Snow had finally come and cross-country skiing ceased to feel like jogging.

We had to remain cautious on ungroomed runs, for there were still treacherous rocks sticking out, and one could fall into a brook (Drain).

On the boundary of January and February, it finally began to snow a little. At Kirkwood it was not quite enough to cover up brooks and all the rocks, so one had to ski off the groomers with eyes open, but we started to be cautiously optimistic. Still, for the next few weeks it was not the matter of mountain snow that made us worry most.

Our children had grown into an age, where they have varied interests, and it sometimes causes me logistic confusion. For example, on Mondays, Lisa has an arts class, and her school attendance thus ends an hour later than Tom's. On Wednesdays, Tom stays one and a half hour longer in his Lego class. The result is, I keep driving up and down in a completely impractical pattern. When Rumiko offered to pick Tom up on Monday and let him play with Bryce for an hour, I took her on. It extended my day and spared me one trip to the school.

So, on the last Monday of January, I set out from home at ease, at quarter to four, planning to pick Tom up from Rumiko's, and we would continue to the school for Lisa. Tom wanted to finish some game playing at Rumiko's (I have long acquiesced to the fact that Bryce and he are of the age when they taper off playing with physical toys, and begin some computer gaming), and after ten minutes I succeeded in extricating junior, for now we really had to go for Lisa. I stopped dead in my tracks when reaching the sidewalk — my car had the passenger door windows smashed in. Yes, I am an idiot: yes, I left my wallet sitting visibly inside the car. Still I was shocked by the speed with which it had happened, at the location where it happened (people in our neighborhood often keep their cars unlocked, windows rolled down, etc.), and that it happened with a neighbor across the street present in his front yard. He had seen the burglar, but he never noticed him doing anything with the car.

We could ski on natural, ungroomed slopes (Tom all the way left).

Everything pointed to a great month.

We had to cancel all payment cards, arrange for new identification, have the car fixed, call the police, insurance, and so on. As soon as I finished going through a long list of bureaucratic hassles, I stepped into our garage on day and discovered that I was standing in water. In the first moment I worried that our roof began leaking (it was currently raining), but it was "only" a ruptured water heater. It wasn't really unexpected; the heater came twelve years ago with the house, and it's hard to say how old it really was. Still, a breakdown represented another blow to our family routine and budget.

The heater had to be replaced, which we managed rather quickly; once done, we exhaled and began to plan our weekend. I wanted to go to the mountains, Hippo wanted to stay back home and work on his machines (the fact that one of our computers was in its last throes, isn't really worth including in my list of disasters). The kids got to choose — Lisa picked mountains with me and Vendulka, Tom opted for computers and slacking at home. I think that Tom rather enjoyed having daddy all for himself, and being able to do his own stuff. Lisa was all excited about ladies-only program. And sibling separation was generally good for their mutual cabin-fever.

I picked Lisa up from school already at noon; I arrange for Tom to go play to Rumiko, who had even offered a sleep-over — and it worked great. We usually put all three kids together, but Lisa interferes with boys' games; this way Tom and Bryce had time and space for their male designs.

Ladies-only program came a bit unglued; we figured to reach Kirkwood still during daylight and set out on cross-country skis, but we got caught in a Valley traffic jam and later in a snowfall in the mountains, and we were bound to advance slowly. There was no way we would complain about the snow, however — FINALLY it started falling, in the middle of the season!

Our car on Sunday morning, 7 a.m.

There was absolutely nothing visible of the beautiful panorama.

It kept on snowing and so we set out in the morning, wearing padded clothing and looking like snowmen. It was not cold, but the heavy, wet, intrusive snowflakes were rather uncomfortable. After half hour skiing (and sitting on the lift), Lisa began to complain about having a wet butt. We explained that the feeling was just from cold, wet seats. After twenty minutes more, Lisa insisted that she would not ski anymore, she wasn't feeling well, she wanted to go to the "cottage". So I took her home for lunch and found out there that she was, indeed soaking wet from shoulder blades to knees, as her new ski pants soaked up from sitting on the wet lifts. I would have expected those NEW pants to last a bit. Lisa was coughing and had a pale green color, with rings around her eyes; I had very little problem believing her that she did not feel well. I supplied her with hot tea and movies, while I went to ski with Vendula a bit more.

And so Lisa fell ill on our ladies-only weekend. She spent it mostly watching movies and reading books, and I kept skipping out to ski, and running back to make tea — and change. My pants did not get soaked, but my jacket was mysteriously leaking on the inner seam of my sleeves, and when in snowed of my face, it all seeped into my buff, and from it farther south; my clothing developed a kind of bib-shaped wetness all the way to my belly button.

And the snow did not stop, and people were going crazy. When I spotted a small Lexus sedan float by, I wondered what the chap was trying to do in a foot-deep powder — and of course, a few yards down the alley he got stuck and felt quite inconvenienced. I absolutely don't get why he had to drive down our alley, as they did not plow it for a half day. Educated by his example, I lay in wait for the snow-plow on Sunday early morning, and then rushed to dig out our car and move it to a garage. We theoretically aren't entitled to a spot there, but I was counting on the owner of the stall not coming up on Sunday in the midst of an snow-storm, and left my phone number behind the windshield in case he'd come after all. I felt this was better than leaving the car outside in a spot where a roof avalanche could hit it and the passing plows would eventually pile snow next to it up to its roof.

Women-only weekend outing got stuck in the mountains till Monday; but the weather made it up to us.

