In college I had to do a research project on global warming. I was taking geology because I couldn't stomach physics or chemistry, but let me tell you, it was no walk in the park. The teacher must have known that words like chemistry and physics turn otherwise happy, partying, havin' a good time students into pillars of fear. She wasn't giving any of us a break and looking back now, perhaps I could have gotten a better grade out of physics.
Our final project was to do a research poster on global warming. I had to fight my way through a lot of questions to get my topic approved... global warming in the oceans. And by oceans, I secretly meant whales, though I could never say that outloud. This wasn't biology for goodness sakes, as the teacher kept reminding me. But in the end I won.
I did my report on the ocean aka beluga whales. It starts in the ocean, as you can suspect, as the belugas are wintering in the arctic they are eating krill. Krill feast on a certain algea that cannot survive in water that varies even one degree. It is a very small margin and everything must be perfect for this certain algae to grow and if there is no algae, there is no krill and with no krill there is no beluga. And you know what? That temperature change is happening and the algae isn't growing like it used to.
But, to bring this more back to home... Oregon is changing. No 'global warming' is happening, that's for certain, but something is most definitely changing for the colder. Whether anyone has scientifically looked into this or not, I have no idea, but I think they had better if they don't want to miss it. 'Cause right now we know that just one degree difference can send a chain of events into place that perhaps we would rather avoid. And someone is going to be sad some day in 20 years when strawberries won't even grow in Oregon and everyone is asking 'when did this happen?' and the scientists look at their charts and say, oh... 2012.
Right. You think I am fibbing? I was married in 2010 and the reason I remember the change in the weather so well was that the seeds that we planted to have flowers ready for the middle of summer rotted in the ground. It was that rainy.
The next year, 2011, The strawberries weren't ready until a week or two after school let out. When I was picking strawberries we were out there after school in the evenings picking flats of berries. Just a few of us. But they were there.
This year, 2012, the berries rotted on the ground. There just wasn't enough sun to turn them red (seriously, strawberries are more like humans than most believe) and there was too much rain.
I don't know what's going to happen next year, but it sure isn't going to be pretty.
Steven hollers every time I say this, but I really don't want to go back to Oregon. It is soooo cold and wet! And I don't think it's going to be changing anytime soon. Sure, the Oregon I left in highschool was pretty awesome. It was green, in more ways than one, people were weird and friendly, the weather was mild... it was all you could ever want. But now, when I go back and it's too cold for shorts the end of July, I don't want to go back. When Alaska is in need of a whole new wardrobe to visit her grandmas because here in Utah she runs around in a onesie all day we've got a problem.
There, I've said it. I am not hating on Oregon. After all, it made me the awesome person I am today, but it definitely isn't the same state I left it 6 years ago. So, Oregon, clean up your act if you want me back. Or... perhaps I will live in Oregon but where the rain isn't so frequent. Like say Pendelton. To do that I'll have to purchase a couple of horses as well. You can't live in the biggest rodeo city and not have a horse. Or maybe I'll stay in Utah forever. Shhh, don't tell Steven. But seriously, this has got to be the craft capital of the world. Not to mention all of the modest clothing and the dry weather that allows your straightened hair to stay straight all day, even in the dead of winter. It's bliss.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
You Grew a Little Too Fast
Let's be honest. EVERYONE says, "They grow so fast. Enjoy it while you can." Yes. While you are giving words of wisdom I will be smiling as Alaska screams bloody murder for want to stay up another hour. I will be taking kodak pictures in my mind as she insists upon attention when all I really want is two hours alone. I will be loving every minute. Every. Minute.
Well, at first I did. I was the mom who snuggled her baby all through her nap. The one who admired her baby's long eyelashes and counted her tiny fingers and toes a dozen times a day. The mom who practically memorized every inch of her baby's face and would spend a minute during diaper changing time just holding her baby's legs. It's kind of incredible to think that those legs are what will carry this child through life and at the moment they were small enough to completely fit in my hand. Such power. In my hand. Such adventures. In my hand. Such potential, and it all fit in my hand.
And then Alaska grew a little. And I thought she was done being tiny. I thought I was done paying extra attention to every single detail of her little face. she could sleep through the night on her own. I could put her down for a nap and she would stay asleep. She was such a big girl! So independent.
And I let her go. I stopped enjoying the moments we had together and started counting the minutes down to the second to when I could put her down and she was asleep enough to stay asleep. I started doing things during her nap. I had dinner ready for Handsome Husband when he got home and the house was always spotless. I was rested and full of energy.
