Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, the blog that your blogger wants to write, but wonders if she should even bother. Other than a dog who just got hold of a sheet of bubble wrap, which pops in his mouth and creates the need to race in manic circles around the house, sliding into dining room chairs and sending them flying across the floor, crashing into corners, and who is now stationed over the offending plastic, alternately attacking and biting it, then dashing away from it when it pops...it's just the same old same-o.



It is snowing, but not the big dump we keep hoping for. Almost every morning, we wake up to just enough snow to make the roads slushy and add an extra hundred pounds to our wheel wells and undercarriages. I have finally taken the knobby tire off my bike and exchanged it for a smooth tire and my trainer. I watched a movie while I biked ten miles the other night in my living room, and my behind is still a little bit tender. The next day, I ran 5k on snowshoes, creating sore glutes and obliques. Then I came home and made brownies for a Bible study we attend on Thursday nights, and very few of them got eaten, so we have been living on grapefruit and brownies with ice cream.



We armchair shop in the evenings- for bikes (that would be me) and travel trailers (that would be B) and vacations and real estate for Someday. Not that any of it is an option, but hey. It helps us dream. Whatever sustains us until April.

...okay, that was when I fell asleep last night. I had spent all of my creative energy writing a story that I thought had a bit of promise, but I got impatient with the writing of it and did not feel like developing a storyline anymore, so I switched to blogging and realized I had absolutely nothing to pull out of the vacuum that was my brain.

Andy and I are back from snowshoeing. We did the short loop, but worked on obedience. He does very well with heel (I still feel silly saying "heel" to my dog. It seems so militaristic. But I suppose it is universal, so I say it.) as long as there are no, and I do mean NO distractions. And he thinks heel means brush against me, or literally walk right on my heels. We have our little routine. It goes something like this.

"Andy, come front."
He stops and looks at me.
"com'ere!"
huh?
"COME. HERE."
He explodes into flailing legs and wagging tail, racing toward me at full tilt. At the last moment, when I am braced for impact, he swerves wildly, spinning up snow, and races around me in tightening circles until he has himself wound down to an excitedly quivering heap of dog, burrowed into the snow. (See photo for example of him doing this. If, of course, you can find him...)
"Sit."
A small wiggle of the butt signals that it has attempted to settle further into the snow.
"Heel."
His head pops out of the snow and he shakes away the snow clinging to his eyelashes, sneezes away the snow that has gone up his nose. Surges forward, then remembers what his command was and stops until I catch up, scarcely waiting until I am abreast of his nose before finding his pace- three steps running, slowing to a painfully calculated walk, three more steps running.
"Good boy."
huh? can we run now? can we can we?
"nuh-uh-uh-uh!"
Tail droops. Head lowers. Eyes roll upward under peaked eyebrows to look reproachfully at me.
"Heel."

Bugger. He presses next to me, unwilling to walk behind me, but the trail is only wide enough for one, so he finds himself forced behind me. And that is when he starts walking on my snowshoes. In Andy's world, "heel" means walk within nose reach of my leg. This is rather difficult than I am wearing skis or snowshoes. We occasionally land in a heap in the snow when my skis or snowshoes do not come along with my forward momentum.

And then, before his attention can wonder so far that he has a chance to be disobedient, "okay."

He literally explodes. Snow flies. He takes flying leaps into ravines, bursting through snowdrifts deeper than he is tall, wiping out and taking faceplants, rolling head over heals, his legs about three paces ahead of the rest of him, already churning before they are back under his body. And then,

"Easy". He stops. Turns and looks at me, puzzled. "Stay". He sinks into a heap in the trail, tail twitching, still ready to spring, but forcing himself into stillness. I catch up. "Heel".

And we start over.

The training walks actually exhaust him almost as much as a run twice as far. His brain just has to work so hard to keep the rest of him under control. Now he sleeps draped between the arms of the leather armchair, the only piece of furniture he is allowed on.

Goodness. I hope we're not this borish in the future when talking about our kids. It is my opinion that dogs are much more entertaining than kids to other people. Their behavior issues do not have sinister implications into the future. No dog who enjoys torturing squirrels when it is a pup grows up to be a serial killer, or something. Maybe I am just being a scrooge, but kids behaving badly does not amuse me. Even when they do it with a modicum of creativity. I am aware that that may change when I have my own.

