Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where after a few days back at altitude, we are strangely happy to be back down in the low places. I don't know why. It was amazing to be back up in Summit County, perfecting my turns on my skis, in the snow that we apparently took up there with us, as snow seems to follow us wherever we go these days. But now that we are back down where the wind blows a little warmer, where we look out our windows to see the horizon and the sunsets and sunrises, bare tree branches and dry milo stalks, it feels a little more right than looking out our window to see the neighbor's houses, the neighbor's judgment eyes if Andy escapes the house without his leash, a dozen cars, a dozen trash cans, hearing snowplows and sirens and helicopters. Here, we hear the wind. A few times a week, a "neighbor" flies over our house to and from wherever it is he goes in his plane, and sometimes, on quiet mornings when sound carries on crisp air, we hear the neighbor's rooster crow from a mile away, their cows mooing, sometimes a motor revving. The cat Marvin, shortened from Starvin' Marvin, given his state of health when he showed up at our door, now also known as Marvelous Marv, Marvae-larvae, Marv the magnificent, Marv the Large, the Killer of Rugs, Kittymarvie, Marv the Claw, and the Happiest Marv on Earth, sleeps outside on all but the cold, snowy nights. No cars whiz past and endanger his life. We have been told of mountain lion sightings around our house, but he must be a wily sort, to survive as he does outside. We have made him a little more house-friendly by paying the vet to remove his little Marvs, now he has no desire to go a-courting, which makes him lazy and accommodating. He sits on the porch railing and waits for us to come home, waits for us to get out of bed, waits for the endearing names and earmite-scratching and catfood and long naps in the house that are sure to come. Andy explores the yard, dragging things that have no business inside the mouth of any living thing out of hidden places, delightedly showing us his prizes and then sniffing them out again when we take them away. Kansas has been good to us, better than we anticipated. The sturdy old house we live in is a solid shelter, walls permeated with memories that no longer seem surreal.

On Thursday, while B was at work, I packed up all of our ski gear and prepared to be gone for the weekend. B came home in a bit of a bad mood, snapped at me for a few things I felt were not my fault in the least, which led me to pick a raging fight with him, slam several doors, bang dishes around, in general, be a raging hag, which twenty minutes later, I had forgotten about completely and was singing and whistling and cooking dinner while he ducked every time I walked near. Isn't it weird how when you are a hormonal wreck, you never actually realize that your behavior is completely inconsistent until later? One moment, I literally wanted to murder him, and the next, I had completely forgotten to be angry. I fell asleep pondering why I had been in such a blind rage, and decided that hormones or no hormones, I had probably better work on that. The next morning, I awoke early, doing math in my head. I was late. Not really late, just a few days, but still...I got out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom, squinting in the bright light, and managed to hit the pregnancy test in my stupor. I watched one line turn pink, negative. So I tossed it in the sink, and wondered into the living room. I texted my "pee buddy" (the girlfriend who has agreed to be my accountability buddy to keep me from using home pregnancy tests until absolutely warranted) that it was negative, then wondered back into the bathroom to throw it away...and noticed a faint second line. I still had my phone in my hand, and without thinking, texted- "They weren't kidding about having to wait three minutes. Now there's another line." The second I hit send, the meaning of two lines hit me and I realized I had just told my friend that Bobby was potentially going to be a father before I told him, which seemed a bit unforgivable. So I had to shake him awake him to tell him, and he was massively annoyed, and grunted and told me in a scratchy morning voice "I'm glad you're so happy, 'cause I don't know how we're gonna pay for the dang thing," before pulling the covers back over his head. I sat there, a little crushed, not sure how to respond to this. "I will not be telling your child that the first time you referred to it, you called it "the dang thing". Then the covers came back off, he giggled, woke up enough to realize what I had just said, and the full realization sunk into our sleep-fogged brains that, in our bumbling way, we have another chance at this whole being parents thing. If. If only this one will stay in there about 30 weeks longer than the last one.

