And then they stole my shoes...

Happy new year. I really don't think we'll make it till midnight, 2007 will just have to see itself in. Although I think some of us who are living in our house will still be wide awake by then. The girls drove to Keystone to watch the Torchlight Parade, the Keystone ski instructors on River run hill, carrying torches, followed by fireworks. On the way home they stopped at Starbucks, the reason they may actually make it to midnight by the time the sugar and caffeine wears off. It has been a hellish week, and not a whole lot of an end in sight. I really don't remember the last time we were not stressed out about something. I actually stopped to count all the people we have in our house the other day. There are eight of us sharing our modest, four bedroom home. in addition to the five of us, B., me, Marci, Amber and Scarlett, my cousin Heather is sleeping in the den, and B's brother Jay and his wife Wendy are sleeping on the living room floor. One dares not sit down in the living room without prodding the piles of blankets on the couches to make sure there is nothing alive under them. One dares not throw anything away, because out of eight people, it is bound to be precious to someone. And one certainly dares not go to the bathroom without first making certain there is enough toilet paper- just because there was a full roll last time does not mean there will not be an empty cardboard tube this time.

And to top it off, in the middle of a frantic rush this afternoon, trying to get somewhere between ten and twenty (I really have no idea, I've stopped keeping track) back to back cleans done- back to backs are units that check out in the morning and back in the same afternoon, giving us six hours to clean and repair them- somebody stole my shoes. I stepped out of them by the door of one of our units, elbowed my way past the guests still loitering around after their checkout time was past, and three hours and a sparkling unit later, went outside to get some paperwork, and my shoes... nowhere to be found. I have giggled to myself at the mental picture of them pulling my smelly old tennis shoes, with their ragged backs and the rubber and soles stained with dark red Moab dirt, the laces permanently knotted and the lumps on top where my big toenails are working their way through, out of their hip rolling luggage, and wondering which of their kids would think to take such awful, dead shoes on vacation. They may ask around, may even bring them along the next time they are all together, that pair of rank old tenny shoes, and only then will they remember that the cleaner did start cleaning before they left, and could they be HER once blue and white Skechers? I wonder if they'll even feel slightly bad about it? I wonder if they'll wonder what I did? Because I had to drive myself home in my socks, the ice and muddy water soaking onto my socks from the Jeep's floormats, tippytoe over the ice in our driveway, and find myself myself another pair of shoes.

The pair I wore the rest of the day are the pair that dumped me flat on my bottom on the lobby steps of one of our buildings the other day, and got me twenty bucks for the effort. (Stories of my clumsiness, of bizarre things that could only happen to me are actually quite easy to come by) One of our guests had left a few valuables in their unit when they checked out, and needed me to let them back in to search for them. I gladly obliged, except when i got there, I could not find any person who matched the discription of "a big black guy in a black sweatsuit". The women in the vehicle outside the lobby assured me he was inside waiting for me. Long story short, three fast trips through the building yeilded nobody by that description, so I went running outside to tell the women so, didnt notice the slush on the front steps, forgot how little tread my natty heeled slip-on shoes possessed, hooked my arm over the handrail on my way down, jammed it into my ribs and armpit, slammed my tailbone onto the steps, unceremoniously slid down a few of them, and came to an undignified stop in front of the horified guests. Hopped up as jauntily as possible (if I had been a cat, I would have yawned and licked myself for a moment, as part of the whole nonchalant, it-happens-everyday act) assured them that I was much more rubbery and resilient than they might expect, yanked down my jacket to cover the giant expanse of soaked denim back there, and let them into their danged unit, where they found their stupid wedding ring, and I stubbornly refused to limp as I escorted them back outside. As I told them to drive very safely on their way back to sunny San Antonio, and watch those steps on the way out, the wife who witnessed my undignified splat slipped me a twenty, which I feebly tried to refuse. I waited till I was in my next condo of the day to pull down my pants in front of a mirror and survey the damage. An impressive, but by no means unususal for me, bruise on the left cheek. To bad every such decoration of my hinder regions does not pay as well. I could retire comfortably.

