...I can go home. This is not a metaphor. I am stuck in Anchorage, AK, waiting for the volcanic ash to clear enough so planes can take off again. My new gentleman friend drove me here from Denali, but he had to go back to work tonight, so now it is just me in my little private room at the hostel near the Wal-Mart calling Alaska Airlines every hour until they tell me-- please!-- that my plane is taking off.
And then? 22 hours SSE and I will be landing in my adoptive home state, green and broad as God's own golf course. My cat is there, likely flattened against the kitchen tiles in the heat of the summer. I've missed everything about proper adulthood, but I've missed him most of all. Accordingly, I expect to weep with joy for 5-7 days upon my return; my participation here may still be sporadic while I settle in to my "normal" life.
Gosh, it's been 8 months since I had a normal adult life! I've been to a grocery store maybe 5 times since January, cooked dinner maybe twice. I minced garlic this morning to cook with my swiss chard and my hands felt clumsy around a knife. I've been cutting my own hair with school scissors and razor blades, coloring it in dormitory bathrooms... at this point, I LOOK as though I've been roughing it for 3/4 of a year. Let me tell you, wilderness trips are cool, and housing-included jobs in remote-ass places can probably be fun, but they are really... challenging when done back-to-back.
But you know, being stuck here isn't actually so bad. My new computer is a wireless magnet so I can entertain myself from pretty much anywhere. And honestly, I am actually so grateful to be going back to FL that I will wait a week if I have to. It is a blessing to be finally out of Denali National Park, away from the 35 degree rainy nights and the dreary days, the cafeteria food and the cruise ship guests making incessantly unfunny jokes, the mud and the gravel and the absence of grass, the mountains knitted so close overhead that I swore they'd collapse on themselves. I'm still slightly embarrassed to be such a tundra-hater, but I love the heat so much and I NEVER complain about humidity, so I think I'm allowed to dislike one type of climatic zone.
Enclosed for your (and also my; perhaps mostly my) amusement are several pictures of me, taken as I appear at this moment, with my crazy MexiAlaskan outback hair and my appropriate lack of makeup. Can we howl "WOLF GIRL?"



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(It's just down the street).



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