I looked down, and my baby that I had left at 3 months old was now 5. It was incredible. And she was still small. She was still a baby. And I knew right then that I needed to keep making the most of our time together. No matter how old she was, whether 3 months, a year or 12, I needed to memorize her little face. Her fingernails and her lips. She won't be mine forever.
She will become a child and want to explore the world. She will have brothers and another sister and my time will be divided. She will become a teenager and her friends will become her world. She will go to college and studying and working and playing will be her world. She will get married and she'll be someone else's to care for. She'll have her own baby girl and she will be her's. I've only got a few years where Alaska is all mine.
So we've started snuggling again. I watch her as she sleeps. I count her fingers and toes and hold her hand. I look at her eyelashes closed soft on her cheek and I watch her little mouth smile when she is really truly asleep. I am no fanatic, she's still gotta be on the floor to have her own learning time, but I am not going to forget this important lesson. It doesn't matter how small they are, enjoy it. The enjoying part never ends. The needing to spend time never ends.
Well, at first I did. I was the mom who snuggled her baby all through her nap. The one who admired her baby's long eyelashes and counted her tiny fingers and toes a dozen times a day. The mom who practically memorized every inch of her baby's face and would spend a minute during diaper changing time just holding her baby's legs. It's kind of incredible to think that those legs are what will carry this child through life and at the moment they were small enough to completely fit in my hand. Such power. In my hand. Such adventures. In my hand. Such potential, and it all fit in my hand.
And then Alaska grew a little. And I thought she was done being tiny. I thought I was done paying extra attention to every single detail of her little face. she could sleep through the night on her own. I could put her down for a nap and she would stay asleep. She was such a big girl! So independent.
And I let her go. I stopped enjoying the moments we had together and started counting the minutes down to the second to when I could put her down and she was asleep enough to stay asleep. I started doing things during her nap. I had dinner ready for Handsome Husband when he got home and the house was always spotless. I was rested and full of energy.
I looked down, and my baby that I had left at 3 months old was now 5. It was incredible. And she was still small. She was still a baby. And I knew right then that I needed to keep making the most of our time together. No matter how old she was, whether 3 months, a year or 12, I needed to memorize her little face. Her fingernails and her lips. She won't be mine forever.
She will become a child and want to explore the world. She will have brothers and another sister and my time will be divided. She will become a teenager and her friends will become her world. She will go to college and studying and working and playing will be her world. She will get married and she'll be someone else's to care for. She'll have her own baby girl and she will be her's. I've only got a few years where Alaska is all mine.
So we've started snuggling again. I watch her as she sleeps. I count her fingers and toes and hold her hand. I look at her eyelashes closed soft on her cheek and I watch her little mouth smile when she is really truly asleep. I am no fanatic, she's still gotta be on the floor to have her own learning time, but I am not going to forget this important lesson. It doesn't matter how small they are, enjoy it. The enjoying part never ends. The needing to spend time never ends.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The Food Network
Yes, we've started it. The network of eating. And I am already ready to throw in the spoon. It's been .75 hours.
You see, I am not a big food-lover myself. My picky eating habits have caused problems in the past. You know, the kind where your mom says, "If you don't like what's for dinner, have a sandwich." I won't eat peanut butter sandwiches anymore. "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry." And so I don't eat. Simple. And when I say, don't eat, I mean, don't eat. I don't keep any junk food camoflouged as snacks in the house and so more often then not, an apple is all there really truly is to eat. So I don't eat until dinner, when I have the patience to make something fabulous because I know Steve will be eating it, as well, and dinners together around the table are important.
Now, that being said, I think I have made quite the problem for Alaska. My friend's baby (not that I am comparing babies, but you know, it's good for mommas to know what other babies are doing and when) was drinking out of a cup, or at least wanting to, at 6 months 'cause her momma drank lots of water during the day. Alaska? Nope, no interest. No interest in drinks or food. Sure, she'll reach out and grab something off your plate, just to see how it feels, but it's nothing that she cries about if you take it away.
Poor Alaska never sees her momma drink water, I hate the stuff... unless it comes from a drinking fountain. But we obviously don't have one of those. And she doesn't see me eat, because, well, I just don't. The only time she is around food is when Steven and I are eating at the table and she is playing in her saucer so that we can act like grown-ups.
Yesterday we tried the sippy cup deal. It actually worked pretty well. Alaska got her little hands around the two handles and could hold it on her own, even if I had to tip it up for her to get any reward out of it.
Today we tried the bowl and spoon with cereal. No go. She let me put one spoonful in, tasted it, spit a little out and clamped her mouth down shut for the rest of the 15 minutes I had her pinned. I popped some popcorn for my dinner and chewed off any choking parts and gave her a few pieces. She was fascinated at trying to pick them up and get them to her mouth, but in the end, anything that did get into her mouth was promptly spit out with a waterfall of slobber. This game lasted about half a hour. I don't even know if she understands food can come from somewhere else than a bottle.