One of my favorite books as a kid was The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowatt. Nobody would have enjoyed the story about the kid who wouldn't be. If it were the kid who wore the goggles while hanging his head out the car window, spitting cherry pits into the breeze, folks would have begrudged him his cuteness, because it was an attention getting ploy. But it was a dog. An innocent, guileless creature who had no idea that it's eccentricity was anything other than normal. Who's loyal little brain worked overtime to churn out delightful bits of amusement for it's people. Who seemed to have a sense for what caused it's humans to laugh, and performed to their sense of humor.

As does Andy, I am convinced. As quickly as he pickes up on verbal cues with us scarcely making an effort to teach him, there is no way he does not read our body language, which is his first language, and realize that certain behavior delights us while other behavior offends us. Which is why we are so unsuccessful at putting the lid on his wild antics, even when they are ridiculously obnoxious and out of control. They delight us too much. I am sure we put out happy pheremones that signal to him our delight and approval, the laughter bubbling up in our chests, even as we tell him to calm down, take it easy, cease and desist, no, Andy, no-no.

Speaking of verbal cues, I did not realize before having a house dog that they could make such quick associations with items and experiences. And once a word is in their head, it does not come out easily. Poor Andy has trouble distinguishing between words that sound almost the same, such as "beg" (to which he balances on his hind legs, front paws tucked neatly in front of his chest, while he gazes nearsightedly at the treat being used as incentive) and "bang" (to which he takes a few staggering steps sideways, falls over, and plays dead...except for the tail slapping the floor). But a few words we did not mean to teach him include "shower" (which provokes a rather alarmed response from him), "bike ride" (which provokes manic circles and whining by the door), "Raisin" (which causes the same response) and "poop". The last one actually comes in really handy, unless one says it while in the car and reminds him he has to go. It is nice to have a command that expedites the long, long process of finding the perfect spot.

Borish. Right. Sorry. Moving along to other topics of non-interest and non-importance.
I am sitting here waiting for a batch of bread to rise. All the arrivals today are back to backs, which means I have to wait for the housekeepers to finish them before I can go inspect them for arrival. B ate the last grapefruit half this morning while I was out snowshoeing, leaving me one long overripe banana for breakfast. Instead, I dug in the freezer and came up with the last soy sausage patty, which I crumbled into an egg white and ate wrapped in a brittle tortilla, since we had no bread in the house. So until noon I have the house, sans food, yes, but semi clean and warm and cozy. I cleaned it this morning, then threw a batch of bread into the Kitchen Aid mixer Grandma gave me as a wedding present.

That Kitchen Aid is the one item I do not think I could live without. It is a workhorse of a mixer, and does everyting from mash potatoes to knead bread to whip merangue. It may have been overworked a time or two, because when the dough gets so stiff it almost cannot turn, grease starts to run out of the attachment head and I have to pick it out of the food. But I remember the days before she gave it to me, those first few months after I was married when I was out to prove to my new husband and the whole world just what a little Suzy Homemaker I was (it's okay, you can laugh. I do). I remember how much work it was to create the perfect balance of gluten development and yeast development simultaneously to create big, fluffy, chewy bread. With the mixer, I do not even think about it. A long, slow kneeding period followed by 75 minutes of rising, puctuated six different times by punching it down, then shaping it, a half hour in the oven, and voila. Fluffy, chewy bread, not too light, not too dense. Unless, of course, the atmospheric pressure is not right, it is a sunny day, the house is too cold or too hot, I forget to set my timer when I am developing the yeast in the sponge, or almost anything else. I actually make much better bread at high altitude than I did in Kansas. And I always make better bread on cloudy days. Not rainy days, just cloudy ones. I can almost get an excellent stretch test on a cloudy mountain day in a warm house with my Kitchen Aid. (A stretch test is where the baker takes a small lump of dough and stretches it between her fingers- when the dough will stretch to create a thin, smooth membrane instead of tearing, the gluten is fully developed.)

