Roofing=Rocket Science?

It turns out that roof #2 was laid over insulation that never dried after snow melted through roof #1. The two disaster recovery companies out here today were mumbling about having to tear out all the walls and the cathedral ceiling in the open floor plan that contains our living room, dining area, and kitchen.

When I asked the property manager what we were supposed to do while all that was going on, she blithely answered, "You'll either have to find another place to live (i.e., move out permanently) or live in a hotel until the repairs are done." She didn't offer to foot the hotel bill, incidentally.

And on a further note: This is going to sound sexist, but it was difficult to take the representative from the second disaster recovery company seriously. She showed up wearing tight jeans and high heels, did not bring a ladder to inspect the ceiling (she had to borrow ours), and had only a tiny (but oh so cute) red flashlight for inspecting the attic, which does not have electricity.

Got a Feelin' Called the Blues

Water is still dripping through our living room ceiling, even though the new (as of November) roof that the independent inspector called "shoddy" was replaced this past Thursday. With bubbles in the paint, brown water stains down the walls, and a portion of the ceiling threatening to drop to the floor, it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm for Christmas decorating. I feel as though I live in a flophouse.

---

In addition to putting on a shoddy roof, the November roofers never cleaned the gutters after finishing the job. I had been diligent about salting and shoveling the steps and the front porch, but I was out all day a week ago Friday and returned through the garage entrance. When a neighbor asked me to come over that evening, I stepped out the front door, did a half-somersault on the ice that had accumulated during the day on the porch from the overflowing gutters, and slammed the back of my head and my already iffy left knee on the concrete steps. I've had a constant headache and a "second kneecap" ever since.

---

Hana was horribly ill last week with gastrointestinal problems, so ill that our vet sent her to a specialist for an ultrasound. The good news is that her intestinal system proved to be fine, and $1,300 of drugs, IV fluids and vet fees later, she is eating without vomiting. The bad news is that the ultrasound picked up a "solitary nodule within [the] right caudal lung lobe . . . consistent with primary pulmonary neoplasia." In layman's terms, our 13-year-old girl has lung cancer.

Hana, 12.18.09

The Roof Over Our Heads

Maybe I need to change the title of my blog to The Cynical Woman. On five of the past nine days, we've been graced by a succession of roofers and home repairmen whose so-called efforts have done nothing to stop the leaks in the roof. It's a sad state of affairs when the property management company's offer to buy us more buckets to catch the drips feels like a early Christmas present.

Personally, I think that the owner should let us get that second dog I've been craving as partial compensation for living in a sieve.

Not-So-Hypothetical Question of the Day

Do we still have to pay rent when our roof has been leaking for the past two weeks, despite a parade of roofers stomping around up there?

(I have a new appreciation for the effectiveness of Chinese water torture.)

Another candidate for the Darwin Awards?

Note: Colorado's annual ski passes feature the pass-holder's name, photo, and associated bar code. When a ski lift staff member scans your pass, your picture appears on the scanner.

From the December 5 Denver Post:

Girl using guy's ski pass: Had sex change

Keystone>> A father was "shocked" last weekend when a deputy called asking whether his son was having a sex-change operation, according to a report from the Summit County Sheriff's Office.

The trouble started when a woman was caught at Keystone Resort trying to use the ski pass of a man named Daniel. The woman claimed to be in the middle of a sex change. The deputy asked for the parents' phone number and the woman gave it to them. Daniel's father answered and said he knew nothing of a sex change. An hour later, the Keystone supervisor told the deputy there was a phone number on Daniel's ski-pass file. The deputy called the number and Daniel answered, informing the deputy that he had given the pass to his girlfriend, Wanda. The woman spoke with Daniel, then told the deputy that she was actually Wanda. She was arrested and booked on charges of theft of more than $500 and criminal impersonation.

Small Pleasures

Although I grew up with a relatively small dog (a cranky Boston Bull Terrier mix who loved only my mother), when I met Jim and fell almost as much in love with his Newfoundland-Irish Setter mix as I did with him, I became a "Big Dog Person." Consider the dogs that we've owned over the past 20 years: Merlin: 125 lbs. Sam: 120 lbs. Sophie: 90 lbs. Hana: 70 lbs.

So perhaps it's a surprise that my next dog will probably be a Papillon, a breed that generally tops out at around 10 pounds. (On the other hand, Papillons are sometimes referred to as "big dogs in little suits.")

Jill's dog, Foxy, was the first Papillon I really got to know. Unlike many small dogs (including the various toy breeds owned by my mother-in-law over the years), Foxy is calm, even around strange people and large dogs. In Brussels, Foxy and Hana treated each other with the exquisite manners of two well-bred aristocrats. Foxy is smart, but then Papillons are often on Top 10 lists of the most intelligent dog breeds. Most remarkably, though, she has what in humans is called emotional intelligence. She seems to sense what people around her need—entertainment, comfort, a warm body to sit quietly with—and quickly supplies it. (The only dog I've owned that truly had this gift was Merlin, the Bouvier des Flandres.)