We, of course, have known our potential kid's names for quite some time already (when you wait for almost ten years, these things just sort of evolve without you ever really having a discussion about them and you find yourself at an understanding without knowing how you got there), so I am already calling the "thing" by both names indiscriminately, knowing I have a fifty percent chance of being right. If I lose this one, I know it won't be easy. There will be tears. A lot of them. B keeps telling me to not get attached to it, but I am already physically attached to it, so not being mentally attached is just not an option. But I am sticking with my theory- I would rather have people rejoice with me, and then, if I lose it, know what I have lost so they don't just assume my life is exactly how I want it. I want them to know the tests and the tears I have had so they know I will understand theirs. I want them to know that if I seem distracted and sad, it isn't them. It isn't some secret, mysterious pain that they are not allowed to guess at. I will need them if I should lose this baby, and I don't think I can bear telling them I need them, I just need them to know that I do because of what they know has happened to me. And how will they know if I don't tell them- first the good, and, God forbid, the bad, if it should happen? Which is why, at a two days short of five weeks pregnant, I decided that secrets are dumb. There is no way I am taking every one's advice of keeping it a secret until danger of miscarriage is past. I am too deep in feelings already for this tiny bunch of rapidly dividing cells, if I lose it I'm gonna be a wreck, and it's best if the world is forewarned.

after all that, we got up, packed our suitcases, and drove to Summit County. Skiing was good. It was exactly what we needed after several weeks of cabin fever (me) and spending every day in the cab of a loader (B). With the snow, B has been working hard lately, scraping snow and deep, freezing muck from pens, enabling the cows to reach their feed bunks and giving them small places to stand where they are not knee-to-hip-deep in icy sludge. I have been doing...well, not a lot. Keeping the house halfway clean. Doing laundry. Watching movies on streaming Netflix. Walking the dog, when the ground has been frozen enough for us to leave the yard. Digging trenches and attempting to drain the small lake that is our driveway and yard. The house and a small grassy patch sit elevated, and are well drained, but the yard itself has been a bottomless pit of western Kansas muck, which is to say, half glue, half slimy clay that sticks to one's shoes until it pulls shoes off one's feet. The only way to remove the clay slime that dries into concrete is to soak it off of tennis shoes that used to look nice. The tires on B's truck have an enormous radius by the time he gets to the garage, from all the mud layers stuck to them.

As we are forced to take to the groomed ski runs in Colorado for lack of snow this year, I have been soliciting skiing advice from every available source. Last year, as you can tell from various videos, we had the time of our lives in the deep powder...but I sucked at it. I survival skied. I flailed. I spazzed. I face-planted. In the forgiving softness of bottomless fluff that was last winter, that was okay, I did not risk injury as I tumbled and had to dig myself out of snowdrifts higher than my head, out of breath and sweating, with snow inside my clothes, only to make a few more turns and do it again. (by the way, I am fully aware, and fully horrified, that I misspelled a word in my last video. But I did that in a hurry, did not proof it well, and then it took like three hours to publish, so I haven't had the time to fix and republish. Never mind. I choose looking like an idiot over having to do that all again.)

So this year, with dismal snow conditions and skiing off-piste not an option if one values life, limb, or gear, I have become obsessed with finding the perfect turn. I have all sorts of advice coming through my brain now as I ski- a more complete turn. Lead with my ski tips. Sideways extension. Focus on upper body stillness. Lean forward. Flick poles. Hold poles and firmly plant. Pole plants are a thing of the past. Focus on where I want to go and keep it between my shoulders. Shins against my boot tongues.