I have my mom to thank for providing me with a goof-proof bread recipe. For some reason, our bread never turns out the same, probably because she doesn't like her bread doughy and chewy so she takes steps to keep the dough a bit more stiff during the kneeding process. But she is the one who spent years in the quality control lab at Heartland Mill, testing and formulating and creating goof-proof techniques for the lab techs to bake test flour samples. She pulled out a hypothetical bread recipe from her head when I asked her one day, and I wrote it down, and with the exception of adding a bit more water to the sponge than she suggested, it makes beautiful loaves almost every time. And without further ado, ladies and gents, I give you Sandi's bread recipe.

Sponge:
3 cups flour (if you are going to be making it with half whole wheat, use the whole wheat flour here, and the white flour when you add the other three cups, because wheat flour needs longer to develop. I use Golden Buffalo flour, flour that has most of the bran removed, but still contains the germ.)
2 tablespoons instant yeast
2 or 3 cups water @ 30 degrees celcius (or approx. body temp, but no warmer, on your wrist.)
1/2 cup sugar (brown sugar or honey works well, makes the bread a bit more moist than white sugar)
mix until smooth- about three minutes at medium speed
shut off mixer, and set the timer for 20 minutes.

Twenty minutes later, come back and find that the sponge actually resembles a sponge, bubbly and twice it's size. poke it and watch it collapse. Add:

1/4 cup oil (I use olive)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 egg (egg substitute does not work well here. Nor does leaving the egg out completely.)
3 cups flour

Kneed until smooth and elastic- a good reference here is when the dough cleans itself off the side of the bowl and it all sticks to the dough hook.

let rest 10 minutes. Punch down.
let rest 10 minutes. Punch down.
let rest 10 minutes. Punch down.
let rest 10 minutes. Shape.
let rise until approx. double in size (if, after a half hour it still isn't doubled in size, accept the loss and put it in the oven anyway. It will continue to grow as it bakes).

Bake at 375 until top turns golden and it sounds hollow when thumped.





Of course, the original bread meister in the family was Grandma. The picture is of your future blogger "helping" her with a batch of cinnamon rolls. Speaking of children behaving badly...I wonder if the only way to keep me in the house and out of trouble was to give me dough to play with. I remember many "Breadie Bears" with raisin eyes and raisin belly button baking while I popped the oven door open every few minuted to check on the process and marvel at the way their tummies got fat when they baked.



...this evening. And that was when I went to work. I am home now, after a trip to the grocery store, home made veggie lasagna in the oven. I was not quick enough to sneak the fact that it was vegetarian (has cheese, but no meat) in on B, and now he is sure that he will not like it. And the truth is, he won't. Not after he has made up his mind not to. There is also a pan of brownies in the oven (okay, confession. I messed up on the pan we took to our group last Thursday night. They were about an eighth of an inch thick. That was why they did not all get eaten. I must prove to B that I can make good brownies. So I threw out the rest of the pan from thursday this morning, and am making another batch. Not that we need more brownies).

...Later still. Hmm. Whatdya know, he liked it. If I must say so myself, I do make a rightous lasagna. Now I am sitting here with my stomach stretched tight, wondering why I did it.

I plan to ride Beaver Creek with a friend tomorrow morning. I have never been to Beaver Creek, but I hear it is supposed to have snow. B says to take the day off, because we get busy the rest of the week. If I can go into the kitchen and take care of the evidence of cooking a meal, I may not even have to feel guilty about leaving a messy house sit on my day off.

