In which I offer 10 not very practical tips for surviving a move (Just Write)

From a twilight run in Jasper, where I found my happy place / pace.

I know I said I'd be back with the rest of the story from Jasper onward, but that was before All The Things came, before my tail spin into a bottomless dish pack.

And just to be clear, dear Pedro--weakest link on the packing team--the box labeled "boys bedding" was actually a bunch of pictures and frames and old towels. That made me super mad, and I wanted to hit you on the head with the frying pan I couldn't find for two days. But don't take it personally. I've wanted to hit a lot of things with a frying pan lately.

On the bright side, I do have a chair now. Time to sit, however, not so much...

::

Yesterday, C had a melt down about not wanting to play the piano and about how no one loves him anymore, apparently because we were making him play the piano. This is quite atypical for my normally even-keeled boy. (The dramatics are his sister's bailey wick.)

So I told him to put on his shoes and follow me. As we ran around the block in the rain, I relayed the story about how earlier this week, I got so angry and frustrated and discouraged that I hid in the closet and cried and thought bad words and wanted to stomp holes through the floor.

"You did?" He looked up at me with surprise, like it was a relief not to be the only crazy one in the family.

"Yeah, I was a mess, Buddy. Daddy heard me and told me to forget about the boxes all over the floor and just go for a run. He was right about the run. It helped a lot. I cleared my head and prayed and thought about the good and beautiful things, like the cool weather and the fireweed and the mountains in our new backyard."

I squeezed his shoulder as we walked up the driveway. "So, did the run help a little bit?"

'Yeah, a little bit, I guess," he shrugged.

I rumbled his hair and moved his face toward me by the top of his rain-soaked little head. "Everything is harder right now, even the things that used to feel simple--like playing your easiest book on the piano. But it'll get easier, I promise."

"And Buddy?
You know I love you, right?"

He kicked off his shoes and cast me a sideways glance. "Yeah. I know."

::

You'll never see a post here touting 10 easy tips for surviving a military move. I seriously have no helpful advice on how to keep Pedro from mislabeling the bedding boxes. But if I had to give some tips, like if for instance someone held a packing tape dispenser to my head and said "MOVING TIPS! NOW! GO! That is, if you don't want this tape pulling every last red hair on your head...."

Then these would be my tips:
1) Blow off piano practice or unpacking or whatever it is that's making you crazy.
2) Then go for a run.
3) Find someone you love and
4) Give them a big sweaty hug.
5) Do the ugly cry together.
6) Say out loud just how discouraged you feel.
7) Then give voice to how blessed you are. (Reminder. Not being able to find your frying pan because you have too many boxes = first world problem.)
8) Write until you feel human again.
9) Go for another run. Give another big sweaty hug. Maybe take a shower too, if you can find the towels.
10) And when you finally find the frying pan, just put it away. Just put it away, and nobody gets hurt.

If these tips seem lame, keep in mind, I was under hypothetical duress when I came up with them. Also? I was just writing. I feel a million times better when I do that.

On taking the plunge

When you decide you are to have an adventure, when you're tired of feeling boxed in by the same old grow-up-and-stay-put life, this is what you do. You find a place on the cliff where the water below is deep, deep, deep. (Maybe nudge a friend to go first.) Then you fix your eyes on the far out spot in the sky, perhaps on the cloud that looks like Mary Poppins' umbrella. Then you back up, give yourself room for a running start. Then you run, leap, jump feet first, plug your nose, point your toes, scream to high heaven.

You can do it any number of ways. The key is to stop deliberating on the edge. The key is to jump.

We jumped, and I'm not a bit sorry. But there are still spots where I'm raw, where it stings to the touch. There are times, like on a Sunday afternoon, when I sit without a chair, trying to figure out how to undo the Amazon order that shipped 4000 miles in the wrong direction, times when I want for everything not to feel like such an effort, when I'd like to trade all this adventure crap for a nice long nap on a real mattress.

We've hit some snags and hurdles. It will all be okay, and there will come a time when I don't feel overwhelmed and alone. But it's going to take a good deal of swimming toward the shore and a healthy dose of metaphoric aloe vera.

::

There's a reason they call it Big Sky Country. Can you guess?

As for the actual journey to Alaska (the part of the jump where we flail our arms and make the crazy flared-nostrils face), I believe I left off somewhere around Yellowstone, yes?

Well, the following day we drove parallel to the ever gorgeous Glacier National Park before crossing into Canada. Thankfully my son waited to sing his improvised lyrics to Oh Canada until after the border agent let us pass.

