Microsoft OneDrive Reminds Us Of Aunt Alice's Affair With Santa Claus

Day after day, despite my best efforts to resist, the Christmas spirit draws me back in.

That totally Christmas image, which you see above, showed up via my daily Microsoft OneDrive Memories from this Day.

This particular memory was from several years ago. 

Aunt Alice, in the town of Tonasket, in Eastern Washington. got herself involved with the guy who, for years, had been the Tonasket Santa Claus.

Holding court on a throne in downtown Tonasket, passing out candy canes to kids waiting to sit on his lap and share their Christmas wishes.

Aunt Alice, recently free of Uncle Albert, soon found herself having a whimsical affair with the Tonasket Santa Claus.

For two Christmas seasons, Aunt Alice agreed to play the role of Mrs. Santa Claus, which we see her enjoying in the photo documentation.

Aunt Alice's relationship with Santa Claus came to an end when Santa wanted to formalize the relationship, but Aunt Alice was not yet ready for such, still trying to recover from her years with Uncle Albert...

Tootsie Tonasket Is Smoking HOT

My North Texas location on the planet continues to be green, even as the HOT days of August near their end with the arrival of September.

Previous summers in Texas have not been like this. Previously most foliage turns brown and wildfires burn some of what has turned brown, often turning the air smoky, such as what you see photo documented above.

But, that is not a scene in North Texas. That is a scene in Eastern Washington. The town of Tonasket to be precise, home of Tootsie Tonasket and Aunt Alice. Aunt Alice has been reporting that this is the smokiest hottest summer she has spent at her Tonasket location.

In the past few days Eastern Washington has somehow managed to have some rain fall, damping down the fires. Western Washington, which is usually the rainy side of the state, has only had a light misting.

Speaking of September, and the arrival of Fall. In Walmart this morning I saw a large Fall type sort of Halloween display, a warning harbinger that that wonderful holiday season of the year will soon be upon us...

Tonasket's Texas Family Diner Is Open For Business

Aunt Alice, also known as Tootsie Tonasket, lives in her namesake town of Tonasket in Eastern Washington, a short distance south of the Canadian border.

Tonasket is a small town of around a thousand people. A lot of tourists pass through Tonasket.

This morning on Facebook, via Aunt Alice, I saw a new restaurant had opened in Tonasket.

Texas Family Diner.

With the Lone Star state flag and the Alamo.

I must ask Aunt Alice if she knows the story behind the Texas Family Diner. Are the owners transplanted Texans?

Washington's Wildfires Cause Maxine A Smoky Laundry Illusion With Tootsie Tonasket

A couple days ago  I asked Maxine if this year's Washington dire fire situation was the worst she can remember, because that is how it is seeming to me from my vantage point a couple thousand miles distant.

I also asked Maxine for a hiking report, which I enjoy reading due to it causing that homesick feeling I enjoy so much.

Today Maxine emailed in a hiking and fire report, with three photos, including the one you see here. The other two photos show how badly the smoke from the fires has cut visibility.

Maxine's message, including the explanation for that which you see above....

Good Monday, 

Definitely the worst fires in my memory. Saturday was very smoky, I thought the smoke had discolored the white laundry I’d hung out to dry but Mike pointed out that it was just looking thru the air that caused  the illusion of discoloration.  At one point we couldn’t see the hills across the valley from our house.

Sunday we hiked the Skyline Divide trail. We did it a couple of years ago but it was very foggy and we couldn’t see anything. This time we were at the trailhead by 7 a.m ., had to take lots of breaks on the trail because the air quality was so poor.  Once we got out of the trees Mt. Baker was clear and beautiful-we followed the trail up and around until we were standing right in front of the backside of Baker. The smoke was settling in by the time we headed back down the trail and we could barely make out the outline of the mountain even though it was a clear day.

Our house is surrounded by trees. So far there aren’t any fires near us. There is a very small fire behind Whitehorse Mountain and that is the only fire of any significance on this side that I know of.

Maxine

______________________________________________

Maxine's location is about 30 miles, as a crow flies, southwest of the Newhalem fire in North Cascades National Park, which has been in the news the past several days.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Washington, Okanogan County remains on fire at multiple locations. Aunt Alice, aka Tootsie, in Tonasket, is working hard to stay optimistic, while having trouble breathing due to the thick smoke.

It has been an impressive thing to witness to see how the people of Tonasket and Okanogan County are using Facebook to connect people and to let the helpers know who needs help.

