Elise Sereni Patkotak

It’s garden season here in Alaska and once again I’m being told that paving over my entire yard is not technically considered gardening. So I guess I’ll have to get supergardener Pat over to help me.  Otherwise, I’m back to considering dandelions pretty yellow flowers.

My sister has officially confirmed her trip here along with two friends.  While I look forward to offering them my home after their hospitality to me every time I’ve gone East, I have to wonder if, in the general scheme of things, it will matter that I ran out of money while redoing my floor and so it abruptly stops in the hallway and reverts back to ugly utilitarian gray carpet from the lovely fake tiles I’m putting down.  You can always tell a home where the animals rule.  All the carpet has been replaced with easily cleanable floor surfaces. 

On Mother’s Day I can only think of one thing…guilt, the gift my mother gave me that keeps on giving.

My sixteen year old dog. who is blind in one eye and has a cataract growing in the other…my dog who routinely stands facing the closet door waiting for me to open it so we can go on our walk because he can’t remember that it’s the door on the other wall that leads to outside…my dog who barks at all the trash cans in the driveways on trash day because he thinks they are other dogs…managed to somehow see the new puppy across the street playing in the circle from his second floor balcony window and now spends most

I now have a 42 inch screen on my TV. I thought for sure once I could see things more clearly I’d understand what was going on.  Yet I still find myself halfway through CSI wondering what the hell is going on and why everyone thinks the little purple dot is significant.  Sigh…maybe it wasn’t the size of the screen after all.  Maybe I’m just not meant to understand that show.

I don’t know how you get rid of the crap in your house.  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe when you die you will be found surrounded by remote controls for TVs you haven’t owned in thirty years and paper bags that were too pretty to throw out because you knew that someday they would be the perfect wrap for some as yet unpurchased gift…that would probably come with its own pretty bag anyway…unless you got it at a rummage sale in which case don’t give it to me.  Anyhow, this all comes to mind because I have recently done the three

There is that knee jerk part of me that not only wanted to see Zaccarias Moussaoui put to death, but wanted it to happen in a particularly painful way. The rational and civilized part of me, of course, is horrified by that that thought.

The biggest part of me, however, is glad he got a life sentence instead.  Why? Because it galls me to think that by imposing the death sentence we would have given him exactly what he wanted – martyrdom. 

It is clear from following the stories about this man that he is an incompetent bumbler who, if

My new TV is very big.  There really isn’t that much more you can say about a new TV, is there?  Especially when you don’t understand the 4000 functions it apparently has.  I think this one can actually make me pregnant. But since I only want to watch Serenity on a big screen, I think I’ll forgo that function.

It snowed here last night.  And it continued snowing through the early morning.  It’s melting now but for a brief period I was pretty sure I had slept through the entire summer.  I expected this weather when I lived in the Arctic but in Anchorage? Then I thought, we finally have a spring here that I can relate to.  Now if it would just snow on the Fourth of July, I’d really feel like I was home again.