of synch. of time. of love. of perceived hate. of lust. of excitement. of motivation. of ambiguity. of clarity. of want. of anything.
Confession: Hello, my name is Rikki and I'm an addict of procrastination and anxiety, I've been clean now for... about 13 hours, thank you.
I'm sure many of you in the U.S. are buried in snow and "fighting" snow dumps of multiple feet and having major traffic issues caused by white out conditions and unusually icy roads and having to plough through snow berms to make it over intersections and negative degree weather. I'm sorry - I'm sure that really sucks for you guys. I'm on the other side of this story - I live in Alaska and it has been above freezing for most of the winter. Yay! some of you may say, wishing you had your norm. Well, I do, too. Without the beautiful refracting light shows cause by headlights driving through piles of snow or street lights paving glittery snow-packed paths throughout the city/muni/area, the numbness of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) seems to be able to hold on to the minor sadness that comes with the longer nights and shorter days. I don't normally have a big problem with it; but this year, it has become a iron fist clenching my normal winter love & solace hostage.
As, hopefully, many of you already know, Alaska is home to many a literal dark days during the winter. Thankfully I'm in Anchorage, where we only get down to a little under 8 hours of daylight at the peak of the dark season. Nome only gets like 4 hours. Anyway, one of the things, for me, that makes winter so bearable during these times is the wonderful beauties of the winter wonderland that are all mine (and that I kinda share with the almost 740,000 other people in the state). Everything is always covered in glitter, like sometimes the clouds get bored with the necessary rain / sun routine and just decide to have a play day spreading glitter all over us. It may be a little chilly, but that chilly brings super cute snow clothes, awesome hats, and it being fully appropriate to come in sweaty, covered in mostly melted snow after an amazing snowball fight or sledding/snowboarding/hockey sesh. And, I have to admit, I really like shoveling the driveway. Not always, of course, and it's a little lame when there's ice involved, but it's a damned good workout and is rather meditative.
In Anchorage, we've had a whopping 2, maybe 3 major snowfalls. The rest of it has been horrible rain and above freezing temperatures during the day, then below freezing temps at night for days on end - yes, there's a LOT of ice. And everything is covered in this dirty/sandy ice that's dingy and grey; not helping either are the ominous overcast skies threatening more rain. It's been incredibly depressing. I used to want to live in Juneau (where this is a little closer to their norm), but any thoughts of that have been fully abolished from my brain.
I have been trying to search for the positives though - trying for grace under fire or something. At least with our 50ºF weather in January (WTF?!), it did provide a clear, almost "summery" drive out to the Valley (about 1 hr drive) last week when I went out for a job interview :)
The lack of snow cover is creating a whole underground network for them little rodents, too! We've never had a mouse problem; Monkey, our cat, has never caught a mouse. This really freaking sucks, but Monkey, thankfully, is quickly becoming a rather adept mouse slayer. Other downside though is that now he's leaving us "presents". Good kitty.
And we shouldn't lose ALL of the plants overwintering. One unexpected thing during this wild winter of ours - thanks to a moose (a real one, not the Moose as in the kid) who hopped our fence and went browsing around before finally being scared out of the gate, both peach trees had most of their buds grazed. Yobo found that one had a branch with surviving buds & brought it inside - we now have a blossoming peach tree in our living room! And the magnificent thing is fruiting! Who knows if it'll be tasty, but it sure is pretty and we can still say we fruited a peach indoors in Anchorage, AK :)
