Here we are. My family lives in Alaska. I like to call myself 14 years ago and say, "hey Leah you just lived in the middle east and now you live in Alaska?" I remember when I was 19 years old I had just dropped out of Hawkeye Community College and I was making some pretty poor decisions and living with my mom. My friend Jessie and I were discussing moving to Iowa City, why not? My best friend lives there and I always have fun visiting there. It is this mystical place only an hour and a half away where everyone is a little more liberal, earthy, hippy, and enlightened. So I throw everything that matters to me into my $750 Mercury, Topaz with one of those sunroofs that open labout an inch and I drive to Iowa City. Liz has spoken with her roommates at the "Farm house" and they have all agreed that I can stay until I get a job and find a place. Jessie comes to Iowa City for the weekend and we never hooked up that weekend - she partied with some friends and then headed back to Cedar Falls so the "big move" just didn't work for her.
In just a few weeks I start talking to Brynn and Ginny and Scott and we decide that we should get a place together. We start looking at houses after I scored my high rolling job washing dishes at Carlos O'Kellys. Scott is the average college kid with funding from his mom and dad. He is currently living at home and decided he is ready to get a place. Brynn and Ginny have just decided to leave the big city of Minneapolis to see what Iowa City can offer them. They too are lured by the hippy culture, vegan restaurants and huge Reggae and Creative writing that this party and college town has to offer. Not to mention the gay per capita is higher than anywhere in the mid-west. The thrill of the "farm house" bonfire keggars has us all excited for the numerous parties that Iowa City boasts to have.
We find the perfect house! With in walking distance of campus for Scott, a great distance from all the bars and a great basement for future keggars. The problem? It is a 5 bedroom so we are now challenged to find a 5th roommate. So uhhh there is this guy Mike, he is like 25, but he just got back from backpacking and traveling around Montana and he needs a roommate. Why not? 25 is pretty old though - but on the upside he can buy us beer and he will be responsible and pay his bills on time so why not? We meet Mike and we sign a lease. Bowery street yellow house shaped like a barn in Iowa City really became a famous party spot for our group of college aged misfits merging hippies, punks, and goth kids that frequented our living room playing vampire role-playing games next to a drum circle fighting over whether to play sublime or Bauhaus on the stereo. There were some crazy parties, a lot of shouting, a lot of stragglers and even a few hippies living on our couch or in the basement or on sleeping bags in my room. We had the party with the naked guy playing twister, the party where the couch was caught on fire. Needless to say Mike didn't last long with us before he had to move due to our consistent noise making and lack of respect for a 25 year old man done with this stage in his life - not to say that his "mellow" stage was any better. Why am I talking about this? I guess to have this memory sitting in Mike's bedroom when we first settled into our new home. Mike had this huge coffee table style book of Alaska. Bright blue and white glaring from the pages and I remember the way he spoke about moving to Alaska. It really sounded like a far away fantasy land to me at that point. At this point I had barely been out of Iowa and was living only 90 minutes from my hometown. He spoke about how he would some day move to Alaska and go to Alaska and I remember thinking, yea, sure me too.
So my best friend Liz says, "enroll at Kirkwood and take some classes with me, it will be fun," I was incredibly too impressionable at this facet of my life and I thank her all the time for being my roll model on that day. So I started some general education classes and found student loans. With my first loan disbursement Liz, Brynn, Julie - Mike's younger and much more fun college student and 19 roommate replacement, and I jumped in my 1986 Toyota, Carolla with plaid interior and our mix tapes of Jimmy Cliff, Sublime, Toots and the Maytals, Liz Phair, and Ween (I will always associate my first drive down the strip in Vegas with the song "Piss up a rope") and we drove to Albuquerque, NM (I had this moment at a keggar we happened upon and met these so much more liberal hippy types than Iowa City and I thought I wanna live here - wow what a pretty mountain) and finally to San Diego, California. I guess that is when I fell in love with traveling and the world started to open up to me.