We stopped in Calgary that night, staying at the hotel with the much anticipated "spinny slide" and pool.  Here's the honest truth. When you're a kid, hotel pools are the most awesome thing ever of all time in the history of the universe. And then here's the other honest truth--that when you're a grown-up, you just freakin' want to go to sleep. Of course, when you're a grown up, you tend to concern yourself more with putting smiles on your children's face than with your own need for slumber. So we swam until way past bedtime.

Pictured above: My favorite part of the leg from Montana to Calgary. Not pictured: The kids favorite part, aka the pool

We left Calgary the next morning with high hopes for another low mileage day, planning to take our time driving from Banff to Jasper on the Icefields Parkway, a 280 kilometer trip touted as one of the world's most scenic drives.

I had already prepped the kids that there would be no screen time allowed on this particular leg of the journey, only gawking at glaciers and oohing/ahhing at the mountain views. But then it rained, poured really, almost the whole way to Jasper. The mountains and glaciers hid behind the fog and clouds, and every which way you looked? That's right, gray.

There was quite a bit more whining and ingratitude than I'm going to admit to on the interwebs (and the kids were a little ungrateful as well), but I stuck to my guns on the no-screen time decree. Instead, we began listening to the Anne of Green Gables audiobook while I craned my neck trying to catch a glimpse of something beautiful.

I had almost resigned myself to the "depths of despair" and declared our day "a perfect graveyard of buried hopes" when the rain finally began to subside. Then the sun threw a few darts into the clouds, and bam, bullseye. We had our view.

Oh, Marilla, I couldn't even imagine a place so glorious, could you?

Stopped for construction, the rearview mirror view, leaving the rain behind.

I've rambled well beyond what a reasonable person would want to read, so I'll save our stories and pictures of Jasper for the next post. 

But can we go back to the jumping just for a minute? When I started to write this (about 500 hours ago), I was weary and melancholy and dreading the unpacking of All The Things, not feeling nearly strong enough to navigate the 4000 mile leap we just made. But writing here, the words become strokes that get me back to shore. They take me back to the solid ground where I can look up at the cliff, now bending small against the sky, and to be ever so glad that I took the plunge.

Moats and boats and waterfalls (and geysers)

My dog still hasn't forgiven me for not letting her loose to frolic in Yellowstone Lake. She's not usually a puller, but man, had it not been for the massive amount of arm strength I've built up by stress-shoveling chocolate peanut butter ice cream into my pie hole, we might've both ended up going for a swim.


So yes, we made it to Yellowstone. We weren't able to find lodging nearby, so we just made it a short driving day and detoured our way through the beautiful national park. Our one and only must see stop was of course, Old Faithful. It was horribly crowded when we arrived, not a parking spot in sight. So we drove around the lot for another 20 minutes, doing wonders for both our bladders and blood pressure. After finally scoring a spot (ok, I confess, we created a spot), we rushed to the restrooms and then off toward the geyser to find out when this show of natural wonder would start.

Oh, it erupted five minutes ago, you say? While we were in the bathroom? Ok, no problem, so when's the next one? An hour and a half to two hours?? Gaaaah!

So we did the next best thing. We took a picture by the sign.

Watching the geyser not going off. Anti-climatic much?

When we finally made it to our hotel that evening, we were tired and crazy hungry. I found a restaurant on TripAdvisor that had great reviews and touted a kid-friendly menu. But upon arriving, we discovered that the restaurant was decidedly more "fancy" than we'd anticipated, not a crayon or kids' menu in sight.
L and I were craving a decent meal with recognizable vegetables and fish or beef that didn't make you wish you were a vegetarian. So we took the plunge and prayed the other patrons would be long suffering should our children choose to act their age.

I know it sounds lame, but this random meal in Butte, Montana turned out to be one of my most favorite memories from the trip. The kids ordered "fancy meals" from the grown up menu (chicken with artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes, salads, linguine, etc), drank lemonade from delicate glasses, and made delightful conversation. They rose to the occasion. That is, until I made them pose for a picture to prove how refined they were. Then they were all quick, pick up your spoon and start goofing off!

::

As I try to recall the details of the trip, so many of the moments I remember are the small ones. Like when I looked in the rear view mirror and C was wearing his bike helmet and creating facial hair out of post-it notes. Or the time I camped out in the laundry room at the Best Western until midnight to ensure we would all have 2,500 more miles worth of clean underwear.

There is little glamor to be found in driving two cars across two expansive countries with two young children and an old dog. I still cringe when I recall the packing and unpacking of suitcases each night, the loading and unloading the cars each day, the often fruitless pursuit of decent coffee each morning. But still I smile when I recall the way the horizon rose and fell on the back roads of Montana, when I remember the sound of D's voice as she tried to sing every word to our traveling song, the one we played every morning to begin our drive. 

Moats and boats and waterfalls, alley ways and pay phone calls,
I've been everywhere with you (that's true.)...
Home, let me come home
Home is wherever I'm with you.

