Odyssey

Odyssey-------"a long series of wanderings or adventures, especially when filled with notable experiences, hardships, etc."  Little did I know how prophetic the title of my blog would be.  Nelson submitted it when I asked for suggestions.  I loved the double-entendre.

Homer, the Greek poet, wrote  The Odyssey  almost three thousand years ago.  It is an epic poem--12,110 lines-- about Odysseus's trip home after the Trojan War.  The man had problems!  It took him ten years to get home.

While our story may not be all the way to "epic", it certainly is on that road, quickly passing many mileposts.  But hey, smooth and easy was never promised!

 The collective life of our family took a sharp turn toward the scary when one of our members landed in surgery for a quadruple by-pass and valve repair.  This scenario is common to many families, I'm sure, but not when the patient is only 38 years old!  Fantasizing our family's story, I had never pictured one of my daughters being widowed during my lifetime!  Fortunately, the procedures were successful and recovery has begun.

Before all this happened, as you may recall, we were having trouble finding a place to live in Homer.  We thought we had two different houses only to loose them both and so had to postpone our departure by two weeks.  We didn't know it then but now realize  we needed to be here.  How unfortunate and frustrating it would have been to be on the road somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia when all this drama was taking place in PA!

Now, at last, we're able to breathe.  The crisis is abating; my daughter is demonstrating grace and maturity under very difficult circumstances; her husband is recovering; we're able to make final preparations to start our trip.

 Oh, and one more completely fantastic and amazing thing.  We have a house to go to----one that is better than any other house we considered, one where there's plenty of room for guests and when you look out the window or sit on the deck, you're looking at water, mountains and glaciers!  Or you could be looking at a moose!  It's fully furnished and yet cheaper than others we didn't get.  How awesome is that?

Dog At The Window

Right now Tuhlula, our black and white lab/boxer dog, is sitting directly in front of me staring out the window.  It's a beautiful day out there, a day she would mormally be outside sunning herself, her naps punctuated with frenzied Ups truck chasing.

Tuhlula has a real love-hate affair with box trucks.  She barks and carries on frantically inside or out when one comes by.  But I think she secretly loves them because they give her an excuse to run an impromptu race through our yard at breakneck speed.  She usually wins.  The various drivers know her and comment about her racing prowess when they happen to stop at my house.  They often leave a milk bone with my packages!

But today she has to stay inside.  She doesn't like that.  Nelson is spraying the yard with weed killer.  It would be very bad for her to be around that.  And furthermore, she'll have to endure for about three days!  She doesn't know that yet.  So she sits, staring.  Every once in awhile she will moan and sigh.  But she never gets mean with us, her masters.  She never growls, bares her teeth, gets moody, chews up shoes or furniture.  She always has a wag, a kiss, excitement for us when we pay attention to her.  In this way she has more sense, trust and "maturity" than most humans.

Nelson and I are currently staring out a "window" too.  Noses pressed, sighing sighs, wondering.  I have lost track of what "plan" we're on.  It must be double T  by now!  I'm grateful plan A didn't work.  There are a host of reasons why it wasn't the best.  We know that now.  And because in hindsight we understand that, we can trust that plan double S wasn't the best either, along with all the plans that went before.

As for plan double U?  I don't even know what that is!  I'm fresh out of plans.  That's probably a good thing.  So we'll just take it "one day at a time".  What an easy thing to say but hard thing to do!  We'll keep trying though.  God, help me to at least have the sense, trust and maturity Tuhlula does!  I don't want to sacrifice "the best" on the altar of "the good".  I need to just keep looking out the window-----expecting, trusting, grateful that I'm not in charge!

Flexibility

Okay, I have to be honest.  For more than two weeks, even as I was getting this blog going, there was a major upheaval in our plans.  Just days before signing a lease, we learned that the owner of the house we wanted/had in Homer changed his mind about the deal.  The house is for sale, but he had told us he would take it off the market for a year.  Suddenly, he changed his mind and was no longer willing to do that.

So how did we feel about driving 6,000 miles to live in a house where we had no idea how long we could stay and while we were there we would have to "show" to potential buyers?   Forget it!!

