Whale Watching

When we planned our Alaskan excursions, we were limited by a number of factors.  For example, most of the fishing trips required you to be ten years old and David had just turned nine.  As you may have guessed, many of the activities involved communing with nature in the great Alaskan outdoors.  Unfortunately, Juliana hates to be cold.  Or hungry.  Or having to exert herself.  In Juneau, however, we found one fishing expedition that had no age limit.  There was no question of taking Juliana; the last thing anybody wanted was to be stuck on a small boat with her crying, seasick self.  It was understood that Ritu would go with David while I did something with her.  I immediately looked at the whale watch options.  The first time I ever went on a whale watch must have been nearly 20 years ago.  We were staying in Cape Cod and took a day trip to Provincetown.  Since then, I've  gone whale watching in Florida and Hawaii.   Alaska offered multiple whale watches in every single port.  When I came across one that used terms like "cruising in warm comfort" and "complimentary snacks and warm beverages" I knew we'd struck gold. 

The day we arrived in Juneau, we disembarked the cruise ship and went our separate ways.  Ritu's parents came along on the whale watch with us.  The day was cold, foggy overcast, and gray but the cabin of the boat was indeed warm and comfortable.   And there were chips!  And Milanos!  And hot chocolate!  Juliana was appeased.  The boat even provided a number of sets of binoculars for passenger use.  I, the seasoned whale watcher, had of course brought my own.  

I was concerned about the weather.  Visibility was somewhat limited and although the cruise promised a refund if no whales were spotted, I wanted to see whales, dammit.  The naturalist who guided the tour explained that the overcast day  made for good whale watching.  If you've ever gone whale watching before, you know that what you're looking for is almost no more than a glimpse:  the ridge of a black back curving out of the water, the misty spout of air coming from a blowhole, and occasionally, if you're lucky, the flip of a tail breaking the surface.  With the sky and sea both gun metal gray, the contrast of slick black whale against the soft background would actually heighten our ability to find them.


It wasn't long before we saw our first whales.  Juliana could see from where we were sitting.  She was mildly interested in the whales, but moreso in the snacks. 

With grandma and grandpa on board to keep Juliana happy (and stuffed with Milanos) I was free to venture up to the open deck.  Despite the cold, I was perfectly warm and dry in my new fleece and jacket.  I had my binoculars, but the whales were so close that I didn't need them.  The air was heavy with water, but not quite raining.  I didn't realize how wet the air was until I went to wipe my face and my hand slid across my cheek.  My face was entirely beaded with moisture and I'd never even felt it.

The boat approached a group (pod?) of maybe three humpbacks and we watched as their backs broke the surface again and again.  Every few minutes you would see their tails flip out of the water, signifying a deeper dive. 

Then came the fun of trying to see where they would re-appear.  This is my favorite part of whale watching.   The engines are quiet and everyone on the boat stands silently, scanning the water for that first hint of the surfacing whales.  It's like standing in a grand cathedral or a cavernous museum, overwhelmed by the solemnity and beauty.  When you see the whale spout--and the mist hangs silver in the air--it shouldn't be that much different than the air and sea, but it is.  You can't help but make a small noise of astonishment each time.  You point and say "there".  People softly ooh and ahh, as if watching fireworks.  We were close enough to hear the sounds of the whales spouting.  It made a loud whoosh, almost something like an elephant would make with its trunk.  I'd never been close enough to hear that before.  To hear a whale. 

After awhile, the whales moved on and so did our boat.  As we headed back towards land, our guide began to get excited.  It turned out that we had come across some whales who were bubble net fishing.  This is a kind of co-operative feeding in which a number of whales, sometimes up to a dozen, dive together and swim in a tight circle around a school of fish, all the while blowing out air to make a bubble barrier which visually confuses and contains the fish.  At the cue of the leader, they swim upward with their mouths wide open gulping down vast amounts of herring or krill.



My brother in law went on a whale watch during another shore day.  He came back unimpressed, asking why people even do that.  I tried my best to explain what it meant to me.  I am not a religious person, but the closest I get is through nature.  I think it has to do with stepping out from my everyday life and realizing that I am a part of something bigger.  To realize that we share the earth with these giant creatures.   To realize that there is an entire world hidden beneath the sea and the only time it touches our own is in these brief interludes of surfacing whales. 

Observations on Moving

1.  Verizon SUCKS.  I am not a big cell phone person.  I have one and I use it for two main purposes: driving assistance and child safety.  I like to have it when I drive because I invariably get lost which leads to panic and hyperventilation, neither of which are conducive to finding my way.  Also, I am the world's worst driver and it's quite possible that I will hit things and need assistance.  Secondly, I have my cell phone so that if my children are not with me, I can always be contacted for the inevitable emergency.  Thus far, we have had no emergencies and I attribute that to the fact that I am always within cell phone contact.  The day I leave my phone at home and drop my kids off at school is the day a meteor will wipe out my town.   (Believe me, it's exhausting to keep the earth safe.)  I don't give my cell phone number out, except to schools and a few close friends who may be caring for my children.  And really, let's face it, do you want me to be trying to drive and talk on my phone at the same time?  Not good.  Like, the Perfect Storm of bad ideas right there. 

