I love this state.  There is no other place I would rather live, and I will never leave–unless my corpse gets shipped to some med school outside (I’m a full-body organ donor).

That said, there is one little drawback to living here that literally makes me scream in frustration at times.  Several times a year, I’ll get a knife catalogue with a special deal in it, and by the time I call the wholesaler on the East Coast, all the good stuff is gone.

Happened again this morning.  Robert Klaas (formerly Kissing Crane) had this close-out deal on an American-made skinning knife with a camo handle, leather sheath–for $6.99.  I had dreams of getting a few dozen and moving them out  real quick at $20 a pop.  Not gonna happen–I claled first thing this mornign (okay, second thing) and they were all gone.

Beth, the order-taker, was sympathetic  when I moaned and patient while I leafed feverishly through the catalogue to come up with enough other items to order to get to the $100 minimum.

Meanwhile–did I tell you about this great deal I have on real Schrade Old Timer fillet knives?

(cue spooky music)

Okay, here’s the deal–pardon the lengthy backstory.   For the past ten years or so, I mostly run my business out of the back of my MPV along the strip of the Parks Highway right before it intersects with Pittman Road.  About half my income comes from gun shows, but in terms of  hours, most of my work time is  spent selling along the strip.  At first, I was towards the middle and there was a  regular flea market thing going–one guy had a  portable hamberger stand, someone else made concrete birdbaths and sold them,  another guy trucked in furniture and sold it–there was maybe a dozen of us.

Attrition set in, until it was just me and a  guy selling bunny boots.  Then I moved down towards the corner of Parks and Pittman, and joined the folks who had been setting up in front of an abandoned strip joint which the state now owns.

Now it gets interesting.  Officials noticed all the commerce going on and tried to stop us.  The boro sent folks around to check for business licenses and issued some citations.  Then the state right of way people came and tried to run us out.  That didn’t work, either, so the state evidently decided to take a more laissez faire attitude, and it was nice.  (A highway project will destroy the neighborhood in 2013 anyway–the building and everything  else along the strip for a mile or so will be bulldozed, and the highway made  way wider than it needs to be–all so the folks in Anchorage can get to Alaska a little faster, and some rich construction company owners can get richer.)   A couple sold Native crafts and jewelry, another couple sold their hand-made jewelry, some other guys sold fur coats that they made, a lady had a little hot dog stand, and we had a sort of little community.  One vendor brought in his weed whacker and kept the weeds down, I kept the trash picked up, stuff like that.

Last couple of weekends, though, the tweakers have been invading.  That is, meth addicts.  Around two in the afternoon, they start coming in, parking their little cars, covering the hoods with brand-new tools and other new stuff they were selling for a small fraction of the list price.  It was fairly tolerable for a while–the tweakers kept to themselves.  This weekend, though, they got so aggressive they literally ran one guy off who had set up next to a pile of stuff the tweakers had left to save a space.  (Competition for space down there is so fierce, legit dealers were coming down Friday night and camping out so they would have a choice spot on Saturday.)

Another legit guy got so sick of smelling the meth fumes from the tweakers next to him that he left.  I hated to see that–the  guy recently lost his day job.  Another thing I really hate is just dealing with these people who come to my stand.  I think only another tweaker could stand to be around a tweaker in full jittery, hoppin and boppin, speed-rapping mode.  The last one–a bizarre-looking young woman who had the gaunt look and the speed rap down pretty well, but still had  a decent complexion and dentition–left half a Marlboro and her Playboy  Bic on one of my tables, after being an enormous pain in the patoot for half an hour.  I should be grateful she didn’t steal anything, I guess.

The ironic thing is that there is a trooper station just up over the hill from all this.  I may drop in this afternoon and suggest they start sending a car through the area a few times on the weekends.  Might not help, but it couldn’t hurt.

I have lots of good news to share today.  A few weeks ago, I reported how the local eye doctors office made a  mistake in their billing, and for a while it looked like I would have to pay for their mistake.  Dr Falconer talked to the billing people, however, and when I checked this morning prior to my appointment, the charge had been dropped.   And after the appointment, there was no further charge, so I reckon I dodged that particular bullet.

It gets better.  My glaucoma is much better–pressure is down to 16–it had been around 20 the last visit, and almost 30 prior to treatment.  BTW, the kind of glaucoma I have can make you go blind and you get no warning symptoms. I had been stressing out over the cost of eye drops for my glaucoma–something like $200 for 3 ml.  I found another drug that should work as well and is available in generic for $70 for 3 ml.  A large savings, to say the least.

