Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the altitude is certainly not a problem. That is because at 3,400 feet, which is what our elevation is out here in the high plains, the air is thick, although not as thick as that air soup at sea level that makes a mountain dweller's lungs feel as though they will burst through one's ribs and forces shallow breaths.

So much has happened in the last week. After I posted that last post, I packed my bags, swished a token rag about my house, scooped all of the odds and ends from the top of the dresser, desk, etc into my underwear drawer so the house at least looked clean should our realtor get motivated and decide to actually maybe, I don't know, list it? Show it? She seems to have decided to not do a thing with it in the month since we signed the papers agreeing to give her 6 percent of the selling price. I packed the car full, put our road bikes on the roof, loaded up Andy, and hit the road. After a few stops in Denver, I drove out into the endless prairie with the sunset in my rear view mirror. At midnight, I was in a different world, that flat place where churches tower and kids reign and the air reeks of feedlot and rotting corn and freshly applied chemical blows off of fields and ditches and leaves it's oily taste in the back on one's throat. I pulled up to the tiny wheeled box that housed my husband, and let the dog out. Their reunion was joyous and exuberant. We cuddled up together on the couch that folds down into a sort-of bed, me curled around him curled around Andy. It felt so good to melt into a pile of blankets and warm bodies and not be alone, it was worth the five hours in the car through flat darkness, straining my eyes for deer and trying not to speed as the mile markers flashed past.

For two days, I rode with B in his truck. He was hauling manure out of a small private feedlot to a field several miles away, so we spent the day talking in bursts punctuated by his pulling into a pen, jumping from truck to loader, and loading the truck with tons upon tons of caked, rock-hard poop.

It has been years since I have had the chance to observe cows. They amaze and amuse me. B thinks I am nuts, that cows are the dumbest creatures on earth. I beg to differ. They are excellent examples of social hierarchy, habit, and creative ways to cope with a mind-numbing life. Cows live their short, cruel lives with nobody looking out for them, at least not unless someone's dollar is threatened. Nobody cares about a cow's emotional well-being. They stand all day in their own poop, and they eat corn that comes from the back of a feedtruck twice a day. When they arrive in a feedlot from whichever ranch they were born in and lived and romped, they are hearded, terrified, into a squeeze chute and hurt by humans armed with electric prods, their ears are ripped open and tags punched into them. If they thrash, a boot to their jaw. Huge and occasionally dull needles into flanks. They learn that a human one-sixth their size is a terrifying, predatory creature, and they learn that machinery, loaders and feedtrucks, will never run them over, will always stop for them, and their dinner comes from these enormous, noisy, stinking, smoking creatures. And they are bored. A pile of poop and a moving loader provides hours of entertainment in the time that they should spend grazing instead of being forced to stand around in their own poop without a blade of grass in sight. I was explaining this to B after he came back to the truck sputtering about stupid cows and how they cut down on his productivity by standing on top of the pile he was trying to load, following the loader, not moving with any amount of bucket-shaking and engine revving. The next load, I hopped out of the truck and stood on top of the pile myself while he loaded, making eye contact with the bravest cows, the ones who crowded closest. They trotted to safer corners and B loaded his truck in record time. But he said that as helpful as it was to have a scary woman out there scaring the cows away from the pile, it was a little embarrassing. He was pretty sure the cowboys would laugh at him. No normal wife would volunteer to go stand on a pile of poop and frighten cows for her husband, so they would probably assume he had made me do it, which would cause them to question his manliness and all manner of other things. Oh, dear.

After three days of spreading, it rained. We were sleep deprived. It is one thing to cuddle on a bed too narrow for two people and too short to stretch out for one night, but by the third night, we were beginning to snap at each other and fight for our sleeping rights. We decided that we absolutely had to find a house to live in.

Now, we plan on moving into Grandpa and Grandma's farm house in March, when the tenants who are in it now move out. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. A garden plot, pasture to bike in and run a small herd of happy cows, room for Andy to run, space for a chicken house, a barn for goats and cattle, a house empty and begging for sticky fingers and tiny feet. I have all manner of crazy notions running through my mind about building structures on the place, finally experimenting with straw bale construction and eco-sustainable utilities. There can be composting and planting trees and guinea hens. I can be barefoot and pregnant and my hair can get frizzy and my nails dirty and my arms tan. We can live close to the earth, of the earth, our food can come from our own hands and our own soil instead of being processed, poisonous, unrecognizable rubbery lumps of questionable meats and faux vegetables that are wax and miracles of geneticism and chemistry that have travelled thousands of miles from a questionable source to find their way into our bodies, to be called nourishment and to convince us that tomatoes are supposed to be pink and cucumbers are supposed to be shiny.

But before all that can happen, we need to be able to sleep this winter. We need to not get hypothermia spending a winter in a drafty camper heated with a propane bottle. I need to be able to cook so we can live on as real of food as I can manage, not Pop Tarts and Shells&Cheese.

B has spent the last six weeks inquiring, exhausting every channel, exploring every option looking for a house for us. Houses in Western KS are not easy to find. Every little farmhouse has a little farm family in it, a little farm husband providing the money for the little farm wife to buy pretty little curtains and new carpet. Things have changed since we left. Farmers have money now. Rent is still cheap, but not as cheap as it was, and home prices have risen. And the things that are available for rent are not what one might call liveable. I mean, for a meth lab, they work just fine. Mold on the walls and holes in the carpets and linoleum, centipede infestation and mouse poop, a history of murder-suicide, that's just fine if you're junkie who's cookin'. It might even be fine for us, as an alternative to our camper. The problem out here is not that the houses aren't there, it's a booming farm ecomomy and a mindset that only low-class people and transient workers rent, while functioning members of society own homes. The farmers do not need the extra money that would come from renting the old homesteads they aquire in farmland purchases, nor do they want the headache of upkeep, or to have to repair the damage that 15 transient workers can cause to a little farmhouse. With depleted aquifers, many of the wells have dried up. Little farm houses that once held little farm families and cradled little farm babies now crumble from neglect, sad windows watching the weeds grow around them. If it's a really nice place, (I.e. brick construction) a farmer might keep it for his little farm sons to move into, which they do as soon as they are married, and live in it until they can afford to build their own large, nice homes for their little farm brides on their yards surrounded by established trees, at which point they bulldoze the old house. At any rate, it is extrememly difficult to convince a farmer who just purchased another big, shiny green tractor that your rent money is valuable to him, and if you do convince him, one mention of your exuberant Golden Retriever and the deal is off. No inside pets allowed. Western Kansas farmers do not like pets. As a result, pets in Kansas are not the adored, well-behaved, easily forgiven members of society that they are in Colorado. And oddly, as trashy and unloved as the sad little farm houses that have escaped the bulldozer are out here, a slobbering, grinning, shedding house dog is a thing of abject horror to their owners.