Hello and welcome to An altitude Problem, where good things come to those who whine. I sit in a wonderfully clean house, simply because I was a bit petulant last night, feeling like I'd been run over by a steam roller after having spent the last eight hours racing from one condo to the next, not taking time for lunch, getting ready for this weekend. Andy was racing in circles and shredding everything he could get his teeth on when I got home, because he had spent the last eight hours patiently waiting for me in the backseat of my car, only to have me slide in and speed down the road a quarter mile, park, and get out again for another hour. He needed a run, and I needed to growl at something, and that thing happened to be B, and the growling was about the fact that gender roles are stupid and the world at large does not think like I was raised to think, that men do not belong in kitchens or behind a mop or a broom or a vacuum sweeper. And that when women work as long of days as their men, they should not be expected to be the only one to cook or clean. And that it wasnt my fault that he was hungry because of the run he had forced himself through at the gym before he came home, nor was it my fault that I hadn't had time to go to the grocery store, and when I did, all I bought was cookies, so there was nothing to eat in the house, and now, I had to take my achy, tired self outside and run Andy, because I had to do everything around here. Ad nauseum. In hidsight, that wasn't one of my finest moments. Especially since I did have a day off four days ago, and spent it sitting in my armchair, staring at the opposite wall, then snowshoing, then more sitting and staring, then eating, then back to the armchair, only managing to blink when the vision started to blur. Oh, it felt good, but after I got done with the glazed-eyed staring in my silent house with no need to go to work, I really needed another day off to do day-off things.

I asked Andy if he wanted to go for a bike ride, and his response almost put me in a better mood. He became pogo dog. Stiff legged bouncing by the front door, his nose in my business as I pulled on my bike clothes and shoes and found my snowboard helmet and readjusted my headlamp to fit it. Apparently, he remembers that the phrase "bike ride" usually ends up with him bounding down the trail.

It was cold, so I bundled up, then wheeled my bike out to the road and climbed on. The trails are so hard packed right now they are a bit hard to ski on, my skis want to slide backward, but as long as one stays in the twenty four inches of hard-pack sunk into the snow, the bike riding is excellent. I overtook a group of cross country skiers, who, when the light from their headlamps fell on my bike, whooped and exclaimed at the craziness of anyone who would mountain bike in the dark in the winter, walked it, slipping and skidding across an ice flow that other winters has been buried under the snow by now, but this winter, is a slanting, yellowish sheet of ice that is almost impossible to get across no matter what is on your feet, through my happy place, gnarled trees reaching into the circle of light in front of me, then snatching branches back into the darkness. Then, through the open meadow, over rocky portions of trail now buried beneath the snow, up the last hill, turned onto another trail, and back down, catching my breath as handlebars cleared trees trunks with an inch to spare, ducking low hanging branches and leaning trees that in the summer are far above my head. Then onto an even less-used trail, where the packed portion is only as wide as a pair of feet, and I flew down it confidently until I stopped to put my gloves back on, my hands freezing now that I was coasting. I tried to start again in the narrow trail, and rode into the soft snow beside it, stopping and sticking my foot into a pile of sagebrush just under the snow. And again, and again. And again. But my mood was better, in spite of the snow in my shoes, and I burst into the house, apology on my lips, and stopped in a sparkling kitchen, facing a scowly B., who rolled his eyes when I told him he wouldn't have HAD to.

It took until this morning to get him to reply to my questions in other than grunts and monosyllables. He wasnt growly because he's a chauvenist who thinks only women belong in a kitchen, he says, he just had to get over my attitude (and even I can't argue with that). But the good news is, I sit here this morning in a house that sparkles, with time before work to blog instead of cleaning and doing laundry, with Velvet Underground playing and Andy sleeping in the window behind me. This is the season of the messy house. But thanks to B, not in my house. Not that I would suggest that any of my faithful few try this, but it does seem that huffing "I have to do everything around here," then stomping out of the house, lends itself to coming back into a house magically transformed. If a clean house is your only worry. If a happy marriage is what you wish for, I would suggest other methods. Like getting over yourself and not expressing every sniveling thought that pops into your whiny head.

Not really sure that little anecdote was blog-worthy, but I'd hate to be having my faithful few thinking I was this goddess, juggling work and home making and then riding down the trail by the light of my halo, then coming back home and saying things like, Oh, honey, don't you worry about a thing, let me rub your feet, because you work so hard to support me, (okay, B hates his feet being touched, so that wouldn't happen anyway) and making hearty meals, all bubbling sauces and chopped vegetables, then spending the rest of the evening pressing his socks. Because I must not tell a lie, it is rare these days to open the sock drawer and find a matching pair, or open the fridge and find anything besides really old beer, condiments, and soymilk, or open the cabinet and find a drinking glass. This is the time of year we finance the rest of our year, and not much else. It is also the time of year I begin to feel like a massive failure, because, unlike in the spring, summer and fall, when I am a halfway active, self-motivated individual who thinks she is the most fortunate person she knows, a little work and a lot of play in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I turn into a moody, combatative, overwhelmed little person who comes home to a disaster area and doesn't even care, because she is cold and sees a couch and a blanket. How women work full time, raise kids, cook, and clean and keep the sock drawers full is a mystery to me. I sit in humble awe in their shadows, and feel like a giant loser.