Well, it is 11:02 pm, and I still don't think we'll make it until '07. I just heard a sleepy sigh, which ended in a snore, from the lump under the covers in our luxurious, pillow-top, king-sized bed. The minute the lump wakes up and reallizes I am still sitting at the computer, the whining may start. I shall just very quietly turn off the computer, peel off my socks, and try not to let any icy appendages venture into the warm cocoon he has created for himself. G'night, love you all.

Here it is, Sunday again. We all just got home, stumbling into a messy house, nobody making any offers to remedy that problem. I am not snowboarding or going to the rec center tonight. A little unusual, since I have been gone every evening this week that we did not have company. Christmas is approaching. We all know it, can feel it in our bones. A dread, a small bit of panic, a temptation to crawl in a hole and stay there until about the sixth of January. I never figured myself for the type of person who excersizes for therapy, but I occasionally surprise myself. TV is boring, the house is messy and depressing, the fridge is empty (we seem to be even shorter on time than money to buy groceries) so more often than not, I find myself lacing up my Gel Asics and hitting the track. It's something to do, the endorphins kick in after a mile or so, and I settle into a comfortable stride that almost feels as though the track is coming toward me, instead of me moving over it. I watch the white cinderblock walls and the floor to ceiling windows slide past me, steal surreptitious glances at the hotties at the weight machines (don't judge me, I know Christmas is past, but the catalog can still be mildly entertaining...), and outrun all the leftover stress and angst of the day. By the time my run is over, and I have pumped enough iron to turn my arms and shoulders into mush, and have simmered in the hot tub or steam room, then shocked my overheated self in the pool, I feel exhausted but so much more alive, have forgiven my job for the stress it causes, and am ready to not resign again for another day. I have a whole list of uncomplimentary things I call people like me, who would rather work out than sleep, who prefer salts to sweets, who drink water instead of soda. I make jokes about it only seeming like they live longer. It is only when I hear my friends say the same thing about me that I become very quiet. That may be the facts of me, but at heart, I am actually a lazy slob. I do exactly what I want to do, which most of the time, is getting out of the house and doing something rather than watching the same movie that we watched last week, and cooking just so I can clean the kitchen later. Plus, I just bought myself new running shoes the other day. They only have about fifteen miles on them, still all springy and arch-supporty, still fresh and white. Who could resist the allure of a new pair of tenny-shoes?

....Well, it's not Sunday anymore. I really meant to get back to my computer after that distraction (can't remember anymore what it was) but by the time I got back up to our room, where the computer is, B. had turned it off and was in bed. It's actually Thursday now, the day after the "Blizzard of '06", as the news is calling it. We only got about six to eight inches of snow, and are used to it, unlike our stranded Denverites and holiday travelers who could not make it up here as planned. They got two to three feet. It has been a nightmare of changed bookings, cancellations, and extended stays the last two days. The office has piles of Fed-exed gear that got here in fine shape, unlike it's owners, who are stuck in L.A., or worse yet, Wakeeney, Kansas. And to top it off, the first big powder day since the slopes have been open, I worked a ten hour day, gunning my poor little Jeep through piles of snow and slush, racing from one near catastrophe to the next, stopping long enough to chug a meal-replacement shake (no, I'm not THAT health conscious, but bless the person who came up with the "sixty second meal"- tastes like swamp goo and bitter cocoa, but provides a much-needed energy boost), and later, a freebie Nature Valley granola bar from a stack of free samples in a building lobby. Cleaned out the granola chunks with a free sample of Nicorette chewing gum (sans the nicotene, being a free sample), an interesting orangie-minty flavor. My standard hunger staver-offer when I am in Keystone, where cheap food is as hard to find as...well, you supply the metophor. I could think of about three, but they are all decidedly naughty. And I'm too tired to make one up.