At last, however, we heard of a recently vacated house 29 miles from town. In a twist of fate that I am not sure how to feel about yet, it is the same house in which I spent the first 15 years of my life. It is a solid little house, stucco over cinderblock, a tall house because an upstairs was added to a basement house 80 years ago. It stands sturdy agains battering winds. Not a single light apart from a blinking red tower is visible to the north, in spite of the fact that the house sits on a ridge, and only a few hardy souls live in the Smoky Hill River breaks to the north. It survived the dust storms of the 30's. It survived years of farmers battling with a terrible farm economy. A family lived in it, raised children, saw them get married and move away, saw them die. They left letters, postcards, photographs, books and clothes in the crawlspace, which I discovered when I was about 8 and spent days living in the 1930's. They left hay in the hayloft, which I spent a significant part of my childhood in, and in which dozens of kittens were born. I climbed over stanchions and imagined I was anywhere but there. The front porch of the house was the bow of my ship, the undulating waves of wheat surrounging the house my ocean. The grainery out back was my castle and playhouse, as was the much older homestead a mile down the road that I walked to, used the leaning outhouse oblivious to what might be living below the cracked seat, played Pioneer, pretending to draw water out of the frozen pump handle, lazily floating in the stock tank under the windmill, not really sure if the lumps on the bottom were dead birds or bits of sunken tumbleweed. It's really no wonder I had to be dewormed on the same schedule as the animals. My companions, a long line-up of short-lived Chows, Border Collies, Australian Shepherds, Great Pyrenees, and Chihuahuas, watched out for me, barked at rattlesnakes to warn me away, chased jackrabbits, dug goatheads from between their pads with their teeth. I lived outside, barefoot, my feet splaying out until no shoes would fit, the bottoms as hard as a dog's. I carried eggs in my skirt from the far corners of the yards as I found nests hens had hidden. I found bleached deer and cow bones in the pasture and brought them back, as well. I rescued a baby cottontail, a baby barnswallow, baby garter snakes, but all had to eventually be turned loose. I was a busy child, perfectly happy with being alone most of the time. And in hindsight, I know why. While the yard, the neighbor's yard, and the surrounding 3,000 acres of grassland and dry river breaks was the scene of the best parts of my childhood, the house was the scene of the worst. It was here I learned to be who I am, all the good and bad, the beautiful and terrible. All the laughter and tears of my adult life pull strings attached at the other end to this place and the things that happened here. The ghosts that haunt this house are not the usual kind. They are me. They are the things that I have tried to rise above and forget and deny. They are the pain that I have chosen not to feel, begging to be let back in so it can grow. They are the forgiveness that I have chosen to give, to myself and to parents and to friends, thoughtlessly cruel because nobody knew what really happened out there in the white house on the north edge of civilisation. It is the anger at certain adults in my life who punished me beyond my crimes, heaped punishment on top of the punishment I gave myself, because of their lack of understanding. Because they somehow thought they needed to be harder on me because of my parents. Because I was different and an only child. Because I didn't always wear a dress. Because I had seen more ugly life than their kids and it colored how I responded to situations around me, made me less like them and made them like me less.

In the 13 years since I moved away, I have become someone my 15 year old self would envy. I have salvaged all the best parts of her, and have scrubbed away most of the hurt, self-hatred, and insecurity that made her such a target. I have embraced her wild hair and her love of nature and her adventuresome spirit, while banishing most of her painful awkwardness with a constant stream of affirmation. I am thankful to whatever common sense she possessed that in spite of her self-destructive tendancies, she found a boy to share her life with who would let her know that she was his world, that he loved her just the way she was, while helping her try to rid herself of her anger and her depression and her self-hatred. I watched her rip her relationship with him to shreds before she realized what she was doing. I watched it circle the drain. I watched as it dawned on her that her low opinion of herself had caused her to mess things up so badly, he would never look at her in the same way again. Then I let her sob long nights away, wallowing in self-pity, and laughed as one day, she found herself laughing and wondering where the pain was. I watched as they laughed together, him and her, in their new reality and she felt, for the first time, something like self-respect. Something like unconditional love, washing over her as she discovered she could never mess up so badly as to make him stop loving her. Something like a dawning understanding of what the love of God must feel like, and something like joy and reverent gratefulness at the sort of love that would create someone like her and then still find it beautiful. I smiled as she looked at herself in the mirror and was glad for life, her own life, and promised her wild-haired, sad-eyed reflection that she would become more like me.

She's the ghost that eases out of the closet in the middle of the night and walks the hallway. She's the icy breath on the back of my neck as I stand at the kitchen sink and wash dishes the same way my mom did for 15 years. She's the reason I put the tupperware in the utensil drawer, the napkins in the silverware drawer, the silverware in the knife drawer. Every time I open the drawer next to the sink to get a fork, as I did for 15 years, I see napkins instead and I remember that it wasn't yesterday, it was a decade and a half ago, and she isn't me. Then I walk outside and I go for a ramble in the pasture, because that was where she had the least power all those years ago, and she still has less say out there. But still, every corner of this place causes an old emotion to come alive and walk the earth, creeping along in my shadow, ghostly fingers plucking at my heels.

But at the same time, I could move into this house and it was instantly home. No need to feel as though I don't belong, as though I have no roots. I know what every pop, every creak in this sturdy old house means. We speak each other's language. The sunrise through the dead tree branches to the east is the same one I saw every morning as I prepared for school, my steps across the yard trace the ones I took as I fed the calves, chickens, sheep, goats, horses, cats, and dogs, carried water and feed, chopped ice, buried my face in fragrant, hay-scented fur, brushed manes and tails, patted silky noses, stumbled over purring cats twisting around my ankles and greeted doggy kisses with belly rubs. So I think it's a good thing. Maybe it's okay that I revisit those old memories, too. Maybe I can finally put them to rest. Maybe being here will force me to move past my old self for once and for all, and plant the notion deep in my brain that Western Kansas does not have to turn me into anyone I don't want to be.