Although, in our defense, I really do not think it is the physical strain that has us in this state every winter. I think back to when we worked ten and twelve hour days, six days a week, and do not remember feeling like this at all. The fact that an eight, or even six hour day can so completely wipe us out tells me something about the strains of this particular job. Those days were spent in quiet reflection, back and forth across fields, back and forth, back and forth, and when it was time to go home, one often decided, just one more hour, one's back hurt, but one had nowhere else one really needed to be, and it was so peaceful here. Or they were spent swinging a machete at the woody stems of Kochia weeds in the hot sun, the sweat of an honest day's work trickling down one's back, the satisfaction growing as the weeds piled up. Or sitting around a break room table or a nurse's station with friends for hours of gossip, punctuated by rounds through darkened hallways, creeping in to check on sleeping residents and patients, changing linens here, giving a drink of water there. Occasionally a stressful shift, but one that could be forgotten as soon as the double doors closed behind one and they drove home into the sunrise.

But here, from the moment one gets to work, there is the push, it shoulda been done yesterday, they wanted in an hour ago, for what they are paying they expected better/bigger/closer to the lifts. It's not done good enough. It's not done fast enough. The elevators are too slow, the key cards don't work, the light bulbs are burnt out, the guests are unhappy, or drunk, or disorderly, or naked in the spa, they yell at the building managers and at us, the building managers yell at us, we yell at the housekeepers, the housekeepers work faster, and do less, and ask for more money, the guests ask for refunds, we ask for more time, shine the faucets to try to cover a bad clean, dump dishwasher soap down the drain to cover the rotten food smell from the previous guests, and hope to goodness the guests checking in wont notice. I have never had a job before that ran on so much anger and stress and negativity. And from vacationers, no less. And then, we get home and collapse, and look at each other with bags under our eyes, and don't ask about each other's day. We don't want to know. And then the phone rings, and we start all over again.

Of course, after April 15, a warm breeze will blow through the county, Keystone will turn into a ghost town, all empty, dark condos and melting slopes, running streams and cheerful locals, a small town community feel will pervade, we will take a vacation, which will kick off our summer, then fix all the broken toilets and dripping faucets and bent lampshades and blinds hanging at an angle, and we will again be happy and flaunting our great life, and bragging about the benefits of a job like ours- negotiable time off in the summer, and an eight hour workday will be spent making leisurely trips to the hardware store, a two hour lunch, with plenty of energy for a ten mile bike ride in the evening. I will spend long, sun-soaked days at A-basin, snowboard pushing up piles of slush and corn, skimming over standing water, riding in my shorts and tank top. Then it will close, and I will begin skiing up it with Andy, waving at employees as they do off-season maintenance on the lifts, coming back down with a sunburn and practically floating with the euphoria of being healthy, and living in the mountains, with towering rock faces and hundred mile views and being so close to the sun.

When we do read the newspaper, over lunch on the days we take the time for it, all we read about is another avalanche, another tree well death. Makes us not want to hit the back country until the snowpack stabilizes, which makes us more okay with working all the time. And when we turn on the TV late at night, all we see is the death toll in Haiti, the frantic, tearful survivors, an economy where a tourist season would literally save lives, save children from starvation, where all that many people there have, including husbands, wives, parents and children, are buried beneath tons of concrete. Which could actually be part of my problem. I suddenly get the feeling I live an insipid life, working a meaningless job, one that makes no difference, makes nobody's life better, only appeases those with enough money to make demands. I wonder if, in another life, I could be there, or anywhere else, working with my hands, helping, in direct contact with lives shattered by disaster, and feel somehow more valuable to the world.