Foxy and Hana at Chateau de la Hulpe, 2008

I just assumed that Foxy was unique and that Jill, who had adopted her from a rescue group, was one of those lucky people who had found the dog perfectly suited to her.

Then in August, my neighbor Joyce adopted a male Papillon from the shelter where I volunteer. He was a stray that the shelter staff christened "Bling." Joyce renamed him "Jack Sparrow" (a "manly" first name, a last name that referenced his birdlike bones) and paid his hefty veterinary bills when, three days into the adoption, he was diagnosed with canine influenza.

In less than four months, Jack and Joyce have become as perfectly in sync as Foxy and Jill.

Jack, 2009

When Joyce was out of town for 10 days over Thanksgiving, Jack came to stay with us and I got to see what he was like 24/7, just as I had when I dog-sat Foxy in Brussels. And here's the interesting thing: their temperaments are virtually identical. Foxy and Jack each stayed with me at times when I was feeling very low. Foxy was with us in Brussels when we knew we we had to leave Europe but Jim didn't yet have a firm job in the States; Jack was here last week when I was in complete despair about my job prospects AND was yearning for a home of my own, after dealing with a leaky (brand-new!) roof in our rental house and an AWOL property management company.

At the risk of sounding like one of those sentimental, gushy dog people, it's impossible to convey how much these two tiny creatures lifted my spirits during their respective visits, from waking up in morning to find Foxy's head on my pillow to laughing at Jack's habit of flipping his dry food into the air like tiddly winks. Which is why, at the risk of sounding like a whiny two-year-old (and knowing that our landlord is dead set against allowing us to have a second dog), I tell Jim at least once a day, "I want MY OWN Papillon."

Heartsick

Of all the jobs that I've applied for and been rejected for in the 19 months since moving to Colorado, the one that hurt the most was the Volunteer Coordinator position at the animal shelter where I've put in hundreds of hours since August 2008. During that time, I've worked in the following shelter programs: dog enrichment; trail walks (for the dogs who are short-term shelter residents); a special program for the long-term dogs (mostly pit bulls); dog-handling at off-site adoption events; and, for the last five months, as the designer for the volunteer newsletter. I've bathed a few dirty dogs and come home soaking wet, and, recently, was one of five volunteers asked to participate in a new program for dogs "with issues" that are awaiting court dates or breed-specific rescue groups.

I was never called to interview for the position; last Monday, I was just told verbally that I didn't get it. Since I got the news in public, several feet from where other volunteers were standing, there was really no opportunity to discuss it.

Since I left the shelter that day feeling heartsick, I sent an email to the shelter staff member who will be supervising the position. She has been the Volunteer Coordinator since I started there (she's moving to another position within the organization), so I've had a lot of interactions with her during my time at the shelter.

For those who haven't had to look for a job in this economy—particularly those of you over 50—the following email exchange (my email to the shelter contact and her reply) is an example of why, some days, I feel as worthless as a used Kleenex.

Hi ----,

Thanks for telling me in person that another candidate had been chosen for the Volunteer Coordinator spot. I didn't want to discuss it in the shelter lobby in front of other volunteers, but it would be helpful to me--as I continue to job hunt--to know if there was something in my resume or in my interactions at the shelter that would have made me a more attractive candidate. (I guess that I was a bit surprised that I didn't even rate an interview.)

I'm not trying to put you on the spot--truly--but if there's anything that you can add to my understanding of the hiring process without making it too awkward for either of us in the future, I'd be appreciative. Thanks much.

Kate

---

Hi, Kate,

I appreciate your email.

As I think I had mentioned awhile back, we were amazed by the 76 applicants for a part-time position. So I completely understand your surprise with the process. It was very competitive and some of the applicants had a great deal of nonprofit work experience and management/training of volunteers.

There was nothing at all that you could have done differently in the process or with your interactions with [the shelter].

I wish you the BEST of luck with your job search. Thanks for following up with me!

Sincerely,
----

Our Pilgrim Foremothers

The colonists who came over on the Mayflower believed that women were morally as well as intellectually and physically inferior, and that they should be married off as early as possible so their husbands could keep them on the straight and narrow . . . But it was occasionally difficult to wring the proper degree of deference out of women who had crossed the ocean in small boats, helped carve settlements out of the wilderness, and spent their days alone in isolated farmhouses surrounded by increasingly ticked-off Indians.

from When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins

Great Sand Dunes

In Michigan, we had Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, with its 400-foot high mounds of fine sand overlooking Lake Michigan. In Colorado, we have Great Sand Dunes National Park, with its 750-foot high mounds of slightly coarser sand in a valley below the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We stopped at the park on our way home from Mesa Verde.

I can't even begin to understand how 19,000 acres of sand dunes ended up sandwiched between endless plains—an "Open Range" where the cattle wander unfenced—and a line of mountains. The only water in sight is an unimpressive creek. Words like "sand deposits," "Rio Grande and its tributaries," and "ephemeral lake" (a lovely phrase that I picked up at the visitor center) have something to do with it.