As soon as we got ourselves moved in, it was time to leave again. Heather, my cousin, snowboarding pal, our occasional winter help in Colorado, has finally found a man. Heather thinks there are those who believe those words deserve lights and a banner, or at least caps and italics, but Heather, bless her, has danced to her own tune and traveled the world and has been an incredible, independant, strong woman while waiting to meet a soulmate, one in several billion, who actually deserved her. And he does treat her like a queen. We love seeing her so very happy and cared for. The wedding was at her home church in Michigan, where she has lived, and I have never been there. We drove for two days to get there, through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, a corner of Illinios, and the bottom half of Michigan. There were more cornfields than I care to remember. Bobby stayed home, but the car was full- my mom, my friend Laci, and sister-in-law Marci. We slept in Davenport, IA on the way up, and made a quick detour off a random interstate exit which took us through the little town of Sagintauk and ended on the shore of Lake Michigan, so just in case I never get back, I can say I have seen a great lake. We walked down to the water, took off our shoes and dug our toes in the sugar sand, and got back on the road. After arriving on Thursday evening, we met all of Heather's "girls", the group of friends she has collected over the years, all having heard of each other, only a few having met. I found an instant kinship with several, that strange feeling that you most certainly must have known each other well in the past and merely forgotten. The weekend was a long series of fun and giggles, conversations of a nature too intimate to merit having just met. A little Too Much Information a time or two, a few deafening moments as everyone tried to talk over everyone else, an uproar here, a moment of hilarity there, and visuals that may stay with onlookers, in spite of them really wishing they wouldn't. (It seemed all such moments inevitably involved underwear- whether it was a cringe-worthy first impression and introduction made indelible by my own underwear, Superman briefs worn over jeans and dress slacks, striped underwear worn over yoga pants- although that one was definitely more cute-wrong than painful-wrong, an underwear moment that should never leave the cabin, because you just had to be there to appreciate it, or a moment involving a boomerang, cat tails and a green pond, me the damsel in distress- or should I say dis dress?- the pantsless husband of a friend coming to my rescue, and a whole lot of mud.) Uncle Warren and Aunt Silver (a.k.a. Sylvia) fed us well, and took care of us and were beyond hospitable. Heather provided a cabin out on Crystal Lake in the quaint and Dirty-Dancing-ish summer town of Crystal for the overflow, since all of her girls would have been far too many for the house. It was quiet there, being fall, and the mornings were crisp. Once the sun came out, fog hovered over the water. Some of the best parts of the trip happened in the cabin, like the long afternoon Marci, Laci and I spent relaxing in the screened-in back porch, saying whatever came to mind, cracking up over the odd things we delight in finding in common. Swans glided past the end of the long wooden dock that stretched into the water outside, water lapped at the shore, the old woman reading her book on the back porch of the house next door may have wondered if we had lost our minds. We ate an inordinate amount of chocolate and had girltalk like we haven't really had since we married boys.

The Friday night dinner and wedding saturday morning were beautiful affairs, and in spite of all the people attending, the couple kept the tone intimate and relaxed. It proved difficult getting them to leave the church after the wedding, with so many good friends around, and when they did, their car keys had accidentally gone home with the groom's father, who, along with all but maybe 20 people, had grown tired of waiting for the bride and groom to make their grand exit and had left. So the grand exit was made in the back seat of a friend's car, which seems highly appropriate and summarizes the spirit of the entire weekend- the focus on friends and the need for all involved to be flexible and plan on the unplanned.

Although there were those very sad to see Heather leave Michigan, they will be living for the foreseeable future in Brian's house in Copeland, Kansas. Copeland is south and a little east of Scott City. There are definitely those of us excited that they will be in Kansas.

After the bride and groom left, it was late, too late to consider starting home yet that night. We decided instead to get up early and make what turned out to be a 17 hour, 1,100 mile trip the next day. Besides, everyone left who was of a kindred spirit decided to trek out into the woods and build a campfire. Which we did, and it was a wonderful way to unwind after a weekend of activity- leaping flames and dancing shadows on the faces of new friends. We instructed my mom to sleep and prepare to be the driver on the first shift the next day, so we could stay out late. We returned to the cabin about 1:30, were sleeping by 2:00, and our alarm rang at 5. We were on the road by 6, watched a Michigan sunrise, a Nebraska sunset, ate wedding sandwiches and wedding candy out of a soft-sided cooler, stopped for gas four times and a potty break five and a half times (the half-time was a guard rail in the Illinios rain) and home by 10:00 that night, a time zone earlier.

And now I am back in the Land of Odd- I mean Oz. I still experience shock every time I lift my head from my computer and look out the window at the russet heads of milo around my house, at the sky that extra atmosphere and dust have turned a paler shade of blue than I am accustomed to, at the silence I remember from my childhood- the sound of such silence is the faint roar of bloodflow in my ears, my breath whispering in and out, in and out, a meadowlark outside. This house is quiet. The wind can howl and not a sound is heard in here. It feels strange, no barking dogs, no kids playing in the street, no backing garbage trucks or distant hammering, no sounds that one accepts as silence when one lives in a populated area. Just the occasional thwack of a loose piece of tin on the barn roof, a cricket, a meadowlark, a gust of wind rattling a windowpane, then back to loud, loud silence. It's wonderful and terrifying.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where life goes on. The chill of fall has arrived, and it won't be long before gold tinges the aspens, which are already losing their deep summer green and looking a little pale. Nights produce heavy frost, afternoons often produce a gray, thick layer of clouds reminiscent of the milk-white winter sky. Drizzling days keep the trails soggy, although the last few have been sunny enough to dry them out again, making it perfect biking weather- a cool nip in the breeze, but warm sun to take off the edge. Only when the sun hides behind a cloud does one realize how close winter is.

This won't be a long post, just a brief update on the lives of me and mine. At least I don't intend for it to be, but we know how these things go.

I had to wait four long, agonizing days to find out if I was still pregnant, but the result was that on Tuesday night (after they fixed the lab- they couldn't get my results to me sooner because the machine they needed to test my blood was broken) my doctor called me to tell me that my HcG levels had dropped, so I had indeed miscarried.