And that's as far as we got. I'll keep trying, but for the record, I would be willing to wait until she can make her own peanut butter sandwhich.
You see, I am not a big food-lover myself. My picky eating habits have caused problems in the past. You know, the kind where your mom says, "If you don't like what's for dinner, have a sandwich." I won't eat peanut butter sandwiches anymore. "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry." And so I don't eat. Simple. And when I say, don't eat, I mean, don't eat. I don't keep any junk food camoflouged as snacks in the house and so more often then not, an apple is all there really truly is to eat. So I don't eat until dinner, when I have the patience to make something fabulous because I know Steve will be eating it, as well, and dinners together around the table are important.
Now, that being said, I think I have made quite the problem for Alaska. My friend's baby (not that I am comparing babies, but you know, it's good for mommas to know what other babies are doing and when) was drinking out of a cup, or at least wanting to, at 6 months 'cause her momma drank lots of water during the day. Alaska? Nope, no interest. No interest in drinks or food. Sure, she'll reach out and grab something off your plate, just to see how it feels, but it's nothing that she cries about if you take it away.
Poor Alaska never sees her momma drink water, I hate the stuff... unless it comes from a drinking fountain. But we obviously don't have one of those. And she doesn't see me eat, because, well, I just don't. The only time she is around food is when Steven and I are eating at the table and she is playing in her saucer so that we can act like grown-ups.
Yesterday we tried the sippy cup deal. It actually worked pretty well. Alaska got her little hands around the two handles and could hold it on her own, even if I had to tip it up for her to get any reward out of it.
Today we tried the bowl and spoon with cereal. No go. She let me put one spoonful in, tasted it, spit a little out and clamped her mouth down shut for the rest of the 15 minutes I had her pinned. I popped some popcorn for my dinner and chewed off any choking parts and gave her a few pieces. She was fascinated at trying to pick them up and get them to her mouth, but in the end, anything that did get into her mouth was promptly spit out with a waterfall of slobber. This game lasted about half a hour. I don't even know if she understands food can come from somewhere else than a bottle.
And that's as far as we got. I'll keep trying, but for the record, I would be willing to wait until she can make her own peanut butter sandwhich.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Six months with Alaska
Favorite Things: You love to chew and play with ribbon. You also love some rubber water toys that grandma (we're still having an identity crises here) gave you. They make great chewers.
Special Talents: Inching slowly towards things. Gracefully letting yourself down from the sitting position. Using your pincher grasp to get pieces of grass off the living room carpet or getting strands of hair from the hall carpet when I set you there while I get ready in the mornings.
Favorite Pastime: Being outside. When you get kind of cranky before bed time we go outside and just sit on the lawn. You like to run your fingers through the grass and taste weeds that I give you after shaking the dirt off. Don't judge me. You're gonna have to get your germs from somewhere, may as well be natural. I am for sure not going to spoon feed them to you, but you gotta get them from somewhere. And seriously, all of the dirt it shaken off.
Nickname: Alaska Paska. It is stuck now, be grateful it isn't anything embarrassing.
Sleep: You sleep in the crib just fine now. All through the night starting at 7:30pm to 7am. Your naps have been given a severe kick in the pants due to all our vacations and all of everyone else's vacations. You slept when you could in the car and now that we've been home for a week by ourselves you tend to take a short 15-30 minute nap in the morning and then a longer 1-2 hr nap in the early afternoon.
Crying: Not so much now that you can move yourself around. You do tend to need more attention lately and let everyone know it, but we really don't mind. We love playing with you.
Dislikes: Being in a room by yourself when you don't know when we're coming back. It's like you can hear a certain pattern in our footsteps or something.
Special Talents: Inching slowly towards things. Gracefully letting yourself down from the sitting position. Using your pincher grasp to get pieces of grass off the living room carpet or getting strands of hair from the hall carpet when I set you there while I get ready in the mornings.
Favorite Pastime: Being outside. When you get kind of cranky before bed time we go outside and just sit on the lawn. You like to run your fingers through the grass and taste weeds that I give you after shaking the dirt off. Don't judge me. You're gonna have to get your germs from somewhere, may as well be natural. I am for sure not going to spoon feed them to you, but you gotta get them from somewhere. And seriously, all of the dirt it shaken off.
Nickname: Alaska Paska. It is stuck now, be grateful it isn't anything embarrassing.