With that turn of events, we were homeless in Homer.  Now you have to understand, this is not a city, not even a large town.  There are 4500 people there year round and not much in the way of rentals, especially furnished. Well, there are the $300 per night places for short-term vacationers.  Not our scene.    We quickly decided along the way that we had to be willing to rent an unfurnished place and then buy what we needed up there.  That's cool, I thought.  Shopping and I are close friends. 

With many emails and phone calls we finally found another place.  It sounded good and the owner was positive.  It wasn't available until June 15 so we postponed our trip.    For two weeks we were almost certain that we would have this new place.

NOT!

As of today, we are back to square one.  It's easy to be discouraged, easy to feel angry.  Today I've been flitting between  both.  And then I remember that this is testing, testing.  Tests are not fun, but they are necessary.   If a task is "easy", it's not as much fun, and where is the victory?

Of course, I'm preaching to myself, here.

It's still about four hours too early to get on the phone and try, try again.  Making these types of phone calls has always been hard for me.  I would rather have a root canal. This is why secretarial work was never one of my career considerations.  I'm usually relieved when no one answers.  Unfortunately, Nelson feels the same way; so guess who gets to do the calling?   But, hey, do I want to live in AK or not?


So..........one ringy dingy; two ringy dingies.........

Flexibility, a very useful quality!

Crazy or Courageous?

Crazy or courageous?  I'm not sure which adjective describes what we're doing, but I've heard them both.  I have never defined our adventure either way.  It's just something we want to do.

Over the more than 40 years we've been married, we've lived in a couple of unusual places----Guam, Wyoming.  We've always loved to travel and have visited many exotic places in the world.  Family circumstances were such that we were always on our own.  So I guess we developed a kind of pioneering spirit.  If we had been alive during the 1800's, we probably would have ended up on a covered wagon going West.  But as our one daughter reminds us, it's usually the children who leave home, not the parents!

Believe me, I'm not claiming we've always been smart about our adventures.  Years ago we decided to visit India.  Everyone visits Europe, I reasoned.  Let's go some place most people don't see!  We happened to know someone else who had been there.  She gave me a quick tutorial on how to get a guide.

So off we went, landing in New Delhi while the airport was being expanded.  It was quite a site because there was almost no heavy equipment, but  rather thousands of loin-cloth clad men making, pouring, spreading asphalt by hand.  The temperature was 105.

After we took care of all the formalities of passports, fees, baggage claim, we needed to get a guide; so we did what my friend told me to do.  We stood in the middle of the airport and yelled a man's name!  "Anoop, Anoop Singh" we yelled in all directions.

A few tense moments later a small, middle-aged man approached us claiming to be Anoop Singh.  We hired him on the spot.  He took all our luggage and guided us to his car.  We were with him for the next 10 days, completely dependent on him for transportation, food, settling of arguments with locals, paying fees, information, and itinerary!

We were young and stupid, but it worked out great!  God protected us, although  I'm sure He was shaking His head at us!  Our stay in India was amazing.  We got so close to Anoop that he took us to his home to meet his family, and we corresponded with him for awhile after our trip.

We know people who know people in Alaska, but we don't know anyone directly yet.  We have never driven 6,000 miles on one trip.  We know what minus 40 degrees is like, but we don't know what it's like to be in relative darkness for months at a time----or light, for that matter.  We have experienced snow in May, but not feet of it.  We  have never looked out the window of our house to see glaciers.  We have never seen moose or eagles in our yard.  We have never driven a few miles down the road to a stream to catch salmon for dinner that night.

Crazy or courageous?  It's a matter of perspective.  I like the word, "adventurous"!

Dogs and Cats and Kids, Oh My!

We have lived on our house exactly nine years now.  We're in the country with a bit of acreage and awesome vista views, but we're not isolated.  It's a great place for the grandkids----seven of them----to play.  However, our house really isn't "kid proof".  It wasn't built or decorated with kids in mind.  So far this has worked just fine since the kids are in and out.

All that has to change now.    While we're living in AK, four of our grandkids and their parents will live in our central PA house for three months.  Their dad, our son, will be on a Sabbatical.  Their three cousins who live nearby are thrilled.  The two families aren't able to be together much since they live almost 500 miles apart.  I'm thrilled for them.