On the days when more sustanance is needed, or one's mental state needs a longer recovery time than the time it takes to drink an icky chocolate shake, there are two places in Keystone where one can eat for around three bucks. Both can send one straight into a state of gurgling lethargy, complete with gassy bloat and breath that could send a camel running. One is the Keystone grocery, a Texaco station with a few aisles of groceries and a prepared foods section where one's pocketbook is viciously molested, but where one can still buy a burrito for under five bucks. The other place where locals can shell out a just a few bones for some uncomfortable bodily functions is Uncle Pizza, better known as it has been known for years, as Pizza 101. It consists of a countertop, two fridges, a massive oven, a tip jar, and three barstools, and one or two shaggy headed shredders squeezed into a space that would hardly hold a gourmet chef's knifeblock. Order a slice, specify what you want on it, your toppings get slapped onto an already baked, basic cheese pizza, tossed into a crusted, ashy oven, and several minutes later, thrown onto a paper plate which is unceremoniously slid towards you. Fight for a barstool, or if you are having a "cute day", grin at the liftie who's just finishing his slice, take him up on his offer to vacate his seat for you, and sink your teeth into a slice the size of your head, all bready goodness and grease, and as you inhale it, idly wonder just how miserable you'll be the rest of the afternoon. Trade powder stash tips, or sob stories about having to work too much with the other six people there (maximum capacity, folks), wash down that last bit of crust just in time to offer your seat to the cutie who just grinned at you, slap down three bucks to cover your slice plus tip, and elbow your way out the door. There you have it, peoples. Keystone on three dollars a day. That is, if one meal a day is all you require. Of course, if your budget is a ten dollar meal, there are infinitely more options, and if it is more like seventy or eighty dollars a meal, well, you will not be disappointed then either. But it takes a very crafty lass to feed herself on three little bitty dollars when she is stuck out in a resort town all day.

It has been quite a weekend, we had a group in our house that, to use a word I learned today, was a bit of an olla podrida. For those of you as verbally unaware as I was, that means a hodgepodge, a motley crew, a jumbled mess of bodies of all shapes and sizes. At one point, we counted sixteen heads packed into the living room, dining room, and kitchen. And given this particular group, they were not sixteen quiet, unobtrusive heads. The house was all but impossible to walk into, the entryway filled with skis and snowboards, and all the gear that acompanied them. Add to the mess most of my former youth group, carrying on where we left off five years ago before we all moved away from Scott City (I think it's safe to say nobody has gotten any less crazy), one massive, collective sugar and caffeine buzz, a week of sleep deprivation, shared sleeping quarters, smelly ski boot feet, a poker set, three digital cameras vith video, deafening surround sound, Dominoes pizza and donuts, one forty dollar parking ticket, one percocet-munching invalid with his upper arm broken in two places, (finished his second run of the day on a sled, being pulled down the mountain by a hundred-pound ski patrolless), and one poor, unsuspecting kid who came along for the ride and did not realise that this group was not for the faint of heart, and you have your olla podrida. It was fun, but judging by the bloodshot eyes and dragging suitcases as we bade them all goodbye, they were as exhausted as we were. But when will it ever work for us all to be together like that again? The answer, sadly, is probably never.

Night before last, we celebrated B's dad's birthday, and last night, we had the newlyweds over for dinner. They are spending their honeymoon in Keystone, in one of our condos. Now tonight, my cousin Heather is here, moving into our den. She will be working for us through the busy Christmas season. So much excitement, it's no wonder we have all come down with colds. It probably didn't help that we all shared the same water bottles, ate off the same silverware, slept on the same pillows as a dozen other kids this weekend. But there was no keeping it all straight, and with that group, nothing is sacred. One stops trying. When it was time to go to bed one of those nights, B had to wait until the invalid woke up and moved himself from our bed, then one of my girlfriends and I escaped up to our room for a long-overdue girl talk. Finally, poor B had enough, and without further ado, even though his bed was occupied with giggling girls, he climbed in it, burrowed beneath the covers and promptly began snoring. We girls looked at each other, shrugged, and since our conversation has been so unceremoniously interrupted, decided it was perhaps time to go to bed ourselves.

I started inspecting for a wall of bookings this weekend. Night skiing is going to be open seven days a week starting this weekend. Christmas season is upon us. We all need nyquil, lots of sleep, and kleenexes, not high paying, demanding guests and a busy season. But oh, well. This is why we are doing this when we are young and resilient. We'll get through it.

It's a Sunday afternoon, everyone besides Marci and me are working, but here I am. I got my one inspection done, and have been instructed to clean house for company tonight. There will be a trickle of kids through here, who are on their way home from B's littlest cousin's wedding in Kansas today. But still, here I am, at the computer. So far, I have started a load of laundry.