Before spring break, Drain got pretty filled up, and you did not have to worry about falling through into the brook.

In the afternoon the situation worsened on the highway as well. It was sprinkled with salt alright, but the plows did not keep up with the increase of snow, and it soon carried a thick layer of salty slush, which would reach regular cars' underbellies. Those truckled on in at a walking pace, and crossing those thirty miles of mountain range woods would take them several hours. I had decided then, with finality, that I would not go home in such conditions. I reported to Lisa's school that we got snowed-in; Vendula took a day off her work, and we began to wait for the weather to improve. And it turned out the right thing to do; we would not have gotten through, for the pass was closed until eight p.m. for avalanche danger.

It was quite nice on Monday, even the sun peeked out sometimes, and we got back home without trouble. That is, when I discount the fact that Lisa was ill, and that one of my teeth was aching and another one wiggling. And I noticed on the way home that our windshield had cracked. Possibly a combination of the break-in, fixing, rapid temperature swings and heavy snow. We were bound to undergo another repair — alas, both our wagon and our bus have served their duties well beyond warranty, and they slowly slide into the sad phase when the repairs become more frequent and more serious. At least Hippo and Tom coped with Monday without my assistance and at ease.

On a Wednesday the 12th I had an appointment with the kids for dental cleaning — so I called ahead whether they could also have a look at my misbehaving tooth. The receptionist claimed that we had no appointment, and I countered that we did. After about twenty minutes of backing and forthing, we discovered the root of the issue — I had an appointment with the kids for a Wednesday the 12th, but in MARCH. Yet I needed a dentist now, and we agreed that I can come anyway.

I was pretty much prepared for it to be a problem: my tooth had been dead for twenty years, repaired thousand times, crowned, re-drilled — thus I did not share the receptionist's optimism that I would have my loose crown re-attached. The doctor grabbed the tooth gently and said it was bad; we would make an X-ray, just to be sure. And then she wrote two referral tickets. One to our friend dentist Stone, who could save my aching tooth, and another to the surgery, for extraction of the doomed one.

Bryce had skied with us during the break.

A view to the other side of the ridge.

For the rest of Wednesday I imagined that on Thursday morning I would drive to Stone's, have him fix one tooth, drive over to the surgery, have them pull the other one, and drive home. I consulted it with my friend Simona (who had had her tooth pulled and implant made), and she explained that it was not a good idea; it would be better if someone drove me home. Thus on Thursday, on Sid's birthday, not only there was no party (for in my state that I attained in the evening I could not participate in anything), but he spent the day driving up and down, between various dental offices.

I would very much like to forget the experience of pulling the tooth and the implant installation, so I won't write much about it here. Unfortunately, no one had told me that they lace the anesthetics with an anti-bleeding agent — and when the numbing wears off, I would begin bleeding. Thus, some three or four hours after the surgery, I was long back home, Sid gone back to work, kids brought by Rumiko from school — and suddenly I turned into a gargoyle. Any movement of mine produced a stream of blood from my mouth, through a tightly clenched gauze. I closed myself up in my bedroom, for I did not want to scare my children by the sight of their mother in a heavily blooded clothing (changing was not an option, as it really got worse by even changing the angle at which I was sitting), bedding — and bloody stains in the bathroom. It took Sid about an hour to get back home through the evening traffic; meanwhile the gargoyling had subsided a bit. According to the doctor's advice, I began biting tea-bags instead of gauze, which tasted incredibly nasty, but were effective. Sid was making fun of me, saying that I looked like a very much pissed-off tea-kettle — the tea-bag threads and tags were dangling from my mouth.

For several subsequent days, I felt rather miserable. In part because I still practically could not eat anything, but I was hungry; the other part was most likely due to antibiotics that I got to prevent inflammation. On Sunday, three days after surgery, I crawled with the family on a one-mile walk in the woods — a level trail — and I thought I would not finish it. On the other hand I fared obviously quite well — there was a mild swelling, but nothing horrible; I did not develop blues and bruises they had threatened me with.

Rascals going down to Thundersaddle.

The scariest part of Thundersaddle is the first jump over the cornice.

On the Monday following my dental experience, children's spring break had begun. I thought originally that we would retreat for the whole week to Kirkwood, but given my useless state we went first on Wednesday, after a check-up at the dentist's. Perhaps it was better that way; the kids had enjoyed Monday and Tuesday lazying around the house — it's sometimes needed as well — turn off, relax, and step out of the chase.

While I still felt like a freshly hatched chick on Wednesday (a chick that keeps falling on its beak, for it's legs are rather shaky), we departed to Kirkwood slowly, taking the whole morning. We ordered our lunch at Giant Burger; kids ate their hot-dogs on the way, and I had to leave it till we reached the "cottage" — I still required having it all cut up to little pieces. I managed not just the burger, but my cross-country skis as well. It is a fact that after two miles I was longingly looking to be back at the "cottage" and once there, I gratefully collapsed next to the fireplace, but I began to have a feeling that it would work out.

I accrued on relatively quiet day; Rumiko arrived on Thursday and the rest of the gang (Kovars, Hippo and Martin) came on Friday night, and the place got pretty busy. By then I felt much better and could enjoy the company. Kirkwood had opened the rest of the resort, and we could ski the Backside, and some more complicated things with the kids — their favorite Thundersaddle and Two-Man Chute.

Now we can only hope that there are only positive things ahead of us, and all the bad for this year is behind us.