I know the way most people perceive me- as not being very interested in being a mother. There is more I could have said on the subject to persuade them otherwise, but to say more would have made me far more vulnerable than I have already made myself. Although I suppose if one wants to not be vulnerable, one is better off not keeping a blog that talks frankly about the normal joys and sorrows that comprise life, the feelings one assumes others experience as well and do not talk about. Except I don't believe in keeping one's struggles or happiness a secret. I believe that painful honesty shows those around us that they are not alone. I believe that if all of us were painfully honest, we would all be able to connect on a deeper level, and maybe we wouldn't all have to bear so much pain alone. Maybe we would learn from each other's mistakes instead if having to make them ourselves. Maybe we wouldn't misunderstand each other and add rejection to the pain we are already feeling. Maybe we wouldn't just be lone organisms in the same tank. Maybe I should have been more honest all along.

It is hard to articulate the reason tears silently rolled down my cheeks as I went about my business for the next day and a half. The fact is, I have spent years knowing that I want a child, but simultaneously knowing beyond a doubt that it was not a good time.

I should clarify- I still believe that there is no difference between a child one adopts and one that comes from one's own body. The soul is what matters, not the DNA. I know I would love a child that someone else had given up as much as one that was biologically mine (and to say it is yours seems a bit presumptious when you think about it. Do you control what happens to it? It's gender? How he looks? How she feels? The choices he makes? How she chooses to live, and how she dies? You can, and should, try to influence it toward good choices. But while you are responsible for it, it is it's own person, and while it is inextricably linked to you, it does not belong to you. You were merely honored to be trusted with it's well-being and given the right to love it more than anyone else possibly could.) And I still feel it is a bit of a waste making my own when there are kids out there who already exist who need a good home. But adoption is expensive and honestly, more beaurocracy than we can handle at the moment. And B really wants to see his own DNA recreated in a new person. It must be a boy thing. And for me, that dam has broken, and there is no holding back the flood of love and hope. I have waited and agonized for years, already loving that future child of mine so much that I was willing to wait until a time in our lives when we could give it everything it deserved- the full attention of both it's parents, the most formative time in it's life not dictated by it's parent's stress and frusteration and anger at circumstances we could not control and a job that dictated every second of our lives in an industry we don't feel fulfilled in. But in the meantime, as one by one my friends had kids, nobody but Bobby saw me cry, and even he did not understand why I could not just be happy for them.

I was born into a disfunctional situation. My entire adult life has been spent realizing the implications of this. Too late, I have discovered that my deep insecurities have affected every major decision I have made, have made me believe that I did not deserve to be happy. I say this knowing that my parents will read it, and it is nothing that hasn't been addressed before. It isn't their fault. They were overwhelmed and they sacrificed their own well-being many times to see that I did not suffer for them. They told me again and again that what they were going through was not my fault. Their issues got back-burnered and taking care of me became their priority. I have often wondered what they might have been able to resolve, the understanding they might have been able to cultivate for each other had I not been in the picture until after the worst had passed for them. Only now, after I have been out of their house, have they been able to grow together as a couple. I have the opinion that many couples have kids too early, and have to get to know their life's mates through childcare, and every couple knows and is known, and grows together through a series of errors. Many of these are errors that an innocent, sweet, unmarred child should not have to bear the consequences of.

I have lived an adventuresome life while I have waited to be the person I need to be, with the life I need to have in order to completely give myself to a child. When I have that child, it will be my "thing". I won't have the time or inclination for my "own thing". I must be ready for that, and know that I won't resent the temporary loss of my "thing" while I am in the middle of diapers and temper tantrums and sticky fingers. I tried to explain this one day to a young mother who seemed particularly judgemental of my decision to wait to have kids, and obviously failed to make myself understood, because she kept telling me I couldn't just lose my own identity. No, I don't plan to. I plan on my identity shifting from badass mountain biker and skier and tough girl to mother. People who made the desision to have a child simply because it seemed like the thing to do after a few years of marriage, who never agonized over the implications of bringing a new soul into the world, who never wondered if their own shortcomings would affect the future well being and psychological health of their child, seem completely flummoxed over why I would want a child so much and still not have one. In the meantime, I have felt a surge of anger at every comment made by others about how I am so selfish, not wanting kids. How I need to grow up. How I am loving my life too much to want to share it and need to realize what is really important. I bite my tongue to keep from saying the same thing to them. I know I make it look like my reasons are shallow to keep from exposing the dark side of myself that doesn't believe I am a good person, so it is my fault. It seems easier than articulating the deeper, darker emotions behind our waiting for so long. Every time I had reason to believe I was pregnant in the past, I let myself believe that it was fate, that higher powers believed in me, trusted me to not screw this up, so I believed in myself. But then it turned out to be a false alarm, and just like that, the switch flipped and I was back to thinking of myself in the singular, and back to knowing I couldn't handle the amount of responsibility of caring for another human, one who would be totally dependant on me, when I could barely manage to care for myself most days. And back to my heart breaking every time I thought of it and what could have been. And back to tears every time another friend got pregnant and suddenly thought that every other woman should want this, too, and seemed to judge me for not wanting to be just like her.

Which is why, for four days while they kept telling me there most likely hadn't been enough bleeding, that bleeding like this happens in the first trimester, that I was probably still pregnant, I tried so hard to not start to believe it, but I couldn't help it. Getting the news that I had miscarried after all was what it took to rip that fragile hope back out of my hands. I had this brief moment of fierce love and fierce protectiveness over that thing inside me that at that point, still resembled a sea monkey more than a human. I saw it as it would be in seven and a half months and I loved it so much it hurt. And then I spent four days trying to un-love it because it was most likely dead. The day after they told me it hadn't survived, my body varified it by offloading massive amounts of whatever was in there. Disgusting, I know. But common. Sorry, boys. You're in a girl's world now. If it makes you uncomfortable, feel free to not read herein.

That was almost a week ago. I haven't shed any more tears. It seems pointless. It took those days of tears to start to think of myself as a lone organism again. I am especially lone with Bobby back in Kansas. Sure, I share a house with another human, I'm never completely alone, but I am singular. I am no longer we. I feel like me again, not this person I don't know, but like. I am sad that I have to wait to try again, annoyed that we were finally there, I finally decided to trust myself to be the person I needed to be, we finally decided we were in a good enough place to be able to bring someone into the world and provide them with happiness and security, instead of the same insecurities we both deal with. Annoyed that the higher powers didn't see fit to let us just have that dream easily. Annoyed that we have to try and agonize and wait and see. Annoyed that it seems so easy for some others, but nothing can ever be easy for us.