I did go to church this morning. I have discovered a very interesting group, one that, given my background, I can see how very much i have changed to be able to enjoy. It is comprised of about fifty people, and set up every Sunday morning in the Dillon movie theater. The thing that appeals to me is the utter absence of pressure. There is no uncomfortable meet-and-greet session, where for five minutes one is subjected to the mandatory, perfunctory hanshake, a glad-to-see-you without the curtesy of a name, not that a name would be remembered without any of the mnemonic aids of how should I remember you, are you from here, what do you do, etc. No need to explain just why this is your first time, no need to dress up, other than possibly a sweater instead of the usual grungy sweatshirt. No basket passed for an offering, accompanied by soaring, warm-fuzzy music and hawk-eyed deacons, just a small box in the back. No fusty, robed choir, swaying and warbling, one or two voices wailing far louder than the rest. So far, no pressure to join. Not that I am against such organised tradition, I just don't seem to be able to get terribly excited about it. In the movie theater, the music is loud and contemporary, the same songs that we listen to on the radio, delivered with the instructions to stand for it, or sit, or sing along, or not. Or whatever. In Kansas, it would all be too odd and unstructured, it would not go over so well. But in Summit County, it fits. I don't know whether to be concerned over the fact that I am acclimatizing, or not. I have never lived somewhere where there is less of an accepted standard. In lifestyles, fashion styles, vehicles, religion and spirituality, I have never experienced such a complete lack of comparison between each other. Locals wonder aloud why on earth the paper though that getting a Polo Ralph Lauren factory outlet store was front page news. Seriously, who cares? Forget Izod, if you're gonna spend that kinda money, there's no way you're gonna afford the important stuff, like knee surgery and beer.

I found myself snowboarding solo the other night, and as is often the case, fell into time with another single, and we ended up riding together the rest of the evening, until we closed down the lift at nine o'clock. He was a few years older than me, uses the bus as his only transportation, lives with slobby roommates. Mostly typical for Summit County, except that he was much better at the whole communicating thing than the usual monosyllabic grunt that accomompanies the usual jamming of the earbuds a little deeper into the ears, as is the case with most of the kids one meets on the lifts. We talked, and talked, and talked, between straightline runs, rudely showering slower skiiers and riders with washes of snow as we flew past, challenging each other to jumps, riding goofy-footed, and just outright speed. At some point, after our butts and knees were competely numb from sitting on the snow, we got onto God, and religion. His view of it all was typical of a lot of people I know up here. "I believe in a higher power, I believe the Bible is a story book written to illustrate a point, I believe that organised religion is necessary because people have to believe something and it keeps us humans halfway civilised. I just want to live my life, and not have to worry about it all. I suppose that means I'm going to hell, except that I don't believe in hell, or heaven, so that's kind of circular reasoning. My parents are Southern Baptists, when I cuss around them they tell me I'm making Jesus sad, which would concern me if i thought he was real. Maybe someday, I'll get on a different track, but right now, I'm just hangin loose..."

Lets face it, anyone with that mentality is not going to be at all attracted to stained glass and choir robes. The only touch of God they are going to get is on a one-on-one, personal level. I am sort of anti-project, I do not view friendship and acquaintances as any more of an opportunity than they want to make of them, I am not trying to nudge everyone I meet into full-blown Christianity, but if I have any credibility with them, maybe they'll give it a passing thought, and that's all I ask.

Another weekend, piles of fresh snow, and along with it, thousands of vacationers and weekenders. No chance of getting out and doing any turns these days. Even I'm not that stupid. This weekend was the Thirty Six Hours of Keystone. I ran around the last few days trying to prepare units for a wave of guests, and now I am asking myself, why? Most of the groups probably would not have noticed if we had done nothing. Poor B. did not get much sleep last night, answering the phone to find irate building managers screaming about parties taking place, guests locking their gear in the wrong ski lockers, groups wanting more keys for everyone coming and going from their condos at all hours of the night. Thank goodness, we are in the last twelve hours that the lifts are running continuously. The most troublesome guests have been successfully evicted, ending that barrage of calls, and B. is home at the moment, taking a quick break before everyone checks in and gets back from the slopes and the calls start coming in. Rumors are that this will be the last year Keystone hosts this particular event, and I must say, I hope so. Snowboarding all night long sounds like a fun, crazy thing to do in theory, but in reality, it is a recipe for major tragedy. Mixing booze, energy drinks, sub zero temperatures, poor visibility, and a sport that is already inherently dangerous cannot be good.