Going up the dunes was dreamlike: no matter how many mounds of sand you scrambled over while fighting strong winds and shifting sand below your feet, the top still seemed no closer. After failing to summit, I was left with a) a lot more appreciation for Lawrence of Arabia and b) the feeling that my face had just undergone a 100-percent natural microdermabrasion.

More pictures from Great Sand Dunes

Mesa Verde

We'd been talking about visiting Mesa Verde National Park since we arrived in Colorado, but always found reasons for not going. It takes a minimum of eight hours to drive there, depending on your route. During the summer, it's pretty hot that far south. No matter which route you take, you have to go over some mountain passes, which makes for a dicey trip during the winter months.

But two weeks ago, the weather forecasts were promising, we had roofers hammering away above us, and life was wearing us down. We tossed our suitcases in the trunk and drove. And drove. And drove. In the three-day round trip, we travelled over 1,000 miles through ever-changing, jaw-dropping scenery without even leaving Colorado.

Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Today, the park protects over 4,000 known archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States. (National Park Service)

The decision to visit Mesa Verde during the first week in November was serendipitous. Judging from the size of the parking lot at the museum/visitor center, the place is mobbed during the summer. We shared a tour of the Cliff Palace—one of the biggest settlements at the site—with about 50 delightful fifth grade girls from a Denver charter school.

Cliff Palace

The rest of the day, we saw few other visitors. We were the only hikers on the Petroglyph Trail that afternoon. The silent canyon heightened the drama of coming face-to-face with our first-ever petroglyphs, including the small handprints of the artist(s).


More pictures from Mesa Verde:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/MesaVerde

I'm not a cyborg

. . . but when I'm without my computer, as I have been for most of the last two weeks, I feel as though I'm missing a vital body part.

(My machine has been in the shop. It caught a virus, was fixed and sent home, and two days later, caught a different virus and went back to the PC Gurus. It may be time to invest in a new box, but I have a lot of emotional attachments to the old one. Clearly I read way too much science fiction during my formative years.)

In Flanders Fields: Armistice Day

During one of our last weekends in Belgium, we spent a day in the area most Americans know only as Flanders Fields, from the poem by John McCrae, a Canadian soldier in World War I. The city of Ypres, which was under horrific siege by the Germans, now houses the In Flanders Field Museum and other war monuments. The surrounding countryside, the site of many battles and—still—the trenches so closely identified with the Great War, is dotted with military cemeteries holding the dead from the British Commonwealth.

I never had a chance to blog about that experience while we still lived in Belgium. But today, the official end of World War I, seems like a good time to share the photos. Unlike the more uniform markers in American military cemeteries, the grave markers in the British cemeteries in Flanders are engraved with the regimental symbols of the dead soldiers, which adds to their poignancy.

Pictures from Ypres, the military monuments and cemeteries, and the now peaceful countryside:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/FlandersFields

John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields"
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

The Brakebills Library

This one's for you, Gretchen . . .

I spent several hours during this week's snowstorm reading Lev Grossman's new novel, The Magicians. A large chunk of the action takes place at Brakebills, a sort of college-level Hogwarts. Although I think that all libraries are magical places (cue to loud groaning), the Brakebills Library--which I envisioned as looking rather like the Long Room in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin (yes, I have been there, so I know whereof I speak)--literally has its own brand of magic:

...some of the books had actually become migratory. In the nineteenth century Brakebills had appointed a librarian with a highly Romantic imagination who had envisioned a mobile library in which the books fluttered from shelf to shelf like birds, reorganizing themselves spontaneously under their own power in response to searches. For the first few months the effect was said to have been quite dramatic. A painting of the scene survived as a mural behind the circulation desk, with enormous atlases soaring around the place like condors.

But the system turned out to be totally impractical. The wear and tear on the spines alone was too costly, and the books were horribly disobedient. The librarian had imagined that he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly deposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub-sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribable papery susurrus.

It's hard not to love the idea of disobedient books. Or the word susurrus.

October Snow

You may have heard that we're having a bit of snow out West. How bad is it? Well, my neighbor Holly, who has teenagers, commented as she was shoveling her driveway for about the thirteenth time in the last 24 hours, "This is the first time we've ever had two [school] snow days in a row this early in the season!"

The streets don't get plowed (see below), but the paved trails in the open space areas do, which enabled me to walk Hana on Ralston Creek Trail this morning and take a few pictures.

No tennis for us today

Letting Go of "Home"

My family moved twice while I was in grades 1-8, so I attended three Catholic elementary schools. Making new friends isn't easy when you are gawky, shy, bookish, and "four-eyed." (Those cat-eyed glasses did me no favors.)

When I had children, I vowed that they were going to stay in the same house from the moment they entered first grade through high school graduation. We bought a house in an excellent school district the summer before Pat and Ali started first grade (1988) and remained there until we left for Belgium in 2007. We'd managed to stay put not only until the kids were out of high school, but until they were out of college.

For most of the past three years, while we were in Belgium and then Colorado, we rented our house to a young couple from Germany. When Carolin and Ranier told us over the summer that they were being transferred to California, we decided, despite the horrific real estate market in the Detroit metro area, to put the house up for sale.

