A little adjustment to the Comments

I've now had three people tell me they're having trouble commenting on Jim's Wild Ride with the security measures in place that help me weed out any spam messages that come along. I'm (at least temporarily) doing away with the extra steps those security measures add to the process of commenting, and we'll see how that goes. I may put them back later, but for now, it should be easier. Let me know, okay? Maybe in the comments?  ;^) 

"What are you making?"

I'm repeatedly reminded of a story I heard when I was still in my teens, a story told by a traveling pastor who was guest speaker at my church. He said that when he was a small boy, he liked to go to visit his grandma's house. His grandma liked to embroider and cross stitch, and he would sit at her feet and play with his toys while she worked.

Sometimes he would look up at the back of her fabric, where the colors of threads passed over and under one another, and the thread tails would hang down in a tangled, jumbled mess. And he would say, "Grandma, what are you making?"

Then his grandma would turn the work around so that he could see it from the right side, and it would be a beautiful picture, colorful and pleasant. He said sometimes we wonder what God is making, when we see what appears to be a tangled jumble, but that's because we're not seeing it from the right side, the finished side. God is working a beautiful picture in our lives even when we can't see it yet.

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The carpet stretcher man came today to repair the carpet in our classroom upstairs. Now, this is a very large room, almost the size of two bedrooms together, and when we no longer needed it for school, it became The Room For Homeless Stuff. If we didn't know what to do with something, that's where it went. And I'm such a packrat. Needless to say, even with literally days of sorting and packing under my belt in that room alone, it was still crammed full as of this afternoon, when the carpet man said it aaaaaalllllllllll had to go out.

Now, the entire upstairs - seriously, the whole thing - looks like the classroom threw up on it. 

I refuse to put these, um, priceless items back in the classroom, so I'm going to sort them where they lay. But I am looking at the tangled, jumbled mess and having a complete and tearful meltdown. I want to ask God what He's making sometimes, but I have to trust that the picture will be beautiful when He finishes with it and lets me see it from the right side.

Losing a battle to win the war...

If you're like me, when you consider moving into a new house, one of the first things you try to figure out is where the Christmas tree will go. I love Christmas. I'd leave my Christmas decorations up four or five months if I could get away with it, which I can't, because Jim and James think, for some reason, that Christmas decorations shouldn't go up before Thanksgiving and should come down before Valentine's Day. Sheesh. So restrictive.

For the last 10 or 11 years, we've been using an awesome Barcana artificial tree that is every bit of nine feet tall. Just gorgeous. Our last two houses have had raised ceilings, and the tall tree looked really good in those houses. Being the Christmas freak that I am, I've also had as many as seven fully-decorated trees of smaller sizes scattered around this house, but I donated all but two (I think) of those extra trees to the thrift store when I was paring down Christmas decorations for the move.

So, okay, here's the problem:  There's only one place in the new Alaska house with a tall enough ceiling to accommodate my lovely gigantic tree - the dining room. That's also the only place Jim's dream wood-burning stove can go. Hm. Dilemma. 

Since we're also trying to cut down the amount of weight we have to ship with the movers, and since the big tree is a heavy sucker, we've decided that my nice Barcana is not making the trip to Alaska. In exchange, I've decided to hit the Fred Meyer store hard as soon as the Christmas stuff goes on sale and go back to blanketing the house in smaller 4' or 6' trees.

Heh heh heh.

You're welcome to come visit us around Christmas time, but be prepared to have to sidle down the hallways and squeeze sideways through the rooms, because I'm thinking it may take, oh, maybe eight or nine trees to make up for the loss of the big one. 

My plot to populate the world with Christmas bling has taken a step forward. Mwahahaha.

FAQs get answered!

I often like to say that moving to Alaska is like moving to another country, but one where they speak the same language and use the same currency. I'm not sure how much more different Alaska and Texas could be in some ways, but the differences with this area of Texas and our part of Alaska aren't really as dramatic as frequent watchers of the Discovery Channel might believe. Yes, parts of Alaska really are very wild and really do try to kill you, but rest assured, we're not going there!

Maybe this will help answer some of the questions that you might not feel comfortable asking - although believe me, other people have asked them! LOL

Do you have to live in an igloo?

No. In fact, the closest thing to an igloo I've seen in our area is a yurt, and they're really not all that similar. We get to live in a regular house just like you do.

Is it really dark around the clock all winter?

Not where we're going. The pictures below were taken in the middle of December. They show the road on our property. We will have about five and a half hours of daylight in December, with an extended period of twilight.

Is there bright light all day in the summer?