But in the middle of the constant, out of control spiral that is our life, all the guests that damage things, that have grandma make a reservation for twenty screaming college freshmen, that lock themselves out at three a.m., that dispute the charges on their credit card after we charge them for damages, sometimes the powers that be take pity on us, and when they does, they deliver bigtime.

Last night, we rented a small condo to a group we were a tiny bit suspicious were from a college in Denver. This morning, we got a livid phone call from the building manager- her brand new carpet was pulled apart, trash and cigarette butts were everywhere, exit signs were broken and dangling, fire extinguisher glass was broken, saliva and urine frozen to her windows, firewood thrown from the unit's third floor deck to the yard below, not to mention the deck had obviously been used more often than the toilets. Obviously there had been a bit of debauchery that had taken place between one and six a.m., and she was not happy about it. She called us, then the police, to fill out a damage report in order to be able to charge the responsible, or should we say irresponsible, party. When the deputy showed up, we pushed open the door that was left unlatched, and found ourselves looking over a sea of bodies, clothes, belongings, and blankets. About thirty unresponsive teenagers, draped over each other, rolled into corners, filling every inch of space not taken up with the evidence of the party the night before. We waded through the mess of bodies, shook enough comatose kids awake until we found the one whose credit card was on file, and told him to pack up his friends and get out. Same song, umpteenth verse for the in-county staff. Usually the story ends with us attempting to charge the credit card of the person who made the reservation, the offending party calling their credit card company and calling the charges fraudulent, and nobody has the energy to deal with it. We end up eating it because it's easier than actually trying to get money out of them. But this time, oh, yes, this time. As it turned out, most of the kids attend a private school in Denver. And as their perverse luck would have it, the owner of our company, who made the reservation thinking that the young man on the phone sounded exceptionally mature, just happens to be the next door neighbor to the dean of said school. Upon being made aware of this small bit of trivia, the kids assured us quite hastily that all damages would be promptly paid for, anything at all, no problem, so sorry. In return, the dean will not need to be any the wiser. Our faith in karma, what goes around comes around, ya win some, ya lose some, call it what you may, has been renewed.

Of course, similar things happened to us when we were little mennonite kids trying to get by with things we knew we aught not to. Friends of our parents working behind the counter when we tried to buy contraband- admittedly, our contraband was a Bryan Adams tape, not underage consumption of alcohol and ownership of a rainbow colored bong, the only thing still standing upright by this morning. I reallise what good kids we were, even though those around us were so convinced otherwise. We tried on makeup, these kids make out. In "love chambers" set up in closets, cushioned with the futons we so thoughtfully provide, lined with couch cushions and dozens of tea light candles. We bought disposable cameras, and even posed for pictures. Sometimes we wore jeans, and took our hair down. But that was about as far as it went. The stakes were just too high to gamble with our reputations any more than that. It might harm our chances of, you know, gettin' married. An expelled girl's chances go way down, especially when she is surrounded by so many innocent, untarnished ones. No boy minds having an expelled girlfriend, as long as nobody finds out about it. But they always ask the sweet, tame ones to marry them. The prospect of being really old, like twenty six, before someone proposed to us was enough to make one toe the line.

Says me, who was almost nineteen when she said "I do, I do, I will" before God and these witnesses. What a waste, to be so good all of those (one) years when she could have really been cutting loose. Now she's expelled anyway. And Mr.B. still even claims her.

But now it's getting dark, the phone hasn't rung for an hour, and I really should go create something to feed my family. Who needs kids when they have roomies? I cook for them, but only when I feel like it, because otherwise someone else will do it, I clean up their messes, but only so I can create a path to my own piles, I yell at them to turn their music down, but only because it is creating terrible discords with my own. I race to be home before they are, but only so I can claim my parking spot, and break up squables only because I can out-shreik everyone else and get my point across in the brief moment while everyone else is cringing from my banshee yell. Well, actually, I'm not the only one that employs that tactic. It's used by whoever's voice is the strongest during any given arguement. We live in a bustling house, and not a one of use could still be called a child- not as biological age is concerned anyway. Ok, till later.