Sleep: You sleep in the crib just fine now. All through the night starting at 7:30pm to 7am. Your naps have been given a severe kick in the pants due to all our vacations and all of everyone else's vacations. You slept when you could in the car and now that we've been home for a week by ourselves you tend to take a short 15-30 minute nap in the morning and then a longer 1-2 hr nap in the early afternoon.
Crying: Not so much now that you can move yourself around. You do tend to need more attention lately and let everyone know it, but we really don't mind. We love playing with you.
Dislikes: Being in a room by yourself when you don't know when we're coming back. It's like you can hear a certain pattern in our footsteps or something.
Likes: Being held and played with.
My favorite part: You are the perfect size for hugging and kissing. Your cheeks are big enough now so that when I kiss you my nose doesn't poke you in the eye and your are just big enough to squeeze hard and not have to worry about breaking your little body.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
You Know You're Ready for a Baby When...
You know you live in Utah when... The U is not just a letter - Neither is the Y. You can pronounce Tooele. You know what fry sauce is made of. You go to the duck pond to feed the seagulls. You negotiate prices at a garage sale. Your car breaks down on the highway and someone stops to help you. The speed limit is 65, you go 75 and a mini-van passes you.
You know you're ready for a kid when Easter egg hunts lose their appeal and 4th of July fireworks lose their sparkle. At least that's how I knew. Easter came and went the month before we found out we were pregnant. We had the candy filled eggs and the one empty egg to represent the tomb after Christ was risen. We had the chocolate bunny and reeses peanut butter egg (you reeses fans know what I'm talkin' about). But we didn't have the easter egg hunt. It was kind of lame. And that's when I knew we needed a baby. Someone to dress up in special easter clothes for church that Easter Sunday. Someone to take pictures of surrounded by baby bunnies and neon plastic eggs. Someone to hide eggs for. And most importantly, someone to teach about the special celebration of Christ's atonement using advent eggs. Yes, I am going to be one of 'those moms'.
You also know you're ready for a kid when fireworks on the 4th of July lose their enticing joy. Last year I got off work and we walked over to the park across the street to watch some awesome fireworks, but it was really more out of duty to tradition then to pure enjoyment. And that's when you know. When you're watching the families around you and giggling about the three year-old's fascination with the lights in the sky, the one year-old screaming at each boom and the five year-old standing up to watch each explosion and then fall to the ground screaming, "I've been hit!" each time the sound echoes through the air. Yup. Sure signs right there. All of the enjoyment is built into those little eyes reflecting the bursts of color in the sky. Except the smokey smell of gunpowder. I must admit that is reason alone to go to a firework show.
And then... after you have had those two signs of 'now you know' you know that you're still on the right track when 4th of July comes around again after the morning sickness is gone and you have a baby in your arms and you are glad for the excuse to 'put the baby to bed' rather then go sit on the ground starting at 6 so that you can get the perfect view, get a crick in your neck, and then wait in traffic for a hour and a half to get back home. Because you wouldn't want to look lame and unexciting. I'm talking about the unexciting you become after you get married. It happens again after you have kids. It's all downhill from there. Someday you're bound to be the most boring person on your block. And you don't want to admit that last year's duty to tradition was kind of a bust and you don't want to do it again. So you have your little bundle all in bed by 9:00 on the 4th and you stay inside blogging about how relieved you are not to be sitting out on the grass as your body cramps up from the uncomfortable sitting position.
But next year I tell ya, we're gonna have the quilted blanket, the perfect spot on the hill, the seven eleven slushie, the popcorn or carmel corn or whatever treat I come up with and we're going to have the little girl dressed in a blue or red dress with pigtails wrapped in ribbon. You can count on it. And she's going to cry each time a firework goes off and we're going to love every single second of it.
You know you're ready for a kid when Easter egg hunts lose their appeal and 4th of July fireworks lose their sparkle. At least that's how I knew. Easter came and went the month before we found out we were pregnant. We had the candy filled eggs and the one empty egg to represent the tomb after Christ was risen. We had the chocolate bunny and reeses peanut butter egg (you reeses fans know what I'm talkin' about). But we didn't have the easter egg hunt. It was kind of lame. And that's when I knew we needed a baby. Someone to dress up in special easter clothes for church that Easter Sunday. Someone to take pictures of surrounded by baby bunnies and neon plastic eggs. Someone to hide eggs for. And most importantly, someone to teach about the special celebration of Christ's atonement using advent eggs. Yes, I am going to be one of 'those moms'.
You also know you're ready for a kid when fireworks on the 4th of July lose their enticing joy. Last year I got off work and we walked over to the park across the street to watch some awesome fireworks, but it was really more out of duty to tradition then to pure enjoyment. And that's when you know. When you're watching the families around you and giggling about the three year-old's fascination with the lights in the sky, the one year-old screaming at each boom and the five year-old standing up to watch each explosion and then fall to the ground screaming, "I've been hit!" each time the sound echoes through the air. Yup. Sure signs right there. All of the enjoyment is built into those little eyes reflecting the bursts of color in the sky. Except the smokey smell of gunpowder. I must admit that is reason alone to go to a firework show.