Then after the four-grandkid-family moves out, my daughter and her husband are moving in for awhile.  They have no children, but they do have three cats.  Our house has always been dog friendly.  We have an adorable boxer/lab mix, Tuhlula, who really owns the place!  Cats?! That's another story.

So you see my predicament.  Going to AK to live for awhile hasn't been just a matter of packing some suitcases and boxes and taking off.  We have almost needed to move out of our house, emptying closets, drawers, shelves, rolling up area rugs of value.  All decorative items are stashed.  Although the kids probably couldn't even reach a lot of things I put away, the cats could!  Sooo I have spent the last two months child-proofing AND cat-proofing.  The house looks empty and bare now.

It's been a lot of work, but a labor of love.  I appreciate that our house won't be empty the whole time we're away.  I appreciate the fact that I have four children who are excited for us and willing to take care of things here while we're there.  As a mom I really appreciate that my children want to spend time together and go out of their way to enable the next generation to get to know each other better.

The one thing that's hard, though, is that I won't be able to enjoy all the cousins and their parents here together for an extended time.  I dare not complain!

Where Are We Going, Anyhow?

Where are we going anyhow?  Surprisingly, many people thought we were moving to Arkansas!  With all due respect to that great state, if we were moving there, MY big question would be, "Why?"  And so, a lesson on abbreviations-------------AK is Alaska and AR is Arkansas.

I can only imagine that people who thought we were going to AR were surprised to think of grizzlies, eagles, whales, moose, salmon, and halibut  inhabiting that state!  On the other hand, most people have wondered at our penchant for cold.  At least AR is warm.  To them it makes no sense to move to a COLD place; so we must be going to AR.

I can't explain it, folks.  I can only run with it.  I hate being hot.  I love snow, watching wild life, fishing, and I really love mountains.  All of that is abundant in AK.  Right now there's still two feet of snow on the ground in Homer.  A caveat, though, is that it's light until around 9:30 P.M.  I'm not sure when spring arrives, but I suspect sometime toward the end of May.  Then approximately a week later, it's summer!

A short summer doesn't seem to dampen outdoor activities.  Last week a local golf course opened.  Yep, they play golf up there.  This year, according to The Anchorage Daily News, all 18 holes were available on opening day, something unusual.  Pictures of several golfers wearing winter parkas, hats, gloves teeing off with mounds of snow in the background accompanied the story.  This is definitely a place for thinking outside the box  I love that.

The warmth of AR?  No thanks!  We'll take the majestic mountains, the aurora, exciting wild life, tremendous fishing, laid-back life style, and excitement of driving down rutted pathways disguised as roads......... in AK!

Forgive My Naivete

"Forgive my naivete, but the house looks so.....well.....normal!"  A puzzled comment from a dear friend looking at a picture of the rental house my husband and I will be occupying soon in Homer, Alaska.  She's right.  It is "normal".  No blocks of ice put together in a domed structure low to the ground.  No pelts hanging off poles.  No antlers festooning the walls.  No sod on top with grass growing out of it.  No stilts, branches, rocks, mud, or underground parts.  Just a "normal," modern, A-frame log house waiting for new tenants.

Nelson and I are fortunate enough to be those tenants.  But first we have to GET there!  Not an easy task.  From our current home in central PA, it's a 6,000 mile trip-----give or take a few miles.  We are planning to drive 5 of those 6 thousand miles very soon.   Sooo the plan is drive 2,700 miles to Seattle; hang a sharp right and drive 1,500 miles to Prince Rupert, British Columbia; hop a ferry and proceed 1,000 miles Haines, AK where we disembark and drive yet another 1,000 miles to Homer.  Our route is pretty much non-negotiable since other route involve crossing mountains in Canada where the passes will still be snowed in.  After all,  it will only be May when we leave!

The standard reaction when we tell people our plan is similar to being blown back by a blast of wind when  opening a door during a blizzard------eyes pop, mouths fly open, and invariably the first question is, "Why?"

The short answer is when we visited there about six years ago we fell in love with the grandeur of the place and wanted to return for a length of time to get to know it and experience life there.  The long answer will, hopefully, emerge through our lives and attitudes and yes, even this blog.