I was having my morning coffee when I heard shuffling from a box next to our fireplace. I was more or less clear about what had happened. Children had failed to lock up our hamster in the evening, who promptly ran away from his cage, fell into a box on his way, and could not get out of it by his own devices. I reached into the box, picked up the hamster, checked him briefly and put him back in his cage. Tom, however, came in a while saying that Brownie had a spot on his snout, and that he's bleeding. It made me a bit queasy for I was afraid that our hamster had injured himself. Lisa had to check him out closely; without my reading glasses, I can't quite focus on something so small as a hamster. Lisa announced that it was chocolate.

Our hamster Brownie.

I scanned internet blogs and discussions, finding that chocolate (actually cocoa) is very bad for animals, and they can die of it. I watched our hamster: he did not appear hyperactive, behaved relatively normally, shuffling around his cage, and I reckoned that he would have to cope with the situation (we could not do much anyway, as there is no antidote for theobromin — the active ingredient that affects animals like coffein does people, and may cause their heart attack).

Foxy — this is how she looked in December.

I dressed quickly and set out to the horse ranch, to apply ointment on Foxy's eye. I don't sub-lease the mare anymore, but I had been helping out with the application of antibiotics on her tumor that had formed between her eye and her nose. Veterinarians can't come to agreement what it actually is, and sadly, prognosis is not very rosy; but while it may help suppressing the secondary inflammation so that things can be done with the tumor, I am glad to assist with the unfortunate mare. Her owner Zoya lives thirty miles away and commuting twice a day is at least difficult for her — thus I began to help out. In the end I begun to like it, for I gained an non-committal way to pet the horse, who seems to like our everyday attention very much — she would show up for being taken out of her run, and let me poke her eye without trouble.

This time I came back home from a cheerful and happy horse to a relatively unhappy looking hamster. A chocolate spot that I had wiped off in the morning, had expanded all the way to his belly, and a strong fruity smell suggested that he did not just eat chocolate — most likely, he had found a chocolate-coated fruit jelly, which he had stuffed in his cheek pouch, thinking it an exceptionally tasty morsel. The jelly began to melt and glue up his mouth. The sweet mixture would flow out and Brownie tried to wipe it off in his sand and bedding, causing little rocks and pieces of paper to stick on. I started dialing a number to veterinary emergency, and in ten minutes we, hamster and I, were rushing to Santa Clara.

Kids asked to mostly frolic by the river.

A cat was sitting at the vet's reception; she seemed to be in charge. Brownie made her quite interested, but she behaved. Eventually, a nurse appeared, who found our glued-up hamster rather amusing, which, for some reason, made me relax. A doctor cleaned Brownie's inflamed cheek pouches and injected him with a hydration solution, after which our hamster looked like a miniature camel. For the rest of the day he then sulked in his bed, but he ceased to have sunken eyes and smudgy fur — in a few days he forgot his foul mood and fear from leaving his cage, so everything seems to have gone well.

We had managed to get them to see other Felton attractions.

We did not go to Kirkwood that weekend. It was warm and the forecast promised snowing for the following weekend — and we had, like every time, believed them. Instead we made a trip to Felton, our kids repeating like a broken record that they'd want to go to the river, to splash in it. Naturally they wanted to swing on a rope that is installed there, but our duck Lisa went swimming after all.

There was no snow again on the subsequent weekend, being postponed to the following week. Feeling that we would go only out of sense of duty, and not because we would want to, we forwent skiing for summer pleasures again. Tom's classmate Raphael's family had planned to camp at Henry Coe Park, and they had invited us to a Saturday visit at the park, and their campfire. We had never been at Henry Coe — it's a park a stone's throw from our house, too close to be a camping destination (if I'm able to drive back home in the space of time that takes me to erect a tent, I choose to sleep in my real bed), known to be to hot in the summer, and so we had never been lured to visit there before.

Bullfrog in a Felton pond.

This early in spring we were happy to go, for we love California's oak savanna, full of green grass and wild flowers, shaded by scattered ancient oak trees. Alas, already on the way up there we could see how poor this spring had been. There is green grass, but wery thin; of flowers we spotted a few poppies in a ditch and one bunch of lupina — and that was all. Moreover, the park rangers had prohibited campfires, depriving us of a major event.

The kids did not mind, as they importantly and adventurously slid down some ropes into a ravine, where they found an old fire place and camouflaged their faces with charcoal. Blending techniques are one of the activities they had learned from Raphael's dad Peter in the fall during a birthday party — Peter has been a great authority regarding outdoors fun, and his ideas take on (happily? unfortunately?) with a surprising persistence.

Camouflage in wilderness is very important.

Several hours of geo-caching ensued. Of course, you must not mention the word "hiking" in front of the children, for that would result in whimpering; but searching for treasures is something completely different. And your feet never ache from it (as opposed from any, even the shortest, walk). There was a competition between the kids and the adults, who would find more treasures: kids won decisively 5:2. The adults took solace in having a beer back at the campsite, while the kids proceeded in dithering around. Naturally, our original plan, which was to "leave by eight" had marginally slipped, and we got back home just before ten. I wiped camouflaged faces with a wet napkin, and we went to bed.

