Elise Sereni Patkotak

I watched “Up In The Air” recently and the only thing I could think through the whole movie… aside from the fact that George Clooney has no right to get so much sexier with the passing years…. is that there is no way ANYONE is as comfortable and happy flying as George would have us believe. Flying is a misery from paying for a suitcase to cramming more carry-ons than god intended anyone to have into a small overhead space, to seats that create more intimacy between you and the person in front, beside and behind you than you have

Why does it seem that we never notice how strange our little families can seem until we are showing a new house sitter the routine?

I love that in Alaska we break out the shorts and t-shirts when the temperature inches towards 58.  You gotta love the warmth.

The legislature has left the building. Let the chorus of “Say wha….???”

Yes, once again our “conservative” legislature, the one that is so dead set against big government and its interference in our lives, has managed to redefine the term “fiscal responsibility”.

According to these fine ladies and gentlemen, since we have plenty of money this year, and since they’ve put some aside into a savings account, the rest is fair game. All of which is true until you smack your face up against the huge deficit looming in the state retirement program.

While some might feel they can outwait

There was a time not too long ago where I thought that Sean Parnell could actually put the needs of others over his political ambitions. Well, he shot that concept to hell in very short order.

In announcing that the state of Alaska would waste money on a law suit that almost all legal experts believe will fail in challenging the recent health care reform legislation, he said that the constitutional question is so important it overrides the urgency of covering almost 100,00 Alaskans who are without health care. His exact quote was, “Health insurance at the price of freedom.

According to a government investigation, senior employees of the SEC were watching up to 8 hours a day of porno on their government computers while our economy imploded. Some of these people were earning up to $222,418/year. One accountant was blocked 16,000 times in one month from visiting sites classified as “sex” or “pornography”. I guess it was more amusing than watching the porn occurring on Wall Street.

Do other people periodically wonder if the molecules that make up their body once made up the body of Michaelangelo or DaVinci or Elizabeth 1?

Did I really just say that out loud? Oh dear. I think I finally had one of those sixties’ flashbacks I was promised so long ago.

There was a minor incident recently concerning a child on my caseload who went to school without any shoes on for a variety of bizarre reasons. Bottom line… no one was hurt and his houseparents know now to look down at his feet before he leaves the house.

My reaction to this incident could be considered by some to be way out of proportion to the problem But those people never knew my Uncle Joe and his foot fetish. In his world, no one went without shoes – ever.  You either had shoes on or slippers on but what you

Stir slightly under the warm blankets. Slowly open your eyes. Find yourself staring into the faces of two dogs who sit right next to your bed in unblinking sentry pose waiting for you to get your lazy ass out of bed and feed them. Smell their fetid breath as they inch imperceptibly closer to the bed upon noticing your eyeball movement. Chose life over one more inhale of their exhale. Get up.

Blue is getting too old to really want to do the outside steps from the deck to the yard. She prefers the inside steps which have carpeting that acts as a brake when she starts sliding down. Sliding occasionally happens when you combine the bad back legs of an old diabetic dog with the dramatic downhill decline of the normal household flight of stairs.

In the winter this is not a problem as Blue is just as happy to pee in the snow on the deck upstairs as try to go to the snow downstairs in the yard. After the