Hello and welcome to the world of... unrealized anticipation. It still has not snowed. It gets colder and colder, and with every gust of wind, the aspens let loose of their leaves, sending them away with the wind, until they stand naked and ready for winter, and still, it does not snow. In church on Sunday morning, the most oft- asked question was "are you ready for snow?" Since it was addressed to the group in general the first time, there was much cheering and fist-pumping, a tribute to how many either depend on the snow for our livelihoods, and how many winter-sports fanatics there are, just waiting for these last few weeks to pass before it returns. I know for one, I am ready to hit the trails on my cross-country skis. As I have heard several times, "If it's gonna do this (insert descriptive word), it may as well just snow!" But at the same time, I have been spending long periods of time staring at my Moab and Fruita mountain bike guidebooks, scheming a few days away yet this fall, in the warm weather, before the snow falls. I want to do a long-distance ride, but BBD has been poo-pooing the idea. There is the 142 mile Kokopelli's trail, stretching through the canyons and mesas between Fruita and Moab, and there is the White Rim Trail, the 100 mile loop that hugs the edge of the canyons hom to the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park. The white rim trail is a jeep trail as well, which makes it a ride for novices, and not my first pick, althought he scenery might be better than the singletrack Kokopelli's trail. BBD always poo-poos my ideas when he thinks they might involve nights on the trail. Of course, the problem with taking even a cheap vacation is not the money we would spend, but the money we would lose by not being home and working. Once MrB starts calculating that, he makes a vacation sound like something so impossible expensive, even I begin to see the folly in it.

I occasionally get the question from a short-time blog-reader, who is B? Mr B? BBD? D? My dearest's name is Bobby, and his middle initial is D. The ways to shorten his name to something fast to type and catchy to say are nearly infinite, and our most opportunistic friends are often immediately aware of it. Most of them did not come from me, but from other friends. He has been called Bobbydee, and BBD, ever since the first year or two we were married. BBD occasionally got shortened to D. My mom often calls him B. Mr.B is my name for him, especially when I must give deference to his wishes. As in, "I would love to go skiing with you today! But just a minute, let me ask Mr.B." He takes it all stride, but he also almost never reads my blog posts, so when a near stranger comes up and shakes his hand, looks at me and says, "so this must be (insert favorite title or letter sequence)", it causes a bit of head scratching for him, and a quick aside to me-"Why are they calling me (insert favorite title or letter sequence)?" After i explain, he usually nods, then mumbles something to the effect of, "dunno what you must be writing about me, guess I should read the thing." Of course, this does not mean that he is seriously taken aback by it, nor that my blog readers should stop adopting for him whichever variation of his name they like best. After life with me and my nickname-loving friends, he knows it is a sign of affection. As a side note, he did sit down to read my blog once, and skipped over the posts without pictures. "Your writing is bit too rambling for my taste", he said, "but looking at the pictures reminds me of the good times., so then I read them to see what you had to say about them." Poor man, doesn't know the good stuff when he sees it. Just kidding... I know I could embark on fewer tangents. But back to nicknames...

Back when we spent much more time with that set of friends than we do now, we all had entire rodent and amphibian alter-egos built around names given to us based on particular aspects of our personalities, and impromptu, hastily composed comic books, poems, and limericks to support them and make their bearers squirm. We had Squirrelly with her constant busyness and manic planning, we had Mousie with her involuntary squeeks and under her breath sputtering when deep in thought, we had Hamster with his wish to be buff, thus spend hours at the gym on his wheel, although it was his laugh, a somewhat rodent-like ha-ha-ha, that earned it for him in the first place, and Frog, who wore a green stocking hat every day and apparently did a lot of hopping around, and who (again, apparently) has a such a wide mouth and freaky green eyes, that such a nickname was inevitable. Since she also wore her hair in two braids under her green beanie, the name often got lengthened to Pippy Frogstocking, and the beanie became known as the Frog Helmet. MrB never got to be an animal, but he was quite often the zoo-keeper in those days, back when we all had each other to encourage each other in each other's antics. Even back then, he was so responsible we had trouble assigning anything but grown-up characteristics to him. Bless his heart. He's had to put up with a lot.