As I finished Kirkwood and went on to University of Iowa I was now a waitress that had down-sized to a more acceptable amount of roommates to get any real studying done - just one. Between studying, waiting tables, and Monday night $.50 cup night at the Que, Dollar pitchers at Gabes on Tuesday, dollar you call at the Airliner on Wednesday, and then of course Thursday was almost the weekend, Friday, and Saturday.... I was still using every break from classes to hop in my car and take a road trip. There was another journey to New Mexico carefully suggested by Liz who I can later give credit to my choice in moving there. That was the original idea of camping in the mountains in January. I don't care what your sleeping bag claims you will still have to pee and sit around the fire before bed it just is a stupid idea unless you are one of those hardcore boy scouts and if you are you will be prepared unlike us. There was the drive to Florida where drunk moms in bikinis roam the beaches with their Milwaukee cans in coozies and young children are encouraged to try and piss off the crocodiles at the everglades. I would just say I lacked the drive to return to Florida . The springbreak 2000 trip to Galveston Island - I feel like I really went to college having this shot drinking experience. Then there was the back packing around Europe. I was living the whole world is my oyster experience and I guess it just never ended. I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2003 and set my sights on New Mexico. Why? I thought what a beautiful and inexpensive place to go to grad school and do some writing and of course travel to anywhere I wanted at my leisure in the Southwest.
So before I left on my journey I naturally acquired a dog because otherwise that move might have been scary! So Afton and I were off in 1993 Ford, Ranger pick-up in the year 2003. I spent a few years in New Mexico somewhat extending my college years. I found some younger college aged kids to hang out with and I landed a job waiting tables at Landry's and as most people in the Service industry can relate to there is no lack of people to go out with for a drink. I got a little distracted and there was nothing being written, I kept my letters of recommendation in a nice stack for when I got around to applying to grad school - the creative writing MFA at University of New Mexico was what my heart was telling me. Then I started to think I needed more of a career - I mean seriously - serving? Really I was in my 10th year in the service sector and was carrying around this degree and still had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I somehow decided to apply at AOL - one of the larger and highest paying call centers in Albuquerque. That is about when Liz decided to pick and move there too - oh and did I mention Julie and Surekha gravitated there as well. I like to think I have a magnetic pull!
So I started in sales it was my duty to answer the phone and convince people to sign-up for the free trial providing payment information in the hopes they would forget to cancel and the company would actually make some money off dial-up internet that was significantly over priced. We also helped people get a high speed connection to go along with their high speed internet. I ended up being decent enough to have some nice bonuses each month and aspired to coach and trainer in the company. I made my way to Consultant Support Specialist - which was one wrung on the ladder below coach which I am sure I would have eventually made (if the company wouldn't have been on it's way to it's demise). I also scored an interview as a trainer which I totally blew as I wasn't prepared to model my teaching strategies - I for some reason often think back to that and know I would rock it now with all the the teaching experience I have now. Anyways here I was a Consultant Support specialist, when the whole call center was unraveled and rumors of closing came down the pipe when I had just bought a new home with my now husband Michael. Did I forget to mention the romantic tail of meeting my husband at the call center and the wooing friendship of 1 year before we finally got together - and then bought a house with the very next day? So the call center is closing and I am suddenly hating my job so I say, Verizon, ok and I quit. I started at Verizon and decided on University of Phoenix for Graduate school finally. Kind of lame I know but the application process was a breeze so I can just start - that was sort of the appeal. I am actually pretty sure the reason I never started at UNM is that I was too lazy to fill out the application and write an essay etc. I didn't make it at verizon very long mostly because I got pretty sick and missed a lot of training and the job was really annoying - face to face customer service with too many acronyms and policies and procedures and standing still for eight hours really was killing my feet - I wanted my soul at the end of the day and corporate America was denying me that. So low and behold I decided to take on substitute teaching and thus began my teaching career and I haven't looked back since.
Teaching, like student loans has become another the world is my oyster kind of thing. Teaching brought me to the middle east and then teaching brought me to Alaska. Is this where we plant our roots? I now have this amazing family and I am really happy at my new teaching position so I am starting to think this beautiful and majestic - yes I think majestic every time I look out the window of a car, or my house or my school and not sure I will ever think anything else, I live in a majestic place and I may just stick around. I think about Mike's book 14 years ago and I think yep it's like that you were right and I live here - I do- because I can, right?
