Hello and Welcome to An Altitude Problem, where, while all around us there is merriment and goodwill, we work. Actually, we have been made aware again lately how fortunate we are to have a job as several friends have resorted to selling possessions on ebay in order to keep house and vehicle. Construction-related businesses entrepreneurs thriving two years ago are now sitting in darkened houses, waiting for the phone to ring. We are fortunate. We really have not suffered at all while those around us know all too well how fast a bad economy can affect them. So we are thankful, and we do have goodwill, if we are not making merry, and hope that they can hold on until spring, and that maybe by then, someone will be building or remodeling or, at least, hiring.

Your blogger sits here on the couch, taking some ill-advised time before heading out on icy roads to prepare welcoming abodes for other travelers tired of icy roads and screaming kids. The last several days, I have run the gamut from feeling angry and isolated, no family this Christmas, no friends, no dinners and pine boughs and good china and pumpkin pie, to feeling extremely blessed, in comparison to those who would gladly drop all Christmas plans if it meant a day of work. We are not doing gifts this year, not by any actual decision, but now that the day has arrived, it is too late. We have all been too busy to be able to make the time to get to the store. My plan was to swing by a sports store yesterday and at least have one tiny giftwrapped item for B under the tree, he (we) needs both clear goggles and a headlamp, but by late last night, it still hadn't happened. Mostly because I couldn't make it out of Keystone and down to Dillon. Keystone had it's hooks in me all day. And because every step had to be a thought out, analyzed process.

Part of the reason yesterday was such a long day was because of this little thing called suprapatellar bursitis of the right knee. A fancy name for the fact that extreme impact, night before last, apparently pushed my kneecap up into the bursa, or fluid-filled area providing the padding between my femur and the tendon connecting my kneecap to my thigh, and scrambled things around a bit. With the result that I could not bend my knee under weight, or more than a few degrees under any circumstance, or do anything that would require use of my left quadriceps, such as lifting my leg into or out of the car, or switching my foot between gas pedal and brake pedal, or climbing stairs, or walking briskly, or pretty much anything that is required of a housekeeping inspector during one of the busyest times of the year, without involuntary gasps and yelps and sudden paleness and faintness. Instead, I hobbled around with my right leg straight, knee locked, swinging it around, lifting it from the hip with every step, carefully sitting down for every job that would have required kneeling (and my job has a lot of those), taking stairs a step at a time, pulling myself up with left leg and using the right one for the only thing it could handle- balance. I worked eight hours yesterday. I got five inspections done. Obviously not something I could bill eight hours for. Marci did the rest, which is to say, most of my work for the day.

Which is why I am slid far down in the couch at the moment. I have a bag of snow wrapped around the offending knee, hoping that, if the swelling goes down, the time I take now to ice will actually save me time later. I found a handy ace bandage with a pouch for ice in a condo the other day, washed away the suspicious stains that may or may not have been blood from a guest's skiing accident, and claimed it for the inevitable. Who knew it would need to be used so soon.

I realize that, while suprapatellar bursitis is fairly uncommon and usually injury related, other bursitis is a common ailment and simply life-related. People who deal with arthritis deal with this sort of pain all the time. I realize now that a few people I have known have walked in just this manner for years. Which has served to make me even more thankful that while my time will come, if I live long enough, it is not yet. Someday, I may experience pain like this that does not go away, as this will in a week or two. It has made me realize again the extent of the thing I so often preach- the time for living is now. The time for doing and being and rejoicing in one's good health and the beauty and happiness of the moment is now. This moment, this set of circumstances, this glow of well-being will not last because nothing lasts. The people we share these moments with will not last. So now, while these moments are ours, we should all claim them. Squeeze every drop of life out of them and absorb it- the joy and the pain and the knowing that without pain, life can't happen.