But when we put the house on the market, it became necessary for me to circulate my cell phone number so that realtors could call and make appointments to show the house.  This meant that my phone became my lifeline.  Any time I was out, I had to call and check my home messages obsessively because occasionally a realtor would call that number, but not the cell.  Usually, they would call my cell directly and that's when I realized that I had the world's worst cell phone service.   My calls would drop or static out if I did unreasonable things such as stand indoors while using my phone.  Also, it turns out that my friend Jimmy's house, which became a second home base for my family this summer, is the swirling vortex of cell phone signal hell.  Not only would my phone not work inside the house, it wouldn't work outside either.  However, there was great entertainment value in watching me prance about onto various levels in the backyard trying to get a steady signal.    Oh, and one last example.  While on the cruise, Ritu's and my cell phones were nothing more than paperweights.  But there was our friend Kenny standing on the ship in the fucking middle of the Pacific Ocean downloading baseball scores with his Cingular phone.  Can you hear me NOW, Verizon assholes?

2.  House-arexia.  Before we put the house on the market, I went through and removed all kinds of personal items like family photos, trophies, and all the crap that covers the fridge.  I took things to Goodwill and rented a storage unit.  I had beautiful clear, clutter-free surfaces and just a minimum of decorative items.  My mother used words like "spartan" and "sterile" when she came to my house.  After awhile, I noticed that I wasn't satisfied.  Everywhere I looked, I saw things.  Things that needed to disappear.  Things that were distracting potential buyers.  My God, I'd left a set of candlesticks on the mantle.  What was I thinking?  No wonder nobody wanted to make an offer on my horrible pigsty of a house!  And I had to stop cooking a whole variety of things because they would make the house smell.  Like cauliflower, salmon, and bacon.  Stricken from the list, I tell you!  Not worth it!  My mother as much as told me I was insane.  "You have to live here", she'd say.  "People looking at the house know you are living here."  Foolish woman.  She obviously didn't get it.  I"d look for more things to hide.  Once the move came around, I was faced with a whole new problem.  I was so tired of keeping the house perfect, but I'd heard that trying to sell an empty house was the kiss of death.  I contemplated having us sleep on the floor at the new house so we could keep the old house perfectly staged with our furniture.  I was crazy.  Agitated all the time and not sleeping.  A joy to behold.  I've never had an eating disorder, but I started to understand how those kinds of thoughts can insidiously take over your mind. 

3.  Hummingbirds Can Be Pissy.  I suck at gardening.  I don't mind weeding because that's a nice satisfying task with visible results, but the ongoing nurturing of plants eludes me.  I have one indoor plant, a ficus tree, which we got as a housewarming present 15 years ago.  We've moved that sucker from New Orleans, to Pittsburgh, to North Carolina, and here to Oregon successfully.  One reason is that I've trained it to need water only every 6 weeks or so.  I'll get all enthusiastic at the beginning of each summer and put in a bunch of flowers, but that doesn't last long.  If the sprinkler system can't reach them, well, then it's back yard Survivor.  It makes me anxious to know those plants are depending on me.  I feel horrible guilt when I don't water them.  Um, but not enough to actually get out there and water them.  My mother encourages me to pull out the plants that I don't like and replace them with something else.  Pull out a living plant?  Why not just drown a kitten?  This summer, though, I bought three pots of flowers for my back patio, all part of staging the house, of course.  I kept them alive ALL SUMMER but the effort practically exhausted me.  All that watering.  Jesus, talk about needy. 

Could I digress more?  This is about hummingbirds.  While I ignore most of the great outdoors, I am thoroughly invested in my hummingbird feeder.  I cook up big batches of fresh nectar and make sure it is always full.  At the old house, I had an Emergency Back Up Sheltered Feeder Location for when the weather turned bad.  The feeder hung from a hook on this trellis-y thing in the back.  At the new house, however, there is no trellis.  Only a collection of fairly small trees.  I tried it in one of the small trees and was horrified to find it lying on the ground later that day.  Before I had much of the house unpacked, I made a trip to the Backyard Bird Store for a pole from which to hang the feeder.  I placed it in the back where I could see it from the kitchen window.  Let me point out that this new feeder location is maybe 20 feet from the old one.  It's a bright red feeder.  They could see it with their little hummingbird eyes from the old spot (which they were sadly buzzing  around).  They nest in a tree in the greenspace and the new feeder is DIRECTLY in the line of sight from there.  Well, those little buzzing bastards boycotted the feeder for an entire week.  I would see them--it wasn't like they'd migrated.  I don't know what they objected to but they made sure to punish me.  Ungrateful giant bugs.  After all I'd done for them.  I was this close to despair when today--TODAY--I saw one at the feeder.  Apparently all is forgiven. 

