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.