And then... after you have had those two signs of 'now you know' you know that you're still on the right track when 4th of July comes around again after the morning sickness is gone and you have a baby in your arms and you are glad for the excuse to 'put the baby to bed' rather then go sit on the ground starting at 6 so that you can get the perfect view, get a crick in your neck, and then wait in traffic for a hour and a half to get back home. Because you wouldn't want to look lame and unexciting. I'm talking about the unexciting you become after you get married. It happens again after you have kids. It's all downhill from there. Someday you're bound to be the most boring person on your block. And you don't want to admit that last year's duty to tradition was kind of a bust and you don't want to do it again. So you have your little bundle all in bed by 9:00 on the 4th and you stay inside blogging about how relieved you are not to be sitting out on the grass as your body cramps up from the uncomfortable sitting position.
But next year I tell ya, we're gonna have the quilted blanket, the perfect spot on the hill, the seven eleven slushie, the popcorn or carmel corn or whatever treat I come up with and we're going to have the little girl dressed in a blue or red dress with pigtails wrapped in ribbon. You can count on it. And she's going to cry each time a firework goes off and we're going to love every single second of it.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Five Months with Alaska
Favorite Things: You have discovered a particular fabric to love after all of your sucking on various blankets, burp cloths, toys, washcloths, and clothes. You have a favorite shirt that you tend to soak in your mouth. It's a pity that it's my most favorite because whenever you wear it you are not a warm and cuddly baby. You are a wet monster with drool streaming from your mouth and strings of spit attached to your fingers. It's disgusting enough that even your grandma mary would rather you in some dry clothes.
Special Talent: You roll up and over your left shoulder from your back to your tummy. You haven't gotten down the steering of the roll, you roll just for the fun of it as soon as we set you on the floor and fuss until we flip you back over.
Favorite Pastime: Visiting with people. You are a social butterfly already and can charm a compliment out of anyone with your everlasting smile. Your daddy had to take you out of priesthood because you were being a little fussy but once church was over and people were looking at you again you cheered right up.
Sleep: You slept in your car seat all this month. Next step... the crib! You sleep through the night starting at 7:30 and take a nap that can range between 1-3 hours.
Crying: There's a lot more of this now that you tend to get frustrated with your inability to get where you want to be.
Dislikes: When it takes me too long to make a bottle.
Likes: You pretty much love everything. You have been so awesome to have around. The best addition to our family. I couldn't have dreamed of a better baby then you have been.
My Favorite Part: Your little chubby legs are at just the right chubbiness and I love holding you and squeezing them a little as you suck on a bottle.
Special Talent: You roll up and over your left shoulder from your back to your tummy. You haven't gotten down the steering of the roll, you roll just for the fun of it as soon as we set you on the floor and fuss until we flip you back over.Favorite Pastime: Visiting with people. You are a social butterfly already and can charm a compliment out of anyone with your everlasting smile. Your daddy had to take you out of priesthood because you were being a little fussy but once church was over and people were looking at you again you cheered right up.
Sleep: You slept in your car seat all this month. Next step... the crib! You sleep through the night starting at 7:30 and take a nap that can range between 1-3 hours.
Crying: There's a lot more of this now that you tend to get frustrated with your inability to get where you want to be.
Dislikes: When it takes me too long to make a bottle.
Likes: You pretty much love everything. You have been so awesome to have around. The best addition to our family. I couldn't have dreamed of a better baby then you have been.
My Favorite Part: Your little chubby legs are at just the right chubbiness and I love holding you and squeezing them a little as you suck on a bottle.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Once A Year
It happens once a year. I get the hankering to pack my things and head up to Alaska for the summer. Those two summers were the best of my life and their memories are etched into my mind forever. My own little Alaska sleeps with her eyelashes gentle on her baby-doll face and I can't sleep because I am thinking of salmon, never-ending evenings and working my bum off to pay for college the next year.
People always ask if I hate the smell of fish after they learn that I worked in a cannery for a couple of summers. No. Fresh fish don't stink. They smell of iron and cold bay water. They smell ok, as far as dead animals go. And as long as you don't think of them as dead animals and more like food they tend not to be so gross.
The cannery is not totally enclosed so it allows for the weather to get in and sift through the smells, whisking away the smell of iron and replacing it with ocean air. It's the smelliest in the morning after it's been closed for the night and the smells have been contained within the walls. The cleaning crew does a good job of getting all the chunks and bits and pieces, but the smell remains. It's smells like iron. Thick in your nostrils as if you have a bloody nose.