Now the naysayers will tell me "make it through a winter first," and I have to say I am trying so hard to do everything in my power to do that with some sanity of course. When I first started at my school one of my colleagues said to me, "we love it when people move to Alaska. We just hate it when all they can do is complain about the winter," she has no idea how powerful that was as I have mentally decided I will not complain about the winter. It has become a mantra! I will not complain that it is snowing. I will not whine about the lack of sun. I will not moan in March when we get even more snow. I will not be so petty and be one of those people that move to Alaska and then have the audacity to be sour with the snow and darkness - that would be ridiculous. I know somewhere in my psyche there exists a bout of depression and emotional baggage waiting to suck me under. So I started weight watchers - cross feeling unhappy about my body off the list and going down to a size 12 jeans has helped a lot and now I am working to a size 10 and I may just feel what size 8 feels like. I started taking yoga classes so I can get some exercise and relaxation at least once a week. I am trying really hard to find my core and to own my yoga positions so I can flop on the floor and do it on my own with out a class or DVD (which avoid because most of them are just plain evil with their redundant warrior twos and flank position - I mean seriously I am trying to relax here and find my core lady!) I am playing in the snow with Gavin to get my real sunlight as often as my schedule and the weather makes it possible. I am really excited to get my own snow pants and we are going to make a fort and a snowman as soon as the snow is a little bit packable. I am swallowing down vitamins - I may overdose on vitamin D. I avoid dramas and tv if I can at possible and I am also trying to spend lots of time cooking fabulous high fiber, low fat, low carb meals that require time in the kitchen with music and singing. Here is my plug for cooking absolutely in love with this lady's blog and her recipes are all pretty amazing and can honestly not say I have made a one that I haven't enjoyed. http://www.laaloosh.com I have taken up painting, and planning to take up knitting possibly and now I am even writing - although this is kind of lazy not thinking not planning kind of stream of conscientiousness writing. Yet I know it is sneaking in - I have these moments where in the bottom of my throat I feel that gonna cry chunk of something for no real or apparent reason. I let a dad last week yell at me over the phone send me into tears. So next step I am going to go to a tanning booth now once a week - why not maybe it will help? Upping my exercise too and downsizing wine intake of course. I think getting through the holidays is key and then we will start gaining daylight again and in a way we will be half way through the dark tunnel of winter.
Overall I am happy here and I think buying a house next year is a fantastic idea. I think I may just decide to get my PhD when Gavin starts elementary school and I am thinking I may like to work with kids a little more one on one on some level or I could be a college professor. Who knows? Also I have been toying heavily with the idea of becoming a foster parent. Not sure on that one yet but I sort of feel like taking a few kids home with me every year I teach and well I know I can't really take my students home with me but maybe I could put that love somewhere and help a kid that feels so unwanted feel wanted during his or her transition to an adoption.
In just a few weeks I start talking to Brynn and Ginny and Scott and we decide that we should get a place together. We start looking at houses after I scored my high rolling job washing dishes at Carlos O'Kellys. Scott is the average college kid with funding from his mom and dad. He is currently living at home and decided he is ready to get a place. Brynn and Ginny have just decided to leave the big city of Minneapolis to see what Iowa City can offer them. They too are lured by the hippy culture, vegan restaurants and huge Reggae and Creative writing that this party and college town has to offer. Not to mention the gay per capita is higher than anywhere in the mid-west. The thrill of the "farm house" bonfire keggars has us all excited for the numerous parties that Iowa City boasts to have.
We find the perfect house! With in walking distance of campus for Scott, a great distance from all the bars and a great basement for future keggars. The problem? It is a 5 bedroom so we are now challenged to find a 5th roommate. So uhhh there is this guy Mike, he is like 25, but he just got back from backpacking and traveling around Montana and he needs a roommate. Why not? 25 is pretty old though - but on the upside he can buy us beer and he will be responsible and pay his bills on time so why not? We meet Mike and we sign a lease. Bowery street yellow house shaped like a barn in Iowa City really became a famous party spot for our group of college aged misfits merging hippies, punks, and goth kids that frequented our living room playing vampire role-playing games next to a drum circle fighting over whether to play sublime or Bauhaus on the stereo. There were some crazy parties, a lot of shouting, a lot of stragglers and even a few hippies living on our couch or in the basement or on sleeping bags in my room. We had the party with the naked guy playing twister, the party where the couch was caught on fire. Needless to say Mike didn't last long with us before he had to move due to our consistent noise making and lack of respect for a 25 year old man done with this stage in his life - not to say that his "mellow" stage was any better. Why am I talking about this? I guess to have this memory sitting in Mike's bedroom when we first settled into our new home. Mike had this huge coffee table style book of Alaska. Bright blue and white glaring from the pages and I remember the way he spoke about moving to Alaska. It really sounded like a far away fantasy land to me at that point. At this point I had barely been out of Iowa and was living only 90 minutes from my hometown. He spoke about how he would some day move to Alaska and go to Alaska and I remember thinking, yea, sure me too.
