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?