Maia the Malamutt is enjoying her stay here in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

After five years in Phoenix, I suppose that she should be enjoying the cold and snow. We had her fur thinned before we came up - it's not really "cold" here at 9000 feet; it might get below 20 as a low - so she's quite comfortable laying with her belly exposed to the snow, yet she's not overheating inside the condo.

Decidedly not overheating. In fact, she's been laying up against the baseboard heater.

                            

This has happened twice this week - we'll be sitting here working, and all of a sudden the place smells like an old-style hair salon; the smell of burnt hair fills the room. Suddenly we realize that Maia is laying up against the baseboard, and the heater is burning her fur off.

And Maia is completely clueless about it.

Why? Because her fur is such an efficient insulator that she can't feel the heat of the heater, even while it's burning her fur - she doesn't feel it until after it buns off the fur, and starts on her skin - and it's a surprise to her when this happens.

Man, that's just like my drinking days!

Once upon a time, I did a good bit of drinking. Drinking insulated me from the discomfort of the world - it did it very well. In fact, my drinking insulated me so well that I was able to get into all sorts of trouble that caused more discomfort, and yet I never really noticed the discomfort, because I was liberally applying 151 rum and German beer as more insulation.

This would keep going until my troubles got to be enough such that society would intervene and take me away from the booze - by locking me up or otherwise restricting my access to liquor. Then suddenly I'd become aware of the actual pain that the booze was insulating me from, and I'd straighten up and fly right.

Eventually, though, the drinking stopped working - I'd managed to build up so much pain inside, and so many troubles outside, that it was just like when Maia's fur burns off - suddenly, the stuff I'd gotten myself into was huge, and I'd used up the ability of the booze to insulate me from it.

That was 4 May, 1985 : )

Booze isn't a bad thing - just like Maia's fur, I suppose. But, like Maia's fur, when it is used to insulate us from something that we should be paying attention to, it becomes a liability rather than an asset. When we've got so much of it that we wind up blundering into - and laying down next to! - things that can hurt is, it is a disaster.

Maia's laying over near the pantry closet as we speak, because this time the heater burned all the way through the fur - now she's licking that spot on her haunch where it hurts. Unfortunately, I was never able to cure the problems that my drinking caused me by licking them : )

        

Once upon a time, it was enough for me to be a faithful husband, earning a good living, being kind and loving with my wife, raising our son, doing chores around the house and staying sane and sober.

But now the Old Spice Man has raised the bar.

                 

Not only am I supposed to do all of those things, but now I'm supposed to be a tall black man with a perfect body and perfect teeth - and hair! I might could manage the first three (We Pucketts have some Afro in our lineage)  but I'll never pull off the hair part.

I haven't actually seen the ad itself - since college football is over, the only TV I see is what's on the monitors at the gym - but I have, indeed, seen the ad being shown over and over again on various morning shows (and it's being shown as a news item - now I know that the media is in cahoots : )  so I've just about memorized the whole thing (no, I don't HEAR the ad, but the monitors are CC enabled, and I can read : )

You can say "no, Jim, you're not supposed to be just like him" but the guy makes the comparison, and makes it plain - "Ladies, look at your man - now look at me - now look at your man - now look at me....". I don't know what happens at YOUR house, but, based on what I see when I look in the mirror, my wife would never even make it to the second "now look at your man".(I'm making that as an assumption based on no data - I won't include in my calculations the fact that my wife keeps watching that ad, over and over, on YouTube. And I won't mention that, when she's watching that ad, and he says "Look at me" she looks at him - when he says "Now look at your man" she ignores that instruction : )

No reason for her to look at her man, really - I'm just a feeble, 51 year old bald white dude. 

I say that - "I'm just a feeble, 51 year old bald white dude" - but I don't really BELIEVE it. I'm still surprised, every time I see a mirror - where did THAT guy come from? In my dreams, I never see myself as 51 years old - the person that I am in my dreams is probably right around 30 or so. And - even though I've been shaving my head for the last five years - the guy in my dreams has hair.