This is huge good news, as the credit card I use for my business expenses is uncomfortably close to being  maxed out.

And my vision is SO much better.  My left eye is now 20/15 uncorrected, and the right eye is 20/25. My uncorrected vision before the cataracts happened was about 20/800. I still have some blur in the right eye, which is normal for stage four cataract surgery, but last night for the first time in almost ten years, I was able to trim the facial hair on the right side of my face.  I was not able to see it before.

Oh, and this is even better.  It seems that the implant will almost completely cure my astigmatism.  This is an amazingly big hairy deal for me. 

Last week I made an interesting discovery at the dumpster–two pieces of furniture sitting on the ground, a chest of drawers and a drop-front desk.  Well, sez I, this looks too good to pass up.

So I  removed the drawers from the chest and schlepped them a hundred yards or so to my cabin.  Then I commence to drag, and shove and walk the chest itself  , bangity-bump, oops whoof ouch , and managed to hump it up onto the porch without killing myself.  (No joke–I have a hernia that needs repair, and if the thing gets strangulated, I am dead in 24 hours or so unless emergency surgery is imminent.)

Next the desk.  It is one of those tall things with a drop front, and five drawers under it.  It was obviously home-made, decent wood, sorta Pennsyvania Dutch looking.  Getting that thing up on the porch was a tremendous amount of work–I ended up walking it up the porch stairs.

I had originally planned to keep the chest of drawers and sell the desk or something, but after I looked them over carefully, I decided to keep the desk. The chest was cheaply made, mostly press-board.

They sat on my porch for a few days while I figured out how to get the thing into my crowded 10×12 foot cabin.  The desk would replace this old white resin patio table–I think Kathy scrounged it from a dumpster about 25 years ago, and it didn’t help it when it flew off the top of my 1984 Eagle wagon, when  I had been using it as part of my Talkeetna street vendor set-up.  (BTW, the good folks of Talkeetna banded together to run me out of town–the rich gift shop owners evidently resented the crumbs I was getting that fell off their table.  But I digress.)  Over the years it had accumulated two shelf units and a shelf stereo which mostly didn’t work and a raft of old merchadise and papers and stuff.

Anyway, I got all the stuff boxed up, the shelf units and table moved out and into my storage unit, and the desk moved in.  Getting it around the fridge was the tricksy part–I had to remove a small bookcase  in the process, and some of the books are still boxed up and in my car.

I love it.  I actually have drawers for things like jeans now.  The cats are gonna have to get used to it–just this morning, I caught  two kittens  climbing up the folding chair to get to the book case part.

Weather.com says it is partly cloudy–I say it is totally cloudy and raining.  So there, weather.com–nyaaah!  So it looks like I might not be opening up my stand, which raises the question, what to do?

I could buy some booze and get drunk, but I would most likely end up dead or in jail, so that’s out.  Nice thing about being a sober drunk (pc-speak: recovering alcoholic), you may not always know what to do, but you always know what NOT to do.  No matter what , you do NOT pick up that drink.  But I digress. . . . .

The other night, I scrounged some furniture that had been left at the dumpster–a real cheap chest of drawers, and a decent, seemingly home-made, drop-front desk.  I have been in the process of moving stuff out,so I can replace this beat-up old resin patio table with the desk.  This whole operation is gonna be tricksy, being that the cabin is small, and I am relatively old and feeble.  After I get all the stuff off the table, I need to get all the boxes of knives out from under the table, and I may have to move a bookcase and an oil heater  and a litter box. . . . .sheesh, I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

Another possibility is laundry.  I have a bumber crop of dirty clothes to deal with.

Or I could go down to my new storage unit and do some cleaning–things are still chaotic in the wake of the burglary and vandalism at my old storage unit.

Or I could just kick off my shoes and snuggle up on the bed with a good book and a couple of cats.  Hmm–that sounds like a plan.

Best wishes and brightest  blessings to all who read this.

Okay, first the good news from the eye appointment.  I have stage one (on a scale of one to four) inflammation in my left eye, but the uncorrected  vision is an amazing 20/15–amazing, consideeing my uncorrected vision all my life in that eye had been about 20/800.  My right eye–the one which had been totally blind–is now a solid 20/30 uncorrected.

About the money thing–it is still up in the air.  I went in there in full combat mode, so full of adfenolin and whatnot I was on the verge of turning green and splitting my Brooks Brothers sportcoat up the back.  I explained the problem to Dr. Falconer, he said he would talk to the bean-counters, and just give me a month or two to come up with the money, and not sic a collection agency on my.  (Note:  I have observed that so-called “health care” places have some of the most aggressive and obnoxious bill collecting methods–when Kathy almost died a few years ago, the local hospital called her so many times to harass her about our bill that at one low point she said to me “You know, I wish I had just died.” Oh, and one of the docs there almost killed her.)

