Elise Sereni Patkotak

I realize that trying to get any given part of Alaska’s elected and appointed leaders to stop tossing the fiscal gap around like a hot potato at a Fourth of July picnic game is probably asking for more than anyone is able to give.  But I don’t think all the blame belongs to the people sitting in Juneau.  Some of it does, but not all of it.

A lot of it belongs to individual Alaskans who keep sending the message to Juneau that they don’t want to pay for services but by gosh those services they use had better not

Before she died, my mother used to quote the poet Robert Browning’s line, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” Then she let loose with what was for her a very unladylike snort of derision. You got the feeling she wasn’t buying the sentiment.

When I was young, I’d hear the cynical tone she used when she said that and thought to myself that would never happen to me.  Why?  Well, because as all baby boomers know, we are never going to grow old.

And then I woke up one day and the unthinkable occurred.  As

One of my younger cousins has died.  She’s the first in our generation of cousins to do so.  I guess that makes us lucky when you consider how many cousins we have and what a wide variety of ages. 

Sometimes I have to blink and clear my eyes when I see my cousin Louie.  I keep expecting to see the young man who used to swallow bottle caps to impress his little cousin who had such a crush on him.  Instead, I see a 72-year-old grandfather who could easily become a great-grandfather in the not too distant future.

But I

Every once in a while you read something so outrageous in the news that you find yourself rereading it just to make sure you didn’t totally miss the point. Then you find yourself turning to the front of the paper to make sure you haven’t accidentally picked up some sort of satire publication.  Then you look at the byline to see if it’s by some world-renowned humor columnist.

Only after exhausting all these avenues are you forced to admit that in fact, just when you thought life could get no weirder, someone pushed the envelope a little further.

And so

I couldn’t believe that my hot water pipes froze when it was only 13 below. I’d lived in Barrow for 28 years and never had my pipes freeze, even in 40 below.  My first thought was what wimpy houses we have in Anchorage.

Then it was pointed out to me that the little room in my garage that contains my hot water heater and furnace was freezing because I had the door shut and the garage heater set at one degree above frigid.  It was an expensive lesson to learn.

While waiting for someone to come thaw my pipes, I

I have already seen the movie “Something’s Got To Give” with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson twice.  It’s a good movie, but the real draw for me was watching Keanu Reeves fall for a woman twenty years his senior.  I don’t know how Hollywood did it, but someone from there clearly snuck into my fantasy life and made a movie based on it.  The only difference is that my fantasy ends with me telling Jack Nicholson to get real and I stay with Keanu Reeves.

Each time I’ve seen this movie, the ending has driven me crazy. I want to