Moving and Friends

Greetings from the new house!  I went the better part of a week without DSL so that really blew, but it gave me time to get things done around here.  Now I'm back, although I am a wee bit concerned that I can't access my blog through AOL.  Especially considering it's an AOL Journal.  Hmmm.  Maybe that's why it's free now?

But on to the move!  I simply cannot convey how happy I am in this house and how thoroughly convinced I am that this was the right move for us.  (Of course, that gorgeous SALE PENDING sticker on the sign next door helps quite a bit.)   I'm still discovering light switches and trying to operate the blinds (I managed to completely break one the other morning.  Yep, still got that magic touch.) but almost instantaneously this house felt right.  Despite all the moving around  we've done in 15 years of marriage, this is only the third house we've owned.  The first one, in North Carolina, was a lovely house on 3/4 of an acre of land.  We lived there for 4 years and painted exactly two rooms that whole time.   When it came time to sell, we put money into sprucing it up and it looked better than in all the years we'd lived there.   We vowed then that we would spend the time and money to make our next house our own.  And we did.  Every room but one got repainted.  We replaced countertops, put in new carpeting, updated light fixtures.  We even worked with a decorator to choose fabrics, paint, and window treatments (I love to say window treatments.  It's such a ridiculous term.) for our bedroom. The changes looked great and I was pleased that we'd made it a space we could enjoy, but it never felt like the perfect house to me.  Living in it was like wearing ill-fitting clothes.  There was always a certain level of dissatisfaction.  But this house.....this house is just right.  Even though we've downgraded in some ways (back to the old tile and grout countertops, no ceiling fans, wallpaper that needs to disappear), I have no complaints and I'm in no hurry to change anything.  I'm starting to think that maybe the impetus to do work on the old house was a lot about trying (unsuccessfully) to make it into the "right" house. 

When we moved here 4 years ago, I thought we had ruined our lives.  I was so unhappy for so long.  It took 18 months for me to stop thinking it was a complete mistake.  Those were long, lonely months when I felt disconnected and friendless.  Things started to change when David got to first grade and I enrolled Juliana in a co-operative preschool.  As a first grade parent, I met the people who turned into my core group of friends.  And at the preschool I connected with like-minded parents who shared my committment to children.  Fast forward three years and you would have to drag me from this community kicking and screaming.  Last Thursday we had a moving party.  We provided beer and pizza and our friends came and helped us move.  We paid two really scary guys I found on Craig's List to do the heavy work, but our friends finished the job.  They moved our three bookcases full of books and transferred the entire contents of my kitchen.  Some of the things in my kitchen were so dirty and nasty that I was embarrassed but they just carried them next door without a word of judgement.  It was overwhelming and exhilirating all at once.  This has been such a stressful summer and I couldn't have done it without my friends.   Friends who let me and the kids show up at the last second because we'd come home to a realtor's car in the driveway.  Friends who let us mooch meals all summer when we were displaced due to showings.  Friends who listened to me talk about real estate obsessively.  My GOD I bored even myself with all that conjecture, but I didn't seem able to stop prattling on. 

The summer seems to have slipped through my fingers, what with all the disruption and stress.  School starts in two weeks, but I had to be there this evening for a volunteer job.  I smiled as I walked through the halls.  I'm looking forward to being back there,  working as part of the community, amongst friends. 

Day 1 of Moving

I did about 5 hours of moving today.  What was I so excited about?  It was 85 degrees.  Did I mention that the new house is one house UP the street?   Since I was working on my own, I couldn't move anything too big or heavy.  Instead, I developed this entirely lame procedure: fill a box at my house, trudge uphill to the next house, unload it, then take the empty box back down the street and start again.  The neighbors must be getting a big kick out of watching me.  Hiya, folks!  Yep, I'm the one moving an entire household with a single box. 

David had a total meltdown tonight which turned out to be related to the move.  Apparently, our current house is "perfect" and he doesn't want a new one.  Much crying and misery ensued.  I don't think I'll be getting my Mother of the Year statue anytime soon since I'd pretty much discounted the effect leaving this house was going to have on the kids.  I know it will pass quickly and I'm glad we were able to talk about it tonight.  I just wish he didn't have to spend hours acting like a jerk as an opening act for the real issue.