Anyway, I left with a bunch of new drops to put in my eyes, including an NSAID, since I am so leery of steroids.

And I’m still having fun just walking aorund looking at things.

And furthermore, yikes.

Yesterday, I got a call from the Alaska Vision Center, the  place that has been doing the aftercare for my glaucoma, and cataract surgery.  Woman says they want another $424 from me, which I do not have.

I talked to her this morning.  She was very apologetic about her mistake.  I told her I do not need aplogies–I need $424.  I reminded her that we had had a  contract–she had assured me weeks ago that $424 would cover ALL the expenses of the next visits, including a prescription for new bifocals.  I reminded her that by asking for double the amount we had agreed on, this constituted a  breach of contract, and that courts tend to take a dim view of that.

She said she would talk to the billing people, and I will find out tomorrow what they want to do.  I told her that the honest and ethical thing to do would be to  write off the $424 since it was their error that caused the problem.  I do not expect them to do this–unless one of their managers  decides that they will get more than $424 in bad publicity if they continue to try to renege on our agreement.

(Had I been given correct info, I would have paid off my cataract surgery  in time over a few months,and I would not be writing this now.  By paying it off all  the surgery at once, my FBO account is now virtually empty.  I still have the required minimum in it to keep it open).

I may be reduced to begging for more money, I dunno.    Evidently the local Lions Club has  decided–again–not to follow up on their promise to help me.

I had hoped to open my stand today–weather only let me work two days this week.  But my landlord said she wants me to work in the office for her this afternoon, despite her promise that she would never  ask me to work for her when I had a chance to earn some money for myself.  I am not happy about being what amounts to an indentured servant.

Right now, I am feeling a tad discouraged, beat up, and broke down.

This will pass.

This morning I awakened abruptly around 2:00am to a loud  roaring noise.  At first I thought my shelf stereo had malfunctioned horribly.   It checked out okay.  Then I thought maybe there were  jets or black helicopters circling overhead.  Nope. Then I noticed my neighbor’s porch lights on, and thought maybe something odd was going on over there.  Also nope.

I finally figured out that the cats had managed to turn on my vacuum cleaner, which I store on the porch of my 10×12 foot cabin.  I pulled on a pair of jeans, padded out to the porch and unplugged the sucker.  Blessed silence.

And my neighbor’s porch light went off.

I kinda got spoiled, I guess, since the left eye went from 20/800 to 20/20 almost overnight.  The right eye has been stubborn, however.  The inflammation is still evident, so much so that  my local eye doc told me to double the steroid dosage–um, I may be repeating myself. 

I mentioned this to Kathy the other day and she replied “No wonder, the way the surgeon was digging around in there,” or words to that effect.  WINCE! when I heard that.  I’m a sissy when it comes to my eyes. I am hopeful this will be largely cleared up by Friday, when I go in to see the doctor again.

Meanwhile, the Course in Miracles lesson I have been working on lately is Number 27  – “Above all else, I want to see.”  It seems to resonate.

Now that I have something resembling normal vision due to  wildly successful cataract surgery, I have having  lots of fun shopping for cheap sunglasses.  I need them, since I have so much inflammation and photosensitivity, my eye doc doubled up my steroid dosage and prescribed another drug to deal witht the side effects from the steroids.

Anyway, I was at this box store up the hill  from my cabin (Three Bears Alaska), and I found a  pair of amber aviator sunglasses.  I bought’em, wore them a few times when it was overcast.  Felt like Joe Cool.

Then I got my hair cut short, and the big-lensed shades didn’t look right.  As I was re-attaching the original $8.99 price tag and attaching my own $5 price tag, I noticed the rhinestones set into the temple pieces.  Evidently, they were women’s sunglasses, which might explain why they didn’t look right on me..

Cut to my stand, this little retail biz I run out of my Mazda MPV.  A man my age stopped, looked at some Schrade Old Timers I had on sale, and tried on the shades.  He liked them, but passed when it turned out they didn’t fold up small enough to fit into a glasses case.

He came back a few hours later and asked me what I would take for my jacket, this garish red, which, and blue thing I wear as a joke.  He gave me $15 for it.

And $3 for the shades.

Which I had originally paid $1.99 for.

I had gotten the jacket out of the dumpster.