What Does Your Home Say About You?

Long time no post? Um, yeah. Got back from Europe and basically began working two jobs. I don't blog at work so since I haven't checked my e-mail or barely touched my laptop from home in 3 months the blog kind of died. 2nd job? What does an engineer need with a 2nd job? I speak figuratively. Back in April we had a flood and moved 1/2 of our household into the other 1/2. This happened in the middle of our kitchen renovation which was immediately put on hold. In September we got our contractor started on a 2 week tops (we were promised) job. Well, its the 1st week of November and we're still trying to get him back to finish stuff. All of my spare time has been spent working on the house, scraping popcorn ceiling, painting, picking colors, drooling over furniture, rewiring lighting, switches, etc. etc. etc. So home improvement took over my life. I'll have a series of DIY posts in the future.

So what does my home say about me right now? We are in the middle of a tumultuous time in our life. People stopping by our house won't see the chaotic mess of someone who might have left the house in a hurry that morning. They get the impression of someone who was in the midst of an unsettling time, who'd yet to make peace with their new circumstances... As I read on another blog recently: "A healthy home is not a home full of the latest furnishings or decorated by the current hot designer. It's a home that says "Welcome. I am taken care of, can I take care of you?" There's a place to sit, a place to put your jacket or a bag, clean towels and extra toilet paper in the bathroom, and a clean glass to offer a visitor a glass of water. A chair has a table nearby to put down a glass, laundry and cleaning are done regularly, perhaps a light is left on for the inhabitant who comes home when it's already dark." Our home is a sick home getting healthy. We want it to say, "Stay and sit awhile." not "Get out of the construction zone!" We're getting there little by little. I better start finishing some projects or I'll never get my dream house. Hubby has already declared, "Never again!" Poor man, his healthy welcoming home that he agreed to give a small kitchen face lift has been under construction with boxes and supplies everywhere for going on 7 months.

Sarah Palin in Fairbanks

Ok, this is just strange. All the news when I got home was a bunch of reporters waiting in parkas for Sarah Palin to arrive. Hello people, its September not December, the leaves haven't even finished turning. It was colder in London when I was there. The big parkas look ridiculous! It's also a tad surreal to see all this coverage from my home-town which is actually quite small. If you took away the University and the military there would be almost nobody here.

On the way to the wedding this weekend we drove through Wasilla, just like we always do anytime we go through Anchorage. Blip, it went by in less than 10 minutes, but along the way we saw no less than 4 scrolling marquee signs with "Go Sarah!" signs on them. That is one excited town.

I keep getting questions about how we as Alaskans feel. It's not like we all vote as a block and feel the same way about things so I can only speak for myself. I'll do that post soon, when I've had a chance to digest a little more. Oh, and please stop talking about the stupid bridge to nowhere, and if you do please mention that Biden and Obama voted for the funding for the bridge and when given the option to redirect the funding to Katrina relief by Sen. Tom Coburn, they didn't do so. Palin might have originally supported it, but at least she was the one who killed it. Ok, nuff said about stupid bridge.

Surreal about Palin

We returned home Tuesday after what was essentially a media fast. We got the newspaper only twice during our trip to Europe, didn't bring the laptop with us, and didn't activate our cell phones for data. So it was much to my surprise when I walked into the Chicago airport and saw CNN news anchors blathering about Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol being pregnant. Uh, who cares about Alaska all the sudden? I soon found out and have been caught up in the perfect storm of media coverage ever since. It's like if a tiny country in Africa was suddenly in the running for the World Cup being in Alaska right now.

I wasn't really surprised she was chosen as VP, the Russian bloggers have predicted it for at least 6 months. She ticks off a lot of boxes for McCain: conservative, pro-life, pro-NRA, female, known for being anti-corruption, known for being pro-business, and totally non-oldschool Washington. If you were evaluating the ticket as a total package, rather than a "What happens when he keels over?" approach, you would definitely have filled in the gaps with Palin.

I'm still digesting all of the attacks, the weird media coverage (can't they intelligently ask someone who knows how to pronounce simple things like her name or hometown before making yourself look like an ass?), and the fact that my candidate who everybody wrote off last year is at the top of the ticket and my governor is in the #2 spot. It's very surreal, like watching somebody you went to High School with on the news. (Trust me, she's way older, but the analogy holds.)

Weirder still is that watching the convention turned what was a blah election for me, with the presumed election of Barack Obama to look forward to at the end into something exciting to watch. I have a team to cheer for again. I may not agree with my team on several key issues, but its like a family, we talk bad about each other within the family, but we'd never say a bad word and become very defensive when it comes to outsiders attacking. I still think I'll give my honest opinions and disect the ticket later.

And um yeah, vacation blogging didn't happen. We couldn't find free wi-fi except once so I journaled the vacay and will do some posting later. We were moving around so much that it didn't make sense to pay 10 euros every day for wi-fi for our entire stay at a hotel which we were only staying at one day. I have to drive 10 hours to a family wedding this weekend so I'll use that as a chance to catch up with my blogging and picture processing.