I actually slept last night, it was AWESOME! I had sort of forgotten how nice it is to sleep. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but after watching the Aurora for a couple of hours the other night I feel like a massive weight has been lifted from me. Everything is still technically the same, I still have the same problems in the world, but I don't feel like they're dragging me down anymore. I feel optimistic for the first time in a really long time. It's odd, but I like it! I spent a couple of hours yesterday shoveling a couple of tons of snow off of a friends RV. They bought land up here and we spent some time standing on top of the motor home once it was clean, discussing the new house that's going to be built, the way the land is going to look when its done. It was pretty cool. I've decided that we have started breakup up here. Sure, it's only 8 outside right now, but it's staying light longer, getting warm during the day. Oh yeah- Its on! I love breakup. It's messy, wet, dirty, and kind of a pain, but it's an amazing thing. WInter finally lets go and things finally begin to live again. I guess that's sort of symbolic for me, especially this year. It reminds me of how I answered Glenda after Corbin was born. I was with her the whole time she went through his birth, which had some definite rough spots. The next day as she was recovering she asked me what I thought. I told her it was the most nasty, gross, disgusting, incredibly amazing miracle I had ever experienced. In a way that's what breakup is like. The days begin to warm up, the nights are still cold. The snow turns to slush, then water which sits on top of the still frozen ground until it finally breaks through and you have an endless sea of seemingly bottomless mud. That's the BAD part. The good part is  all the cool little miracles that go with it. For anyone that doesn't know, I live on a hill above what can only be described as a swamp. In that swamp, at this moment, is what has to be about 15 million tiny little frogs which are our only Alaskan amphibian. When the temperature starts hanging in the 45-50 mark and the swamp begins to thaw these little frogs all wake up at once. Like everything else up here, once they feel warm they start getting busy right away. There will still be a couple of feet of unmelted snow on the marsh and they will start singing, cruising for their annual mate. They sing like mad for about 48 hours. After the complete silence of winter it's honestly nearly deafening. it echoes through the trees, we hear it in the house. The volume of these tiny little 1" frogs is unbelievable. And then, all at once, they stop. You won't hear another chirp from them until next year. That's like everything up here. Spring doesn't sneak into Alaska, it bursts in in a wild blur of color and life. The birch trees go from stark white skeletons to being able to see JUST a hint of green at the tops, to fully leaved out, all in less than a week. The growing season isn't long here, so life doesn't take its time. It explodes in a wild blur of being. The best way I can describe the experience of living here is like this- Everywhere else I've been has been like looking at life through a pair of dark sunglasses that are slightly dirty. You can see okay, but sometimes you have to squint and look really hard to make things out. When I got up here it was like removing those sunglasses on a bright, sunny day. Everything was dazzlingly clear and bright, a little disorienting, and somehow far more real without that filter. On that note, I think I'm going to have to get going, I have a script to write for school today, wood to cut, and I'm heading over to my friend's house later to attempt to remove his tractor from it's snowy womb so we can start moving some snow around in preparation for the big thaw. Have a great day everyone!