Dreams are funny that way - in some ways, I think, dreams are completely irrational, but in others, they show us what we really believe; our (forgive the term) unconscious assumptions about the world that we live in. I've never convinced my unconscious side that my father is dead - in my dreams, Dad is still quite alive, and is still full of funny opinions and advice.

As I've pointed out before in these pages, I'm a recovered alky and compulsive overeater, and I'm also an ex-smoker. And since I've worked the Twelve Steps on two of those things (I quit smoking cold turkey, no meetings or anything) my unconscious understands that I'm recovered from the drinking and overeating. Those problems simply don't exist anymore for me.

So, in my dreams, whenever I'm overeating or drinking, I'm able to say to myself "whups - I've recovered from this. This isn't really happening - therefore, this must be a dream. I think I'll change dreams" and that takes care of it.

But when I am smoking in my dreams, not only am I "really" smoking, but I'm also CERTAIN that I've been smoking for the past 19 years, and that nobody has caught me; in my DREAMS, I still smoke. And I'm still 30 years old, with hair.

I wonder if this is some form of arrested development?

At any rate - when folks have asked me in the gym "why do you work out so hard?" I tell 'em "I'm trying to attract a mate". When they say "But you're already married", I say "Yeah - that's the mate that I'm trying to attract".

Well, now, I can see that, if I wanna keep Ethel's attention, not only will my fitness work have to increase exponentially,  I'm also gonna have to do some serious tanning. And join the Hair Club for Men. And get a Scottsdale cosmetic dentist.

Or maybe I'll just buy some Old Spice.

        

Now that we're got a place up here at 9000 feet, it was time to bring Maia the Malamutt up into the snow.

                

For the first two days here, Maia oscillated between ecstatic jumping around and laying down and breathing - it takes a while to get used to this elevation.  But, after a few days Ethel decided that it was time to take Maia snowshoeing (well, we'd wear the snowshoes - Maia doesn't really need them, although she did do a bit of postholing).

This is one happy dog : ) This is what she was born for - bounding around in deep snow. True, she was also built for pulling heavy things through deep snow - but let's not remind her about that, as the only "heavy thing" that she might be pulling through deep snow these days would be Pucketts, and we'd rather pull ourselves along, thankyouverymuch.

Maia will go out in front of the condo and just lay down in the snow, maximizing the contact between her minimally-fur-coated belly area and the frozen ground.  This leaves me wondering if Malamutes are actually native to this planet, or if the immigrated from Pluto. If so, then they were the dominant life form on that planet, because This. Is. One. Smart. Dog. (except for her choice of family, that is - if she had known that we were going to leave Park City for Phoenix, then she would never had nuzzled up to me that day in the Salt Lake animal shelter; but, then, had I known that I was going to leave PC for Arizona, I wouldn't have).

Silas is coming up on Friday - next week is GCC's Spring Break - so we should have a condo full of Pucketts for a while. I'm not sure that this place is big enough for that many folks - so if it gets too crowded, I'll just send Silas out to walk Maia. Silas takes ten or twelve walks a day anyway - at this elevation, it'll take a lot longer to walk anywhere at all.

It's taking me a long time to do my runs - this week, I'm "supposed" to be back up to 40 miles/week, and I'm on track for that, but I am very tired. Last night, I was tired in my dreams - when I woke up this morning, I was still tired. 40 miles at 9000 feet, plus a few days of lifting, and skiing every day (today was day 37 out of a planned 50) is not easy to do when you're 51 years old.

Come to think of it, it wasn't easy to do when I was 45 years old, living in PC, and that was at 7000 feet elevation (the difference between oxygen levels at 7000 feet and at 9000 feet is much sharper than the difference between sea level and 2000 feet - in the same way that the difference between "bad" and "worse" is much sharper than the difference between "good" and "better" (reference? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?)