My early morning job that I assigned myself to was getting the ice water to cal berate the thermometers. I would walk from the office through the cannery, past the gutting operation and chink machine and through the temporary storage where you could always find a few fish wheelbarrows or plastic pallets to stand on. I would sneak through the fillet station and on into the freezer where there was a mountain of ice stored. I would scoop into the mound with my water pitcher and fill it with ice, hustling back to the office before the rest of the QAs showed up where I would be sweeping when they came in. My routine was well known and some of the other early risers would shout out greetings to me. There was one hispanic guy who I had become acquaintances with (but since we're in Alaska, we're going to call us friends, even though we never hung out.) He would shout out Hola, and ask me how I was doing in Spanish. I would answer the only Spanish sentence I knew from my two years of High School study of the language and he would get the biggest kick out of it. It was a great start to the day. He would often make sure that I didn't have to get my ice from the freezer, which was a bigger pain then you could imagine, but would have a wheel barrow full of it for me to scoop into.
The Dillingham cannery is one of the oldest canneries in the business and because of that, everything is made from wood where more modern facilities sport metal. The wood has to be painted over and over again so that none of it splinters or chips in the cans of fish racing through. That is what pre-season is for. Painting. I have painted a lot of ridiculous things, including the floor of the QA office that was once painted on a whim and now must be re-painted each season because it gets so scuffed up it's a hazard. We painted wooden stools for the patchers to sit on for the last part of the season. We painted the ceiling. We painted the machines. We even started to paint the outside of a building one season when the fish were exceptionally late.
Another pre-season chore is to clean the bussies. Bussies are huge iron crates with wheels that the canned salmon are 'swept' into by way of manual Turkish labor. The carts become full and are pushed to the ovens where they are cooked 10 at a time. They get mighty nasty over the course of a season with such hot temperatures and the occasional exploding can of fish because it wasn't properly sealed. They get a kind of grit on them that only comes off with sanding paper and on bussie cleaning week it's not uncommon to find 15 of us sitting inside these huge crib-like contraptions with a chunk of sandpaper, sanding away and then hoping to the next when we think we're done. These days are always the dirtiest and you can't wear those clothes again until wash day. Logistically, we all wear the same clothes for about three days so that we still have something to wear at the end of the week.
One pre-season things were especially slow and there were new orders that the overcoats that so many of us wore to keep fish flesh off our clothes could no longer have pockets. Two other girls and I spent four days ripping pockets off of coats with only two seam rippers between us. It was a long process. But at least we were warm and clean while others were chosen to scrub the holding tanks and sand more bussies.
We always got off at 5, right before dinner, on those pre-season days. And then, because we had nothing else to do, we would explore or play cards or watch movies.
My first season up there I went alone. I didn't know anyone and my friend who I did know wouldn't be coming for two weeks. Luckily there was one other American girl up there who introduced me to all of the American boys. We always went to their room after dinner and Jenna would bring a book to read while I would bring my journal and we would sit on one of their beds while the boys gathered around a table in the middle of the room and played cards. Other times all 8 of us would go exploring down the beaches, which aren't like beaches in the states. These beaches are all rock and mud. No sand in sight. And tons of sea glass. Which is most likely from all the drunks you see hanging around town, tossing their bottles into the ocean after a long lost love.
There are two stores up there. One the main grocery store and another that sells a few more things like clothes and rain boots and more groceries. It's always a toss up to which one you should go to. They're only a rock's throw away from one another and the prices are comparable. One boring day we were looking for a bouncy ball to play kick ball with and we trudged through both of them, the whole pack of us. It's obvious that the natives don't like the cannery kids. Not necessarily because we're obnoxious, but just because we're better off. We're in Alaska by choice.
The natives are really beautiful people. They've got their long, dark hair and their little noses that honestly look like God took his fingers and made a place for eyes and a mouth and the little mound that was made by dispersing the clay of man made their nose. It's just a little moosh on their face and is absolutely to die for. So soft looking. But the girls especially are unfriendly. I heard it said once that it was because they were afraid us 'American Girls' were going to take their native boys and marry them. There aren't many boys to begin with and if we were to take one of them back to the states with us, well, you can imagine.
