My running route- one of the "other things to like". I'm not actually sure who owns all of the grassland around our house- a house we will only live in for another week, but I sneak through it anyway. Would I rather be running a trail through the pine trees, with 100 mile views? Maybe. But at least I didn't have to give up running through wild places altogether when we moved here. I remember when I was a kid walking worshipfully through these grasslands (yes, I was a weird kid), thinking, "right here- the four inches where my foot is right now, how long since a human foot has been here? Was the last human foot a Native American one? A buffalo hunter? A cowboy? Or has this spot ever felt a human foot? Could I be the first?" And I felt I was a lucky person, getting to put my foot where possibly, no other human foot had ever touched.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where there is finally payoff. Right now, in Summit County, we would not be loving life. We would be in the middle of spring break, dealing with barf and slush and crowds of really bad drivers on roads designed for a fourth of the traffic. We would not be skiing except at night on weekdays. If we could negotiate a few hours off work, we would be seeking out the backcountry, with it's extremely unstable snow and dangerously windloaded aspects, fearing to go on inclines of more than a 30 degree angle and wishing for the season to end so we could take our celebratory and inevitably rainy mountain biking trip to Fruita or Moab.

But in Western KS, life is kinda alright. It is close to 70 degrees and only mildly breezy. (And why, you ask, do I sit inside and blog on such a rare gift of a day? Good point. I will be going for a run soon. Then I will soak up every ray of sun my winter-white skin can handle. But at the moment, my low blood sugar has me thinking I need to eat first, but the energy to do so has gone the way of my blood sugar. So it is easier to type for a moment.) Since writing the words "mountain biking trip", I got this physically painful longing to be on my bike, crisp mountain air and hot sun, sage and pine. But there is other stuff to like. I keep repeating this to myself. Other stuff. Like warm, quiet days in the middle of March. Other stuff.

My post-breakdown prying-my-butt-off-the-couch has come full circle by now. Thanks. I rebounded in a big, scarily enthusiastic way. I enrolled in online school for the next two years, The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, to become a health coach. I set wheels in motion for a community garden, and eventually, hopefully, community greenhouse to become a reality. I called a "local" (by local, I mean only 90 miles away) yoga instructor to inquire after the best way to turn my love of flowing, stretchy poses into an (most likely pitiful) income in a western Kansas town. I am inquiring and kicking over rocks, trying to devise a workeable business plan for a zen little wellness center and whole foods retail in the middle of a factory farming community. And I feel like I was always going to do this, I just never knew it until now. I am amazingly calm about this. If I can't make humans, I can help the ones who are here get more out of life. And if I should happen to suddenly discover one growing down there in my possibly broken regions, it is a life that can accomodate it. I am feeling so good, not being stagnant anymore. It took a few months of living luxuriously unemployed before I realized what it was doing to my mental stability and self esteem. I have realized that my personality must always be reaching to appreciate what I already hold. Personality flaw or strength? I don't know. A little of both.

And now, a salad calls my name, as does a golden retriever, the best he knows how. Perhaps at a later date I shall go into the particulars of school, wellness center, and community garden ventures, but for today, there will be good times and sunshine. Ahhh....

Hello and welcome to An Altitude problem, where things did get better. I sit here in front of a sunny window, typing on the desktop keyboard (that will explain some of the typos, if I don't catch them all...I have a hard time changing keyboards). Sparrows chirp, meadowlarks whistle, and mourning doves moan outside my little white farmhouse, a house that will only be mine for a few more weeks. An extremely chunked-out Marvin is stretched out luxuriously on the living room rug, paws curled, and a golden retriever who has grown his long feathers back since his shave-down when we first moved here lies against the couch, upside down with feet in the air, lips hanging down (up) over his face. The house is chilly, as it is when it isnt hot in here, since the ancient floor furnace has only two settings- on or off, and when it is on, it belches heat, crackling and popping and roaring as the hot air rushes out of it, and when it is off, the house is instantly reclaimed by cold drafts from the many windows- the same windows that makes this house so cheery and light.