I'm gonna call it a night.  I need a shower and I have a terrific craving for a cherry lime-ade from Sonic.  (Too bad there are no Sonics within a 200 mile radius.)  My box and I will get started again first thing tomorrow morning.

On Your Mark, Get Set....

I'm sitting here like I'm waiting for the starter's gun to sound.  The new house is being "professionally cleaned" as I type.  As soon as they are done, I can start moving things in.  So far we've moved the patio furniture into the new yard and the new garage is filled with the items from the storage unit.  I hate that this process doesn't move along in an orderly fashion.  Ever since we bought the house back in May, we had the close date set at Friday, August 11th.  It felt written in stone.   But, in yet another moving/birth parallel, the close date became more like a due date, nothing more than an educated guess.  Originally, the house was going to be cleaned last Thursday so it would be all ready when we took possession on Friday.  But then we decided to resurface the wood floors and the current owner let us get the jump on that before the close date.  That was supposed to take until Friday.  No point in having the house cleaned before that sawdusty process was complete so it got pushed back til Monday.  But the floors were done on Thursday, and the house has just been sitting there empty and dirty all weekend.  I considered going in and at least cleaning the bonus room myself, but Ritu made me promise to wait.  I'm not good at waiting.  When there are things to be done, I want to jump in and work until it's done.  I don't want loose ends.  I don't want setbacks and for the love of God, I don't want to reschedule once the plan is made.  I want to go, get it done, and be done with it.  Knowing there was a mountain of work to do, but being powerless to do it is what kept me awake those nights last week.  The untapped adrenaline made my brain spin like a revving engine.  I remember feeling this same sort of frustration while planning our wedding.  All the visits with florists, all the invitations to consider, all the contingencies.  I just wanted to make a decision and MOVE FORWARD.  I like a process with an established  beginning and endpoint.  My satisfaction comes from a job clearly defined and cleanly executed.  But this is all old ground, isn't it?

 

Last night, we invited some friends and neighbors over to test out the fire pit in the back yard.  We made a fire (and when I say "we" I mean my friend Karen who used to be a Campfire Girl) and roasted marshmallows on poky metal skewers.  The kids all had a blast and nobody lost an eye.  Even though we were only in the back yard, it was the first time that the house really felt like mine.  I haven't quite wrapped my brain around the fact that we are planning to live in this house basically forever.  I haven't had long-term roots in a single community since I graduated from high school 22 years ago.  This city, this neighborhood, and this house feel right to us.   I'm going to keep one of those skewers to remember this feeling.  And in four years, when I get the itch to move again, I'm going to jab myself with it until the urge passes.

Digging My Way Out

We accepted an offer on our house today!  Povided that nothing major pops up during the inspection (I think I would've noticed a big hole in my roof, don't you?  Note: Don't email me about stealth roof holes you've had personal experience with.) we have sold our house.  This happened today-- also the closing date on our new house--nothing like taking it right to the wire.  To say I am feeling good wouldn't begin to describe it.   My stress has been manifesting itself in a number of physical ways: two nights of insomnia, lower back pain, and my jaw feels like I must be clenching it all night long.  While not sleeping.  I almost blogged at about 2 AM the other night but then realized that would be tantamount to drunken blogging and wisely decided against it. 

Today the kids and I moved two loads of stuff from our storage unit to the garage of the new house.  We had the wood floors re-surfaced and the house is being professionally cleaned on Monday so we can start the real moving process at that point.  Don't expect too much from me this week, but I'll do my best to get caught up soon.

Lame Excuses

Just a quick note to say that I haven't forgotten about all this  I'm swamped with pre-move crap and I'm so wiped out at the end of each day that I'm too tired to write. Also, I seem to have a sore throat.  

We close on the new house on Friday and are going to move on Thursday the 17th.  Still no takers on this house and I must admit I'm more than a little tired of playing the Have Your House On The Market game.  Send all your best house-selling vibes my way and I hope to get caught up on here soon.

Where Did This Child Come From?

The other day Juliana figured out how to use a clip to hold her blanket (which she calls dee-dee) around her shoulders like a cape.  From there she became Queen Juliana.  When it came time to write out a birthday card for her friend, this is what she wrote:

"I give this gift, this pleasant gift, to you Queen Hallie.  From Queen Juliana.'

One morning this week she busied herself quietly in the living room.  I went to check on her and found she had made a sign reading "Welcome to Funderland".  She had tickets to hand out and three games set up in the living room: a bowling game using plastic cups, a toss the ball in the ring game, and a putting green with a golf club she'd fashioned from tinker toys.  She even had a container of "prizes" to hand out after each game.  (Mine looked surprisingly like a small tinker toy, but she informed me that it was a tootsie roll.)

I don't know whose child she is.  Any real child of mine would be hiding her brother's special possessions and taunting him til he cried.  What's up with this creating fun and happiness for others crap?