Let me see if I can find an example of a person on Facebook connecting the Okanogan County community. Found one. Patrick Plumb, go to Patrick Plumb's Facebook page. I think he may be the mayor of Tonasket or the chief chief of the Tonasket Tribe.

I hope relief in the form of rain comes soon to all the states currently on fire....

Aunt Alice's Tonasket Town Level 3 Washington Wildfire Evacuation Order

My old home state is on fire. I don't recollect wildfires ever being as bad as what is happening right now.

For days I have been asking Aunt Alice, also known as Tootsie Tonasket, if she was in any fire danger in Tonasket.

Tonasket is a little town in Okanogan County in Eastern Washington.

This morning, on Facebook, I saw that which you see here, from the Seattle Times, and the following from the Mayor of Tonasket....

SHARE THIS IMMEDIATELY IF WE LOSE POWER IN THE CITY OF TONASKET

7th Street/Mill Drive/Top of Highway 20: If we lose power, get your sprinklers on FULL BLAST and Shelter in Place and get water on your property. Since we still have power, lets hit it now. If you have a wooden roof, get sprinklers on it now. Wet ANY vegetation surrounding 300 feet of your homes.

Entire rest of City: Have hose ready and have sprinklers in place. If you have a wooden or burnable roof, get water on it now. If you see large ash falling around your house, shelter in place and turn water on to wet the area around your house. If you have ladders, lean them against your house so Firefighters can access your roof quickly. Make sure all of your windows and doors are shut. If you have elderly neighbors, and they are leaving, make sure that they have hoses in place and ladders against their house. MAKE YOUR EXTERNAL PROPERTY EASILY ACCESSIBLE TO FIREFIGHTERS. After that, wait it out. Watch for spot fires and extinguish them when they are SMALL and we can all get through this.

Elderly and disabled people that cannot do these tasks, get to the Tonasket High School Shelter or North Valley Hospital because they have a backup generator and we can shelter you in the basement. If you have more people to help, come help us keep the Nursing Home Roof watered.

Also on Facebook, Aunt Alice, also known as Alice O Della, in addition to also being known as Tootsie Tonasket, posted the following regarding the current dire situation in Tonasket....
.

• 
  

Alice O Della

8 hrs ·

Where should I go? Fire coming down hill out front? Mayor any ideas? No $ to go far.

Like   Comment   

Share

• Catherine Buffan likes this.
• 

  Catherine Buffan Is there a community page you can see about a ride out?

  Like · Reply · 8 hrs
• 

  Alice O Della Dunno where to look.

  Like · Reply · 8 hrs
• 

  Jody Lee Prichard Alice you need us to come get you

  Like · Reply · 1 · 8 hrs
• 

  Alice O Della Wades here too. Gimme a bit

  Like · Reply · 8 hrs
• 

  Elizabeth Gronlund You can see the fire?

  Like · Reply · 8 hrs
• 

  Alice O Della Yes. Mayor said behind us too

  Like · Reply · 8 hrs

Walking Around Fort Worth's Fosdic Lake Listening To Tootsie Tonasket's Tale Of A Washington State Gestapo Stormtrooper Raid

The picture is from Sunday, feeding the birds at Fosdic Lake in Oakland Lake Park in sunny Fort Worth.

There was a thick frost on roofs and windows when I did my icy Sunday morning dip yesterday.

This morning there was no dip due to a constant drip. Yes, rain has returned. It's like I am back living in the Pacific Northwest, which is currently having one of its most balmy winters ever, with buds sprouting and flowers blooming way too early.

Yesterday when I walked around Fosdic Lake I talked to Tootsie Tonasket and heard the bizarre explanation for the plea for help she left on my phone late Friday.

The Tootsie Tonasket voice mail message was "the police are here and are yelling at me to come out with my hands in the air. Do I have to do that?"

Tootsie was calling me, 2,200 or more miles distant, to ask what to do while police were yelling at her to surrender?

One of the more bizarre messages I've ever gotten, and that covers a lot of bizarre messages. The story of what lead to that phone message and what happened after that is also very bizarre.

As I listened to Tootsie's tale I was thinking to myself, this is the type stuff that happens here in Texas, in Fort Worth, in particular, not in a bucolic little town in Eastern Washington.

The sky continues to drip. I'm thinking maybe the first day of the new month of March is my one day of the month to do nothing aerobic, as much as that pains me.

Alice Tonasket and Wee Cheng

Yesterday I mentioned an email I got from someone who felt I'd hurt her feelings and disrespected her home away from home, that home being Scarborough Faire. I got an email from another person yesterday in which the emailer asked me who my most memorable out of the blue emailers have been. I could only think of two who I actually remember by name, mostly because they both became constant emailers.