So my best friend Liz says, "enroll at Kirkwood and take some classes with me, it will be fun," I was incredibly too impressionable at this facet of my life and I thank her all the time for being my roll model on that day. So I started some general education classes and found student loans. With my first loan disbursement Liz, Brynn, Julie - Mike's younger and much more fun college student and 19 roommate replacement, and I jumped in my 1986 Toyota, Carolla with plaid interior and our mix tapes of Jimmy Cliff, Sublime, Toots and the Maytals, Liz Phair, and Ween (I will always associate my first drive down the strip in Vegas with the song "Piss up a rope") and we drove to Albuquerque, NM (I had this moment at a keggar we happened upon and met these so much more liberal hippy types than Iowa City and I thought I wanna live here - wow what a pretty mountain) and finally to San Diego, California. I guess that is when I fell in love with traveling and the world started to open up to me.
As I finished Kirkwood and went on to University of Iowa I was now a waitress that had down-sized to a more acceptable amount of roommates to get any real studying done - just one. Between studying, waiting tables, and Monday night $.50 cup night at the Que, Dollar pitchers at Gabes on Tuesday, dollar you call at the Airliner on Wednesday, and then of course Thursday was almost the weekend, Friday, and Saturday.... I was still using every break from classes to hop in my car and take a road trip. There was another journey to New Mexico carefully suggested by Liz who I can later give credit to my choice in moving there. That was the original idea of camping in the mountains in January. I don't care what your sleeping bag claims you will still have to pee and sit around the fire before bed it just is a stupid idea unless you are one of those hardcore boy scouts and if you are you will be prepared unlike us. There was the drive to Florida where drunk moms in bikinis roam the beaches with their Milwaukee cans in coozies and young children are encouraged to try and piss off the crocodiles at the everglades. I would just say I lacked the drive to return to Florida . The springbreak 2000 trip to Galveston Island - I feel like I really went to college having this shot drinking experience. Then there was the back packing around Europe. I was living the whole world is my oyster experience and I guess it just never ended. I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2003 and set my sights on New Mexico. Why? I thought what a beautiful and inexpensive place to go to grad school and do some writing and of course travel to anywhere I wanted at my leisure in the Southwest.
So before I left on my journey I naturally acquired a dog because otherwise that move might have been scary! So Afton and I were off in 1993 Ford, Ranger pick-up in the year 2003. I spent a few years in New Mexico somewhat extending my college years. I found some younger college aged kids to hang out with and I landed a job waiting tables at Landry's and as most people in the Service industry can relate to there is no lack of people to go out with for a drink. I got a little distracted and there was nothing being written, I kept my letters of recommendation in a nice stack for when I got around to applying to grad school - the creative writing MFA at University of New Mexico was what my heart was telling me. Then I started to think I needed more of a career - I mean seriously - serving? Really I was in my 10th year in the service sector and was carrying around this degree and still had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I somehow decided to apply at AOL - one of the larger and highest paying call centers in Albuquerque. That is about when Liz decided to pick and move there too - oh and did I mention Julie and Surekha gravitated there as well. I like to think I have a magnetic pull!