Even now, when we get in the car, they say, almost out of habit, "Hey mom, can you please tell Siri to play Home by Edward Sharpe?" And now, even when the music is off, I hear Siri's robo-voice saying, "Looking for Home....Ok, Jo, here's Home."

Once upon a time, in a small town in South Dakota

We spent the 4th of July at Mount Rushmore. It's all well and good for an impressive Facebook status, but to be honest, the park wasn't our favorite. There was no going off the paved and commercialized trail--not even a little bit. (It seemed like every other stone on the path was "sponsored" by one "freedom patron" or another.)

While it poured rain, we watched a film that emphasized the featured presidents' commitment to individual liberties. The irony wasn't lost on my eight year old. "Sooo, we're celebrating freedom, but they don't give us any freedom and make us stay on the same little trail the whole time?"

Still, I'm glad we made the stop. The mountain is a colossal work of art, and it was amazing to learn about the craftsmen and master artist behind it. And you know, the whole patriotic Facebook check-in thing doesn't hurt either. 

Photo credit: The 8 year old

An old filling station in Lead

We were planning to go back to Rushmore that night for fireworks, but they had stopped doing a fireworks display in 2012. (Our timing was impeccable.) So we headed to the small mining town of Lead in search of food and fireworks.

The town was quaint and inviting, yet rough around the edges, with a vintage toughness and tenacity to it. We made friends with some biker chicks in the line for lemonade, and then settled in for the fireworks.

My favorite part of the 4th of July would've been the same whether we'd laid out a blanket on a grassy patch in an Ohio parking lot or stood on a pier in Maine or fought through the crowds at the national mall in DC. It was when, in a small town in South Dakota, my kids leaned in (one on my lap, one under my arm), looked up, and marveled at what they'd later describe--before dozing crooked-necked in their car seats--as the "best fireworks ever."

North to Alaska, the Rush is On

I'm not gonna lie. I wished some moments of my life away. The South Dakota moments, to be exact. Someone please tell me how Pa and Ma Ingalls didn't fall apart entirely on their way to Dakota Territory, because I'm pretty sure the covered wagons didn't come equipped with DVD players.

Pretending to be pioneers for about 5 minutes before resuming the begging for more screen time

Fording the Mississippi

After crossing the Mississippi, our first notable stop was the Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. The signs for Wall Drug line the highways for at least 200 miles. These also happen to be just about the only signs you see for hours, which of course creates a desire to stop and see what all the fuss is about. So we stopped, along with the whole realm of humanity traveling on 1-90.

We hurried out of the 93 degree parking (baking) lot and into the AC. Who cares what time it is or whether we've had a proper meal all day, it's time for root beer floats!

The kids stopped to listen to the mechanical cowboy band sing "North to Alaska, the rush is on", and I felt a surge within my spirit.  

We're doing this. We're really doing this. We're moving to Alaska.

North to Alaska, the rush is on

This is the first post of  my feeble attempt to chronicle our two week journey from Ohio to Alaska. Much more to come. Also? I still don't have a chair. All hope for comfortable seating is still 8 days out, currently floating somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska. Now that we've been without our belongings for over a month, I can say that minimalism certainly has its advantages. It's just that the general enjoyment of sitting for any length of time isn't one of them.

Family selfie. After we'd finally made it to Rapid City, near Mount Rushmore

We're home

I wrote a hundred pages in my head on the 12 day, 4600 mile, 83 hour drive. I blinked in a thousand images, willing my eyes to remember the way the lakes glistened below the glaciated mountains, the way the clouds and sun painted every shade of green and purple shadows on the hillsides.

This might explain why my head feels on the verge of exploding. I wish I could stick an SD card in my ear and just hit "download." But really, everyone knows you're not supposed to stick stuff in your ear. So there goes that idea.

We made it home. That's the first thing, the most exciting thing, and probably what I should have led with. We beat our belongings here (by what will likely be three weeks), and so we eat our cobbled together meals sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the kitchen tile. Even without a single piece of furniture, this house is a hundred times more pleasant to me than the cramped and restless hotel living of the past two weeks. I love it here. I love the house. I love the neighborhood. I love the trails around the corner. (I'm told the bears love the trails too, but more on that later.)

I haven't been able to write or to run very much for the past few months. I'd love to get back to doing both, as I feel enormously out of shape. My form and rhythm feel awkward, and what once felt effortless now feels forced. But I'm going to force it, the writing especially. However, before I begin writing hours upon hours in the land of the midnight sun, it might be best I have a chair first. (Sitting criss-cross-applesauce isn't my favorite.)

I'll be back soon with more pictures of the journey and maybe some commentary. In the meantime, I just wanted to tell you all that we made it. We're here. We're home.