This was this morning...

Ok, I admit I am not entirely bummed about waking up to 8 1/2 inches of freshies this morning. S'posed to be another foot or so tonight. We are scheming about going somewhere illegal with our snowboards...

This was a week ago....

but still, to think... it was ninety four degrees where we were a week ago! We sat out on the balcony in the dark, wearing bath towels, and soaking up the last of the days heat, letting our sore muscles relax. The best of both worlds, or a taunting teaser, havent decided which...

Ruby the Hendog

It's a hard job, and one that many dogs overlook entirely. Luckily for Ruby's people, Ruby is not like many dogs. She takes her work seriously. Hour after hour in whatever element Western Kansas chooses to throw at her, she can be found, herding her charges around the yard, keeping the flock in a safe, tight huddle, workin it like the working dog that she is. Sometimes she picks one hen and separates her from the herd- flock, that is, her head down, every sense alert, anticipating every move with the savvy of an experienced chicken dog. She keeps a tight ship, reminding forgetful or irresponsible biddies of their place with a gentle nip of the tail feathers, and she rarely sleeps until the last of her responsibility has roosted for the night. She can become a little confused about the end game, and does not always know why she is doing what she is doing or what her objective is, but she is not daunted in the least, even when she is reprimanded for having moved the herd across the road into the neighbor's lawn. In the evening, she drags herself up the steps and in the back door, smelling of henhouse, and collapses in an exhausted heap in her corner, knowing that all too soon, she will hear those words from her people, "check the chickens", and will jump up, so eager to help that she will nearly injure herself in the process, and start the whole thing over. A good dog's work is never done. If there were more dogs like Ruby in the world, jokes like "Why did the chicken cross the road?" would have never been born, and Chicken Little would have never gotten himself into such a mess either, because he would have never been allowed to be idle enough to notice the sky falling in the first place. Here's to good dogs, safe hens, and order on the farm.

lovin those vacations

The fun just keeps on comin', when you have nowhere to be, nothing to do, and wouldnt feel like doing it if you did. We left Silverthorne in a freezing drizzle early last Saturday morning, and before we got to the Clear Creek County line, on the continental divide, snowflakes were blowing through our headlight beams, and skittering across the boat tarp. Felt all kinds of wrong, and completely inconcievable that somewhere, not here, was a warm lake, a balmy breeze, greenery that didnt yet know it was fall. I refused to believe it until nine hundred miles later, I tentatively stuck my foot into water I was sure would be chilly, then waded the rest of the way in, hardly believing such a large body of water could be so comfortably warm.

The boat runs like a demon down there in the lowlands. We didnt realise how adversely the altitude affects it's 130 horses. They didnt gasp and sputter nearly as much as they do at 9,000 feet.

I discovered just how altitude aware I have become, living in a country that counts not only miles, but verticle feet in it's calculation of distance. Somewhere in Missouri, I wondered aloud why every exit sign also had an elevation on it... oh, I was informed, my husband rolling his eyes at my not so brilliant observation, 1,200 feet was the distance between the sign and the exit, not the elevation of said exit.

We spent every possible moment of our week on the water, and only had one rainy day. How about that? Maybe there is something to this karma thing after all. It was cold the day we got there and cold the day we left, but in between, there were some idylic, sunsoaked days. We waterskied till we were dizzy, and invested in a wakeboard which we spent the week trying to master. Wakeboarding is a completely different concept than waterskiing. Waterskiing requires a boat with it's center of gravity incorporated into a flat hull to make the smallest wake possible, and an agressive slalom, speed, and good form is what one exhausts oneself trying to attain. I noticed the "bad boy" ski, the neon green sliver the MEN ride, had a completely different feel on such warm water. On the other hand, a wakeboard resembles in no way the fast turns and even roostertails of a ski. A good wakeboarder spends more time above the water than on it. The point of the wide, flat surface of a wakeboard is to sling it's rider off the swell of the wake, across the wake, to land on the downward slope on the other side. The time spent between launch and landing is what makes a wakeboarder "good". So the larger the wake, the more time spent airborn, the more impressive the tricks and maneuveres, and of course... the better the crashes. There are as many wakeboarders with torn ACL's and just generally bad knees and backs as there are snowboarders. Large wakes require boats with deep V hulls, run barely on plane, slowly gouging a deep furrow in the water. One really cannot ski well and wakeboard well behind the same boat. Considering our seventeen foot runabout is neither a skiboat nor a wakeboard boat, we did our best, softening our knees to absorb the too-large wake on a ski, and trying everything we could to make a large enough wake to allow us to jump to the other side on a wakeboard. (I only made it all the way across once, and then, typical... I was so surprised and elated I dropped the rope.)

We stayed in Branson, where the lodging was cheap, and drove out to the lake every day, where we rented a boatslip for the week. It was wonderful not having to load it on the trailer, but just to tie it up and leave it bobbing in the water overnight. It was just a very humble little boat, sandwiched between luxery cruisers with onboard bathrooms and sleeping quarters, but then, we didnt really fit the profile there either, as was observed by the talkative man in the lawnchair, parked by the boat launch. "Sure you kids don' nade some help there?...Huh! looka that. Yo act lak yuh done that bafore!" Nearly wanted to offend Mr.B. I tell his to embrace his baby face.