The house itself isn't anything architecturally special—it's a big 1970s Colonial typical of the northern Detroit suburbs. However, it backs to a huge, rolling commons area where the neighborhood children ran back and forth on summer evenings like a herd of antelope. During the winter, they all sledded down a hill that I could see from my kitchen windows. Patrick first tried snowboarding—with a cheap snowboard that he strapped on over his boots—on that hill; he and Alison also tried to get our dogs to sit on the toboggan with them (fat chance!) as they glided down the gentle slope. (Merlin and Hana also showed no interest in pulling the toboggan up the hill.)

Although the previous owners had not been big gardeners, we added a flower and vegetable plot at one of the lot's back corners. (The other corner held two identical playhouses on stilts, one for Patrick and one for Alison. Sharing has never been an option for those two.) One spring, when my next-door neighbor Sue and I had three friends between us who were suffering from breast cancer, we channeled our anxiety and fear into creating a shared, peaceful, shade garden in the narrow space between our houses.

We closed on the sale of the house last Thursday.

Color Season, Colorado-Style

Fall is beautiful but monochromatic in Colorado: the aspens turn gold. Period. Maples and other hardwoods, the autumn showstoppers of the Midwest, are rare.

However, while hiking at Meyer Ranch Park last week, we glanced at the grasslands bordering the trailhead and realized that all the colors we associate with fall were right in front of us. They just happened to be at ground level. (Click on the picture for the full effect.)

Phillies 5, Rockies 4

I don't have a Bucket List.

We're not big baseball fans; it's a slow game that lends itself to daydreaming. I tend to miss most of the exciting plays. Jim prefers sports like soccer, basketball, and hockey.

But the Colorado Rockies made the playoffs, tickets were affordable, and we didn't have to take a day off work to go to the game. (There are benefits to unemployment, we told ourselves.) Neither of us had ever been to a playoff game in any sport. It seemed like the kind of thing one would do if one had a Bucket List.

Which is how we found ourselves at Coors Field yesterday sitting in the upper deck over right field. The Rockies made a dramatic comeback in the eighth inning, but still managed to lose the game when the Phillies came back from the brink in the top of the ninth with two outs and two strikes on the scoreboard.

The fans were equally entertaining. The weather during Sunday night's game had been in the 20s. Although yesterday's weather was warmer and the game started earlier (4 p.m. vs. 8 p.m.), many people showed up at Coors Field looking like they were headed for a camping trip in the high country or a day on the ski slopes. Jim didn't want me to wear my ski pants, but I did have on ski socks, my high-tech ski turtleneck, a hoodie, a ski jacket, a scarf, gloves, and a polar fleece headband. I also brought a fleece blanket. For the record, I didn't need the jacket or gloves during the first half of the game, but by the time darkness fell and the wind picked up, I was feeling snug and smug.

If only I'd a taken a "real" hat that could be turned inside out as a "rally cap," a tradition that I'd never seen until that awful moment in the top of the ninth. The Rockies' relief pitchers needed all the help they could get.

More pictures from Game 4 of the Division Playoffs:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/RockiesPhilliesDivisionPlayoffs

It's nice to know that I'm "suitable"

From the ding letter in this morning's e-mail:

Although you were identified as a suitable candidate for the position, the Search Committee selected an individual they believe is best suited for the job.

Just not suitable enough, apparently.

Wilderness Cure

We spent a lot of time last week watching the PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea. I was drawn to the story of Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, whose "love of the parks was highly personal: he had found that time in nature helped him ward off the bouts of depression to which he was prone."

The description resonated with me. Since our move to Colorado, I always head to the high country—or at least to a spot where I have an unimpeded view of the mountains— when I feel depression lurking. And if I need a big wilderness fix, one of the jewels in Mather's park system is less than two hours away. (RMNP pictures, July 2009)

Bumper Sticker

Spotted recently:

"Liberals. One per day. One in possession," illustrated by a graphic of a rifle sight with a person in the crosshairs.

Does this mean that the owner of the car—which was parked in a nearby subdivision—views me as prey?

Postcards From the Edge

When Jim's college roommate, Dave, was in Colorado two weeks ago, he wanted to take the cog railway from Manitou Springs to the summit of Pike's Peak. Snobbish Colorado transplants that we've become, we thought it sounded a titch touristy (God forbid!), but we try to oblige visiting friends and family.

It proved to be the a wise decision: The road to Pike's Peak has no guardrails. Zip, zero, nada. (Note to my brother: No wonder Mom was livid when you and Mike D. swiped the car and drove up Pike's Peak during the debate tournament trip.) It was much easier to enjoy the scenery when none of us had to concentrate on driving, or, in my case, praying that Jim wouldn't launch the car over the edge. (After 18 months on mountain roads, he's become off-handed about switchbacks.)

Curiously, our alma mater was well represented on top of the world. Dave wore a Michigan baseball cap; I had on a UM sweatshirt. Two of the three people in the seats facing us on the train--seats that are reserved, by the way, so it wasn't our Wolverine regalia that caused them to sit with us--were Michigan grads; we chatted about the football team and swapped stories of running the Dexter-Ann Arbor race. And, rather wonderfully, at the summit, there was a little Wolverine theater of the absurd playing out as a guy in a UM t-shirt and cap showed the sights to his pal in a gorilla suit.

