Alaskanmama

We were supposed to be camping this weekend. Right now I was supposed to be waking up out of my cozy nice sleeping bag and cooking breakfast in the great outdoors. But instead I’m sitting here in my pjs at my computer with half of my stuff still in the car. Including breakfast.

We were beyond laid back in our planning. So much so that as we pulled up to the Seward Highway we debated on which way to turn. Two days earlier we had decided to head North to Paxson lake, but that plan fell through so we rolled with it and decided to head South. We soon found the challenges with that plan when we realized that meant Mt. Marathon and rain. So we decided that Talkeetna sounded lovely. A small town parade and Saturday morning vendors. We were stoked.

We arrived in Talkeetna to find that there were only a few campsites remaining. The secluded ones were grown over with weeds, looked incredibly buggy and wouldn’t have room for our giant tent. The only other option was “overflow” camping in a large parking lot with a bunch of other campers. That’s not an option for us and the kids. So we turned back down the highway and tried the following: Montana Creek, Susitna Boat launch, Willow Creek, Nancy Lake and South Rolly Lake. They all had the exact same situation.

What’s awesome is that we spent 7 hours in the car yesterday after packing for 3, and we still had a great time. So we’re here, but we’re not. We’ll be going to the parade and hitting the parkstrip and then coming home to make smores and grill some hot dogs. Oh, and drink the beer that was scheduled to be consumed this weekend.

I hope everyone has a fantastic and fun weekend!

1. Make sure that you have a red eye flight, then pump them full of junk food. ie. hot dogs, fruit snacks and granola bars.

2. When it comes time to sleep during the red eye, make sure you’ve booked the fullest most uncomfortable flight and that your child develops a pressure induced earache.

3. After waking up at 6:20 AM (realizing that 6:20 is realy 2:20 AM back at home which is where your child’s biological clock is still running) you get on a shuttle and head to the happiest place on earth where your hotel room isn’t ready and won’t be ready most of the day. Oh, and your husband, the father of the exhausted-meltdown-waiting-to-happen still hasn’t left the neighboring state on his flight to your destination.

4. Three hours of “waiting” later your husband gets there and optimistically has you leave the comfort of the hotel lobby, grumbling in all of your stench, to the resort for lunch. You notice your child is in a daze, but chalk it up to the heat. Only to discover minutes later that she has fallen asleep at the restaurant table and has to be laid down on chairs to nap.

5. You do your best to not drop her or pull your back out as you carry your rag doll all the way back through the 90 degree heat to the shuttle station where you go back to the hotel that you left and hour earlier to find your hotel room ready and waiting.

You have my permission to change up the routine, but I guarantee it will work and work very well.

Life is a huge gigantic starship (ode to Hubby) that just keep barreling along regardless of my need to blog (or shower). So here I sit in the Portland Airport, during a layover on my way to…well, it’s a secret. I’ll fill you in later.

Anyhoo, I’m sitting here killing time. Boog is doing a much better job at this time killing thing than I am. She’s quietly coloring in her princess coloring book, perfectly content because she’s prepared for our final destination.

Patience padawon.

She’s been fantastically good and very entertaining. When we told her where we were going (we waited until this morning to tell her we were going ANYWHERE) we got a less than lackluster response. We even recorded it and were slightly disappointed. She was more excited about there being a pool than about the surrounding festivities. So we trudged along, packing what remained and slowly seeing her realize the fun that was to come.

Figured it out yet? We’re going to DISNEYWORLD! WOOT!

Hubby’s boss has been my favorite person as of recent because she gave hubby a raise an sent us to Disney (for a conference, but still!). Granted, he’ll have to attend some conference activities but we’ll still have SO MUCH FUN. Can you tell I’m excited?

I’m also exhausted. Eating crappy food and hauling enough junk to keep a four year old entertained can take a lot out of you. I hope I get sleep on our connecting flight to Orlando.

Oh and since I’m rambling with no real purpose, here’s a cool tidbit from our layover here at PDX. We just saw my Dad! Opa was leaving Portland to go back home to Alaska and we just happened to be in the airport at the same time. It was great for Boog to be able to tell her Opa all about the trip she going on and her new pink backpack. It’s awesome. Did I mention it was pink?

See you when I get new ears! and maybe a tan!

F-ing facebook! I could scream right now. It’s only been a week since I officially started facebooking (it’s a verb right?) and all I want to do is beat my own score on Wordtwist then pulverize all of my “friends” so that I don’t look totally stupid. Although apparently I AM!

I miss the dumbest words, like ‘all’ and ‘ray’. THREE LETTER WORDS! And the problem is that because I can’t beat my friends I’m even more obsesse than I normally would be. Hubby is going to have to convince me to start knitting again because right now knitting is the last thing on my mind.

GAH!

Friday I had to take both of the kids to get their blood drawn. I was a little nervous, but not so much that I let them know it. I really didn’t want to the fear to freak them out so much that it got dramatic. Hubby told me not to let Boog watch it happening.

At first I was confused. “What’s going to happen if she watches?”

“It just makes it worse.” he replied from firsthand knowledge.

Well, I wasn’t about to announce to my four year old NOT to watch the blood being sucked out of her arm through a hose. I’m sure that little announcement would go over really well. “MOMMY! They’re going to KILL ME!” and on and on. Oh lordy that would be fun.

So I played pretend that it was going to be “neat” and she was going to be “so brave” when they put her up into the chair.

When they stuck the needle in her arm though she panicked a little. She looked freaked out but was stuck until they were done. It wasn’t until about a minute after the needle came out though that the fun started.