The Bulgarians are the most friendly of the Europeans that are flown to Alaska. They're hard workers and still live in a country where women do not do manual labor. They treat all the girls like angels, making sure that they have the best. There is one QA job in particular that requires some big muscles. In order to be sure the machines are doing as they ought someone catches 5 cans from each line and then takes them back to the warm office to open them and measure the sealing and the pressure and all that. It's one of the more comfortable job but takes an efficient person to get the measuring done before the next set of measuring needs to be done. Anyways, they open up the cans, dump the fish into a bucket and proceed to measure. By the end of the day that bucket is full and heavy. One year we had a girl doing the measuring and the Bulgarian clean-up crew would never let her take the bucket to the grinder. They would insist that they take it and would often be waiting at the door at the end of the day to take this huge bucket of fish for her.
The Bulgarians are used regularly for the clean-up crew (they get the worst hours, but the best pay). They are like gods in their orange rain gear while everyone else wears yellow. They are the ones that make sure you don't slip on fish guts and who keep the water from pooling around your feet. The Bulgarians also work on the patch line with any other unfortunate American girl. For some reason only girls work here, perhaps because it's a precise job that takes some detail thinking. As much detail thinking as you can expect in a assembly line. There are 10 girls on either side of a table and the cans of fish whiz by. A scale is attached to a breath of air. If a can is too light or too heavy the air pushes the can off of the assembly line into the table and a patcher must fill it with more meat or take meat out of it. There are large trays filled with cute up meat just for this purpose of patching. When things were slow (or they were totally overwhelmed) I would go and help the girls down there. I was the only QA who would touch the fish and they all thanked me for it and because of it I often got the best patchers because it was first come first serve as to which patch line you were on and they all loved my line the best because instead of getting frustrated when things weren't going right, I would go to the source of the problem and help them out.
The Turks are alright. Sometimes you can find one or two that you can connect with, but for the most part they are a little lazy. They are used mostly in the fillet station and for sweeping cans onto the bussies in the cannery. There was one little guy that I met my second year that had some kind of eye infection and I was the one he chose to pour the eye drops in. We're still friends and talk often about how we were both so grossed out about the whole ordeal.
I have just been laying in bed thinking of all this and had to get it out. It only happens once a year that I wish so badly I were going up there. And I guess this is it. Perhaps it may persist the rest of this month and I will add bits and pieces of my adventures as we go along. For such rough country I really did love it with all of my heart.
People always ask if I hate the smell of fish after they learn that I worked in a cannery for a couple of summers. No. Fresh fish don't stink. They smell of iron and cold bay water. They smell ok, as far as dead animals go. And as long as you don't think of them as dead animals and more like food they tend not to be so gross.
The cannery is not totally enclosed so it allows for the weather to get in and sift through the smells, whisking away the smell of iron and replacing it with ocean air. It's the smelliest in the morning after it's been closed for the night and the smells have been contained within the walls. The cleaning crew does a good job of getting all the chunks and bits and pieces, but the smell remains. It's smells like iron. Thick in your nostrils as if you have a bloody nose.
My early morning job that I assigned myself to was getting the ice water to cal berate the thermometers. I would walk from the office through the cannery, past the gutting operation and chink machine and through the temporary storage where you could always find a few fish wheelbarrows or plastic pallets to stand on. I would sneak through the fillet station and on into the freezer where there was a mountain of ice stored. I would scoop into the mound with my water pitcher and fill it with ice, hustling back to the office before the rest of the QAs showed up where I would be sweeping when they came in. My routine was well known and some of the other early risers would shout out greetings to me. There was one hispanic guy who I had become acquaintances with (but since we're in Alaska, we're going to call us friends, even though we never hung out.) He would shout out Hola, and ask me how I was doing in Spanish. I would answer the only Spanish sentence I knew from my two years of High School study of the language and he would get the biggest kick out of it. It was a great start to the day. He would often make sure that I didn't have to get my ice from the freezer, which was a bigger pain then you could imagine, but would have a wheel barrow full of it for me to scoop into.
The Dillingham cannery is one of the oldest canneries in the business and because of that, everything is made from wood where more modern facilities sport metal. The wood has to be painted over and over again so that none of it splinters or chips in the cans of fish racing through. That is what pre-season is for. Painting. I have painted a lot of ridiculous things, including the floor of the QA office that was once painted on a whim and now must be re-painted each season because it gets so scuffed up it's a hazard. We painted wooden stools for the patchers to sit on for the last part of the season. We painted the ceiling. We painted the machines. We even started to paint the outside of a building one season when the fish were exceptionally late.
Another pre-season chore is to clean the bussies. Bussies are huge iron crates with wheels that the canned salmon are 'swept' into by way of manual Turkish labor. The carts become full and are pushed to the ovens where they are cooked 10 at a time. They get mighty nasty over the course of a season with such hot temperatures and the occasional exploding can of fish because it wasn't properly sealed. They get a kind of grit on them that only comes off with sanding paper and on bussie cleaning week it's not uncommon to find 15 of us sitting inside these huge crib-like contraptions with a chunk of sandpaper, sanding away and then hoping to the next when we think we're done. These days are always the dirtiest and you can't wear those clothes again until wash day. Logistically, we all wear the same clothes for about three days so that we still have something to wear at the end of the week.
