Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the light at the end of the tunnel is the darkness that is the lack of Christmas lights.

One is hard pressed to be excited about the season when one has noticed over the last eight years that the meanness, the pettiness, the impatience, and the rudeness displayed by ski resort guests grows in direct proportion to how close to Christmas it is. I know, it seems like it would be the other way around, right? But it isn't. Nothing about the season of joy to the world, peace on Earth and goodwill toward man is pleasant for us anymore. I am resentful of this job because it took Christmas away from us. It probably has not helped that I now rent skis and sell gloves to these same guests. I am just sick of them, and even though they put groceries on our table the rest of the year, I just want them to go back home to the South and the Midwest and Asia and Europe and wherever else they hail from. I am sure where they are from, they are nice to their fellow man. But here, they are just rude and tiresome and no matter how hard and fast we work to anticipate every need, we will always miss something and it will quite possibly ruin their whole vacation.

I have decided it is all about expectations. Anger comes from unmet expectations. So does disappointment and impatience and the urge to try to punish your hosts in advance for what could potentially be a less than flawless vacation. So I am trying to not expect behavior that would befit a decent human being, expecting, instead, toddler-esque temper tantrums. Which I hope does not make me appear condescending. Because that can escalate a bad situation in a hurry.

But through it all, I have been feeling an underlying vibe lately, a current that is carrying me and connecting me, and I don't quite know how to articulate it without sounding trite. What it is, is life. Being alive. See? I knew it would sound like a bad cliche. And the more I try to explain, the more I could sound like I am preaching a grand concept that will make you roll your eyes. Or make you think I need a padded room. But it's true- I have had this almost frantic need lately to do and to be because it's all so temporary. I find myself expecting to lose those I love, to lose how perfect everything is right now. Clenching hands free of arthritis and painlessly bending my knees and wondering how long this state of pain-free, youthful perfection will last. Bobby asks why I am looking at him, and I say it's because he's so darn cute rather than try to explain that I am trying to make this moment, while we are both alive and healthy and together, last in my memory. This is a scar from losing people unexpectedly. Or is it a compensating blessing? We have experienced the same shocks everyone experiences if they live long enough, of phone calls bearing devastating news, of unexpected illness, of facing the vulnerability of those we love. And the longer I am allowed to live and be, the more I find myself in this constant state of reverence toward life, drawing back from moments to look at them through a lens of loss, measuring their value in the present against the value I will give them in memory.

Weird, right? I don't know if this is how it feels to grow up, or to get old, or to become unstable. All of which could cause the loss of this slice of perfection that I feel my life is. This feeling of living in the present, not just living but reveling in it, in still being young and together and nothing too bad to deal with has happened yet. I realize this means that I do expect the lightening to strike sooner or later, I do expect to lose more of the people I love, or for something to happen to me, and I also realize this is not exactly a healthy way to live. But it does add something to life. It adds life to living. It adds appreciation for this moment, this one right now, in which I am happy and have everything I need.

To change the subject to one less introspective, our eighth 26th of December is now behind us. The 26th is one of the season's milestones. It is the biggest day of the year, when all the Christmas guests check out in the morning and all the New Year's guests try to check in in the morning but have to wait, many rudely and impatiently, until the afternoon when the units are ready for them. We dread it, and we feel just a little less stressed out once it is behind us. Today went smoothly. I thanked myself again and again for working such a long day on the 24th to prepare for it. Other 26ths have been much more crazy than this one. One year, while we were still cleaners, B and I cleaned 5 four bedroom, 4 bath condos back to back, they all checked out at 10am and back in at 4 pm. That was the day that I vacuumed up a rug and broke the vacuum cleaner, and Marci locked her keys in her car and had to sit and wait for B to bring her another set of keys. And we still got everything done. Another one, one of our housekeepers called in sick because "I have phlegm", and between Amber, Jay, Marci, Bobby and I, we did 18 cleans in that six hour window. Another one, an entire housekeeping crew just didn't show up, and when we called to ask, we were told, "well...sorry." Then we all dropped everything we were doing, grabbed our cleaning buckets, and started cleaning. And last year, in the panicked rush that happens between 2 and 4 o'clock, when we all suddenly realize we have about four hours of work left and less than two hours to do it in, I locked my keys in my car, and sat by the fire in a building lobby and read the paper while I waited for B to bring another set of keys. Today was tame compared to those days.

And now, I am tired and two dogs are snoring at my feet (did I mention we are dogsitting Raisin?)and snoring dogs are just so delightfully distracting. Every once in a while the snoring turns to a sort of snuffling snort and their paws twitch, then that passes and soon, the snoring is back. I wonder if Andy has not started dreaming about things that go bump lately, because he has come out of a dead sleep a few times this last week in a barking frenzy and as soon as we tell him to quiet down, he comes running over to us and buries his head in our laps. It's like he is scared of something. Do dogs have nightmares? I hope not.

To all, a good night. May you savor all your perfect moments. But not because you expect them to end.