One of a few of Sophie's Alaskan Ice Memories

When Sophie was melancholy, she would seek to hang out with other melancholy people for the emotional sympathy that came with a good old Alaskan drinking night. This was a particularly melancholy night for her as she'd found her life had dropped her in the middle of frozen tundra at 26, a lonesome Christmas, a life of uncertainties, and 6 weeks of difficult work without a break finally letting her have a few days to herself to reflect.

The bar was a typical Anchorage hangout with dusty undergarments stapled to every square inch, on the Spenard strip, a historical area famous by the amount of brothels that used to line it, delineating the path between the airport and the military bases in the 40's and 50's. A Spenard divorce was code for 'shooting the bitch'... it was a rugged and blue collar kind of unique place that Sophie found herself, pondering the strange series of affairs that led her to wind up here.

Sophie was dressed to the 9's for her weekend escape. Fresh from the couture and life of  a Los Angeles music industry lifestyle, she wore Cowboy boots, a stylish skirt and sweater combo, all covered up with a silver fox coat that was that was brand new, a reward for her hard work and the struggle that her life had been prior to acquiring it. The downside was that there was no sanity in dressing this way in -80 F. You couldn't tell that to Sophie tho... she was 6 weeks into a new reality and the practicalities hadn't sunk in yet.

This was what led her to leave the bar a few hours later, with a friend she'd met, intending to head to a car that would take the two women to a nearby restaurant. What she didn't expect was that the ramp just outside the bar's parking lot access door was coated with sheer ice and that her trendy and expensive cowboy boots had a slick bottom... There was about a decade that went by in the time between sliding down the slope,  losing her balance and landing on the ground and in that slow motion distortion, Sophie was able to think about how she would probably never walk again, how she really had to review her wardrobe choices, how she was gonna cry over spilt milk this time. She thought about how the fox fur coat was BRAND new and if she landed on her elbows she was going to tear the sleeves!

There's no rationality for some things we do, and this was no exception. In that long fall from 6'4 in her cowboy boots, our current day version of Calamity Jane crashed to the ground with her arms in the air over her head, taking the brunt of the fall on her tail bone. There was providence in her destiny as the woman she was having dinner with was a registered nurse, who was able to calmly assess Sophie laying there on the hard ice, the blizzard building all around them. After about another eon, with snow settling on her precious coat, Sophie realized she wasn't paralyzed and painfully got up to head for home instead. The damage to her tail bone, it was later medically discovered, was that her tiny coxxyx had been shattered, leaving a little shamrock of blasted bone in there where her previously unknown tail had been, that serves to vex her well into her advancing age.

Sophie had to experience a humbling few days, where moving was ok but transitioning from not moving to moving was excrutiating. It made life very 'interesting' in the Chinese sense of the word... But heal, she did, and weeks later, that same parking lot led her to another exciting contribution to her eclectic collection of memories. That will have to have its own dedicated blog installation...

Sophie had one of those interesting incarnations that rivalled fiction at the best of times.

*Sophie is the alterego of the Resourceress