One is Alice Tonasket. She'd been at my webpage about Mount Carmel and the Branch-Davidians and somehow thought I had something to do with that debacle. She was rather inarticulate back then so it was really hard to understand what she was asking. It sort of seemed like she was interested in joining my church. So, I replied to her. Told her it cost $200 to join my church. She decided to pass on the offer.

Alice is well known in her local zone for her home brew. Alice makes about 4 kegs worth of beer a month. What she doesn't drink she sells, bootleg style, bottling it herself in classic old beer bottles that she makes labels for. Alice calls her beer, "Alice Doesn't Drink Here Anymore Ale."

Over time I learned Alice has a bit of an amnesia problem. This made it sort of fun to play with her. She is easily confused. Currently she is emailing one of my pseudonyms named Igor and has forgotten that Igor is me. She now thinks Igor is my brother. So, she emailed me yesterday complaining about my brother Igor being mean to her.

Alice lives in a very small town in an isolated part of eastern Washington (the state, not the city), but, even though it is a small town, Alice is surrounded by constant Soap Opera turmoil and drama. A couple years ago Alice's Soap Opera was spinning out of control. I suggested she use her MySpace webpage to deal with various issues. For a slight monthly fee I agreed to create several MySpace characters and write blog postings for Alice. The various characters then opined in with their two cents on Alice's issues.

It did not take long for the targets of Alice's disdain to feel the sting of her pointed tongue. The zenith was reached when one of the targets showed up at Alice's house threatening Alice with the law if she didn't stop telling the truth. Of course, Alice blogged about this the next day, thoroughly chastising the trouble causer. Who is now a meek lion afraid of the Roar of Alice, rather than the other way around. The days of Alice the Meek have long vanished.

Alice now finds herself the recipient of new found respect among all the characters in her cast. It has become common for Alice to hear pleas of "Please don't blog this." To which she warns "Don't do it if you don't wanna read about it."

And then there was Wee Cheng from Singapore. Way back in the 1990's I had a website called Dialing Doctor Durango. It was supposed to be a tongue in cheek know-it-all advice type thing. But, for some reason way too many people took it serious. I finally killed that website when I learned it'd been listed as one of the top 20 medical websites on the Internet on some German university website and then got an email from a woman in the UK asking me for medical advice about her uterine tumor. That was enough. It had to stop.

But, long before I killed Doctor Durango I heard from Wee Cheng. Asking me for relationship advice. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the last person you'd wanna be asking for that type advice. Wee's ex-boyfriend, Teck Seng, was moving back to the island from London and he'd let Wee know he wanted to get back together. He'd broken Wee's heart. Wee didn't know what to do. Her mother told her to take him back, that if she didn't she'd end up like a cuttlefish. This stuck in my mind because I had no idea what a cuttlefish was. Wee explained it's a dried up stinky fish that is used in Asian cooking.

So, I told Wee to give Teck Seng a chance. And so she did. The romance re-bloomed. Wee agreed to marry Teck. I was invited to the wedding. I did not attend.

The Wee Cheng/Teck Seng wedding was probably 4 or 5 years after I'd first started exchanging emails with Wee. She'd send me things in the mail, like antique postcards. One time she asked me if I could ship her some wonderful cheese she had in Japan. It was Cheez Whiz, you know that stuff you spray out of a can. I shipped her 3 cans and some real cheese. Shipping was expensive so I took the cheapest option, basically a slow boat to China. By the time it got there Wee'd found Cheez Whiz in Singapore. I never heard how the real cheese faired.

Wee called me a couple times. She's a teeny little thing but her voice is real deep and very guttural and her English is very hard to understand.

Wee's mom died before she got married and before she had a baby. So, Wee's mom never knew that Wee did not end up like a cuttlefish. The last I heard from Wee Cheng Seng was in 2003. Her husband Teck Seng is very anti-American. He works for some high tech company and was stationed in California for a year. Hated the Americans he worked with and pretty much everything else about America. Why, I do not know.

So, when King George invaded Iraq Wee Cheng emailed me in quite an irate mood, as if I had anything to do with what George did. She told me if America invaded any more Asian countries she would not have anything to do anymore with anything American. I replied, in full umbrage mode, and asked if that meant she'd be giving up the Internet, it being an American invention of Al Gore's, after all.

I never heard from Wee Cheng again. I hope she's all right. I tried to contact her after the 2004 tsunami, she liked to vacation on those beaches in Thailand. But I never heard from her again.