...moving on. I really wanted to skip the last race of the season yesterday morning, but went anyway. I planned on not riding hard. But I pulled away from the pack within a mile of the start, and two girls from Boulder stayed with me, and we battled it out over 16 miles and about 2,900 vertical feet, from Breck to almost treeline up Boreas Pass, and back down. At the top of the climb, I had no hope of catching the girls from Boulder, but it was a descent I have raced down before, so I was prepared. My bike fishtailed under me, but we stayed upright over the washed out trail, babyheads roling under my tires, we caught air over water bars and splashed down a shallow stream that decided to share the trail for a ways, navigated the tight switchbacks that caused me so much time last race, passed the Boulder girls halfway down and crossed the finish line in first place. I probably would not have done so well, but the girl who beats me almost every race did not show up to this one, and "that girl Marlee" decided to move up to Expert. I was tied for second place overall going into the race, so I knew I had gotten second overall. I was a little sad I wold never have another season to try for first overall, never have that pretty plaque with my picture to hang on my wall and remember my glory days, but at least I would get a medal as a consolation prize. I finally got to stand on the tallest podium, and I got a new pair of bike gloves as a prize. After all the awards were handed out for that day's race, they started on the overall awards. I was expecting second, but the race organizer started in on this explanation before he announced my name. "And there was a tie for first place overall. We break the tie by who has the highest score in this race, and since one of the girls was not at this race, the tie goes to..." And suddenly my teammates were cheering and jostling me, and I realized I had won first overall. That was unexpected. I felt bad for the girl I have been neck-and-neck with all season, because she actually did consistantly better than me, I was down one race, up the next, but their rule of taking the best six out of seven scores meant she had to drop more points than I did. I have my getting lost on that second race of the season to thank for my high overall score, as bizarre as that seems. If I had had to drop a higher score, my overall score would have been lower and I would not have been tied for first, but second.

It was a good feeling knowing that while I won't be racing again, at least not for the forseeable future, I did accomplish more than I had hoped to with this season. I could have had more podiums, but I still helped my team win the series, I won the overall championship, and I had fun and didn't miss a race. I was also extremely lucky- not a flat tire, not a broken chain all race season.

The last happening in the lives of me and mine is that my mom has decided to go back in for another surgery. Her last one was a single mastectomy with a lumpectomy on the other side, and at the time, it was important to her to keep as much of her body as she could. She has since become less attached to her girls, and has decided to have the other side removed, as well. Less careful monitoring, more peace of mind knowing that she won't be getting breast cancer again if there are no breasts left to get cancer. It was hard, agonizing, to know that she was losing one of them, but after one has been gone for six months, the other has finally become more of a priority. Her appointment is set for September 30. I hate to see her have to go through that again-the surgery, the pain, the rehab. But I do agree with her decision- I'd like to think if it was me, I would do the same thing.

The month ahead looks like a long series of trips between here and Kansas, with several other trips thrown in, like the one to Michigan for Heather's wedding. It looks like the little Focus will be carrying four girls- Marci, me, Laci, and my mom on a 14 hour road trip Northeast. It's not really a comfy car for traveling, but it does get good gas mileage. In the meantime, I am trying to not think about the future, since we still don't have a house in Kansas, still don't know when I will be moving, don't know if I want to move or not. Out there, I will get to be with Bobby, but there I might lose my mind with boredom, while here, I can at least bike, and after the resort opens this fall, I can still ski. But alone. That just isn't as much fun. When I am out there, I will be spending 16 hour days waiting for Bobby to get home from work so I can see him for a few hours a day, while up here, I can fill my days up with work and play, as long as I don't mind being apart from him. There's really no good solution.

Until later, faithful few. Here's hoping honesty doesn't make you squirm.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where life is a roller coaster. If this were a real roller coaster, we would be screaming WOOOOHOOOO! and throwing our hands in the air on the way down, not curling into dead-weight balls of misery and dropping like rocks. Real roller coasters are fun. Emotional ones really suck. We're supposed to yell WOOOOOHOOOOO on the way up, but we never realize we were up until we drop again. At least not all the time. There have been a few times this last month when I have actually looked up and around me when I was on top, smiled and said something to the effect of "this is living".

Let's see...since my last post... oh, dear. It's been so long, I will just have to hit the highlights. There were several weeks of work that left us (Marci and me) exhausted. We spent several days moving an apartment's worth of furniture from her apartment, down two flights of stairs to a trailer, cleaned out her apartment, moved her and her cat and her essentials into my place, and left the rest of it in the trailer, not to be used again until she is living in Kansas. We moved a trailer load of Bobby's and my furniture down to a storage unit in Kansas. We made a trip to Kansas to put on a surprise birthday party for my mom, who turned fifty this year. I spent a fun weekend hiking and biking with a "boot camp" of a motley crew of people I came to have deep respect for. I got sunburned. I spazzed/danced with friends at an impromptu street party at the Swan Mountain King-of-the-Mountain line during the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, screamed until I was hoarse as Andy and Cadel, America's tour de France darlings, shot past. I missed Bobby. We fussed. We saw each other once. Marci and I pulled an empty trailer back to Colorado. We hired new help. I all but stopped working. I started working at the bike shop again, then immediately quit- my last two shifts are this week. We put the house on the market. We worked on finishing the bathroom project. I showed the house. B wondered why I was so testy and I didn't have a good answer for him, except to say that I am so sick and tired of not knowing what manner of thing is going to come up tomorrow, and I am tired of being adaptable, and I am tired of being agreeable when it really bothers me to not know where I am going to be tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

And that was still just the half of it.

The trip to Kansas was fun. Since having a birthday party for my mom on her actual birthday was not possible for everyone's schedule, Leroy, Mary and I practiced some lies and deceit, swore the community to secrecy, and had it a week early. We decorated the shelter house in the state park and had a magical, full moon evening in the soft glow of the twinkly lights we hung from the rafters, homemade ice cream and Jason Koehn's brisket. Since Bobby's home is a camper right now, the three of us (B, Andy and me) shared a couch/bed and stumbled over each other in the mornings, trying to wake up and eat breakfast in the mornings, took 3 minute showers, since that is as long as the hot water lasts, enjoyed being together.

