, the thing is... I'm not a big fan of dissection. At Thanksgiving, I usually put on rubber gloves when I have to reach in the turkey to pull out the neck and whatever else is in that nasty wad of guck they shove inside the turkey. And even though I know how economical it is to buy a whole chicken, I opt instead to go with the boneless skinless variety, so I don't have to play "chicken biology class" in my kitchen. I can only imagine how I will react if in the process of gutting a moose, the stomach should get punctured. The subsequent smell combined with the visual already at hand could quite possibly induce the sort of projectile vomiting that inspired the makers of the Exorcist. I guess we'll just wait and see.

The night before our first hunt, I collected *ALMOST* all the necessary hunting paraphernalia and loaded it into my pack. (* I discovered immediately upon arrival at our hunting spot that I had not remembered to include my arrow release. I was sad and disappointed to be relegated to "token hunter" for the rest of the day.) My husband was going to use his rifle, and I was set to use my bow... sort of. Our plan was to head out before dawn so we could get to our hunting spot before the moose began stirring for the day, so we went to bed early the night before, in order to get enough sleep to be alert and ready for our hunt. However, my brain thought it would be more fun to think about how important sleeping was, than it would be to actually go to sleep. So, I lied there, just thinking, about getting good sleep. When the alarm went off at 4 a.m., I had been asleep for three hours. I could tell the day was going to be stellar.

I fumbled into my clothes, remembering to put on my wool blend socks and enough layers to keep me warm, knowing that keeping warm was going to help the time spent outside in the crisp autumn Alaskan air be more enjoyable. So we headed to our chosen spot and, I was soaking wet up to my knees in under 3 minutes. To be fair though, NOWHERE on my awesome waterproof boots did I see ANY label that read: "Hey idiot: these will only keep your feet dry if you don't stand in 2 feet of water!" Really, some warning would have been nice, people.

We shortly figured out that our chosen location was not going to be ideal for moose hunting. Even though we did find signs that moose had been in the area, the ground was total marsh for as far as we could see. Neither of us wanted to try to gut a moose that could very likely be half submerged in water once down, so we went on to plan B.

Plan B took us to a beautiful spot where there were lots of large game trails. We saw signs of both bear and moose, and followed what looked to be a promising trail that led us to what was clearly a regular watering hole of our desired prize. That was when I heard a noise that immediately put my adrenal glands into overdrive. The sound of a bear from behind you is indescribable, so I won't try to do so. I was instantly acutely aware of how unarmed I was. I was REALLY wishing I had remembered my arrow release. Fortunately, I have the indian tracking skills of your average New York City native, so I'm pretty sure the bear heard us, and decided to leave us alone. We spent the rest of the morning in a good "waiting" spot, but did not see any actual moose and eventually decided to call it a day.

We made the trek back to our truck fairly uneventfully. And so ends the first entry in the chronicles of MOOSE QUEST.

Tune in next week for Moose Quest part II

Stealthy Admirer...s

Once in a while I'll hear a story about how some lucky girl got flowers or gifts from a secret admirer. And I'll admit, it used to cause a ping of jealousy inside of me. I got flowers once from a "secret admirer" ... turned out to be my mom. That was disappointing. But recently I've had a whole paradigm shift that has caused me to choose to be more of an optimist. You see, I realized that I am awesome. And that being the awesome person I am, I must be attracting the highest quality of secret admirer possible. Like, Secret Service, Navy Seal, Ninja secret. These guys are so secret, I'll probably never know they exist. And they don't do piddly things like send flowers, not these guys. These guys are out there doing things like stabilizing the local housing market so I can sell my house if I want to, or fixing the hole in the ozone so I don't get skin cancer, and directing the salmon swarms up the river at the right time so that if I ever go fishing, it won't be a waste. So, go ahead and get all giddy excited over your soon to be dead bunch of roses, girls. I'm not jealous. I'm pretty sure one of my admirers planted the "wild" lupines on the side of the highway where I run... just for me.

Are you ready???

Look, just because we didn't know we were living through the tribulation for the last 23 years, doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, when you think about it, a lot of pretty bad stuff has happened. There was hurricane Katrina, PB oil spill, Tsunamis and earthquakes... AND, I broke my pinky toe last year and that REALLY hurt.

Everybody knows the earth was created on May 21, 11,006 BC. It says so right on the website. And if you would just use your logical deduction skills, and do the math you would CLEARLY see that the rapture is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. That's 5:00 p.m. Pacific Standard, because as we all know, God was on the American 8-5 work schedule.

And, those of you who think you ought to go out and party like it's 1999 tonight, might want to rethink your priorities. Is your house clean? Is your fridge emptied of all its expired foods? Have you cleaned out all the empty coffee cups and fast food wrappers out of your car? Well, you might want to. You don't want all the post apocalypse looters to think you were a slob when they come pillage your home now, do you?

Did I do everything on my bucket list? No. But I don't have enough time left to run a marathon and see baby sea turtles hatch in the Galapagos ilands AND vacuum the dog hair out of the intake vents.

