OmegaMom

Okay, so I suck at updating. And, for the nth year in a row, I have hopelessly flubbed NaBloPoMo.

Sigh.

Maybe next year, eh?

So. We are now ensconced at a lovely little B&B in Ranchos de Big City (not to be confused with River Rancho, a suburb of Big City filled with McMansions crammed together cheek by jowl). As a result of this stay, we have become enamored of Ranchos de Big City, an area on the banks of Big River that is filled with huge old cottonwood trees, old ranchos of sprawling adobe structures sitting next to outrageously large new construction.

The streets are tiny. The properties are put together in huge blocks, so you might have a series of one-acre properties lining the street, with a series of one-acre properties behind them, reached by a common lane/driveway leading off the main street.

Interspersed here and there are irrigation ditches, which the local residents have used as hiking paths for years and years, to the point that the village of Ranchos de Big City finally gave way and made the ditches into official village hiking easements.

Following the irrigation ditch right next to the B&B, one finds: behind the house, horses in a corral; next, a pair of friendly llamas; then a newer adobe barn with yet more horses. On the far side of the ditch, you have: behind a lovely stick-and-wire privacy fence, a huge pond with a waterfall gurgling into it, filled with migrating geese; a field with more horses which is a destination for the migrating sandhill cranes; then some outbuildings which are home to some happy dogs with hoarse barks…

And on and on…

We love it. We would love to live here. Unfortunately, it’s outrageously expensive. But we would never have known of this area without the B&B, which caught OmegaDad’s attention by it’s name, which is quintessentially New Mexican.

Aside from that…

OmegaDad has started his new job. He has a corner office with big windows. He was greeted by seven neat stacks of files that his assistant said were items that needed his immediate attention. He also has an administrative assistant, which he finds somewhat befuddling; he is so used to doing everything for himself that she has to remind him that she’s there to help him, and she can actually do things for him…so he can wrangle those stacks of files into shape while letting her handle the day-to-day stuff.

The dotter and I have been exploring. We drop OmegaDad off at work, return to the B&B for (scrumptious) breakfast, head out for a hike somewhere we can let the dawg off his leash for a while, then drive around to scope out various properties OmegaDad and I have decided we might be interested in. Then we take a swim at the B&B’s indoor pool, schmooze with the utterly charming elderly proprietor for a while, then go pick up OmegaDad from work. (It will be nice when one of our cars arrives here, so the to-and-from-work schlepping ends.)

We now have a handle on a temporary, month-to-month furnished rental, so we can take some time looking at properties.

When we left Big City, Alaska, it was snowing. It took half an hour for the airplane to be de-iced before we took off. Our old Alaska town has has -5 temperatures already.

Here in Big City, New Mexico, it has been sunny and–at worst–down in the upper 30s at night. Everyone here complained the first few days we were here about how cold it was…we just sort of gave them old-fashioned looks and reminded them just where we had just come from. (And for the record, the huge storm that was all over the news? The OMG-it’s-the-end-of-the-world storm? Was on the north and west coast of Alaska, about 600 miles from Big City, Alaska. So, not only did we miss the storm by flying out of Alaska two days before it hit, we would have been just fine anyway, because it was like living in the Panhandle of Texas when a hurricane hits the Texas-Louisiana border. )

I am writing this using my brand-new iPhone, curled up on an inflatable mattress.  The house is empty, except for the heap of stuff we are either shipping to NM via UPS or schlepping onto the plane with us.  (That includes one dawg, three cats, and three turtles.)

OmegaDad is setting up turtle carriers.  OmegaDotter is snoring on another inflatable mattress beside me.

The cats were quite traumatized today.  Piggy, our 17-year-old half-Siamese, half-calico dainty scaredy cat, spent most of the past four days carefully hidden in the box spring of our bed.  When the movers finally came to take our bed away, we cornered her, then I deposited her in our empty closet.  Newman, our Siamese mutt cat I inherited from my mom, spent the day hidden on a high shelf in the dotter’s bedroom.  Wooly, our laid-back cat, I confined to the upstairs bathroom.  By the time the movers left, Piggy and Newman had gone AWOL.  Luckily, a few hours later, they both timidly emerged again.

The dawg spent another happy day at doggie daycare.

Tomorrow I clean.  And I drive my car to the port to get it shipped.  Then a day of finalization of various stuff, a night at a hotel, and we fly out Sunday.

More tomorrow.

Above is the container truck being backed into our driveway.  Yes, it is really happening.  Yes, the movers have packed some stuff into the container.  Yes, we have sent OmegaDad’s car off to the shippers (my car goes on Friday). 