Speaking of that last reference - Hey Silas! When you come up on Friday, please bring "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"; you've read it, and so has your mother, but I haven't gotten to reread it yet. Oh, and bring up the boxed set of Warren Miller DVDs, too, please. Oh, and a couple of bags of the Starbucks coffee in the pantry. Oh, and bring the mail - real mail, not Albertson's flyers. And the new voltmeter, too - I need to change out these thermostats.

        

We're back up at the condo, at Cascade Village, at Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort.

(that's a lot of stuff to say to say where we are. From now on, I'll say "Purgatory" to mean the ski hill, "Cascade" to mean the condo, and "Durango" to mean the town)

There are a lot of things about the condo that we just love, but - as always - it's the things that you don't like that get your attention.

Here's something that I don't like.

A long time ago, a fellow named Edison spent a lot of time in his laboratory finding a filament that would produce light when you pushed an electric current through it. He called this invention the "Electric Light Bulb" and it changed the world.

Now, technology has produced a new breakthrough - we now have filaments that will produce light when you push an electric current through them - after five minutes or so!!! Yes, we've improved upon Mr. Edison's invention by creating light bulbs that not only produce electric light, they also cause the growth of the virtue of patience in the user!

                       

You turn these lights on, and they sorta glow dimly for a few minutes, and then, after a while, they actually turn on.
We've got a condo with WiFi, internet phone, we watch Buffy in DVD surround sound  on a 40" LCD screen, but we don't actually have Edison-level technology in electric lighting. We have to turn the lights on and wait for them to warm up.

There's a reason that these lights don't come on - it's because they are (supposedly) eco-friendly. Somehow or other, having lights that wait to turn on is more energy-efficient than having lights that come on immediately. (I'm not even going to address the chemical makeup of these non-light bulbs, which I understand is supposed to be hazardous to living things on the same level as toxic waste or old nuclear-reactor core rods). We turn on the lights and wait for them to come on because we are thus being "friendly to the planet".

Of course, there's an easy fix for this - replace these new, eco-friendly non-lights with actual light bulbs. And I intend to do that, just as soon as I've run 40 miles this week and skiied every day and made five meetings.

What I mean is, that I've overextended my schedule. So, when I walk into a dark room at 6 AM and need to grab my stuff to load up my gym bag, and I turn on the light, and the lights don't actually come on bright enough to see what I'm doing, then I get a lot less eco-friendly.

And the end result is that I actually turn on the lights, leave the room, go do something else in some other room while the lights are coming on - and, of course, this distracts me from my original task, so now the lights are on for a half an hour or so, before I walk back into the room and do what takes thirty seconds to do. This is called "saving electricity" - of course, it gets me yelled at by my Precious Soulmate for "leaving the lights on" - at which time, I have to say "No, I didn't leave the LIGHTS on - I left the DARKS on".

That's it - after a century of light, we've achieved Electric Dark.

        

I once heard an alcoholic addict compulsive overeater refer to himself as a "chunky drunky junky".

Our new Mexican furniture is chunky and clunky - and we LIKE it that way.

It's "new" Mexican furniture, not New Mexican furniture. It's also NEW because it is "new", but it doesn't LOOK new - like our new fence (that we're still waiting on) that is coming pre-rusted, this "new" furniture is coming pre-faded and "distressed". Sort of like buying jeans pre-faded and torn, and Vermonters buying their Subarus pre-dented and rusted.

(When I told Floyd that we were getting this Mexican furniture because "I like things that are old and clunky and rusted", he said "just like Ethel Puckett, huh?" Floyd hasn't been seen since.)

Here's the dresser -

              

(that picture on top - that looks like a smiling baby Buddha - is Silas in his baptismal gown : )

This is the armoire - although that's a French word, so is it still an armoire, or is there a Mexican word for this?

                                         

....and the coffee table (I'm pretty sure that clunky Mexicans drink coffee)

                        

That's all for now - we have to run out the door and jump in the car and drive to Purgatory. More later.

        

March is a beautiful month in Arizona, especially when we get a lot of spring rains.


                     
This is the Circle Mountain neighborhood, as seen from one of the nearby hills.