Cheering me up

I'm down. Depressed. In the dumps. Whatever you want to call it, my feelings are not all warm and fuzzy. I'm okay with not feeling okay, for a while. It's probably healthy to experience short bouts of melancholy from time to time.... maybe. I dunno. I'm not a shrink, but I'll give that statement a 67% chance of being true. I'm also not a professional speculator (it's a real job, look it up), but I can live with the 33% chance that my statement could be untrue.

After that while, though, I get tired of feeling blechy, so I begin to put as much mental exertion as I can spare into figuring out how not to feel crappy.

I have learned there are a few ways to beat the blues. One of them is to count my blessings. I'm not really in a Tiny Tim kind of mood right this minute, so I'll take a pass on that one for now. Another way to feel better is to do something nice for someone else. You know, like send someone flowers, or end world hunger. An optimistic estimate of time for flower delivery is at least 18 hours, and I'd really prefer more instantaneous recompense. As for world hunger... well, if you're hungry right now, come over and I'll make you a sandwich.

But what else can fulfill my need for a rapid spirit boost? Well, here's what I've come up with. I will make a list of compliments. You choose one, or more, or all of them if you wish, and apply them to yourself. I feel that this is the fastest and most efficient way of getting the results I'm hoping to achieve. To wax poetic: My compliment gun is loaded with buckshot and you are the flock of penguins at which I take aim. And look, if you've got a problem with me shooting at penguins, well, we probably aren't very good friends.

Here goes:
1. Your hair looks nice.
2. I like bald heads.
3. Red hair suits you.
4. Brown hair suits you.
5. Your butt does not look big in those pants.
6. You are great at your job.
7. You didn't deserve to get fired from your job.
8. You have very neat handwriting.
9. You write like a doctor.
10. You smell nice right after you've showered and applied the deodorant/cologne/perfume that is compatible with your body chemistry.
11. I like your smile.
12. I appreciate your ability to find the humor in yourself when I am laughing at you.

And I mean each and every one of those from the bottom of my heart. Thanks for helping me cheer myself up.

I want to be asleep, but this is obviously WAY more important

I was in bed. I was happy to be there. Before getting there, I really wanted to be there. My eyes had been burning and watering and they were just so MAD at me for having been open for so FREAKING LONG!! I layed down, and got all snuggled under my 1000 thread count egyptian cotton sheets and my super fluffy-cozy down comforter. I was positioned in my most comfortable superman pose with my 21 year old pillow tucked just right beneath my head, (we'll discuss that later) and I was SO looking forward to the next 8 or even NINE hours of blissful unconsciousness. Maybe looking forward to it too much? My kids aren't at home. For the first time in 8+ years, I am at my house and they are all at Nana's for the night. Freedom. Nobody's going to call my name in the middle of the night and ask me for juice, or if they can take off their pajamas, or if they can be Iron Man Girl next halloween, or tell me that the movie they've watched ten THOUSAND times already is suddenly "soooo scaaardey" and they need another one.
*brain clicks on*
The kids don't need any more movies, they need to read more books. I need to finish that childrens' book I started 7 years ago and never finished. It's been so long since I've worked on it I don't even know if my illustrating style has changed. I wonder if it's like riding a bike. No, it's not like riding a bike at all, it's like drawing, you can't draw while riding a bike, the two are totally unrelated. But I bet if I could draw and ride a bike, and somebody got it on video, I could youtube it and get millions of viewers and become famous, and therefore, rich, because don't the two go hand in hand? Can you be famous and not be rich? Probably. I don't think John Wilkes Booth was rich and everybody knows about him. But he's famous for all the wrong reasons, so that pro'lly doesn't count. He didn't get famous by doing awesome stuff like drawing while riding a bike. If I could draw and ride a bike, I wouldn't even have to finish the book, because I bet just one or two drawing-while-riding episodes would probably rake in enough dough to make me independantly wealthy! I'm a genius! And everybody thought my brother had all the smarts. Smarts FARTS! I'm brilliant! I mean c'mon - the Upside Down Show is two guys with an imaginary remote control and their special effects consist of somebody turning the cam-corder upside down every few minutes, and they've got their own frickin' TELEVISION SHOW with that Einstein ingenuity. SURELY, my razzle-dazzle bike-riding-artsy extravaganza will be more captivating than that! I could even up the stakes every new episode by changing up the riding apparati. I could start with training wheels, and then graduate to a big-girl bike, and then maybe one of those old fashioned GIANT front wheel bikes, and then maybe, if I'm super tricky, I could even do a uni-cycle! The possibilities are practically endless! and WHY AM I STILL AWAKE!?!?!?!?!?

You're not sick, you're crazy.

Very recently I became allergic to penicillin. It wasn't fun. I don't recommend it. If this were facebook, I'd put a "like" on the I HATE BECOMING ALLERGIC TO PENICILLIN page. I won't go into the gory details of what happened to me, but if you're really curious, you can google Urticaria and Angioedema and Arthritis in connection with penicillin reactions, and see what I went through.