And, of course, I also realize the value of not skiing blind in the dark, and of remembering footbridges through ditches and not angling through said ditches in the perfect spot to collide with said footbridges, landing with one's entire body weight behind one's right kneecap when it meets the sharp edge of said footbridge, buried as it is under the snow. And remembering that it is nobody's fault, certainly not the county worker who labored for two days building said footbridge in a perfectly needless place a few weeks before it snowed. Or the friend who accidentally took my headlamp home, or the dog who thought he needed the second run of the day, or the husband who did not offer to take him.

I am blogging on a new computer these days. Although it is wonderful, and lightening fast, and I get to learn how to use Windows 7, and it is shiny and new and pretty, I am still wondering if it was entirely necessary. Remember a month or so ago, when I was whining about all my electronics leaving me sit? Well, I waffled for a long time about whether I thought I could afford to replace my 1G ipod, which did not even hold a quarter of my music, podcasts, audiobooks, etc that I force through my eardrums on a given day, and lately, had been refusing to load my music, due to an unknown error. I finally decided that yes, I could, if it was an older refurbished one without all the fun stuff that Apple put in the new one. So I ordered it, and impatiently tracked it from China to Colorado, and finally got it and opened it, lovingly turned its small sleekness over, admiring it's pretty orange color and big screen, and plugged it into my computer, and...what's this? Unknown error? Could not load my media? I unplugged it and spent the day listening to the a's and b's- all it got loaded before it errored- and a day of Abba and Blink 182 had me in a foul mood by evening. I spent the evening trying, and mostly failing, to back up music and pictures online, and just before I went to bed, tried to shut it off. When I got up the next morning, it was still trying to log off. I tried for three hours to get it to respond, with zero results. There was no way it would be turning on again. I admit to being a teeny bit mean to B, in my frusteration, and he responded with what I thought was a perfectly harmless, idle threat- one borne of his own frusteration with me. "Fine. You'll have a new computer by tonight. Go to work." And claims he did not slam the door as he left, but it was certainly securely latched.

So I accepted that the items not yet backed up, such as the story I had spent two days writing, recent music purchases, recent prized landscape photos that I had had to climb three thousand vertical feet to take, were lost forever, dissolved into useless piles of computer code, and I ran my recovery discs (instead of going to work) and by the time I left, I still only had Abba and Blink 182 to listen to, so I left the shiny new ipod at home. But my computer worked. Maybe not stellar, because it occasionally still locked up, but not indefinitely. I was ready to try to get as much data back as possible and get on with grieving for the rest. And then B called. He had just purchased, for what I thought was an exorbitant amount of money considering the amount of agonizing had just gone into my new ipod, a new laptop for me. He thought I would be extatic.

I was livid. I am laughing now, as I type that, but then, there were immediate tears of rage and frusteration. He was taken aback, utterly shocked that I would react in such a manner to his selfless guesture. He did his thing and got quiet, and I did my thing and stormed and sputtered and demanded that he say something, and he did his thing and pointed out that when one is in a hole, one should stop digging, and I did my thing and nearly popped a vein in my forehead. By the time we met for lunch an hour later, I had calmed down, and was feeling a bit silly for making such a scene, and was ready to think logically again, which, of course, proves that he was right to stop digging, as much as it pains me to admit it. When I am primed for a fight, all I want is someone to fight with, although five minutes later, when the evil wind has stopped blowing, I am left in a mellow, humiliated pile of remorse for it.

And so it was that by that evening I was actually quite excited about Windows 7 and lots of internal storage and super fast page loads. And now I sit here quietly clicking shiny new keys, and loving it.

And now, it is time to take myself to work. I just tried straightening my leg from the seated position I so carefully eased it into an hour ago, with painful results. Not sure if the ice did much at all except get the rest of me to shivering. The wind is howling around the house like a beast and I don't think the tempurature has broken single digits yet. Time to go make everyone else's holiday the stuff of dreams and fantasy, cozy, snowy mountain Christmases. And remember that just the fact that I am able to do so should make me less Grinchy.