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/PikeSPeak. Wolverine and gorilla shots courtesy of Dave.

Fire on the mountain

It's hard to convey to our friends and family in Great Lakes states (water, water everywhere) how the possibility of forest fires weighs on the minds of Westerners. The current level of fire risk is posted on roads and trailheads all over the mountains; we pay more attention to it than to the terrorism threat level.

In the 17 months we've lived in Colorado, the state hasn't had anything like the California fires near Jill's house earlier this summer. So we felt uneasy yesterday when we saw a fire burning near the wooded area we had planned to hike through late in the day. Open space being plentiful here, we opted to hike on a mesa farther from the fire, but we could still see the smoke across the plains.

Oddly, the fire didn't seem to bother the herd of cattle and the colony of prairie dogs—including a fellow so relaxed he was stretched across the opening to his burrow, just watching the humans and cows parade by—sharing the open space with us.

We found out later in the evening that the animals' nonchalance was justified: the fire was a "controlled burn" designed to prevent an inferno like that in California. The news made us feel less guilty for enjoying the fire-enhanced evening sky, which looked ready to open up to a choir of the heavenly host.

books. dogs. life is good.

During the years of our black and white feline sisters, Thelma and Louise, I owned a T-shirt and a tote bag with this Edward Gorey image:

Above the image were the words, "books. cats." Below the image, "life is good."

Despite continuing unemployment and assorted other stresses, today's T-shirt would be similar, but with a canine focus. Books, mostly from the Jefferson County Library, continue to make me happy. In the past few weeks, I've had a particularly splendid run of "good reads," as we used to call them at NPL: The Little Book by Edward Selden, a novel of time travel with remarkable twists, and In the Woods and The Image, psychological mysteries by Irish author Tana French. (Thanks to my sister-in-law Wendy for introducing me to Ms. French's work.)

Although there are no longer cats in our lives, we still have our just-turned-13-years-old Hana here at home. And, on the days when I am at the animal shelter, a constantly changing cast of dogs reminds me that grace and a sense of humor are possible even in the grimmest of situations. Below is Tiger Lily, my current favorite, whose ear-to-ear doggie grin is completely contagious. The shelter calls her a Staffordshire Bull Terrier (aka pit bull) mix, but because of her ears and her diminutive size (relative to most of our pits), I tell her that she's just a big-boned French Bulldog.

Photo: © 2009 TMAC

Question of the day

If you knew that, after leaving your job to move to Europe for 14 months, you wouldn't find employment when you returned, would you still get on that plane for Brussels?

View through a September downpour

Golden Gate Canyon State Park, 9.6.09

Aye Chihuahua

There must be something about our neighborhood that makes dogs want to climb out second-story windows onto the roof. (A better view of the mountains, perhaps?) Last year it was Miss Lily, the basset hound across the street, this week it was the chihuahua several houses down.

We grew a cat!

When the hail storm damaged or killed many of our potted annuals earlier this summer, we couldn't really afford to replace them. Some, like the snapdragons, managed to partially recover. Others, like the three fuchsia plants I put out to attract hummingbirds, did not. I pulled them up and left the pots empty.

So I was quite pleased when I glanced out the kitchen window Sunday morning and discovered a huge ginger cat lounging in one of the empty planters.

Snake in the Grass

We've seen signs warning us of rattlesnakes at Roxborough State Park.

We've twice been told that we were looking at a rattlesnake. Once, another hiker at Mount Falcon Park warned us that the big pile of coiled reptile under a bush was a rattler. We skittered by too fast to confirm it. A few weeks ago, at Mount Galbraith Park, a trio of teenage Japanese tourists told us that the skinny snake rearing up between two boulders like a snake charmer's boa constrictor was a rattler. I'm no herpetologist, but it looked like a garter snake.

So I guess we'd gotten a little sceptical about ever seeing a rattlesnake out here. But as I led our little party of three (Jim, Hana and me) around a bend on the Eagle Wind Trail at Rabbit Mountain yesterday, a gigantic snake—olive with black markings, at least 30" long—slithered across the trail right in front of me. The rattles looked weirdly like molded plastic pieces popped over the tip of its tail—sort of like fake fingernails. As it passed into the brush, a sound like the shaking of seeds in a dried gourd confirmed the sighting.

So naturally we had a "Ya think?" moment when we paused at the end of the hike to read a little sign at the trailhead that reported that Rabbit Mountain had once been named Rattlesnake Mountain—"for good reason!"

TMT: Too Much Twitter

"You're receiving this email because of your relationship with [name omitted] Orthopedics & Spine Center."

Although our "relationship" consisted of one brief visit after my skiing accident in January, these docs (or, more likely, their marketing people) have been sending me daily emails inviting me to follow them on Twitter.

