Tell-you-ride!!

In the fall of 1997 Paul Bunyan and I, hair (well, what was left of Paul Bunyan's) still wind blown from a cross country tour, pulled up to Frisco, Colorado in a Nissan Pathfinder chocked full of, well, I don't think we had much at that time. We bought a mattress, a futon and a cheap t.v. from Walmart.





I got a job as a fresh smiley hostess at the brewery on the corner and he was an instant star on the Breckenridge ski patrol.





There were nights when my butt cheeks would be so cracked from the dry air that I didn't know if I could quite make it up there. And there were days when Paul Bunyan would be gone on the river for so long that I didn't know if I could quite make it up there.





I had a brand new fresh M.A. in English in my back pocket and I was skiing all the way to April and drinking margaritas on the sun deck every afternoon. And yet something didn't feel right in the gut.




I tried to let my soul be free but it was trying to dig some soil to take root in- and well, the hardwoods don't take so well at that elevation.




So I made Paul Bunyan and brand new stinkin' puppy Sydney pack up the U-Haul to move east for a job I took in Philly, where houses were made from rocks and not sticks.




Paul Bunyan would have stayed forever. He would have found his own private stash of powder, marked his claim with a native American flag, and became a good old fashioned raccoon faced ski bum. No doubt.



But we put down our roots. She grew first and fast.




And then we officially became permanently grounded when these two trees came, at once. It was everything the palm reader from the Jersey shore told me it would be.





And we haven't gone on vacation, alone as a family, without grandparents, for ten years.




Until this house came up for rent on an on-line silent auction to raise money for Haiti relief...TWO years ago.




It's a cute little place (those are license plates on the sides!) with only 500 sq. feet of moving room.




We got the winning bid.




And every morning I woke up and looked out the window right at the mountain.




And every night I woke up and looked out the sky light and saw the stars.




And every day I would wonder how I could bake enough cookies to raise 2.6 million dollars to buy this place.





Or how many pretzels I could bake to buy this for $600,000.




But one thing that surprised me, besides how quickly my butt cheeks dried out (almost as much as my hair) was how I was able to set my soul free. I know that if I lived in a mountain town I would have my own set of worries like, if tomorrow would be a powder day or not. But I was surprised at how much my soul was refilled in that valley at 9,000 feet above sea level.





The blue sky that seems to go on forever, the Alpen glow, the dogs running free all over town, the beer, the dirty chips, the Baggo game at the lunch spot on the mountain, the music streaming from every chair lift, the local kids dirty from playing outside every day all day, the bikes with super wide tires to ride to the mountain in the snow, the TWO Thai restaurants, the ability to walk to everything (or ride the free gondola). I want it all- back.




We stopped at Breck on the way back down to Denver. It was crowded. Not the same.



My favorite twice baked wings at Downstairs at Eric's weren't even the same. Definitely not as good as I remember.






The brewery on the corner where I first learned that tourists are assholes- not as good as I remember. The jeweler where Paul Bunyan bought my engagement ring- gone. Our friends? Moved away. The people we used to be- not the same.

You see, I got these trees growing from my soul here in Vermont. They started to take up root here about ten years ago and now they're thriving in this weather. They've grown despite the rainy and soggy and not as clear blue as Colorado. But hey, they're hardwoods. And in the fall I love that they turn red and orange and purple and in the spring I love that they start to bud all green and I definitely, wholeheartedly, believe that in the winter they warm my soul more than those spindly little pines ever could.

A Swirly Eye

So because these beautiful ladies came to visit a few weekends ago I made this:



I painted this backsplash (and a) this photo doesn't do it justice- you can't see the purples, greens, blues and b)just ask my friend Jen how cool it is, she'll tell you) because a) the white wall behind my stove was so greasy no Magic sponge could have taken it off, b) I can't figure out what color to paint the walls in my kitchen because I ain't no interior designer, c) their beautiful mother (see above) is a very very neat and clean person and I was embarrassed to have my white wall so greasy and so in her face (because a) I knew she would cook for us and b) I knew she would look), d) I'm really an oil painter, or at least I was in a previous life, and e)Paul Bunyan didn't believe I could paint anything cool on canvas.


Now because we had so much fun eating, drinking and making jokes about this video all weekend long:





I had no time to take any photos of their visit except for a few of these bad shots of their amazing new dog Ronan. He's a love-amuffin. A giant love bug who had never jumped over a creek bed in all his life. I'm very excited to say he did it first here. Although I'm not very excited that we have running water for him to leap over.