The first day we were there, we were still keyed up and on edge, not fully reallising that we were on vacation and Seymour Lodging was nine hundred miles away. Even if there were a crisis, we could do nothing about it. Every day we spent on the water, our shoulders loosened a bit, and we got a little less morbid and cynical. The last night there, we took the boat out to the middle of the lake and shut it off, allowing it to be tossed back and forth on the wind-whipped surface, and watched a red-gold sun set, leaving a flaming trail across the lake, shattered by the waves into a million shimmering splinters. As it dropped behind the blue Ozark hills and caressed the sky with it's last fingers of pale pink, we loaded the boat on the trailer and tied it down, much happier and more relaxed. We didnt even argue over the proper way to tuck it in like we usually do. Vacations are good.

Now we sit here in western Kansas, still nothing much to do... except clean an entire summer's worth of dirt and mouse droppings out of a house that feels more and more abandoned, winterise the boat, winterise the yard, and attempt a cobbled-together repair on a shop door that the wind caved in. Ok, so not entirely nothing. Our vacation isnt completely over yet, but that day feels closer than it did than when we were out watching the sun set over the lake.

now you see me...

The reunion has come and gone, and as i write, I am doing loads of laundry for our next trip. My, we do nothing but play these days! Well, except that we have been a little short handed for the work load we find ourselves juggling, with our housekeepers kids back in school and one last surge of vacationers through the county, blame the fall aspens for that. But this weekend, the first of our winter help will arrive and begin occupying the last bedroom still open in our house. Dont worry, there's still a bed in the den for you, whoe'er you be. But back to the vacation plans- we made non-refundable, non-transferable reservations, the only way we can think of to make it so that our vacation cannot be pushed off indefinitely.

It was good to see all of my cousins, the sweet, the eccentric, and the outright crazy (you know who you are). It was good to do crazy things like swim in the pool at 11:00 pm, in spite of the chilly wind and mist which finally gave in and turned to rain, lay on the Scott Lake Dam at midnight and watch the lights in their rippled reflections across the lake, and have to find our way through the Kosha weeds and yuccas by the light of a cell-phone display, because the full moon was hidden by clouds and no one had thought to bring a flashlight. And all the old photographs were a special treat. Thanks, to you who brought them, and even more thanks for narrating them, and regaling me with a few stories, you know that was a teaser for me. Now you'll have to write these things down for me. (oh, yes, you know who you are...) We only ended up occupying a cabin for one night. I am curious, how many other couples pulled the matresses from their twin beds, threw them onto the floor, spread a sleeping bag over both, and slept like babies? It almost felt like we were being naughty, cuddling in a king-sized expanse of bed surrounded by four very private walls, when everyone else was having to be all communal for the weekend. And the food, oh, my goodness, the food. Ramen noodles have never been so boring as the day we got home.

It has been a very misty, almost surreal day here. Warm, windstill, a touch of moisture, the humity and the sun behind it turning our mountains into odd, muted shades. On the way to work this morning, passing the lake, every minute detail on the surrounding hills was reflected, stretched across a barely rippled surface, weird blues, greens and violets flowing together, and in the middle of the lake, it's reflection appearing a mile long, a single sailboat without a breath of wind in it's sails. I wished desparately for a camera so I could share it.

I took my rollerblade wheels apart day before yesterday, cleaned and oiled the wheels, and had plans for hitting the bike path just any day now. Every day something comes up and it gets pushed off till a more convenient time. But I am feeling the itch to get out of the house, in fact, here i sit in my sports bra and shorts, looking, if not feeling ambitious. So far, havent decided where to go. Tonight may be the night for a run. I am sitting here with my water bottle, trying to make up for a day of drinking nothing except the milk required to wash down my cookies earlier because nothing is more miserable than running dehydrated, and berating myself for not making wiser food choices all day. Oatmeal Scotchies will get me nowhere I want to be.

Now I remember why I used to love running after dark in the winter. I left the house night before last with no destination in mind, and soon was so bewitched by my surroundings I forgot about my feet, which kept carrying me further and further from the house. After dark, the wind dies, and the scent of broken, dying flowers mingles with overtones of woodsmoke. The air is too cold to breath through one's nose, and one finds oneself drawing deep gulps of air through one's mouth, simply because one can, and ignoring the sting. There are two times I find myself running- when I am angry, and when I am going crazy from inactivity. When I am angry, I do not run hard. I do not listen to angry music, because the fact that I am out there is proof that I am trying to shake the feeling. I listen to gospel or folk or bluegrass, and sing along until I am out of breath, and do not turn around until I find that the verbal tirade in my mind has abated and catch myself thinking neutral thoughts, and feel foolish for letting anything get under my skin in the first place. But on nights like tonight, when I feel as though I have done nothing all day, I push my earbuds deep into my ears, and assault them with heavy metal, and run hard with my head up and my hands relaxed. I listen to misunderstood degenerates scream about the unfairness of life until they have me worked into a mood needing to be taken out on the blacktop, then switch to something that fits into the background, and before I know it, have slipped into a state of nirvana, no longer hearing the music or thinking any discernable thoughts, my strides have become as involuntary and painless as my heart beating or my eyelids blinking, and when I reallise how far I have gone, I have a long way home in the dark.

Gotta run...