When it rains, it pours... sewage this time.

Sometime in January, we started to notice it. A definite smell of sewage. We dealt with this for a few weeks last year, when a pump went out, and it was an ordeal to get the maintenance man to look at it that time, so we prepared ourselves for another ordeal. How were we to know how difficult it would be...

The toilet in the "master" bathroom stopped really flushing about that time as well. We knew something was wrong, but the maintenance man on staff told us the "smell was normal" with "those types of pipes." Right...then the contracted maintenance man, who's definitely more skilled, told us it was just that the furnace sucks air from outside and it was sucking air from above the pump for the septic. Finally, the maintenance director told us one of the air vents was blocked, but, basically not that big of a deal...

..and the smell got worse...

Finally, it got so bad that it drove us out of the trailer and into the trailer next door. The trailer next door had one room with a hole it in where someone went through the floor. At least five other spots in the floor visibly sank down when you stepped on them; the floor was rotted for sure. Just perfect for 4 kids. We made them sit on the couch and watch movies; it's definitely bad when the kids are begging to play and you're telling them they have to re-watch the Disney movies again because you're afraid their playing will put them through the floor...I sent S.O.S.'s out to my bosses in the district, and thankfully #2 was coming out my way to do an evaluation. She assessed the situation, and agreed something had to be done.

Another night in the rotten-floor trailer and the contracted Mr. Fix-it came back out to check the problem. Right before heading out, our maintenance man blamed the smell on us painting. As if I can't tell the difference...

Within 5 minutes they found the first problem. A "trap" under the toilet that broke fell off and that was just dumping under the trailer. That's gross, but, oh how I wish that was the only problem...

Then they discovered that the pump responsible for pumping our sewage away was completely shot. Didn't work at all. When they mentioned that, I realized that I hadn't heard the pump, which sounds like a washing machine, for, well, I don't know how long. Months. So where has ALL of the sewage from our trailer been going? Spilling out onto the ground under the trailer, most likley. Fantastic...but, oh, how I WISH that was the end of it...

So right in front of our trailer is a 3-way intersection where our sewage, the school's sewage and the village sewage meet to head down to the "lagoon," which is responsible for filtering the sewage. And there's this valve that makes sure the sewage goes the CORRECT way, and not towards our trailer. And, of course, it was broken too...

Take a moment to realize what this means. Probably all the sewage in Stevens Village, and definitely our sewage and the school's sewage, was being dumped. Under our trailer. For a month, at least.

Fantastic.

Mr. Fix-it promised it would all be fixed by evening that day and we'd be back in our home that night. Um, gross? But ok...They started pumping the sewage out with a small pump and a hose. The hose ran 10 yards behind our trailer and dumped into the ground. Gee, that's so much better...I started making plans to get us the h-e-double hockey sticks out of there...

A few hours later, Mr. Fix-it let's us know that he fixed the pump, and the trap, and everything else, but, oh shoot, after draining all the water, there's still several inches of black sludge under our trailer (btw, I've looked under our trailer...there's about a 6 foot pit in the middle with a haphazard stack of wood supporting the middle...I wonder what that hole's filled with now...). Sorry guys, but it's not going to be liveable until after summer. It's going to get really gross when it starts to thaw. Don't worry, you can live next door...in the smaller trailer with your 4 kids...with the rotting floor...3 feet away from the giant puddle of nasty sewage that is your old trailer....

Mr. Fix-it asked our handy maintenance man how quickly it would take him to fix the floor in the trailer. Just one hole was the reply. No, I think there's two holes, and I'm looking right at them...so we're not going to worry about the rotten places just waiting for my kids to fall through...yippie ki-yay...

I had a Grand Caravan (3,000 lb capacity plane) scheduled for the next afternoon, Budget car rental set up, dog kennel called, and hotel booked, ready to go. The ad-hoc plan was to get the family out, and I'd return when I could to work, sleeping in the school. And I started packing...going for the heavy, quick things, looking to fill the plane. I work best at night, when everyone else is asleep, and was working frantically to box things up until 12:30 am when Alice let me know how cold the trailer next door was getting...maintenance man had let the fuel run out...awesome...

1 am in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere in Alaska and I'm pulling a 100-ft thick blue hose over the utilidor wall (twice), through the frozen puddle of sewage running under our trailer, and around back of the rotten floor trailer to get to the fuel tank for the furnace. I'm hyped up on coffee, tired, and it's cold and dark outside, so I have to force Alice out to keep me company...I'm just imagining myself as the next meal for a pack of wolves or a cranky grizzly that didn't eat enough for hibernation....good news is I survive long enough to fill the fuel tank up...bad news is the furnace won't kick back on...

I get to wake up Mr. Fix-it at 1:30 am and tell him I can't get the furnace started. After 15 minutes, in which I figured he'd probably just fallen back asleep, he stumbles over to the trailer, tells me to turn the oven on for heat (why can't I think of that?), and starts messing with the furnace. He has to drain a styrofoam cup of fuel out of the furnace, resets it, and we're good to go! I'm through with work and give up for the night. Next morning, more of the same, packing like crazy, getting ready for the 4pm departure...then, of course, it starts to snow...heavy....worried that we'll be stuck, I continue on, hoping for the best, wondering how we'll survive another night sleeping in one room in the living room of a trailer with a rotten floor...

I saw a lynx!

I saw a lynx! For the first time in either Venetie or Stevens, one of the Arctic's mammals was hanging around our house. The lynx was walking down the road in broad daylight like it didn't have a care in the world, less than a football field away. I spotted it while running between the back door of the school and our house. I threw open the door and started yelling to Alice and the kids to come to the front door, then realized that it would be out of sight, yelled at them to go to the window. We all watched it saunter on down the road until it went out of sight. So cool! Like the northern lights or the hot springs near Fairbanks, it's these little things that will turn into the awesome memories of living in Alaska when we leave.

Now, the power going out when it's -60 and staying out for 3 hours will also stick in our memories, but for other reasons. After 3 hours without power, the trailer was getting cold, but not unbearable. The village generator had run out of oil and the generator house was so cold that all the extra quarts of oil had frozen. The school generator house's heating unit was also out, unbeknownst to me, and it took a portable generator, heater, and about an hour and a half to get our generator warm enough to run. Then, as luck would have it, the generator was overheating every few hours, and it took some time to figure out that problem. Another day in paradise!

On a plus side, the -60 temperature was a bit of a surprise, as we've been spoiled on temperatures right around 0 for most of January. With the sun coming back at about 5-7 more minutes of daylight a day, it's starting to feel more and more like spring here. We could always dip back down to extreme cold in February, but we really feel like the worst of the winter is over.

In even better news, we're nearing the end of our adoption journey. In fact, we intend on leaving Stevens in a short 5 weeks to begin heading to the lower 48 and then to Africa to complete the adoption. 35 days left! When we finally leave, we will have been in the village, and off the road system, for 200 days straight! We haven't seen a stoplight, a Wal Mart, a Starbucks, a police car, a grocery store...you name it! For 200 days! How have we not gone insane?

If things go as we plan, and they probably won't, we will drive on down to the lower 48, fly to Africa, come back and visit with family before heading back to Alaska in August, meaning we'll have 5 months away from village life. Then we'll begin what will likely be our last year in the Bush, and this time we're definitely coming home for Christmas! After 200 days of living between the school and the 20 yards to our trailer, we have a lot of excitement coming to us in 2013!