Anyway, sometime early in my second admission to the E.R., the following conversation with the admitting MD took place.



Dr. - "Remus Graham?"

Me - (in a confused way) "No....?"

Dr. - (turns around, looks at nurses in an even more confused way) ".....uuuuuuuh"

Me - (lightbulb illuminates overhead) "ooooooooh, ARE YOU MISS Graham! Yes, yes I am."

(ensue laughing hysterically)

Dr. - "Do you or does any one in your family have a history of mental illness?"


During this entire silly exchange my mind was going a million miles an hour trying to figure out why the Dr. would have called me Remus. First I thought he was one of those guys who thinks it's funny to call you by the wrong name, or does it "just to see if you're paying attention". I have an in-law who thinks it's funny to call everyone George, so I thought maybe that was his game. When that didn't seem to fit the scenario, my brains google button hit on the idea that there was some other patient here by the name of Remus Graham and our charts had been swapped. Same last name... I could see the mistake. When that didn't seem to fit either, I then scoured the corners of my consciousness to figure out why, oh why was this Dr. SO confused that my name wasn't Remus. And that's when the google button brought up the "translation to english language" option, and the lightbulb went on. Aha!

When I regaled this anecdote to my friends and family, aside from laughing at my poor hearing, the first question from them was, why would he ask you about mental illness?
Good question. At first I thought my hearing faux pas was such a blunder that it had him questioning my sanity. Later, after having done some extensive research on the cause of my entire medical fiasco, I learned that there are cases of allergic reactions where the patient believed so strongly that they were allergic to a substance that they actually put themselves into a full blown allergic reaction, just because they believed that was indeed what was happening to them. For me this was not the case. And trust me, if it were at all possible to have believed myself out of the penicillin reaction I was having, I would have done it. I did NOT wake up one morning and say, "Hey, it's been a long time since I've visited the good folks down in the E.R. and it's high time I had a serious life threatening medical issue! Plus, I could REALLY use an outrageous medical bill that would be the equivalent of buying a new luxury car, so I think I'll be allergic to penicillin now.".

Anyway, the whole idea that someone could actually believe themselves into an allergic reaction, and that the medical industry would consider such a phenomenon as "mental illness" really got me thinking. Is it really a mental illness that could do such a thing? Isn't it more like a very unfortunate super-power? In the world of super-heroes, those people would be called like "Introspective Voodoo Girl" or something, with powers that only work on themselves. Eventually they'd probably turn to being a super-villain though, just because misery loves company, and they'd be working on a machine that could extrovert their powers by focusing it through a super high intensity lazer beam that they would point at a trillion-faceted crystal hung from the top of the Empire State Building, which would refract the beam into trillions of smaller beams that would hit the entire population of New York and eventually THE WORLD! Muahuahahahahaaaa! Sheesh. What a weirdo.

Here's another thought. What if there are people all around us that are what they are, be it rich, poor, thin, fat, ugly, pretty, just because they believed that is what they were. We don't know about it because none of those things draw the kind of attention that a disfiguring physical ailment draws, but what if it happens all the time and we just don't realize it? Furthermore, what if poor uncle Gus, who talks to the chair, and believes the chair talks back to him ACTUALLY hears the chair? You don't know... maybe it does because he believes it does. Just because the chair doesn't talk to YOU doesn't mean it isn't happening. He's not "mentally ill", you're just JEALOUS!

Well, I guess all I am really saying is, maybe not everyone who we think is a few bricks shy, actually is. Maybe they are gifted with something the rest of us lack, and our society doesn't know how to handle it, so they've been labeled as "ill". Or maybe I'm just overly sensitive because I didn't clean my ears out well enough that day.

Z I N G! Perfect Timing!!

You know the statement, "better late than never"? Yeah, I don't think that really applies to everything. Here's why. When I walk away from a conversation, and think to myself later, "man, I should have said ____(Fill in the blank)____ - THAT would have been AWESOME!!" I should be able to call up all involved parties in said conversation and - ZING that one-liner right in there, and.... the response would be all the laughter, accolades, and awe at my quick-wittedness, that I so rightly deserve!

But it just doesn't work like that.... or does it? It's not like I've ever actually tried, so maybe I should test this out. I don't really have time to set up the continuity for every conversation here, so just imagine a conversation we've had, and if any of these are the verbal icing on that cake, then let the laughter ensue, or whichever response is most appropriate.

Here goes - here are some of the one funny, smart, sassy, and poignant things I would have said if I'd have thought of it in time.


1: Or we could make a Karey sandwich!

2: Does it hurt like when somebody hits you in the head with a pot?

3: Those weren't real fish-heads.

4: Maybe if you tried it with an Australian accent!

5: Just make it look like a chicken did it.

6: Chinese food doesn't count.


Do I hear crickets? Yeah, that's what I thought.

So, no, people. Late is not always better than never. Sometimes never is best. Never. Ever.


Ever.