But that sort of thinking leads to untrue comments like "I have to do everything around here". And I am stepping off the grumpy train. Today is a new day, and other than spending too long having an inner dialogue that I typed here as I was having it, and am now wondering if I should even post it, I dont have any reason so far to be stressed out. So I am going to take my happy pants, pull them on, and go to work. And try to get home in time to take Andy on another bike ride. And to you, faithful few, get off your computer. Hadn't you aught to be out making the world a better place, instead of listening to me whine?

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem , a blog neglected while it's blogger has been lose-her-mind busy. I am enjoying my first day off in eleven days, although the one eleven days ago was spent on the road, so it really didnt feel like a day off. I am not sure how long it has been, but I don't think I have written here since before the new year. Which would mean you, faithful few, do not know that I went to Kansas after work New Year's Eve, five hours of driving through the middle-of-nowhere high plains under a blinding bright moon, arriving the same time as 2010, sleeping about three hours between Andy's pacing and running up and down the stairs and chasing cats in the wee hours, then hit the road the next day after helping my mom finish a few projects, allowing her to be gone for the next few days, then driving back home and bringing her with me. And yes, the whole trip was about as endless and run-on as that sentence just now. I had several opportunities to shorten the sentence but thought I would make you feel just a bit of the exhaustion of Too Much, like I did the next day.



Marci rode down with me and I left her at her uncle's house for the night so that she could get in on the family reunion taking place between Manitobans and Kansans. Twelve hours later, I picked her up again on the way out of town. The three of us got back to a whining BBD, having covered my work for the day and bored at home without me, after dark that night. Andy slept all the way back on top of a pile of luggage in the back of the Subaru, trapped back there by a baby gate, but we did have to make one stop in Denver, at which time he body-slammed the baby gate down, crawled into the backseat, and helped himself to three of a dozen cherry-filled cinnamon rolls mom had brought from her freezer. Each roll had one cherry in the middle, and we found all three cherries, polished clean and spit back out in a pile on the floormat. Apparently he has no love for cherries. Apples, bananas, potatoes, carrots, strawberries, yes. But not cherries.



I spent the next three days working, and mom canned pinto beans and made bread, and we cross-country skied once a day. It was the perfect antidote to my holiday blues, which come from seeing everyone else spending the holidays with family, while we work and hear about the fun time that everyone else is having. My mom's holiday blues come from the fact that with both parents and one brother gone, and her three remaining siblings scattered between Idaho, Maine, and Eastern Kansas, there is no family for her, either. And in her family, the holidays were sacred- one came to Western Kansas on the holidays. No exceptions. They were full, busy days of food and crackling fire and every bedroom filled in the home place. Now, the family structure has changed, and she finds herself the only family member still there. In short, the holidays are a bit of a bummer for both of us.



After she left, I got busy and tried to work ahead as much as possible to get ready for this weekend, when Jay and Wendy came up so that Jay and B could ride snowmobiles. Mitch and Ashley, who had spent the holidays in Wolf Creek with her family, came as well, and Wendell and Titus stopped by on their way through, so we had a houseful for an evening.



Before they got here, I took Andy out for a long cross country ski, and put his new boots on his feet to keep the ice balls from sticking between his pads and hurting him. The snow this year has been exceptionally cold, and these boots have been almost impossible to find. I waited for them on backorder, since they were sold out every where I looked for them. I think it was becasue of the large number of soft-furred, webbed-toed big dogs in the county. There are big, happy, slobbery Golden Retrievers on the trails everywhere, and everywhere there is one, there is an owner picking out the ice balls that have frozen in their feet and are causing them to limp. Andy's friend Raisin does not have this problem becasue she is a black lab mix with non-webbed toes and coarse fur.



They look like little hiking boots, Vibram soles with no-nonesense tread and a mesh upper, rediculously cute. He prances in them, not used to not being able to feel the snow beneath his feet, and for some reason, absolutely loves sliding in them. He takes running leaps onto icy patches of road and trail and slanting ice flows, and without fear of hurting his toes or tearing his pads, goes stiff legged and slides until he stops or loses his balance, spins in excited circles, and does it over again, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he pants and grins.



