OmegaMom

Here:  Have some big oogy squishy kisses.  Mwah.  And a hug.  And a noogie, just to keep things from getting too mushy.

Many thanks for the responses.  And while I am trying to come up with 101 uses for dryer lint (har!), as suggested by Miss Vinegar Martinis, I will take a whack at AmFam’s series of questions.  She asks:

I want to hear more about living in Alaska. Do you think you will stay there forever? Is milk $7 a gallon? How can you get your car to start in -25 degree weather? Is it even warm there in the summer? Are you glad you moved there? Do you go crazy when it is light out 22 hours a day? I want to know more!

Do I think we’ll stay here forever?!  Ack!  No!  OmegaDad has Plans, y’see.  Long-term plans, that include finding a way to get posted to China for a few years, which requires a certain level in the federal bureaucracy.  He’s thinking Maine.  Or New Hampshire.  Or one of those other New England-y states.  I, of course, yearn for the southwest.  But, hey.  He’s my One And Only True Love, and the main thing is that he enjoy his job.  He hated his job in Arizona after a while, and it really impacted his health, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  He truly likes his job here in Alaska.  My job is much more portable; I can find a techie-type job anywhere (so far).  So there we have it.  “Whither thou goest” and all that rot.

Milk is not $7 a gallon.  At least not where we live.  This doesn’t mean it’s cheap:  $5 per gallon.  But if you shop around, you can find deals.  When I go visit mom, I find myself just standing in the grocery stores drooling at the prices.  And the fruit and vegetable variety.  Then, when I come back here, I find myself just standing in the grocery stores bug-eyed in price shock.  And missing good veggies.

You get your car to start in -25F weather in three ways:  Either you’ve got a nice new battery, or you’ve got a plug-in engine block heater, or you’ve got both.  And even that doesn’t work for some folks.  So far, there has been only one day when my car sounded like it might be having difficulty getting started, on about the tenth day of meteorological brutality.  Otherwise, the Big Honkin’ Heap o’Iron just keeps going, as does Little Red, OmegaDad’s car.

Is it warm in the summer?  Well, it was in 2007; it got up into the 80s.  It wasn’t in 2008; it barely got above 70 twice, officially.  Goodness knows for 2009.  The U.S. Weather Service is promising “above-average” temperatures for the summer.  We shall see.

Am I glad we moved here?

Um.

Um.

Well, it’s an adventure.  You betcha.  I always wanted to visit Alaska.  It’s beautiful.  It’s wild.  It’s different.

Do I want to stay here?

Not much more than a couple more years, frankly.  It’s a nice place to visit, though!

Do I go crazy when it’s light out 24 hours a day?  Because, really, it is light out all the livelong day.  Or, more to the point, it’s never dark in the summer.  Just like it’s barely light on December 20th, shortest day of the year, when the sun gets about 5 degrees above the horizon, and it’s like anemic late afternoon sunlight for the entire five hours…

So:  the summertime.  I was blessed, genetically, by an ability to sleep through just about any type of environment, given that I am sleepy.  This comes from my mom, who would fall asleep if you got her out of the vertical long enough.  My husband joked that I would sleep through 76 trombones (and associated trombonists) marching through our bedroom.  Menopause has put an end to that, but I can maintain a nice sleepy haze when I am wakened, and then fall right back to sleep as soon as the disruption disappears, so the end result is about the same.

OmegaDad, however, has serious difficulties with the all-daylight-all-the-time environment.  It leaves him in a perpetual state of semi-sleep, not good.  I am considering blackout shades and one of those eye-patch thingies for him this year.

My difficulty lies with the winter lack of light; it makes me seriously gloomy, depressed, and sleepy.  My distant ursine ancestors raise their shaggy heads in my DNA under those circumstances, and tell me it’s time to EAT and SLEEP.  So I gain weight, get depressed, and sleep a lot.  And I have yet to see the Northern Lights, which seriously bums me out.

I’m sure all of you are just delighted that us Alaskans managed to send our cold snap down your way, and grabbed your nice warm weather for ourselves.  Today it was 45 degrees.  This evening’s march out to the chicken coop was…warm.  It was weird.  And our foot and a half of snow has managed to melt down to about six inches of very very soggy stuff.  I find myself wondering where all this water is going to go; we have a few more days of this kind of warmth scheduled, and while the snow is melting, the ground beneath is still frozen solid, so there’s nowhere for the water to sink in.

Anyway, we just thought we’d share.  We’re just nice and friendly that way.  No reason for us to hog all the double-digit below-zero temperatures; y’all need some, too.