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.