A few days after I wrote that last post (actually, post before last, in which I was in such a dark place), I woke up. That is honestly what it felt like. I guess it was more hormonal than I even gave it credit for. I started a new cycle, and boom. One morning, I felt like going for a run. So I did. It was great. I had energy. I didn't use the road as a private place to cry. I never stopped to walk or have a meltdown in the entire 6.2 mile loop. The nex day, I went to mommy's day at the neighbors and didn't feel a meltdown tearing to get out and spew crazy. I just felt a normal amount of sad over all the toddlers, the normal amount of cheated, and a nice perspective that it wasn't the end of the world, even if I don't manage to ever keep a pregnancy I still have a good life and a lot to be happy about. Not saying that I actually enjoy other people's babies, and hearing them sing their significant other's praises over parenting instinct makes me want to light them on fire as I think about the possibility that I may not get to see my own significant other realize that he is a parent and step up to become one. And not saying that I don't get that let-the-crazy-out feeling a few times when they hint that someday, I will see, when I have kids... or a huge twinge of something that makes my guts twist in involuntary resentment when a friend announces a pregnancy and she has no reason to think she won't keep it. Or when someone gets pregnant accidentally and just magically keeps it.

But a switch flipped that day, and I went from being not okay to being okay. I go whole days now without tragic thoughts, and I have the energy I remember from last summer, energy that has me wanting to go out and run, bike, ski, shed the 15 pounds that I gained through the whole ordeal when I ate bread, butter and jam in copious amounts for a month and a half and the weather was too depressing for me to force myself outside and put one foot in front of the other, when I had no energy to get off the couch, let alone try to do somethig healthy like work out.

I am terrified of that happening again. That was six weeks I will never get back, and the thought that it could happen again has me wanting to not try again until the memory wears off a bit. Looking back, I can see that it wasn't me. It wasn't my nature, it wasn't my personality, it wasn't the true me. It was the chemical imbalance brought on by out-of-whack hormones. It was like I watched myself cry, scream, drag my tear-logged butt off the couch to cook, leave dishes in the sink for days, and I almost started to believe that was me. I hated myself for it. B, bless him, kept telling me to just snap out of it, to decide to be happy, to start acting happy and happy would follow, to go for a run and I would see that I would feel better, that I was taking this too hard, all the stuff that men, in their need to problem solve, think should be helpful. He took me shopping for new jeans when mine got too tight, and stood outside the dressing room as I tried on pair after pair until he finally said, "okay. this pair gives you a cute butt." Then bought two pairs for me. He tested the waters when I said I wanted ice cream, and if I didn't back down immediately in the interest of my allegedly cute-again butt, he bought it for me. He was good, if not entirely understanding of what was going on. He was a bit of a punching bag for a while, and I leaned on him pretty heavily, but he eventually got better at recognizing the things that might cause a psychotic episode and steered around a lot of it for me- turning down invitations to places with babies or pregnant people, out-of-character lying when I asked if I looked fat and haggard, started making small guestures that I have tried to get him to do in the past. Poor man. I put him through a lot in those six dark weeks.

And now that the sun shines again, inside my head and outside my front door, I am eaten by guilt over how I acted, but I also see how the train wreck careened out of control and realize that there was not much I could have done to stop it as it was happening. I couldn't decide to be happy. I couldn't decide to act happy. I couldn't do a thing about the incessant crying and the inability to get off the couch, the constant slight dizzy nausea and the aching exhaustion. Mental stamina wasn't enough to give me a win over that one. And I feel better realizing that wasn't the real me, and after six horrible weeks, within 24 hours the hormones stabilized and I was me again, the me I like, a me who sings like nobody can hear me as I wash dishes, who runs 6-8 miles at a time without huge difficulty, a me who has patience and energy, who wants to be with friends and laugh with her husband and throw a long-neglected tennis ball for her dog.

It has made me realize again though, that who we are is merely a shaky formula that may not stick around forever. Do we really even have personalities? Yes, we have preferences, but to say we have a sunny personality, that we love people, that we have good energy or that we are patient, those are things that can go as easily as they come. There are days when we feel truly good, when the chemicals balance and we feel happy in that layer just under our skin. And then the weather under our skin changes, for some reason. It can be anything. Toxins. An allergic reaction. A fungus found in litterboxes and undercooked meat that recently, has been found to affect mood. Medication. Hormones. Diet. Whatever the cause, who we are when our brain chemical formula is optimal means nothing when the delicate balance shifts and suddenly we are lashing out at those around us, we have lost patience, we feel like shaking everyone around us until their teeth fly out of their heads, we are irritable and borderline homicidal, or suicidal because we are convinced this is truly who we are and we are worthless pieces of trash. When we overeat on simple carbs because the sugar rush makes us feel human for just a few moments, and then watch our bodies change for the worse on a poor diet and hate ourselves even more, and cant find the energy to do anything about it and decide we just don't care.

