Anchorage Trip; Tactile Sense to Stave off Anxiety

Happy Friday, everyone, wherever you are! I'm on my way home from another Anchorage trip--solo, this time. Having been a green-card-holder for two years, I have to reaffirm my presence and personage and be checked again for bona fides. So today, they 'captured' my fingerprints (I love that expression: don't worry, the part that makes prints is still attached to my fingers!) and mugshot. Hopefully it won't be as bad a shot as the one on my current card...

I also got snow tires put on our 'warthog.' Which meant being helped out above and beyond by one of the in-store mechanics at CostCo, and then being patronized mercilessly by the guy in the shop. I did lay myself open for even more of it by cringing at one of the especially ear-splitting hydraulic wrench noises, I guess... Not before time with the snow tires--I'll share pictures tomorrow but compared to this one from last week...

...the snow has now advanced at least half-way down the mountains, closer every day. And so we're heading into yet another beautiful face that this land can present. Hazardous as it can be, the drive between Homer and Anchorage is always so beautiful--I'm grateful that so much of it is so 'wild.' Anchorage itself, of course, is the antithesis, with cheaper and more abundant everything in its much larger variety of stores (although, to be fair, there are plenty of 'wild' areas in Anchorage and you can always see the mountains like the walls of a bowl). It can be bamboozling, all the errands we run when we go to Anchorage--from CostCo to the Natural Pantry to the Habitat for Humanity Store to Office Max to the bookstores to (horrors) occasionally WalMart... I think back to times when I lived in close biking or driving distance to the analogous gamut of places, though, and overall I feel that the lack of those conveniences at home is more than made up for by the natural beauty. It's also yet another way of paying attention to what we choose to buy.

Speaking of choosing what to buy, I made a somewhat wacky purchase today that, wackiness notwithstanding, was probably a very smart buy indeed. I showed these fluffy dusters at the Habitat for Humanity Store on our last trip, mentioned that they made me smile.

I was back there again this morning, looking for door hinges and such, running the gauntlet of defunct refrigerators and rows of bathtubs laying there like coffins, miscellaneous parts and pieces in ziploc bags stuffed in milk crates. Stores are anxious places for me anyway, even stores with a logical layout where I know or can infer where everything is. Stores with an element of chaos are difficult for me above and beyond that. The predictable run to the bathroom didn't stop the rising panic; I was starting to be incoherent...And then I found myself over with the fluffy dusters, holding the fluffy in my hands, just feeling the softness, the givingness.

I breathed. I felt.
I became able to continue looking for hinges, even if I did drop several and get my finger pinched in one to the point that I almost couldn't free myself!

So, for the princely sum of $2, I walked out the store with two different possibilities of hinge-set and one deep green fluffy duster-head (I didn't need the stick part).Throughout the day, driving around, doing errands, not receiving an email I needed to receive, making it to Biometrics and the scary Immigration people (who were actually extremely nice and friendly and not-scary), I thrust my hand into that giving softness and felt calmer.

Like a baby with a security blanket? Well, yes, I guess so. And I think there's some good reason for that behavior. It seems like different senses can be different avenues to get back into the body, to pull back from the brink. It was good news for me today that the tactile sense worked so well. It might even become a good decoy from nail-biting and skin-pulling.

The most impressive thing: it got me to breathe. Seems like as long as you're breathing, there's a chance.
Do you love the feel of soft and fluffy things?