We spent two hours this evening sorting everything that we’re either taking with us on the plane or shipping via UPS so we’ll have it right away when we get to Big City.

Things are moving along!

Bella asked for an update on the move.

Yes, I know that Bella requested it more than a week ago.

That is how the move is going.

::frenzied rictus in place of a grin::

The movers are here.  The house is like a hurricane has hit us.  Almost everything is packed, and we have four nights left.  No standard foods—though the refrigerator is full of scrids and scrads.  No plates.  No cutlery.

The beds are still here, but it sounds like they’re departing tomorrow.  Ah, well, we have inflatable mattresses.

I’ve been hauling the poor dawg off to doggie day care every day, so the movers (and I) don’t get literally “hounded” by the constant territorial barking.

I’ve been shutting the poor cats into the master bedroom, where there are heaps and piles of Things We Want To Ship Directly Or Take With Us scattered about.

The furniture in the living room has been carefully covered with wraps.  The moving guys assured me we could still sit on them.  Oh, goodie.

I’m frantically pulling together documents for our mortgage application for whatever house we decide on in Big City, NM.  (Actually, outside Big City, NM.  Preferably in more mountainous, tree-ish areas.)

OmegaDad and I are sniping at each other.  We are both sniping at OmegaDotter.  She is sniping back.  It is great fun.  Not.  I have taken to reminding myself “just a few more days, and we will be done with the omigod we are taking an airplane with three cats a dog three turtles a man a woman an almost-10-year-old and associated luggage I can’t breathe help me God whole affair.”

(The chickens and bunny rabbit have gone off to A Good Home.  Story to come.)

Then, of course, we get to settle in to a few days at a casita in a bed and breakfast in Big City, then find a local month-to-month rental, while we’re looking for a house to buy.

BUT.  Here?  It is gray.  The wind is howling off the glaciers.  The sun is rising at about 9:30 and going down at about 5:45.  It is currently in the 20s and there is snow on the ground that is being whipped into crusty small drifts by the 60 mph gusts.  In Big City, NM?  Sunny (or just clear at night).  In the 50s and 60s during the day.  It will be windy later in the week, but…the sun is rising at 7:30 and setting at 6:15.

I will be so glad when this is all over with!

(Oh, yeah, and I’m attempting [bahahaha!] NaBloPoMo, yet again.)

New Mexico, here we come!

OmegaDad accepted a position in Big City, NM, yesterday.  The job starts in about 8 weeks.  We took OmegaDotter out to dinner after her team gymnastics for the day and told her…

She cried.

Sigh.  I remember what it was like for her when we moved here to Suburban Alaska, those first few weeks when she didn’t know anyone at all, and I spent time cuddling her every day after school for a week while she processed being away from her One And Only True Love and her friends from Arizona.

Now she has to go through that again.

Oh, I know quite well that within a year, she’ll have new buddies galore, and thanks to the Miracles Of Modern Technology she will be able to keep in touch with her old buddies.  But for a few months, it will be very difficult for her.

In the meantime, I have been struck—quite unexpectedly!—by sadness at leaving Alaska.  While I will never, EVER miss the long, cold, dark dark dark winters, which leave me dull and depressed and miserable, I will miss the mountains, the long summer days, the fun of having daylight change so rapidly from short to long to short again.  I will miss the chance to see the northern lights.  (Alas, last night, when the latest wowza geomagnetic storm hit, it was overcast here and the almost-full-moon was shining behind the overcast.  So we got a lovely pearlescent sky, but none of it was the northern lights, wah!).  I will miss having actual seasons.  I will miss the thick, sweet, peaty smell of the wet boreal woods, which is so different from the light, dusty, vanilla scent of dry ponderosa forests.

I will also miss that odd plus to living in Alaska, the yearly PFD check.  While we should have banked it, we used it for such things as flying down to…the Southwest!…right around Christmas, or, last year, out to the Southeast.  Those trips were something that kept me sane during the darkest days near winter solstice.

I don’t have many friends here, myself; we managed to deposit ourselves squarely into the Bible Belt of Alaska, filled with conservatives.  I remember during the last presidential campaign arriving at the dotter’s gymnastics facility to be greeted with a bleacher full of women wearing “Prayer Warrior for Sarah!” pins.  On the other hand, our next door neighbor is a lovely liberal lady with her equally liberal female partner (who has had to deal with some really ugly experiences as a result); I will miss her and her family dearly.  Also, the family of OmegaDotter’s dearest friend are liberal and laidback; I’ll miss them too.

But it’s a new adventure!  Onwards!