And now for the point of this ramble- I'm not sure that I believe humans are naturally good or naturally bad. We are merely containers for an unstable cocktail of neurotransmitters, hormones, nerve impulses that govern our movements and responses. It's scary to me how much of our interaction and response to the world around us is just an effect of seratonin, dopamine, norepinephrin, testosterone, estrogen, progeserone, adrenaline, the list could go on, all working together to create that thing known as "nature". "Personality". If one variable in the formula is too high or one is too low, we suddenly change from nice people to not-nice ones. Without warning, we lose ability to concentrate. We lose ability to empathize. We lose analytical thinking and replace it with whatever is governing our decision-making process at the moment.

We have this ethical code that tells us how we are supposed to act, what we are supposed to say in spite of how we feel, and we live our lives trying to push down our impulses and live within that code, a code that our own experiences have taught us by producing guilt when the chemicals rebalance after an episode in which we acted upon impulse. "It would be maniacally fun to go on a murderous rampage and pull out my boss's fingernails, but it wouldn't be right, and I would feel terrible later for the pain I caused". So we live in this constant battle with ourselves, trying to fool ourselves and everyone around us into believing we are a certian person, when truthfully, who we are is just who we are at the moment, or who we were taught to fake it to be the rest of the time.

And now, faithful few, I am needing to do things. There is laundry and dishes and all manner of housewifely duties awaiting me. Because that is my life now. I am getting extremely excited about moving into the farmhouse and claiming that precious, special space that I still can't believe is to be mine. It was always a space I felt good in, safe and valued, and I have this crazy notion that somehow, the walls are still leaking out all the good karma and happiness they absorbed for so many years. They are kind walls, and I think there is still an echo of the love I experienced there. In a weird way, I can't help thinking that being there will be like seeing Grandpa and Grandma again. I don't know. It's weird, I know. But it's like I'm anticipating seeing them after a long absence, talking to them again, feeling less lonely for them by being a part of their life again, even though it is a life that they, themselves, are absent from. When we spent the summer there after they died, living with their stuff, I struggled back and forth with needing to personalize her space with my own touches so that walking into a room would not have me expecting to see her there, and loving the feeling that she was there, just never in the same room as I was. The feeling that nothing had changed, nobody had died, all was as it always was, and any given moment was just like a hundred other moments before they died, when she was in the basement and he was in the shop, both just out of eyesight and earshot.

Now, I think, moving back, with the walls an airy green, the flooring modern instead of orange shag and geometric linoleum, the cabinets a cheery cream instead of 1975 dark walnut, the kitchen bar gone, I will feel more like she is in my space. Things have changed enough that now it will be my house, but there will still be the pleasant, if mild, expectation that maybe she is just downstairs getting a jar of pickles, maybe I will hear her voice or catch a glimpse of her frizzy mop and ample waist and feel, again, like the years since I last saw her never happened.

I was one of those lucky kids who came from a line of young women- Grandma was 18 when she had my mom, her only daughter, and my mom was 21 when she had me, her only daughter. So I got to be a part of a three generation trio of females in which there was only 40 years between oldest and youngest. There was girl power in our family. We were extraordinarily close because of it. I grew up feeling a bit like I had two mothers- one who worked and did so much, all she could for me in spite of her own obstacles, jobs and obligations, and one who was my backup for emotional needs when my own mom was too busy being an overworked 20-something and 30-something. She was the young grandma who still had kids of her own at home, who welcomed the chance to have her daughter's daughter around. Chris, Sandi, Susan. The three women in Jim Koehn's family. I want so badly to be able to have a daughter of my own, now that we are back here and in a place to do it- and I want to name her Christina, and I want another trio like that. Even though we won't all be as close in age this time around, I feel as though we could still have it. Of course, little Christina is only a dream at this time, and one that biology may not see fit to give us, but a girl can dream, right?

And now, on to the rest of my day. Hope yours is good.