I stopped off yesterday to take this picture, on the way home from a noon meeting. I'm not at a noon meeting now, because Silas has Ethel's car (taking Maia to the groomer to get a haircut) so Ethel has my car, and when I tried to crank up the motorcycle, the battery was dead.

That's not entirely true - when I first cranked up the motorcycle, it cranked, but it was running cold, and when I tried to rev up the engine, it died - and then it wouldn't crank again; not enough battery.

So I'm not at a noon meeting, on this gorgeous spring day - I'm sitting here working through lunch. That's not entirely a bad thing - there's plenty of work that I can do. And it's not like I'm needed at that noon meeting. I'm starting to get the idea that I am SUCH a dinosaur that even the dinosaurs don't understand me.

Yesterday an oldtimer explained that he doesn't pray for patience, because he finds that uncomfortable circumstances happen when he does that. I pointed out that the Big Book does, indeed, say that we are to ask in our morning meditation that our Creator shows us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.

He spoke again (not normal in this meeting) to point out that he'd been sober for 35 years, and that the people who told him to do it that way are still sober (back in New York, I believe) and that's the way that he does it. The fact that the Big Book says that we ARE to ask for patience doesn't matter to him - he has his own way of doing things.

I'm not a newbie by any means; but I reckon that I'm one of those guys who is busy trying to find his way to a better way - closer to the Big Book's instructions - than I am currently; this guy obviously thinks "that's what they told me when I got here, I'm sticking with that".

There's a definition question: Does that make me more liberal than he is (since I will toss out what folks told me when I got here in favor of what I later learned in the Big Book), or more conservative than he is (since the Big Book existed before I got here, and before the folks whom I listened to got here)? The idea that I might be less conservative than somebody else - about anything at all - bothers me. I'm an emotional conservative.

But the sun is still shining out there, and I'm not riding on my motorcycle. We were planning on heading back up to Purgatory tonight, but now it looks like that will have to wait until tomorrow, as there's just too much to get done right now.

There's also still a hole in the backyard - unchanged since December - and still no fence around the yard - unchanged since creation. Permits are holding up the fencing and pool construction. Progress has ground to a halt. I actually had the first half of a solar-powered pool heater installed back in December so that, when the pool got built, we would be able to warm up the water fast enough to start swimming in March. However, it turns out that we won't be able to start swimming in March unless we can warm it up faster than the speed of light, causing time to flow backwards.

        

Here are my two grandsons -

Sam, who lives in Alabama, and is the son of my middle son, Andrew:

                              


...and this is the Ugly Baby himself, Jackson, son of my eldest, Floyd/David:


                                      

Sam is a year and two months older - and, as you can tell, much better groomed.

I've never seen Sam in person - we went home two years ago for his birth, but Sam refused to cooperate, and stayed put until about ten days after we left. I was there when Jackson popped out, and I've seen him his whole life.

If I didn't have kids - or grandkids - I might think that the difference in having spent time with them would mean something with respect to the way that I feel about the little fellers. But, since I have kids, it doesn't surprise me a bit that I have just as much investment - emotionally - in seeing Sam do well as I do in watching little Jackson.

I also have two granddaughters that I haven't seen in four or five years - and I have the same sets of feelings about them.

When I get well - really well - then I'll be able to feel the same way about you, or about the guy at the corner store, or about Osama Ben Ladin, as I do about Jackson or Sam. But, for now, I admit to being tied (somewhat) to the demands of my genome.

        

My father in law, Bud, was about as OCD as you can get when it comes to taking care of his automobiles.

He rode around Hartford City and environs in his Olds Silhouette van, but he kept this 1993 Park Avenue in his garage and only used it enough to keep it in shape:


                  

This car is completely loaded - leather and wood interior, power EVERYTHING, plus such touches as a separate climate control for the passenger side and double visors I.

What your seeing is this car after it has been driven around in snow and slush for several days - it usually doesn't have any smudge or smear on that perfect pearl finish. But we were having it shipped to my mother in Alabama, and we were supposed to get it down to less than 1/4 tank of gas before putting it on the transport. Besides, driving this car is a pleasure!