What kind of tweet could orthopedists possibly send that I would be interested in reading? Updates on the slow progress of some guy's knee surgery? ("wtf, L8 4 t time") Links to x-ray images of bizarrely broken bones? ("IC big $$") Rude comments about the last patient they saw? ("OMG 2 hot")

UG2BK

Stricken by Formophobia

Formophobia n. Paralyzing fear, distress, and nervousness caused by the act of entering personal information into a pre-made template. Making simple tasks such as applying for jobs, school, etc. almost impossible for the affected. (Urban Dictionary)

Until I began to job hunt on our return to the States last year, I hadn't actually filled out an employment application since 1972, when I applied for a student assistant position at the Undergraduate Library (aka the UGLI, a reference to its Soviet Bloc-style architecture). In the professional job search, you submitted a cover letter and a resume. Period. You had your resume typeset by professionals and you typed your cover letter v-e-e-r-r-y slowly, so that you wouldn't make a mistake and have to start over. (Using Wite-Out in a cover letter was verboten, especially for English majors. Maybe engineers got away with it.)

That was so 20th century.

As a job applicant (supplicant?) to a large corporation or a government agency in the brave new world of the online job search, you "will be allowed to attach a resume and cover letter later." This assumes, of course, that you will successfully answer every question on said application before losing (select any or all of the following) your confidence/your patience/your mind.

Fill out enough applications, and you will have to first recall all of your previous salaries and then report them—by the hour, the week, the month, or the year, depending on the prospective employer's way of thinking about compensation. If you held various positions at a single company over a five-year in the 1980s, you have to wrack your brain for the exact month and year when you left your position in Product Development to move to Marketing. You also have to come up with a bland version of your real reason ("homicidal tendencies towards supervisor") for leaving Product Development.

You may be confronted with questions so ridiculous that you conclude that you would rather be homeless than work for anyone stupid enough to ask them. For example, an application for a high tech firm presented a list of computer software products used in the job and then required the hapless applicant to rate on a scale of 1-5 how interested he/she would be in learning each product, with 1 being, for example:"I am not at all interested in learning Microsoft Access" and 5 being: "I cannot imagine anything more thrilling than learning Microsoft Access."

And, then there was today's online application psychodrama, in which I was applying for a different position at an organization to which I had previously applied. I won't get into it, but let me just say that I may be drinking Pinot Grigio directly from the bottle tonight, à la Cameron Diaz in my favorite scene from "The Holiday."

Another Magical Spot

The approach to Roxborough State Park is set in old grazing lands, and doesn't look especially interesting. After the final bend in the road, though, you enter a landscape that looks as though it might be home to creatures from the imaginations of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and other great fantasists.

We didn't see any hobbits or even Mr. Tumnus, but nature put on her own magic show in a meadow set against this monolithic backdrop: a huge swarm of tiny sulphur butterflies—so pale a green that they appeared white from a distance—dancing (mating?) above the tall grass. There was no way to capture the scene on camera, so we stood silently, watching in wonder.

Just peachy

Of all the day-to-day things that I miss about living in Brussels, food is high on my list. (Alright, alright, it's number one.) When I learned that we were moving to Colorado, I consoled myself with the thought that we would have access to wonderful Mexican food and excellent beef. (A friend who ate at one of the few Mexican restaurants in Brussels said that the "salsa" was just ketchup.)

Sixteen months and many failed attempts later, we may have found a good Mexican restaurant, but we want to try it a second time, just to be sure. We have yet to eat beef that tastes as good, in its own beefy way, as chicken from Brussels' ubiquitous rotisserie trucks, below.


So, what do we have that rivals the food we ate in Belgium? Strangely enough in this semi-arid state, it's peaches, specifically peaches grown in Palisades, on the western slopes of Colorado's slice of the Rockies. We buy our peaches by the boxload off a small truck belonging to a small orchard; the owners e-mail their fans to let them know when they will be coming to a certain church parking lot in Arvada. The peach line forms early; the tension about whether there will still peaches left when you reach the front of the line is palpable. (It's sort of like waiting in line for Bruce Springsteen tickets, or, out here, Phish tickets.)

But when you bite into a Palisades peach, you wonder why Eve ever settled for an apple.

Sleepless in Arvada

When humans can't sleep, they can read a book, raid the refrigerator, watch reruns of "Law & Order," surf the Internet for stories about celebrity plastic surgery gone bad, or call L.L. Bean to order a new Polar Fleece jacket.

When dogs can't sleep, they pace, pant heavily, and claw their owners' (or "guardians," as the always-PC Boulderites call us) bed.

Hana's insomnia began in late June. The vet attributed it to pre-July 4th fireworks and the violent middle-of-the-night thunderstorms we were having then. She prescribed Valium, which we picked up at the Walgreen's pharmacy under the name of "Hana Dog Gillette." The script was written for six tablets, "which should see you through the holiday," according to Dr. Harris.

The Valium had no effect on Hana. The pacing and panting continued long after the fireworks season and stormy nights had passed.