One pre-season things were especially slow and there were new orders that the overcoats that so many of us wore to keep fish flesh off our clothes could no longer have pockets. Two other girls and I spent four days ripping pockets off of coats with only two seam rippers between us. It was a long process. But at least we were warm and clean while others were chosen to scrub the holding tanks and sand more bussies.
We always got off at 5, right before dinner, on those pre-season days. And then, because we had nothing else to do, we would explore or play cards or watch movies.
My first season up there I went alone. I didn't know anyone and my friend who I did know wouldn't be coming for two weeks. Luckily there was one other American girl up there who introduced me to all of the American boys. We always went to their room after dinner and Jenna would bring a book to read while I would bring my journal and we would sit on one of their beds while the boys gathered around a table in the middle of the room and played cards. Other times all 8 of us would go exploring down the beaches, which aren't like beaches in the states. These beaches are all rock and mud. No sand in sight. And tons of sea glass. Which is most likely from all the drunks you see hanging around town, tossing their bottles into the ocean after a long lost love.
There are two stores up there. One the main grocery store and another that sells a few more things like clothes and rain boots and more groceries. It's always a toss up to which one you should go to. They're only a rock's throw away from one another and the prices are comparable. One boring day we were looking for a bouncy ball to play kick ball with and we trudged through both of them, the whole pack of us. It's obvious that the natives don't like the cannery kids. Not necessarily because we're obnoxious, but just because we're better off. We're in Alaska by choice.
The natives are really beautiful people. They've got their long, dark hair and their little noses that honestly look like God took his fingers and made a place for eyes and a mouth and the little mound that was made by dispersing the clay of man made their nose. It's just a little moosh on their face and is absolutely to die for. So soft looking. But the girls especially are unfriendly. I heard it said once that it was because they were afraid us 'American Girls' were going to take their native boys and marry them. There aren't many boys to begin with and if we were to take one of them back to the states with us, well, you can imagine.
The Bulgarians are the most friendly of the Europeans that are flown to Alaska. They're hard workers and still live in a country where women do not do manual labor. They treat all the girls like angels, making sure that they have the best. There is one QA job in particular that requires some big muscles. In order to be sure the machines are doing as they ought someone catches 5 cans from each line and then takes them back to the warm office to open them and measure the sealing and the pressure and all that. It's one of the more comfortable job but takes an efficient person to get the measuring done before the next set of measuring needs to be done. Anyways, they open up the cans, dump the fish into a bucket and proceed to measure. By the end of the day that bucket is full and heavy. One year we had a girl doing the measuring and the Bulgarian clean-up crew would never let her take the bucket to the grinder. They would insist that they take it and would often be waiting at the door at the end of the day to take this huge bucket of fish for her.
The Bulgarians are used regularly for the clean-up crew (they get the worst hours, but the best pay). They are like gods in their orange rain gear while everyone else wears yellow. They are the ones that make sure you don't slip on fish guts and who keep the water from pooling around your feet. The Bulgarians also work on the patch line with any other unfortunate American girl. For some reason only girls work here, perhaps because it's a precise job that takes some detail thinking. As much detail thinking as you can expect in a assembly line. There are 10 girls on either side of a table and the cans of fish whiz by. A scale is attached to a breath of air. If a can is too light or too heavy the air pushes the can off of the assembly line into the table and a patcher must fill it with more meat or take meat out of it. There are large trays filled with cute up meat just for this purpose of patching. When things were slow (or they were totally overwhelmed) I would go and help the girls down there. I was the only QA who would touch the fish and they all thanked me for it and because of it I often got the best patchers because it was first come first serve as to which patch line you were on and they all loved my line the best because instead of getting frustrated when things weren't going right, I would go to the source of the problem and help them out.
The Turks are alright. Sometimes you can find one or two that you can connect with, but for the most part they are a little lazy. They are used mostly in the fillet station and for sweeping cans onto the bussies in the cannery. There was one little guy that I met my second year that had some kind of eye infection and I was the one he chose to pour the eye drops in. We're still friends and talk often about how we were both so grossed out about the whole ordeal.
I have just been laying in bed thinking of all this and had to get it out. It only happens once a year that I wish so badly I were going up there. And I guess this is it. Perhaps it may persist the rest of this month and I will add bits and pieces of my adventures as we go along. For such rough country I really did love it with all of my heart.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)