I digress.
So, let's see, it's been a while, so I'm not sure which little anectodal Alaskan truffles I should impart first! Shall I start with my hair breaking off at a 3:1 break to grow ratio due to retarded amounts of iron and arsenic in my drinking water? I don't even know if I said that ratio bit properly, I hooked and crooked my way through statistics, so, like, whatever. Or how about the time when temperature stayed on the business end of -27 for a month (straight! HA! *insert girthy, lunatic chortle*) and my landlord, the spastic self-monickered "Wild Bill", neglected to schedule that pesky- oh, how do they say it in english- propane maintenance? Refill of propane? Yes, refill of propane; the incumbent heat-source in my little cabin in the witness-protection woods. Instead of calling his tenant (yours truly) he calls a neighbor to come "check on it". Jim, real nice, quiet, unassuming, and completely negligent in that he neglected to tell the new-comer to the party (muah) that a) the tank was down to fumes, aka OUT and that b) nobody who knew fuck about shit had any intention of rectifying what was quickly morphing into what I like to refer to as a motherfuckin' "situation", given the ambient daytime temp was -27 and quickly dipping since at that time the sun bode farewell around 3pm daily. Anyhow, Jim instructed me that I might have to start a fire, and that I also MIGHT notice the aromatic notes of propane tickling my olfactory upon entering the fucking shotgun shack I was currently inhabiting.
Yeah, might.
Here's how the rest of this shit went down: Thanks, Jim. Bye, Jim. Walked in. Smelled propane. Immediately thought of the Rocking R Bar. Realized I had not yet penned an adequate eulogy heroically chronicling my hardships in the frozen arctic permafrost, not to mention a playlist for my double-denim mandatory-wake-kegger. Promptly shut off water. Drained pipes. Poured Glycol down aforementioned drains. Quickly dredged floor of room for matching (clean and of a wool blend would have been nice, but I had to settle for cotton, questionable integrity, of similar thicknesses) socks and clean underwear (no such luck, commando it is). Got the fuck out of dodge. Hello, hotel. It's nice to see you again, climate control.
At this point, I'd like to take the time to mention that had anyone bothered to give me the run-down and "stuff you should know" about the cabin before they told me to hit the ground running, I might have been more inclined to help and probably a hell of a lot less indignant- hell, I probably wouldn't have assumed this cabin was not unlike any other dump I'd squatted in during my glory (read college) days in that the heat keeps going when you pay an all inclusive "rent check". Because the internet and the electricity sure do, why wouldn't the heat?! But congruent with my previous experiences in the second shittiest state in the union, this was not the case.
Flash forward through chaos complete with frantic, disjointed miscommunications between "Spaz Bill" -who was currently up trapping wolves in buttfuck-ask-me-if-I-care-north Alaska- and pissed off, displaced me to refilled propane, renewed heat and running water. I return from work three hours after what I would soon come to look back on as a premature-disaster avoidance celebration, clambered out of my work "rig", shuffled toward the door of my now toasty abode, only to stop dead in my tracks with a look on my face that I'm sure could be likened to confusion or trying to decipher simple arithmetic/translating the dead-sea scrolls off my very forehead, tweeking to consternation, and then melting to horror as I realized that in this climate and season (January, Alaska, respectively, for those of you who haven't actually read anything until now), running water is not a sound one would hear in nature without accompanying abject panic. So, yes, without further adieu, my pipes had exploded in grand fashion and were currently spewing out of the back of the house like my own private water park. Oh, joy unending.
The rest is history, although I'll admonish the readers to learn from my mistakes and not assume that a harsh, inhabitable climate will weed out the schmucks and genetically inferior (I'm still alive...so...yeah, theory disproven) to create a elite super-species of humans that operate on common sense and necessity, and preemptively anticipate things such as but not limited to: finite heat resources. Ask questions, and then ask more questions when coming into an unfamiliar situation. That's all the preaching I've got. Needless to say, I no longer live in that secluded little slice of hell. With it's subtle nuances like iron-fraught tap water that stained my artificially blonde, yet beautiful hair, a ruddy hue, whilst retexturizing each strand with a signature, rope-like grit. Gone are the nights when I layer on electric blanket on top of electric blanket on top of psychosis to stave off ol' jack frost in the confines of my retna-burning lime green bedroom. Night after night pulling those electicric blankets over my head for fear of ghosts wandering over from the adjacent cemetery...trying to tell myself that Charles Manson and The Family was fiction.
As for me and the memories, we'll always have hipstamatic.
Sincerely,
Wyoming