For a while, Hana slept if Jim or I moved into one of the two single beds in the smallest of our three bedrooms. Hana would wedge herself into the small space between the two beds, or between one of the beds and the wall, and, after some more heavy panting, settle down. We weren't too happy with the Q. Elizabeth/P. Philip sleeping arrangements, but we were exhausted and assumed it wouldn't last long.

It did. And now there's a new twist: After I moved into the tiny bedroom last night when Hana started pacing in our room, Hana followed and proceeded to shuffle around the bed in a continuous U-turn. Because space is tight in that room, sometimes she bumped into the closet doors during her endless journey, interrupting any light doze into which I might have fallen.

Some Internet sites dealing with canine insomnia suggest giving your sleepless dog a lot of exercise during the day to ensure that she sleeps at night. Hana gets two walks a day, and accompanies us on all our mountain adventures. Even after a seven-mile hike (a hike rated "Difficult" in the guide books) near Mount Evans, she was up all night.

What we need for Hana, I said to Jim this morning, is the canine equivalent of a program for Alzheimer's patients recently described in a New York Times article ("All-Night Care for Dementia’s Restless Minds") about the Bronx-based Hebrew Home's ElderServe at Night,

a dusk-to-dawn drop-off program intended to strengthen their decaying minds while sating their thirst to be active after dark.

Participants are fetched from their homes by vans and spend 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. painting, potting plants, dancing and talking — or, for those immobilized by their disease, relaxing amid music, massage and twinkling lights. The patients rest as they need, for a few minutes or a few hours, and return home the next morning fed, showered and, usually, tuckered out.

[Your caption here]

While we were walking pit bulls this morning, one of the subjects in the photo below asked me if I had put it on the blog. No, I replied, because every time I looked at it, I was reminded of the title of a certain movie starring Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels.

But since you asked nicely, sweetheart, here is the shot of you and Michael, the dynamic engineering duo, posing before your professionally guided fly fishing trip earlier this month. Blog readers may feel free to affix their own caption it.

A Room With a View

We drove to Vail this afternoon to visit our friend Kim, who's in the hospital there after taking a bad fall during a bike race last Saturday. Despite many broken bones and a lot of pain, she's revelling in the view from her hospital room's huge window, which looks out through the tops of tall pines to—thanks to all the rain we've had this summer—Vail's lush, green ski hills.

Hopefully she'll be fully recovered by the start of ski season.

Behind the Scenes of Art History 101

As some of you know, this tale of thwarted artistic treachery is currently captivating my imagination. It appears in British author Rachel Cusk's The Last Supper, a travel memoir that also features commentary on Italian art.

At the time the story opens, Michelangelo was in the midst of sculpting a tomb for Pope Julius II.

While Michelangelo was out of Rome, [the artists] Bramante and Raphael set about trying to undermine his reputation. They suggested to Julius that to build his own tomb was to invite his own death. When Michelangelo returned, he was told by Julius that work on the tomb had been suspended. Instead, he was to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a job at which Raphael and Bramante were confident he would fail, for Michelangelo was principally a sculptor, not a painter. Michelangelo locked himself into the Sistine Chapel: no one was allowed in, not even Julius. It seemed that to fetter Michelangelo was simply to make his myth the more powerful. Soon, all of Rome was fixated by the mystery of what lay behind that locked door. Then, according to Vasari, Michelangelo had to leave Rome for a few days, and while he was away Bramante got hold of the keys. He and Raphael went in to look. And what they saw, of course, was the preeminent artistic achievement of the Renaissance, and perhaps of the whole history of art, past, present, and future.

If only we could see the expressions on the faces of Bramante and Raphael at the moment they stepped into the Sistine Chapel . . .

Dead Silence

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

William Shakespeare
from Sonnet 73

During the hail and wind storm last week, the Denver Post noted that in one park alone, "hundreds of birds . . . were killed or maimed by hail and flying debris." A local news station reported that, "The Birds of Prey Foundation in Broomfield has been swamped with injured hawks and owls since Monday's storm."

Our neighborhood, which is bordered by a woods on the south and open space on the north, used to be full of birds, particularly small ones — finches, chickadees, sparrows. Their chirping often woke me in the morning. Now there is only silence.

I walked Hana today in the local park in which I first heard (and saw) a western meadowlark. Again, total, eerie silence.

Mother Nature Strikes Again

An enormous hail storm hit us suddenly late last night. My neighbor Kim says that even long-time Denver residents have never seen anything like it. It killed all of our flowers and vegetables, and stripped most of the leaves from the five spirea bushes in back. The hail also shredded two big window screens in the front of the house. Being unemployed sometimes leaves us feeling like white trash; now our house reflects our mood.

Splendor in the Grass

The Denver Post reported yesterday that "2009 has been a banner year for wildflowers." In the past three months, we've seen wildflower species that that we never even glimpsed last year. In 2008, we certainly never saw hillsides full of wildflowers, as we have this year.






This exuberant fecundity isn't limited to the plant kingdom. During yesterday's mountain hike, there was so much grasshopper hanky-panky going on that it made Jim and me act like third graders. ("Euuuw, there's another couple going at it!") Too bad all those the grassshoppers didn't appear to be enjoying themselves.