I did a really fun road ride with a co-worker on August 22. We took off from Dillon, after a stop for air in tires and lube on chains at the bike shop, and rode to Frisco, on to Copper Mountain, and on to the top of Vail Pass. We stopped at the top and enjoyed the warm sun and cool breeze before coasting (me) and flying (him) down to Frisco, then taking the bike path to Farmer's Corner and Swan Mountain Road home. 42 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing in three and a half hours. I came home more exhausted than I wanted to admit, and hunched over a bit in pain, since Mother Nature had chosen that morning to bless me with the present she feels compelled to give me every month. (I would like to say, though, that I have started taking a Mangosteen and multivitamin supplement called Vemma, and the pain has gotten bearable lately). That evening, I finally got back up off the couch about 6:30, packed my backback and my bike, and went to preride the race course I was going to be racing on the 24th. In hindsight, I should have remembered Fall is approaching. The days are gettig shorter. But I wasn't thinking, and I stopped halfway up to take pictures of a brilliant double rainbow framing the damp but sundrenched valley below me, and didn't ride hard, and it was getting dark by the time I got to the top of Keystone Mountain. I took the race course trail down to the turnoff where we were to start climbing again in deep twilight, my senses numbing as I barely registered trees flashing by, as I bounced and rattled down the rough trail, my bike somehow staying under me, glad I knew the trail well. Then I started climbing again, back up all the vertical feet I had just lost, over to the other side of the mountain. The elevation profile for this race is a big M. Up,down partway, back up, then down. By the time I got almost to the top of the second climb, it was so dark I began to wonder how exactly I was going to be able to see anything by the time I got down. I gave up looking for the turn-off, decided to skip the singletrack descent and descend on the road. Then I saw a needle of light through the trees. Another rider, as crazy but smarter than I. He had remembered his lights. I turned around and rode with him until the single track turned into the forest, then I turned around and cautiously, blindly made my way down the mountain on the faintly visible white ribbon of road, the friendly forests of Keystone, my benevolent playground, suddenly ominous and full of unearthly sounds, strange groans and creaks and grumbles.

When I had navigated the last portion of trail, a quarter mile of mandatory singletrack that I rode slowly, my behind hung far back over the rear wheel and my front wheel light so it could ride over the rocks I did not see, I breathed a sigh of relief. The other rider finished just behind me and we laughed about my predicament and how I would definitely not be making that mistake again.

The race was a good one. I came ready to do some damage. This was my home turf, and nobody deserved a win here more than me, I reasoned. I straightened my hair and put on make-up for the team photo, posed with the 15 or so riders who wear the jersey of the bike shop I work for, as well as Smith Optics, Keystone Bike Park, and Clif Luna Bars. As I was getting my helmet on and attaching my race plate, a coworker asked me if I planned on leaving Andy in the truck. I had planned on it, I said, but if he wanted to get him out and walk him around while he waited, he was welcome to. I hooked Andy's leash as I have a hundred other times, I thought, and handed it to him, with instructions to make Andy socialize and get a little less psychotic around strangers. And then the starting whistle, and I pedalled to the top of keystone. That part is a blur, What I do know is that I know the way to the top of Keystone like the back of my hand. I couls almost do it with my eyes closed. I know where to push hard, when to downshift, when to stay in a high gear and stand on my pedals. And I watched to gaps close between me and my fellow Sport category women, then I was passing Sport men who started a minute ahead of us, then every muscle in my lower body was screaming at me but I was closing on the top, then I crested and was flying down the trail I had ridden in the near dark two nights before, bike and trail and me in three part harmony as I ducked and swerved and danced to the tune it sang, knowing every line through every technical portion. I popped out at the bottom and pointed it uphill, passing one of the Expert category women, who had started three minutes ahead of us. And with a final burst of power, I crested the top and flew down, and down, and down until I was at the bottom and crossed the finish line. It was my best finish of the year, long minutes ahead of all the riders I battle with every race. I only finished a minute later than that girl Marlee, who has just started racing and can climb like a mountain goat and should be racing Expert, if not Pro, but for some reason keeps racing Sport and making the race for the rest of us about being first place after her, which is actually second, but there is no chance of beating her, so second has become the new first. (Did I mention I have no appreciation for sandbaggers?)Across the finish line, then a cool-down lap around the parking lot. I stopped and talked to a friend, then went to find Andy. He wasn't in the truck, and his "handler" was nowhere to be seen. I began peeling off my helmet when my co-worker rode up on a borrowed bike and skidded to a stop. "Oh, I am so, so sorry, I lost Andy!" He handed me Andy's tags and leash. "These fell off when he bolted. I'm so sorry, he was fine, and then, just like that-". I had attached his leash to the flimsy keyring holding his tags onto his collar, rather than to the sturdy ring on his collar.

