In which OmegaMom whinges
posted in Alaska, Arizona, OmegaMom, The Move |(Isn’t that a great word? Whinge. Love it. For those who don’t know, it’s the British version of whining.)
Leah has given me permission to whine. So here goes with confession time.
I’m homesick.
There. I said it.
I live in Alaska, land of wilderness and mountains and oceans, a place so many people dream about coming to, and I’m homesick.
I miss the sun, oh so much. Right now, we’ve got 6 hours and 53 minutes of sunlight per day. That’s if you call it “sunlight”. First, we get “sunlight” maybe once every four days. Second, the angle of the sun is so low that while the sky gets light, we don’t get the sun for about an hour after “sunrise” (it hides out behind the mountains), and similarly it hides before sunset. Third, that low angle of sun means that the sunlight we do get is watery late afternoon sunlight all day. But most of the days are gray with clouds.
I miss the stars, oh so much. When we were moving here, I just assumed that, being in the northern wilderness, we’d have glorious stars. Not so. We’re near enough to the coast to have high humidity, which washes out the stars…when it’s not totally overcast (those gray days extend to gray nights, too). I miss seeing the Milky Way almost every night, arching across the sky. And so far we haven’t had any northern lights to take the place of my glorious, shimmering, take-your-breath-away stars.
I miss the smell of pine trees in the sunshine.
I miss the openness of the piney woods.
I miss our ratty old log home, smelly and poorly designed and cold and drafty as it was. It had character. Our new house is nice enough, but it’s a basic box and lacks character.
I miss my buddies back in Arizona. I miss having the Society of Geeky Gals meeting up for dinner and a play on a regular basis. I miss my Northern Arizona FCC buds.
I miss my mom and my grandma. Oh, lordy, do I miss them. I miss being able to say to myself on a lazy Sunday, “Hunh! Wonder what Mom’s up to…I think I’ll drive down and hang out for a while!”
I miss our old neighbors. We had some cool neighbors back there.
I feel so guilty to be feeling so homesick. Here I am, on the adventure of a lifetime. For cryin’ out loud, the feds paid for us to come here.
I know that I need to give it all some time, that I will make new friends, that in about six weeks’ time the days will start getting longer, that we’ll find new places to hang out, that I’ll be able to visit my old hangouts every now and then to get a jolt of piney woods and stark desert and stars and vivid sunlight.
I know all that.
But right now, I’m homesick and I just want to cry.
