Diversity Month

If Michael Scott can have Diversity Day at The Office, I see no reason why we can't have diversity month here in Telluride.  April has proved to be a month of closing out the ski area ski season, working (making money), desert camping and explorations, ski touring in the lovely San Juans, wearing boots and flip flops (and slippers) and finally finally waking up when it's light out.

The kidlings came back from a whirlwind week in California with their mom and had to deal with readjusting to boring old dad's house with no tv, electronics, eating out, amusement parks, go-carts, trampoline rooms, fancy hotels, or pools and after 2 days camping in Butler Wash the transformation was complete!  Sometimes I feel like they have it all with 2 households that offer them so much diversity and sometimes I feel like the transitions have got to be physically, mentally and emotionally painful at times.  Either way, they get the best of both worlds, and who knows what they will end up choosing, one extreme or the other, or a nice balance of both?

We had some great hikes in the desert, the Fishmouth Cave and Ballroom Cave, saw petroglyphs, heard early morning owls and coyotes, but the real winner from the camping trip had to be the discovery/invention (my brainchild of course) of... S'Moreos!!

Yes, there it is, a hippie Oreo with a cream filling licked out and a crispy charred carcinogenic marshmallow squished in between.  My favorite part is how perfectly the marshmallow fits, tall-ways, on the chocolate wafer.  It's almost as if they were made for each other.  Universal Studios?  Ha, suck it California :)

Anywho, the desert was just warm enough to make us feel like spring is on the way, cactus flowers just starting to come out.

The other cool thing we indulged ourselves in was burning tumbleweeds.  Never done it?  It is a treat, which you can kind of tell from the photo: they burn like a ball of sparklers, sizzle frizzle gone in just a few seconds.  The wind will load up any ditch or arroyo with tons of them, just convince a child it is in their best interest to retrieve them and stash them by the  truck until campfire time, and get ready for the fireworks!

A friend of mine who worked at the wedding in Ridgway between the Lauren family and Bush family last year told me that a Lauren brother gave a little toast and talked about how siblings that share bedrooms have been shown to end up having more successful relationships, and that even with all their huge houses and privileged lifestyle options, they shared a room a lot growing up and it made me happy for the kids.  Unfortunately, they have no choice but to share a room here in our tiny little ski chalet.  Is it ideal?  Not really. But I expect we will see some good come out of it.

So the kids went back to their mom's on Tuesday and as I've said before I'm happy when they arrive and I'm happy when they leave again - I like both of my lives.

Johnny and I chose to take advantage of the first warm weather we have had since last October and do some ski touring this past weekend.  As you can see from our Sunday shots,  we were practically sunbathing at 12,000 feet.  Yes, gentle readers, it is Floppy Hat Season. It is incredible how much heat radiates off that snow.  Skiing in a yoga top?  Why not?

We of course spent a good amount of time talking about skiing, about the frustrations of learning and progressing in a community where everyone is a great skier, and by the time we had shusshed down some velvety sugar snow together, none of it seemed to matter.   As Johnny likes to say, Enjoy every turn.  And that is exactly what we did.  Thus far, skinning up is the easy part, and the prospect of having to take off my skins and ski down fills me with anxiety, dread, and a vague impending sense of doom.  I figure the odds are in my favor since you spend about 80% of the time skinning when you tour, right? but I expect that will change, and Sunday turned out to be the first day of that transition.

I have been reading Lonesome Dove, another Pulitzer winner, and have found it difficult to put down.  Kind of a dusty soap opera, but a delight to read.  I'm happy I am living now - there didn't seem to be that many options for women in the Wild West and I sure wouldn't want to live anywhere else at this point in time.

I fly to North Carolina on Thursday for some beach and family time before we launch ourselves into May.  I expect May will be more of the same: mountain skiing and desert explorations.  Now I have to force myself upstairs so I can put away winter clothes and drag out summer clothes before I get sucked into that damn book again!