I tried not to panic. Andy has done this before. "He probably just ran home", I told him. "Don't worry." Then I got back on my bike and took off for home, six miles away, thinking I would find a smallish Golden Retriever somewhere along the bikepath between Keystone and Summit Cove. I called for him every few seconds, in case he was off the trail. Nothing. I left my bike and jumped into my car and sped back to Keystone, thinking I'd see him on the road. Nothing. I fought a rising panic. I drove back home and jumped back on my bike, knowing that they were calling my name right now, and that in Keystone a podium was standing empty, but I didn't care. I jammed my headlamp onto my helmet and a measly light onto my handlebars and careened over the singletrack connecting Summit Cove to Keystone. I took corners too fast. I called his name every few seconds. I took maverick trails that I normally don't ride in order to do my part to stop erosion. I skidded my tires down them, since they are too steep and loose to ride without leaving a mark, and I didn't care. The sound of "AAAAAAANNNNNNDYYYYYYY!" echoed through the silent, dark woods. I finally got back to Keystone, where the after party and awards ceremony was dying down, and met several friends there who offered to help me look. I called animal control and Keystone emergency services, in case anyone had reported a stray dog, and left them my number. Then Bobby called to tell me he was going to bed, and I finally gave into my panic and sobbed like a little girl. I told him I needed him so much right then, and how ridiculous it was that he wasn't there for me. His worry took the form of anger. Several of my friends took their big race van and drove up to Montezuma, after someone said he had bolted that way. The coworker from whom he had bolted gave me a hug and apologized again and tried to reassure me that he was just out chasing squirrels, but I know Andy. He bolted trying to find me, and if he wasn't at home, there was no telling where he might be looking, alone and scared and puzzled over why his mama would abandon him like that. I drove all over Keystone, calling out the window, crying. The breeze had died and the air was crisp, I could hear my calls echoing back to me from the mountains. Why could he not hear them? Five hours after he had bolted, I drove home and collapsed into bed still wearing my bike shoes, and sobbed until I was achy but still not asleep. The only sound outside my open window was packs of howling coyotes, rangy mountain coyotes that a 65 lb scaredy-cat golden retriever would be no match for. An hour later Bobby called me. His anger had passed, and now he was crying, too. "We have to find him. He's our boy. We can't not find him. We can't not know what happened. If I was up there, I would still be out looking. Can you go ride the bikepath one more time?" So at midnight I bundled up in Bobby's old orange coat and jeans, pulled on my full-finger bike gloves and ratcheted my bike shoes tight and rode slowly out of the cove, back to Keystone. I begged Bobby not to hang up, since his voice in my ear helped me feel less alone as I rode under a brilliantly starlit sky, my voice echoing, my whistle thin because my mouth was too dry and my lips were too cold. Finally, he hung up and I kept looking and calling. I returned home at 3:30am, every muscle hurting from shivering so hard in the 40 degree night air, my bike light dead and my headlamp dim, opened the car door in the driveway so Andy could crawl inside if he came home, put a piece of tape over the front door latch so if he scratched on it or bumped it, it would swing open, and left my bedroom window wide open with the screen out, so I could stick my head out and check if he was home from time to time. And not a wink did I sleep. I had not eaten anything but a Honey Stinger shot before the race, just glucose and B vitamins, and I was so hungry I shook, but I couldn't force food down my throat without gagging on it. I watched the sky turn from black to gray to pink. Every pop of rafters, every rustle of grass I sat up, thinking it was him. At 6 o'clock, I was back up, bundled in fleece and driving around Keystone and Summit cove, and up to Montezuma, calling him. Bobby had called back and we had cried some more, wishing we at least had the closure of knowing he was dead and not lost and panicky and cold and hungry. I had just parked at the Keystone Lake and was walking in to go check some more of his favorite haunts about 9am when my phone rang. It was Keystone Inn. The only dog-friendly hotel in Keystone. "I think we have your dog", a woman's voice said, and I decided it must be a hallucination from too little sleep or food. All the same, I raced to the Keystone Inn, and there, behind the inn, under a flight of stairs, sat a shivering pile of dead leaves, dirt, mud, and yellow fur. His tail was between his legs, and his head hung to his straggly chest, and he was shying away from the hands offering him doggie treats and water, growling a half-hearted warning that was more "I'm scared" than "you should be scared." I rushed him, and cried all over him, and he tried to crawl in my lap and turn himself inside out, then righted himself and began snarfing doggy treats and water from the strangers he had been growling at a moment ago, and I thanked Kassandra from the front desk about a hundred times because I swear she grew a halo, or maybe it was just my low blood sugar. And then I called Bobby and we cried some more, and swore to never let him out of our sight, and to stop loving him so much because someday, we will lose him for real and we don't ever want to have another night like that one.

The rest of the day, Andy slept, and while he slept he whimpered. Not the usual dream-whimpers that must mean he is closing in on the squirrel as his paws twitch and he smacks his lips, but long, keening sobs that broke my heart and made me wake him up with a kiss and a cuddle just to show him that he was home with me.

The following days were full of activities, courtesy of my friend's boot camp. My friend Annie represents the vitamin and antioxidant company I mentioned earlier, which makes high-quality liquid antioxidants and multivitamins, as well as several other extremely healthy options for high-performance athletes, such as energy drinks and shots and electrolytes that rely on healthy ingredients instead of sugar. She had been bugging me to try taking it for a while, and I finally gave in, telling her I would try it since everyone had such good things to say about it, I didn't expect to see great changes. Turns out, after two weeks on it, Mother Nature's monthly present didn't keep me on the couch. I was hooked. I had better energy and less bonking. I had a clear complexion. I sailed through two weeks in an office full of sick people, flying snot and wet, phlegmy coughing and had nary a sniffle, even though I had as little sleep and as much stress as the rest of them. I called Annie up to tell her that, and she invited me to spend the weekend with a group of people who, she said, have literally had their lives changed by this product, and represent the company along with her.

I had my life changed by them. All of them have an incredible story to tell, about personal anguish and physical devastation. They have come to realize, as I have, that life is about the people you share it with, and that health is about giving our bodies the best possible fuel. There was Don and Chris. Don was infected with HIV in 1981. For the last 15 years, he has had full-blown AIDS. In 1995, he was lying in a hospital bed with less of an immune system than a newborn baby, and he had a dream that he would live to educate thousands of people about HIV so they would never have to go through what he was. The AIDS cocktail came out in '96, and he was able to get out of bed. He went home and began trying to live his life. He'd get up, eat breakfast, try to do some work and pursue his dream of spreading AIDS awareness, but by 3pm, he was back in bed for the rest of the day and night. Until someone talked him into trying Vemma. Within two weeks, he had stopped taking naps and now, although he only has the equivalent of one lung and is still battling AIDS related cancer, his immunity is that of any other 60 year old man. He comes to the mountains every year from Kansas City every year to hike and bike at 11,000 feet, and his book, My Dream to Trample AIDS, is coming out soon. His partner, Chris, is also HIV positive, but the two of them show such a cheerful face to the world it was a joy to spend a weekend with them. There was also P-nut, the deaf Olympic wrestler, and Gene, who's legs are solid scar tissue from being run-skidded over by a car when he was four, and Brian and Clem, who are so freakishly fit they gave me a run for my money, and I am used to the altitude! And Eric, who is a bike racer, and with whom I instantly found camaraderie. And several others, all of the same mind, all as worshipful of good nutrition and as grateful for good health as I am. I went home after that weekend exhausted. It was an exhaustion I couldn't quite shake after my 36 hours without sleep during Andy's lost-and-found episode. It hung with me- that tired, dizzy, coming-down-with-something feeling that had me juicing carrots, eating apples, drinking caffeine, and running and biking harder than ever trying to shake it, since sleeping in didn't seem to be fixing it.

A week later, it rained in Kansas, and Bobby wasted no time coming home. True, he wanted to see me, but it was Andy, lost and found, that he couldn't wait to see. They tumbled about together, paws and tongue and flopping ears and happy whines and pet names and ear-scratching and belly-rubbing. A man and his best friend. I worked at the bike shop that night and the next night, and the next afternoon, we drove up to Steamboat springs and spent the evening soaking in the hot springs up at Strawberry park, hanging out in a shallow rock alcove as the water ran through it and cascaded trhough the rocks into a lower pool. I propped my feet up on a big rock and leaned my head against Bobby's shoulder, looked up at the stars above us, bright in the absence of lights (Strawberry park is mostly off the grid, lights there are solar powered and dim)and reflected on how divinely happy I was, and how alive I felt. We drove our relaxed, smiling selves back down to town and found our cabin, left the lights off and relaxed on the front porch, a few feet from the bank of the Yampa River, the lights of town reflecting off low hanging clouds, making them look oddly sci-fi and beautiful. Eventually we got cold, so we dragged blankets out to the porch and lay under them and drifted asleep. Some time later, a car pulled in to the tent site next to us, waking us up, and we moved inside, the three of us, boy, girl, dog, falling asleep in a big pile under the blankets on a cheap blue plastic mattress.