MrB is, however, looking forward to winter with his new snowmobile. Since we we have a window at the head of our bed, he rolls over each morning and peers through the slats of the metal blind, and reports no snow. Then he gets out of bed and looks at his new thermometer, the one that records outside highs and lows as well and indoor temperature, and sighs. It coulda snowed, if we had had moisture. Another freeze wasted. I know what he is thinking. If we could get an early season snow, he would have time to go enjoy it. A mid-season snow means turning down friends when they call and ask if he wants to join them on Rabbit Ears or Vail Pass, and then going by himself later in the day. Of course, add it to the list of things we do not necessarily agree on. I am happy he is happy, but I do not see the need to burn tanks full of precious gas, in foul clouds of acrid smoke, leaving a haze hanging on our clean mountain air, just to race in circles and frighten wildlife. Now, if we are talking a bit of necessary touring to get us to where the skiing is good, then turning the machines off and carving up the fresh powder on human-powered equipment, I can totally see it. (He cannot see how muscling ones way through snowdrifts, utilizing large muscle groups and gaining only inches is preferable to exploding through them at thrity miles per hour, utilizing thumb muscles and those used for balance on a bucking machine.)

We have recently had to stop and laugh, because if we don't laugh, our heads may explode at how completely different we are. I suppose we are proof that it is ok and marriages can still work with almost no common denominators. Since election is looming, we were bored one day and began taking quizzes to determine just where we would be classed on our political views. We now know that where one of us is on one side of the graph, the other is on the exact opposite of the graph. Every time we go out to eat, we must just laugh, because there is so much compromising to do. How does a vegetarian and someone who hates vegetables compromise on a restaurant? Then we go home, and...how does an ordered, neat person and someone who is perfectly comfortable with disarray coexist? We leave for work...what about someone who would rather walk to work to do a tiny part to save the environment, agree with someone who refuses to acknowledge the existance of global warming, since last winter's cold broke records? We plan time off...someone who thinks vacations should be relaxing, and someone who thinks vacations are for all the activity denied during the rest of the year?

But, there is one thing we do agree on, and I suppose it saves us. Two things, actually. Our views of life may differ, one being that life is not a bed of roses and we must get through it as best we can, and one being that a bed of roses is totally lame and lacking in excitement. But while we may not agree on how life is to be lived, we do agree on the meaning of life. Our philosophical views are amazingly similar, as are our views of God and religion. And we agree that we must laugh so our heads do not explode, and it is ok to be so different.

I hope, after this post, that you know BBD a little bit better. He is my ballast. He is the reasonable one. He lives with me, which is a major accomplishment. Sometimes, he scowls and says I make him sound boring, or worse, like an ass when I talk about him, but that is not my intention, swear. It is he who smooths over my mistakes, repairs friendships broken by my impulsive behavior, understands that how I feel now will not be how I feel in tomorrow morning, but still refrains from telling me so. This one's for him.

And now, i must run along and go down to town. I am not sure how it happened that I got nominated for dinner tonight, but I am bringing a pot of chili to our group that meets Wednesday nights, under the guise of Bible Study. Oh, we do study, but that is a part of the evening. It is mostly a group of good friends who reconnect once a week for food, and tales of our lives, feet close to a fire, a large dog curled in the middle, as we converse about whatever it is that happens to come up, often with Bibles close by for reference. Since there are two vegetarians in the group, both with husbands who they try to force into healthier habits, it is one place where we know there will be a healthy, hearty meal at least once a week. Tonight, we will be having butternut squash and black bean chili, courtesy of the new crock pot my parents gave me. But first, I must make an ingredient run. I had thought I would do that when I went down to the office this morning, then swing by the house and start it when I drove back to Keystone, but suddenly this morning I had nothing to do at the office. Now I must make the trip down to Dillon anyway. So the best to you all... I hope every one else's lives are well under control and you are not just reading my blog because you are procrastinating all the pressing matters around you (no, of course I do not post to my blog because I am doing that very thing myself...)