It seems like it! But no, the longest summer day for us will be just under nineteen and a half hours. It's no wonder that Alaskans get a lot of gardening done during their growing season!

Check out this big ol' cabbage!

How much snow do you get in the winter?

I'm still looking for an average annual snowfall, so I can't tell you that right now. When Jim went to visit the Plan B house in March, he said about 5" of snow fell during his three-day visit, and there was three feet of snow in some places.

How cold is it? Or how warm does it get?

Summers can reach into the lower- to mid-70s, and the winters can dip into the negative 30s for brief periods. Click here to read more about weather in different parts of Alaska.

How big a problem are moose and bears?

We are going to a relatively urban area, so the bears won't be the problem that they might be in more remote areas - but they're still nearby and do need to be watched out for. Moose strikes are common and drivers need to be careful not to hit the huge animals on the roadways. Moose are really very large animals (they're not cow sized, they're much, much larger) and they can do a lot of damage or even cause death if you hit one with your car or are attacked by one.

How big is Nikiski? How big is the nearest larger town?

Nikiski has a very small population of around 4,400. The next town over, Kenai, is considerably more populated with 6,700 people. Anchorage, by contrast, has 281,000 people. For Texas readers, you can compare Nikiski's population to that of Murphy, Texas, where South Fork Ranch is located. The people are packed fairly close together in Texas, whereas in Alaska, there is quite a lot of room to spread out, so that's what people do.

Will you say hi to Sarah Palin for me?

No, sorry, Sarah Palin is nowhere near us. She's most likely to be in Juneau (over 1000 miles away) or Wasilla (200 miles away). And we don't have much of a burning desire to go look her up.  :^)

If you still have questions, feel free to ask them. We're getting used to it by now!

"I'm beautiful inside!"

I admit it that yesterday I didn't care to see the For Sale sign in the front yard, so I didn't look at it until I left the house to run errands this morning.

In the place where (hopefully soon) the SOLD sign will go, there is a placeholder sign that reads "I'm beautiful inside!" Underneath it is the normal real estate sign with a smiling photo of our realtor. At first glance, it struck me as the realtor proclaiming himself to be a beautiful person, regardless of how he looks on the surface.

Which is pretty cool, actually. Especially in the stress of the upcoming weeks, I'm going to use that as a reminder to stop and inventory the things that are right about me, and right about my family, and right about my friends. 

Because YOU're beautiful inside, too.

There's a sign in the yard...

Well, that's that. The realtor has been here and our current house is now on the market. The MLS listing goes "live" on Friday night, and then I'm sure there will be a parade of lookie-lous in and out of here. I'm not looking forward to the Saturday morning tire-kickers coming through, but in this economy, I have to accept just about any appointment that comes our way. Maybe we'll be very blessed and the first few people through will yield an offer.

I can hope, can't I?

I spent the last two days cleaning like a crazy woman. I don't mind admitting that I'm completely exhausted. I've scraped, shoveled, dusted and decluttered until my eyes are crossing, but we did get some very nice photos of the main rooms for the MLS. Now we just have to keep it this clean, and not only that, but finish cleaning the rest of the rooms that haven't gotten the whole treatment yet.

A house for sale needs to be "staged" to show it off best. It needs to have enough homey touches that a potential buyer understands the purpose of the spaces and feels comfortable in them. But you shouldn't have a lot of personal items around. You want the potential buyer to imagine *their* stuff in the space, not look at yours. I completely understand that.

And yet, I can't quite get past the thought that the house looks so... sterile. Many of the things that make me smile are headed for boxes, not to be seen again for three months at best. So, I've got to get creative, and make my smile objects look unobtrusive enough so that I can leave them out.

They can be our sneaky little secret, okay? Okay.

AARGH!

No, it's not Talk Like A Pirate Day, it's just some frustration at all that has to be done before Wednesday.

What's so special about Wednesday, you ask?

Wednesday is the day our current house goes up for sale.

Jim and I have been packing boxes and taking them to the storage unit to make room here in the house, and also to start recording the weights of the boxes in case we go with a shipper who charges by the pound. But there's also the cleaning and sprucing up of the house to make it appealing to potential buyers, and that's a LOT of work. We live here, so we have things the way we like them, not the way that a stranger would necessarily think is the best way to use the space in the house. So, no more recliner in the breakfast nook (pout, pout) and the dining room table is going to have to look like a dining room table, instead of a place for me to work on cake. Right now, getting photos ready for the MLS listing will probably mean moving stacks of boxes, etc. from one room to another so that we can photograph the rooms while they're relatively empty, and then put stuff back again.

Wheeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!