I feel like I’ve been living my life in a holding pattern
for weeks. When we were working to
get everything moved out of the house, I found myself thinking how nice it
would be to finally be out and not have to deal with our “stuff”.
Then we moved in with my in-laws for a week. It was
wonderful to be in a home with food, other necessities and love, but we had the
truck and trailer to prepare, a vehicle to sell, possessions to ship and still had
to close on the property. We were busy, busy, busy and I found myself thinking
how nice it would be to finally be on the road and not dealing with the tedious
details of relocating.
Finally the day came when it was time to hit the road. The
days were long, but God protected us and we didn’t have any major issues, a
true blessing, indeed. However, as the week wore on I found myself thinking how
nice it would be to finally be in Alaska and off the road.
We’ve been in Alaska for 11 days and are currently living
with my wonderful niece, her husband and 3 cute kiddos. We’ve been to town to
get supplies, pick up the load of our outdoor manly supplies (insert grunting
noise), buy a car and open a checking account. We’ve also been fixing up the rental
house.
The downstairs consists of a kitchen that is getting a
complete overhaul, living room, bathroom and 2 bedrooms. (There used to be
third bedroom, but a wall was removed to enlarge the living room.) There is an
arctic entryway, a small enclosure with four doors; one to the outside, one to
the greenhouse, one to the upstairs and one to the living room. Upstairs there
are two bedrooms (one master, one dressing room for me) a bathroom, office,
tinker room for David and a big room for exercise, watching TV and hanging out.
All of it needs to be painted and the floors all need to be repaired and/or
cleaned. (Hardwood downstairs, plywood upstairs)
While David’s been working on major renovation projects
downstairs, I’ve been working on getting a portion of the upstairs ready to
paint. First I vacuumed the floors and part of the walls. Then I had to remove
decals, stickers and a room full of glow-in-the dark stars, comets, and
planets. A blow dryer on low heat worked well on the celestial work of art, but
not so much on stickers and decals that had been there for years, so taking the
advice of a good friend, I used a mixture of fabric softener and water, soaked
the decals and then was able to peel or scrub them off of the walls. Once I was
finally finished with that messy project, I began patching holes. I patched,
and patched and patched. There were thousands of little holes from thumbtacks
and nails as well as bigger holes from kids living life to the fullest.
The past few days I’ve worked on painting primer on the
walls and ceiling of the big room. It has a lot of character that I love, but
makes it tricky to paint. There are also two little red circles that keep
appearing through the primer. It’s like the wall is bleeding. Spooky…
As I’ve worked on the house, I’ve found myself thinking how
nice it will be to finally live in the house and be settled in Alaska.
Have you noticed that seems to have become a pattern in my
thinking? However, each time I’ve thought “how nice it will be when…” another
thought gently blows across my narrow mind and reminds me that I don’t need to
think about “when”, rather I need to focus on “now”. Right now, THIS is the
life I’m living. I need to focus on the blessings and appreciate my life
instead of waiting for the ideal situation that I’ve conjured up in my head.
So today, I get to do laundry. Yes! Clean socks and
underwear are on the way!! And, because I have to do laundry, I can sit in the
quiet loft and type out my thoughts for this blog, and that will satisfy a
certain gentleman in Kansas who went to the trouble of figuring out to how locate
my blog only to discover that I hadn’t written anything new in awhile. This
afternoon I will head over to the house to add more primer to the walls and
hopefully, stifle the bleeding in the wall. All of this, I get to do, while
surrounded by a forest of trees, white capped mountains and crisp, fresh air.
I love my life…right now.
