The ation of being prepared...preparation

"You know you're in Alaska when: the trunk of your car doubles as a deep freeze."

After watching the "extreme couponing" show on TLC earlier this week, this makes me wonder why extreme couponing is not an actual sport in Alaska. On this show, store patrons use coupons to purchase hundreds of the same item, many of those items coming from the freezer section. If you lived in Alaska, you wouldn't even have to unload the car after one of those trips unless you didn't want your lettuce to have icicles on it. I guess the only catch is that if your town in Alaska even has a grocery store, they probably only have 1 apple, a can of sardines and a community barrel of salt. To preserve the moose that the bear killed for you right outside your igloo door last night.

                                                                          Hello bear.

Anyhow. It is apparently less than two weeks until the great departure. I know this only because I just got off the phone with mother dearest and she said she is doing "Alaska Stuff." I was too afraid to ask, and she does read this blog, so I know I'll find out eventually. But what, pray tell, is "Alaska Stuff?" I definitely won't be packing until a few days before we leave. And I already have my boots and my flannel. Maybe she's ordering a deep freezer so she can practice withstanding inclement weather conditions? Or maybe she dressed her black lab up in a bear suit and she's going to run around the park behind her house, alternating between screaming bloody murder and curling up in a tiny ball to mimic a dead animal. Those are the two bear-escape tactics I'd try for sure.

Either way, I am doing no such preparations unless you want to count this blog. A friend of mine just got  to South Africa and I believe she felt similarly about her preparations. You just kinda wait around until its nearly time to go to the airport. Then, if you're me, you start freaking out about how you haven't been on a plane since you were 10 (that was 12 years ago) which was pre- 9/11 and you have no idea how to pack a suitcase with any sort of restrictions.

Then, you have to actually ride the plane. My ears have been giving me slight problems lately, so I'm wondering if the pressure from the takeoff with pop my eardrums. I'll have to warn the person sitting next to me I suppose. 

Ultimately, I'm sure it will all work out. And if problems arise,...what are mom's for anyway if not to clean up the messes? So I will just sit here and eat the giant container of cheese ball puffs that I got at Kmart last week and hope that when the time comes, I will rise to the challenge. 

Over and out!