It started with her face turning a little white and her telling me she wanted to go home. (Not a good sign since she never ever wants to go home) I realized she was about to hurl, so we hung her head over a trash can and waited. 3 minutes later she still hadn’t puked, so crisis averted we sat her up and gave her a sip of water. 30 second later up came her pb&j.

And here we are, yet again with a first in a medical facility. The last first we had was the first 2 year old to hold completely still during a CT scan. I have such a special child.

I’ve been wanting to knit a sweater for awhile now and have really wanted to knit one for the kids, but I every time I go to the yarn store I’m floored by the cost of yarn for a sweater that I’m pretty sure will be destroyed. Then the other day while strolling through the craft store the other day I discovered a clearance bin of not totally awful yarn. At only $2 a skein I couldn’t walk by without swiping a LOT of it. Enough for two or four sweaters. I immediately came home and cast on for a sweater for Junior.

I pushed through and finished it in record time, only to discover it’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be. AND that the yarn doesn’t lay down very well, making Junior’s sweater just a little bit ill fitting in style and size. But whatever…I KNIT A SWEATER! WOOT!

I was not known as miss popularity in junior high or high school (or preschool for that matter). I’m not sure if I was a nerd, a geek, or whatever. I just wasn’t cool and certain kids loved to bring me down. But when I was 13 I got a gift that gave a slight reprieve to the battering.

Next to my hypercolor shirt the jacket my aunt sent me was my favorite piece of clothing. I wore it as often as I could. It was almost like a shield to the making fun of. The shirt was cool enough that kids that wanted to make fun of me couldn’t because they actually liked the jacket. However that coolness didn’t last forever. Most fashion doesn’t (although I still don’t get that).

So here it is, pulled out of a box in storage in all it’s mothball smelling glory.

I’m currently fantasizing about my neighbor’s saline nasal wash. It’s a beautiful sexy can of booger washing goodness that I could seriously use right now. This cold is hanging onto my very soul. In fact I’ve actually tried to talk myself out of the cold and into being healthy for three days, but it’s not working. It’s just been too strong. (It’s even stronger than the nyquil, ibuprofen, tylenol, sudafed, essential oils, warming socks, and emergen-c)

It knows that I have things to do. Places to go. People to help. It knows that I’m overwhelmed by all of this and decided to take over so that I couldn’t do any of it. Instead of doing it all I could just let it sit in my living room, taking over any clean space I might have had by now. I literally have so much crap everywhere right now that you have to step over it to get into the kitchen and into the house alltogether. It’s all supposed to be at my parent’s house getting sold at their yard sale instead.

My parent’s yard sale is kind of a big deal and although they need help I’m sure they’ve got it all under control. It’s a big deal because it’s my childhood home and they’re leaving it. Maybe this cold is stopping me from some hysterical grief motivated breakdown. Stopping me from going over every little piece of childhood nostalgia that would bring me to tears and only make it harder for my folks to leave.

I still want that nasal spray.

It’s just after 5 am, but don’t let that early time fool ya. I’ve been up much longer. Technically I’ve been “up” since 3, but at 2 I was woken up by both children taking turns crying. Then a poopy diaper, then a nose and throat that won’t stop hurting my ears. So I gave up. I give up. Sleep and I are not going to be dancing right now.

But good news - I’ve gotten all sorts of knitting done! I mean, when you can’t sleep because your nose or ears might explode what else are you going to do? KNIT!

I’m almost done with mrtl’s goodbye socks. Yes, she’s already gone, but I couldn’t give her the socks when one of them didn’t actually have a heel. I just blew right past it and forgot to put it in. That would be awfully uncomfortable. So with one sock done and the other with a heel I’ve only got the remainder of the foot to do!

So last night I took the kids with me to a craft store and saw a bin with clearance yarn in it and thought, “THIS is what I need!”. That’s not normally my first thought when I see a big bin of cheap acrylic yarn, but I really want to make the kids some sweaters and I just can’t justify the large expense for really wool when it might be thrown in the wash. So I’m starting with crappy, but cute colored yarns and hopefully they will turn out.

Back to my insomniac knitting frenzy! (the alarm clock will go off soon)

I’m a habitual cart filler. I love to go to an online store and pick out the things that I want and pretend that I’m actually buying them. I’ll go back and fill my cart 5 or 6 times when I’m feeling especially needy. It’s a dangerous game because I’m not really pretending to buy things, I’m talking myself out of them.

My favorite is Victoria’s Secret. I always think that I NEED that $50 bra and $30 matching panty (like I’m the type of girl who ever matches) and that I’ve got to have a new swimsuit, and a nighty and a new set of comfy pajamas and on and on. Sometimes I get far enough to put my credit card number in and then I stop.

I just did this same act with some yarn. Yarn is tough because it’s a textile. And on the internet you can’t touch it or roll around in it as I sometimes do. But I’ve got this itch to spin and dye my own yarn and I know I have to start small, so just five minutes ago I had an entire dyeing kit in the shopping cart and I was ready to check out. Then I thought about when I would actually have the time to do it and where in the heck am I going to dry it out?

The good thing about VS and going beyond just entering the credit card and hitting the “submit” button is that I wear my bras out to nothingness and only own 2 right now. (not counting my recently retired nursing bras) So I think underwear is probably excused. Maybe not the ridiculously overpriced and uncomfortable bras, but the nice comfy cotton line that I love so much.
Ooohh…time to go shopping.