Tho boys took snowmobiles and snowboards up to Vail Pass the next morning, while Wendy, Ashley, and I cross country skied up Peru Creek, picking our way around a large, unexpected ice flow, which Andy gleefully slid down, ran up, and slid back down. We got back around noon and I went to work while they went down to town to meet Marci for lunch. I went down to the office after my work was done and picked up Ashley, and we got groceries for dinner, then went home and had it ready soon after the boys dragged in, having skipped lunch and smelling of two-stroke fumes.



Mitch and Ashley left the next morning, and I went to work. And Andy, who had been pleasantly mellow the whole time our company was around, got sick. Maybe it was the 2 foot long rawhide bone we gave him for his first birthday, or maybe the turkey Raisin's mommy gave them, or maybe some mystery stink he found on our walk, but he turned into a barfing, squirting, miserable little boy. While spending the day in my car. We narrowly avoided any of the barfing or squirting taking place in my car, but there were some emergency stops along the road.



At work, I dealt with more barf. Apparently our housekeepers did not think they needed to remove the pile of linens from the hallway outside a condo door when they cleaned the condo, especially filled as they were with someone's dinner. So they sat in the hallway until I found them the next day, and, retching a bit myself at the smell, gingerly sorted sheets, mattress pad, blanket, and towels using trash bags as makeshift gloves, bagged them and put them in the car, where, when the windows were open, the wind blew the smell up to me, but when the windows were closed, Andy's sick-dog gas was even more lethal. Needless to say, I was in an absolutely foul mood by the time I got the bags unloaded at the office and make a last emergency stop along the road when Andy began hacking up another vomit. Thankfully, I had the house to myself for an hour, so that by the time everyone else got back to the house, I was only slightly growly.



Andy got us up every two hours that night to go outside and turn the snow along the road in front of our house brown. The next morning, yesterday, Wendy, Raisin's mommy, Raisin, Andy, and I went for a six mile ski up Keystone Gulch Road, Andy still turning the snow brown every little bit, but exhibiting no less energy than usual as he raced up and down the trail and played with Raisin. Wendy and I went to Noodles and Company for lunch, then home to sit and be lazy for a bit until the boys got home from snowmobiling. Jay and Wendy packed, then left for Denver so they could catch an early flight the this morning to LA, where, in a few days, they will be boarding a cruise ship for a few days.



B and I sat in our suddenly quiet house, took Andy outside with decreasing frequency, and finally crashed. Andy slept all night, and this morning, was no longer sick. Such a relief. I can actually leave him alone for a few hours again.



And this morning, I took him on a four mile hike on snowshoes. He wore his boots, and slid, and dug in the snow, and rolled and kicked, as relieved to be feeling well again as I was to have him well again. We hiked out to a hillside and enjoyed the view of the valley spread out in front of us, hundreds of dog, coyote, and fox trails crisscrossing it in the sagebrush poking through the snow, cerulean sky and intense sun. Then we came back home to clean house and do laundry and figure out my mileage log for the last ten days and all the things one must do on one's day off.



There is a point on the trail that I always wonder about. I do not know why it makes me so happy, but every time I walk, bike, or ski through it, I begin to feel very at peace with myself and my surroundings, and very happy to be alive. It is about two miles up the trail, a winding portion that crests a small hill, slanting sunlight coming through thin needles on impishly twisted, stunted trees, many of them dying from Pine beetles. There is a tree with an arm-like branch bent into a permanent salute that marks the beginning of this portion. Maybe, since it is about at the two mile point, that is just where the endorphins from my exersize kick in, but everytime I walk through it, I just cannot help feeling the glow of good health and the joy of being alive. I have tried to take pictures of it, but in the picture, it just looks like more woods. But in the daylight, I always feel invincible there. In the dark, I got a big spook there one night, a crash and a snort as I was biking through it. But that was because there was no sunlight.



There was no point to that paragraph, just hoping to share one small bit of the magic of silent woods, happy dog, bouncing sun, and pine trees before I sign off and get started on the endless job of creating order in my house after two weeks of disorder and work every day and guests.