Adieu, mon ami

Adieu: from Old French a dieu, (I commend you) to God : a, to (from Latin ad) + Dieu, God (from Latin deus)

Despite your best intentions to get to know the locals, when you're an expat in a foreign country, hanging out with other Americans can be as restful as flopping in an old easy chair. So it was with our friends Joe and Jill, fellow Midwesterners (as Minnesotans, they were the genuine article) living in Brussels at the same time we did.

Joe and Jill jumped into European living with zest. Their travels took them to the continent's great cities—Paris, Rome, Athens, Venice, Berlin—as well as to quirky, known-only-to-locals spots, such as the only farm in Belgium that sells donkey milk (with the added benefit of a herd of adorable donkeys for Jill, a great animal lover, to pet). They loved perusing the open air markets for antiques, trying grand and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and entertaining their friends in their beautiful, high-ceilinged row house near the Ixelles ponds. (Joe made an exquisite kir royale and then told you hilarious stories while you were trying to drink it, making it difficult not to snort champagne out your nose.)

Joe, an accomplished cyclist with, as Jill says, a "passion" for riding, went native and joined a bicycling club in a country where cycling is revered; Belgians follow the Tour de France with the enthusiasm of Americans during March Madness. After he and Jill were transferred to southern California late last year, he became a member of a local cycling club.

Joe was struck and killed by an underage, drunk driver during a cycling club ride in the Angelus National Forest last Saturday morning. He was 43; he and Jill had been married for six years.

Mountain Girl

Lillian, my "granddaughter-of-the-heart," is visiting Colorado with her mom and dad this week. (That's Michael, her dad, in the background.) Although she's only three, Lillian hiked the trail to Rocky Mountain National Park's Alberta Falls like a pro.

Arrrghhhh

The dryer decided today to ignore its timer, while simultaneously emitting only cold air. The clothes were still damp when I finally realized that the "the most expensive appliance in your home to operate" had been running for hours. HOURS. Of course, this happened two days before Catherine, Michael, and Lillian arrive for a six-day visit, and after a weekend when I had better things to do than laundry.

If anyone would like to witness an example of spontaneous human combustion, just try telling me that, "God doesn't give us more than we can handle."

And the decision is . . .

We're staying.

Flee response

Overwhelmed by stress, we fled to the mountains yesterday, hoping that a hike in the Mount Evans wilderness area would ease our minds.

On the drive home, we talked of how difficult it would be to leave Colorado, of being able to see views like this only on vacation. If we return to Michigan, will "our" beloved mountains call to us constantly as Innisfree did Yeats?

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand in the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.*

Will our hearts break?

*William Butler Yeats, from The Lake Isle of Innisfree

What now?

We learned yesterday that the tenants in our Michigan house are moving out ahead of schedule, due to a job transfer. The news, coming on top of our Colorado landlord's insistence that we sign a full year's lease (we've been going month-to-month since May, paying a 20 percent rent premium for the privilege) threw us into a panic.

Do we move back to Michigan, where the economy is worse than it is in Colorado, but where we have friends, family, and professional contacts? Or do we stay in Colorado, which we have come to love for its community spirit and friendly people, and, above all, the incredible natural beauty which has been a balm to our ragged souls during these stressful months?

Just answer the question

The spring before they entered kindergarten, Pat and Ali went through the screening process required of all incoming kindergartners (accompanied by a parent) in our school district. Patrick took a dim view of both the process and the overly made-up, dripping-in-jewelry, older woman doing his assessment; during the interview portion of the testing, he sat with his back turned to her.

Then the assessor asked, "What do you do all day, Patrick?" at which point he lost all patience, whirled around in his little chair, and yelled, "I'm five years old. What do you THINK I do all day? I PLAY!"

There have been moments during recent job interviews when I've wished that I could answer as forthrightly as Patrick did.

What's the first thing you'll do on your first day of work?

Locate the coffee pot, and, fifteen minutes later, look for the ladies' room.

How do you handle criticism?

I dare you to try to make me cry.

What are the titles of the last four books you read?

The only thing I remember is that they all have "Dead" in the title.

Where do you see yourself in 15 years?

Living in the tent I just picked up at Goodwill.

Talk me through your career trajectory.

Right this minute? Headed for a crash landing.

Shuffling back to the blogosphere

When I shuttered A Foothills Life four months ago, I wasn't certain that I'd ever blog again.

I didn't realize just how much I would miss the act of writing. Even in the midst of an annus horribilis—my inability to find a job in Colorado; Jim's job loss after 22 years with MWH; my ongoing musculoskeletal breakdowns and pain; and, last month, my father-in-law's death—a part of my brain kept stepping aside to editorialize on events and emotions.

Perhaps the urge to write is simply genetic: three of my grandparents majored in journalism in college, while Grandma Foley was an English major.

Perhaps writing is an attempt to make sense of how a middle-aged, middle-class (dare I say boring?) life became unglued so quickly. As Alice's White Queen reminds her consort,

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, NEVER forget!"

"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."

Or perhaps, with apologies to Descartes, J'écris donc je suis.