...well, it was a pleasure for Ethel and I, but my mother -all 4'11" of her - is totally freaked out by this car. She says that it's way too big for her to drive; my brother, on the scene in Alabama, thinks that she may have an additional fear that she won't be able to get it into her garage.

Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do!...we shipped it down to her because her old car was giving her trouble. Now we're not sure what to do - wait and let her get used to driving it? wait until her old car dies and she HAS to drive it? Sell it and buy snowmobiles for the condo?...decisions, decisions.

It'd be a nice car to drive around in Phoenix, which is the Lady Of Old People Drivers - if I were ten years older, I'd keep this car for myself. It's a land yacht - you turn a corner, and then wait a while for the trunk to turn the corner too. The sort of car that old guys drive to say "Yep, I'm an old guy".

This morning, I was driving my BMW Z3, which is the kind of car that old guys drive to say "Nope,I'm not an old guy yet". It was almost sunrise, and I was driving along a country road between my house and the Carefree Highway (yes, the Carefree Highway that Gordon Lightfoot was singing about. I've been driving up and down that highway for five years now, and I have yet to meet the girl named Anne, although I wouldn't be able to recall her face anyway) and this guy in a pickup truck actually ran a stop sign to pull out onto the road that I was on, and then immediately slowed down.

Hmmm...okay. I didn't even get upset - I just started clicking my dimmer switch to tell him that I was going to pass him. He didn't seem to like this - he actually swerved over into the oncoming lane (the one that I was going to pass in) and then thought better of it, pulled back into his lane, and then made a hand gesture that indicated his displeasure.

I found myself laughing maniacally - what was he mad about? Did he want to pull out onto the road, drive slow, and NOT get passed? Did he not like it that I was signalling my intention to pass by blinking my lights? Was there something else going on with him, that both caused him to run the stop sign, and get mad at me about it?

Well, I found out that I was laughing too hard too long, which meant that I was upset about something...and I started listening to my thoughts. My brain was having a conversation with the guy in the truck, even though he was by this time quite a ways behind me, and he wasn't involved.

The conversation in my head (whenever I'm having a conversation in my head with somebody who isn't there, then the incident has turned into a resentment, and thus I called my sponsor to drop a 10th Step) started out with normal traffic blaming phrases that folks would always have with folks who aren't driving the way that they want them to drive (it's one of the curious facts of living in Phoenix that everybody will tell you that Phoenix is full of crazy drivers - but, if everybody thinks that, then who are the crazy drivers? Obviously, the crazy drivers are the ones who don't drive the way that the person speaking wishes that they would drive) - gee-why-did-you-pull-out-there-and-go-so-slow-you-should-have-waited-didn't-you-see-me-coming type of stuff.

But then I realized that, as the conversation in my head continued, it wasn't just who's-driving-which-way type comments - it was actualy more of a conversation about which of us was the better person; which of us deserved to have a spot on the planet. This left me wondering if maybe - just maybe - that's what most arguments are about, after all.

Of course, this would never have happened had I been driving the Park Avenue, since this guy was an older guy, and had he seen that Park Avenue coming down the street, he would have shielded his face and cringed behind his raised hands. I know I would have done so.

        

So - you think you're patriotic with your "America - Love It Or Leave It" tattoo and your "These Colors Don't Run" bumper sticker?

Compared to the folks in central Indiana, you're a commie atheist pinko:

  

That's right - that's Miss Liberty out there on the front lawn of this home between Upland and Roll (that's "Roll" as in "rhymes with ball", not "Roll" as in "Roll Tide"), Indiana. Patriotism is alive and well in America's Heartland.

Row after row of frozen cornfields, day after day without sunshine, bitter biting winds and a lot of really nice corn-fed folks, and no HOAs to say "No, you can't have a Statue of Liberty in your front yard" - that's Indiana. I understand that they also play basketball.