So I started in sales it was my duty to answer the phone and convince people to sign-up for the free trial providing payment information in the hopes they would forget to cancel and the company would actually make some money off dial-up internet that was significantly over priced. We also helped people get a high speed connection to go along with their high speed internet. I ended up being decent enough to have some nice bonuses each month and aspired to coach and trainer in the company. I made my way to Consultant Support Specialist - which was one wrung on the ladder below coach which I am sure I would have eventually made (if the company wouldn't have been on it's way to it's demise). I also scored an interview as a trainer which I totally blew as I wasn't prepared to model my teaching strategies - I for some reason often think back to that and know I would rock it now with all the the teaching experience I have now. Anyways here I was a Consultant Support specialist, when the whole call center was unraveled and rumors of closing came down the pipe when I had just bought a new home with my now husband Michael. Did I forget to mention the romantic tail of meeting my husband at the call center and the wooing friendship of 1 year before we finally got together - and then bought a house with the very next day? So the call center is closing and I am suddenly hating my job so I say, Verizon, ok and I quit. I started at Verizon and decided on University of Phoenix for Graduate school finally. Kind of lame I know but the application process was a breeze so I can just start - that was sort of the appeal. I am actually pretty sure the reason I never started at UNM is that I was too lazy to fill out the application and write an essay etc. I didn't make it at verizon very long mostly because I got pretty sick and missed a lot of training and the job was really annoying - face to face customer service with too many acronyms and policies and procedures and standing still for eight hours really was killing my feet - I wanted my soul at the end of the day and corporate America was denying me that. So low and behold I decided to take on substitute teaching and thus began my teaching career and I haven't looked back since.
Teaching, like student loans has become another the world is my oyster kind of thing. Teaching brought me to the middle east and then teaching brought me to Alaska. Is this where we plant our roots? I now have this amazing family and I am really happy at my new teaching position so I am starting to think this beautiful and majestic - yes I think majestic every time I look out the window of a car, or my house or my school and not sure I will ever think anything else, I live in a majestic place and I may just stick around. I think about Mike's book 14 years ago and I think yep it's like that you were right and I live here - I do- because I can, right?
Now the naysayers will tell me "make it through a winter first," and I have to say I am trying so hard to do everything in my power to do that with some sanity of course. When I first started at my school one of my colleagues said to me, "we love it when people move to Alaska. We just hate it when all they can do is complain about the winter," she has no idea how powerful that was as I have mentally decided I will not complain about the winter. It has become a mantra! I will not complain that it is snowing. I will not whine about the lack of sun. I will not moan in March when we get even more snow. I will not be so petty and be one of those people that move to Alaska and then have the audacity to be sour with the snow and darkness - that would be ridiculous. I know somewhere in my psyche there exists a bout of depression and emotional baggage waiting to suck me under. So I started weight watchers - cross feeling unhappy about my body off the list and going down to a size 12 jeans has helped a lot and now I am working to a size 10 and I may just feel what size 8 feels like. I started taking yoga classes so I can get some exercise and relaxation at least once a week. I am trying really hard to find my core and to own my yoga positions so I can flop on the floor and do it on my own with out a class or DVD (which avoid because most of them are just plain evil with their redundant warrior twos and flank position - I mean seriously I am trying to relax here and find my core lady!) I am playing in the snow with Gavin to get my real sunlight as often as my schedule and the weather makes it possible. I am really excited to get my own snow pants and we are going to make a fort and a snowman as soon as the snow is a little bit packable. I am swallowing down vitamins - I may overdose on vitamin D. I avoid dramas and tv if I can at possible and I am also trying to spend lots of time cooking fabulous high fiber, low fat, low carb meals that require time in the kitchen with music and singing. Here is my plug for cooking absolutely in love with this lady's blog and her recipes are all pretty amazing and can honestly not say I have made a one that I haven't enjoyed. http://www.laaloosh.com I have taken up painting, and planning to take up knitting possibly and now I am even writing - although this is kind of lazy not thinking not planning kind of stream of conscientiousness writing. Yet I know it is sneaking in - I have these moments where in the bottom of my throat I feel that gonna cry chunk of something for no real or apparent reason. I let a dad last week yell at me over the phone send me into tears. So next step I am going to go to a tanning booth now once a week - why not maybe it will help? Upping my exercise too and downsizing wine intake of course. I think getting through the holidays is key and then we will start gaining daylight again and in a way we will be half way through the dark tunnel of winter.
Overall I am happy here and I think buying a house next year is a fantastic idea. I think I may just decide to get my PhD when Gavin starts elementary school and I am thinking I may like to work with kids a little more one on one on some level or I could be a college professor. Who knows? Also I have been toying heavily with the idea of becoming a foster parent. Not sure on that one yet but I sort of feel like taking a few kids home with me every year I teach and well I know I can't really take my students home with me but maybe I could put that love somewhere and help a kid that feels so unwanted feel wanted during his or her transition to an adoption.