The next morning, the pain in my innards I had been registering all day the day before and blaming pizza for woke me up. My back hurt, but I blamed the hard matress, and squirmed about until I woke Andy up and he vacated the pile for a cooler spot on the floor. I finally woke Bobby up, and we lay there chatting for a while, until I finally pulled the covers off of him and forced him to get up. We ate a fast food breakfast on our way out of town, and that apparently added to the pizza/cheap mattress discomfort, and I squirmed all the way over Rabbit Ears Pass. On a whim, we took a side trip over Ute Pass, and by them time we got home, my tummy was complaining and I wanted to go back to bed. I was beginning to wonder if mother nature had bumped up her schedule.

At five o'clock that night, sudden pain shot through my left side, between belly button and hip. It shot down my leg and curled me right up where I sat. I started breathing raggedly, and B asked what was wrong. My leg, in the vicinity of femoral artery, was cramping so badly I could barely stand. Now, one doesn't experience a best friend dropping dead from a pulmonary embolism without spending the rest of one's life having the word "blood clot" pass through one's mind every time one has unexplained leg pain. I tried to walk it off, but walking was a bit of a problem, given the pain level. I called the doctor. I know they would tell me to come in, and the clinic was already closed so it would mean a trip to the ER, but I called anyway, but by that point there really wasn't a rational thought left, just irritation that it was taking them so long to ask for all my history. They, of course, told me to waste no time coming in, and the trip to the ER is a hazy memory of feeling the air conditioning fan my sweaty face and clutching the top half of Bobby's cheese and cracker's tray under my chin, because the pain had make me nauseus and I was fully expecting pancakes and maple syrup to make their forcefull escape at any moment.

Just as he was squealing into the parking lot, I felt something give in my innards just behind the jutting bone on my front left hip. The pain subsided the tiniest fraction. I staggered through the door and explained my woes while holding onto the nurse's station white-knuckled, and soon they had shoved a percocet and a cherry-flavored anti-nausea pill down my throat and were wheeling me places. And then-could this day get any better? I was sitting in blood and they were drawing blood and they finally informed me that surprise, this is what a problematic pregnancy feels like.

Our mouths, naturally, dropped open. We looked at each other for a moment. I had been assuring them that there was no way I could be pregnant, after all, half of that equation had only been seen once in the last four weeks, and the timing was all wrong for that, and Mother Nature had been right on schedule and since immaculate conception had aready been copyrighted, we were going for "not possible". And great, was our first thought. Our insurance covers accidents and emergency room visits, not pregnancy. They probably wouldn't be amused if we tried to call it "accidental pregnancy". Of course, the chances of the pregnancy surviving an ordeal like that were slim to none, so after the first flip-flop of the stomach at the words "You're pregnant", the goofy grin that I felt spread over my face that surprised the heck out of me and I immediately tried to blame on the percocet making me loopy, we immediately proceeded on to "Not anymore".

We drove home slowly, with glazed eyes, afraid to ask what the other was thinking. It was one thing to decide we might be ready for a kid. I mean, we're closing on a decade together. We don't even know if we can have kids. I still dream of adopting. We had thought it would take us a while. We could stop the careful planning we put into preventing one and just let it run it's course.. But it's another to have it happen so soon, only to be gone again so soon. Now I just felt annoyed at the waste of time-annoyed that now I would have to actually try to make it happen again, and annoyed that if it had stuck, I'd be six weeks pregnant and know where my life was going and what I would be doing in eight months, instead of still asking that annoying question. I kept flashing back to that split second between "You're pregnant" and "probably not anymore", when that stupid grin forced itself across my face. What am I? Who am I? My clock's not ticking. At least I didn't think so. But that sudden wave of hope and happiness and fierce protectiveness for that thing inside me that at that point, was nothing more than an abstract notion of some possible future life, and that sudden feeling of loss for something I never knew I had made me scratch my head and get extremely quiet for the rest of the night. I'm still analyzing.

They told me to come back to the ER tonight so they could check hormone levels and be able to tell for sure that the pregnancy was terminated. Maybe it survived, they waggled their eyebrows, but I don't see how. I know what I felt. There was surely no way anything survived that. But I still hate that they gave me a tiny bit of hope, because I can't get it out of my head that maybe, just maybe... But I don't think I'll go. There has been no pain since, so I'm not worried, like they were initially, about an ectopic pregnancy. What difference does it make if I go in tonight so they can check my HcG level and tell me if I am or am not still pregnant, most likely not, when I can save several hundred dollars and go to the clinic when it opens again on Tuesday and hear the same thing? It's just another 36 hours, is all. Thirty six long hours with the tiniest glimmer of hope, and my brain trying to squash it. In the meantime, I have been ordered to stay quiet and not to ride bike or run or lift heavy objects or stress out or worry or any of my usuall coping methods, because apparently all of those things could compromise an already compromised pregnancy, and until I find out if things are hanging on in there, I have to live as if they are. Which means Bobby had to go ride Keystone by himself yesterday and came home smelling of outside and crisp fall air, while I sat on the couch with my Kindle and the TV remote and reflected on how silly this is, and how annoyed I am at my body for playing tricks on me, and if it's gonna do something, for Heaven's sake, get it right! And go for full disclosure! I don't want to be six weeks pregnant before I realize it next time, even though it saved me from heartbreak this time.

And after all that, with a new floor finally down in the bathroom, and a trailer load of stuff, Bobby had to head back to Kansas this afternoon. Now I'm back to being the me that I am when he's not here- the me who cleans because she doesn't like to watch TV or go out to eat or ride bike by herself. I have a bottle of Barefoot Moscato in the fridge and I want a glass. For an extra couple hundred dollars, I could go find out if I could have one tonight. I like Barefoot Moscato, but it's not worth that much.

And that is the story of the roller coaster ride that has been our lives lately. I'm still queasy from it. At least we'll say it was the wild ride...