We've met some new friends here - the kind that you want to take with you when you go. However, "go" is exactly what we're going to do - every time I step outside, I miss Arizona. I miss Colorado, as well - in Colorado, it snows, but it's not cold, and the winds don't blow like this. Here, it's been snowing every day for the last eight days, and it's stayed below freezing - but you see how the lawn doesn't have any snow on it? It's a freak of nature, I tell you...maybe it hasn't actually been snowing - maybe the snow fell a week ago, and it just blows around and hangs in the air...

Tomorrow morning, if all goes the way it is currently scheduled, we'll wake up in beautiful New River, AZ - it might be raining this weekend, but that's OK, because in New River, rain is enough of an oddity to be interesting. We'll turn on the fireplace and huddle up in the big leather chairs and pretend to be "cold" as a novelty, and then run around outside in shorts (it's been around 75F down there the whole time that we've been gone) and laugh and laugh and laugh.

(I say that - however, we're both really tired, Ethel much more so than I am. We might just sit inside our house and rest - I might watch some Buffies - and stay horizontal until life reasserts itself way down in our bones and causes us to stir about. I won't really know until I get up tomorrow)

The title of this post is also the name of a song by John Prine - he's a country singer. You can tell that because his last name actually has two syllables - it's pronounced "Pri-un" (I don't know how HE pronounces it - that's just the way that I heard it, growing up) I've been giving Ethel fits lately, as I woke up the other morning with "Sweet Revenge" by Prine in my head -

"I got kicked off of Noah's Ark
 I turned my cheek to unkind remarks
 There was two of everything, and one of me..."

...which is actually a description of the opening scene of Muppets From Space. I think I'll watch Muppets From Space when I get home.

        

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned - it's been eight days since my last posting.

But I've been busy - we're here in Marion, IN, taking care of my father-in-laws effects and business affairs. He passed away last Thursday, and we've been dutiful children - jumped on a plane as soon as we could get one, been going through all of his stuff and situations as best we could, and now we've been through the funeral mass - the only thing left is the Interring of the Ashes, and that happens tomorrow afternoon in a cemetery in Greenfield, after which we'll jump on a plane for home.

I've also been trying to get my workouts done, at the YMCA in Hartford City, IN -

           

That empty dreadmill in the middle is mine - although, while I was taking this picture, a nice old lady tried to take it.

It's not often that I'm the youngest person in the cardio line. Nor am I normally the one in the best shape; but it's been that way at the YMCA. Even the young folks don't run as far or fast as I'm running....and it needs to be stated that I am not running very far, nor very fast.

In all honesty - no exaggeration - I'm in the worst shape that I have been in since I started keeping my running log in January of 1993.  The combination - in series and in parallel - of the PF from last April, the hip dysfunction showing up this last summer, going back and forth to 9000 feet and skiing and then this trip - have left we with the lowest numbers in my log that I can recall seeing. And my speed is by far the slowest. I'm a mess.

And probably only half of the miles that I've logged here have been running miles - the other half would be elliptimiles. Just as vigorous, but not as much pounding. That's "good", in the sense that it doesn't bang me up as much, but "bad" in the sense that it doesn't prepare me for real running on the roads where I do get banged up.

But I'm still alive, and "where there's life, there's hope" - it's possible that I could get back into shape. I'm willing to try. Those folks in the picture above seem to be still trying, although maybe their definition of "back into shape" isn't the same as mine.

However, it should be said that being still alive is not an automatic asset; my father-in-law had lived two years longer than his wife, and he was in a hurry  to join her. I think that I can understand that. Someday, assuming that Ethel continues her current policy of yeah-I'll-get-back-to-the-gym-later, it's possible that I'll live in a world without her, and that's not a world that I want to think about.

My legs are now tired and sore; I was going to go for a walk at lunchtime to loosen them up, but it's (yet again) 20F outside, windy and blowing snow. Not "snowing" like it does at the Love Grotto, but snowing the way it snows in Indiana - damp, chilling to the bone, never piling up much, blowing around like crazy. This is MISERABLE.

I am very, very ready to go home tomorrow.