They tell me I am improving. And I can feel it- a more fluid line. My friend laughed when she saw me ski this time. "Well, you're not twisting like a beginner...you're skiing exactly like Susan K. Fast, energetic and spastic, like you're too impatient to slow down and finish out your turns." I started laughing. "It's true, every time I start to feel resistance, I am over that turn and ready for the next one. I blame the ADD." The rest of our time out, B kept coaching me on how to ski less like Susan K and more like Ingrid Backstrom, who's fluid, effortless, slinky-like turns I so want to have for my own. To Bobby's credit, his turns are also some of the smoothest ones seen on a normal day at a ski resort. He looks relaxed, just hanging out above skis that never stop their side to side arc under him, almost as if they are pulling his feet, and not vice versa. So I make him coach me. This is a win-win for us. I will never be better than him at skiing. Willing to jump off higher rocks and cornices with less experience under my belt, maybe. But I won't have the ease that comes from having learned to ski on skinny, long skis and then transitioned to short, fat, shaped skis. Therefore, we will never come to that awkward place we came to on our snowboards where suddenly the student finds herself attempting to teach the teacher, then the teacher feels emasculated and demoralized and stops wanting to ride with the student. In his defense, by that time, I had caught up with and passed the total amount of time he had spent on his board.

After a few runs in the 4 degree morning nip, we spent a good while sitting inside and warming our toes before going out again. It felt absolutely wonderful spending guilt-free hours up on the hill, never wondering how we were going to pay in future stress for our stolen fun, never worrying that we had missed a phone call and a guest was now furious with us. Nothing to worry about but our icy, numb toes in our unforgiving ski boots, and making each turn a little more fluid and graceful than the last. Unfortunately, the first unhandy pregnancy symptoms manifested about mid-morning in the form of something that felt like low blood sugar and high altitude shakies- I was bone-tired, shaky, faint, headachy, queasy, and my chest burned with the worst heartburn I had ever experienced. As hard as I tried to ski through it, I flat couldn't help but bonk. At 11:00, I finally told B I was done. If he wanted to ski more, that was fine, but I would be inside by the fire. He looked at me like I had lost my marbles, mocked me a bit for not being more die-hard, knowing this would be my last run before we returned to Kansas. But he took me home, back to the friend's house who's loft we commandeered, and I spent the afternoon trying to sleep sitting up, since lying down wasn't an option with the heartburn, while he watched the Bronco's game with a group of friends. We went out for dinner and I managed a few bites from B's plate, then home, where I spent the night propped up and sleeping fitfully.

The next morning we drove home, and the lower the altitude got, the better I felt. The friend we stayed with had predicted this, since she had been sick during her entire pregnancy, except for the Arizona river trip they had taken at fourteen weeks, during which she felt fine. By the time we hit 3,500 feet, our high plains elevation, I was feeling normal. Perhaps that is part of the reason I am so happy to be back home in Kansas. My brain and body really like being dependant on thick air. I still feel a bit crappy, but at manageable proportions.

Plus, I sit here with a Andy's head lying heavily on my arm as he gazes into my face, telepathically beaming to me his sheer adoration and his thinking that while he loves spending time with Grandpa Kevin, he hopes we do not leave him again for a while. Marv lies in the curve of his body, cleaning his own face with a luxuriously curled paw, occasionally stopping to also look up at me, letting me know how much he appreciates the fact that we did not abandon him like the last people he trusted. The sun streams through my south-facing windows and puddles on their matching yellow fur, warming the bottoms of my feet as they are propped on the coffee table in front of me, the only sound is Andy's wheezing, Marv's snorting as he licks himself,the tap of my keyboard and the ticking clock. I think it's going to be a good day. Of course, my house is trashed now, all of our gear dumped just inside the door, the bathroom the scene of a plumbing fix, but I have until four o'clock to fix all that. Then I have to drive to where B is working today, up by Sharon Springs, to pick him up and bring him home. In the meantime, I plan to fill the crock pot with food for dinner. It's a good life, this is. I wonder every day how I became one of the lucky ones, how we became so normal (by the gender role standards with which we were raised). I never saw myself enjoying being a woman in a patriarchal farm community, a stay at home wife, but right now, it seems oddly natural. Well, I would choose an ocean outside my door if I could, but it's still a pretty good life, considering. I have been able to be many things, and have enjoyed being those women, but at this point in my life, it doesn't really feel like I've sold out to enjoy being this one.