Now everything on this blog, as of late, has been about what's being done around here on weekends because who really wants to hear (and for god's sake who wants to remember) the minutia of our weekly grind. Who wants to remember the ten year old who grumbles every morning on her way to school- picking for fights in the garbage like a street cat looking for scraps? Who wants to hear about the untrained dog who goes chasing chickens around the yard trying to fit them into her mouth and the woman who is so angry about not training said butt head that she goes hoarse from screaming at said butt head with a stick flailing in her hand? Who wants to hear about the stomach bug virus that got sprayed in my face by my little Scarlet dear on Monday- a death sentence for me that was executed 24 hours later on Wednesday....every hour on the hour for twelve hours? Who wants to hear about my Lysol brigade? No, not you. No, not you either. And neither do my children who will one day read this.

However, I'm not sure they'll want to remember last weekend when I made them stay all day on the bay of the big lake while I and their father attempted to play pond hockey on some sort of surface called ice, on which you could neither turn nor stop, much less do anything with the puck besides lift it to a team mate who was not moving. We should have played in our boots and drank more Labatt's Blue. I probably shouldn't let them know that as they hung out in the car for a few hours I stood by the fire to have a few beers in the beer tent after the last game of the day. Shhh. They said they had fun. And I did too, despite global warming.

The swirls in my mind's eye that came out on that canvas is a good image for what my life has been like lately. Weekends swirling into weekdays- all the colors (browns and purples and greens) coming together. And it all mixing together to make a fairly palatable print.


Today is my daughter's birthday. She is ten. My head is swirling with this number. Ten years. I can't for the life of me understand where she comes from. She is doll house and fishnet stockings at the same time. She is nail polish and stuffed animals. She is still sniffing her blankets and wearing her extra high All Stars. She is instant gratification and Wizard of Oz. She is the lead in the school play and holed up in her room with her i-pod on. She is sweet and rude. Tender and mean. She is generous and selfish. She is emotional. It's a swirled up mess. It's my mind's eye.

Tonight after rushing everyone off to bed, too late, I stepped outside to load the green monster. It's cold tonight. I like when it's cold. We've had nothing come from the sky but rain. No snow. And I'm tired of the browns. I either want it white or green. So I look up. I look up. And the stars- they're bright. It's clear. I can see every single one, separate from the next. They do not merge. They do not run together. They do not swirl. And so I stay. Because at least out there- there is sense. And it's not a greasy mess.

I wonder if she'll remember...

This young lady turned ten last Sunday.




And because her mother and I are crazy we decided to celebrate the last ten years of their tiny lives by taking our daughters to the BIG Apple for the weekend. Here we've just arrived at JFK.




I wonder if Claire will remember this moment.




Or if she recalls that the hair dresser doing Rebecca's hair couldn't quite complete the "do" she requested because Claire had been brushing Rebecca's hair all wrong and now SHE HAS NONE!




I wonder if she'll remember the hissy fit she threw when I said I wasn't going to pay for a new wig quite yet. When she's ready to box that shit up for her daughter, yea, then I'll pay the 50 bones.




I wonder if she'll remember that Medora told her the smoke coming from the sewer was the devil mixing a toxic concoction.




Or if she'll remember waking up laughing on our first morning in the city. The fire trucks were right outside our window. Or so it sounded like.





I wonder if she'll remember all the cute dogs being carried in baby slings.




Or how many Shirley Temples she drank? Her pee was red.




I wonder if she'll be able to remember the silence at ground zero, even though there were thousands of people there and still lots of construction.





Or if they'll remember getting their nails done by women who made fun of us in the Chinese they knew we didn't understand.




Will she remember the fat pigeons?




Or all the bubble gum on the sidewalks?




Will she remember the smell of roasting nuts?




Or worse, the giant fish at the fish markets?




Will she think she spent the whole time looking up?







And how they walked down the street with a little more swagger after this happened at the Bobby Brown make-up station in Macy's?




Will she remember these lights which gave the illusion it was day time?





Or this amazing show?




Will she remember refusing to stand next to any street actor?




But yet she gave a dollar to the man playing his saxophone under the ground?




Will they recall loving the tamarins at the zoo?




Or not being overly impressed with Central Park?



Will they remember being excited to see the huge boats going up and down this river- the one right outside Mud's step-mother's apartment?




I wonder if she'll remember that it was this trip that made her claim the city as part of her?
And that is was upon her return that she started researching acting schools in the city?