Our start on Sunday was rather belated, but when we finally finished stuffing our bicycles in our car, Luba called (they aren't early birds either) whether we wanted to get together. After a bit of organizing and calling back and forth we converged on a plan with us finishing our restaurant round on bikes, and stopping at their house in the afternoon to discuss options. Eventually we set out to Sanborn park, which offers a beautiful creek in the woods, where the kids got incredibly wet again. So instead of skiing we spent two weekends doing explicitly summer-time activities, and I think that it was a very pleasant change.

Geocaching, as opposed to hiking, is not tiring at all.

After relaxing time come some duties — we had discovered that Tom's passport was about to expire and we would need to go to a post office to order a new one. This was already Tom's third passport, and since we had also been through arranging two such for Lisa, we felt we were quite accustomed to the process. You must go to the post office early in the morning, grab a numbered ticket, and then wait until your number comes up. Both parents must be present for children's passports, and the child as well. We excused Tom from school, I checked online that the passport office opens by ten, which I found strange, but I gathered that they probably did not have as many customers — and I drove out at nine at ease.

We transitioned from summer back into deep winter and two feet of powder.

When I parked by the side entrance where the post office passport section is, I was taken aback by the cluster of people just dispersing, and people driving away. The door was locked uncompromisingly, adorned by three different signs. One said that today's numbers were already all issued. The second said that this door would open a ten a.m., I shall receive a number and an approximate appointment time. The thirds announced that numbers are only valid for the same day on which they were issued. It was nine twenty, and my head could not compute it. Except that a creeping feeling had arrived, of a return to the old times, when a common person would always lose, with a communist bureaucrat.

As I was thus contemplating, a Chinese woman came and disclosed to me that she had waited by the entrance since six thirty, just to be the first in the line to get the earliest appointment, for she must go to work afterwards. She told me further that the numbers get issued around nine, in spite of the sign saying otherwise. And that she had been at the office on Saturday already, but they ran out of numbers before her place in the line; that's why she got up so early this time. My sense of bolshevik deja vu intensified. Meanwhile, another lady came with a numbered ticket and an appointment for two thirty, saying she only needed to ask them something. The Chinese reassured her that nobody would ever talk to her at the passport counter outside her appointment, and advised her to go around and ask at the regular post office. I must have looked like a scarecrow, for she advised me that if the passport to be renewed was still unexpired, I could renew it online. I countered that in case of children's passports, the online path is not permitted. However, the other lady with the late appointment got interested — saying if she could extend hers online, she would not wait till half past two, offering me her ticket. She still went to the regular post office to make sure, but returned with the coveted number. My deja vu was culminating — only we were not bartering on a black market, just a laughable piece of paper for a thank you.

Experts demand their t-shirt with just such skull.

At home I received a commendation for a frontline fighter's job well done. Tom went back to his class, Sid to work, and we got together in the afternoon, at the under-the-table two thirty. The rest was relatively easy, only the clerk began to quiz Tom about his name, and almost forgot to attach his birth certificate, without which his passport would not be issued. Now we just hope that he would get it. And we are readying ourselves mentally for the time in two years, when Lisa's five year's traveling document shall expire as well.

To earn the t-shirt, you have to ski The Wall.

On the following weekend, too, it did not snow in the mountains, and when I woke up on Saturday morning with a feeling that my sinuses are going to explode, even I had to agree that it made no sense to drag ourselves two hundred miles, just so that I'd be able to whimper with my cold at an elevation. So, again, the mountains got postponed, for a forecast for the subsequent weekend again promised some snowing. The only surprise came from the weather, as it really started to snow on Wednesday, and thus we conceded that this time, we really HAD TO GO.

Vendula and Pavel were at Kirkwood since Thursday, we had arrived on Friday midnight to a well heated and well domesticated "cottage". It snowed on Saturday and an icy wind was blowing, and we got quite frozen stiff already during the morning. The children refused to ski in the afternoon and opted to frolic on the meadow with some sleighs and saucers — I went cross-country skiing.

Sunday was a completely different deal — two feet of fresh powder and crazy sunshine. I started to work on the kids right in the morning that if they want a Kirkwood t-shirt, they have to ski The Wall. The shirt features a skull and crossed bones and signs EXPERTS ONLY and KIRKWOOD and THE WALL. We had not gotten on this hardest slope for the whole season. Its lift was not even operating until mid-February as there was so little snow, and even thereafter it was no fun — and I don't dare to take kids into a terrain that is too difficult even for me. Now it started to look passable; falling into a soft powder is something quite different from skidding among rocks and trees on an icy slope.

It snowed on Kirkwood and it looked groovy.

Yet I discovered during our first run through the popular Drain that powder is not all fun. Lisa had fallen in an easy section of the Drain — and lost a ski. It was not to be found in the place where she'd fallen, untouched snow all around. I started perspiring and spent next ten minutes poking my poles in the vicinity, trying to reach Hippo or Pavel on the phone, to bring me a shovel from the "cottage". In the end, by sheer chance, I felt hitting a hard object in the snowy depths, and dig out the lost ski. I announced to the kids that we won't be going off the groomer on the Wall, and we would stay in the well run parts, where the danger of losing a part of the gear in the woods and ravines, buried under fresh snow, was much smaller.

Lisa as Charlie Parkhurst.

Eventually we rather went the bottom part of the Wall through a gully named Snow Snake, instead of the regular run, and it was fine. Hippo joined us at the bottom and we skied until our legs ached. Tom went up with me once more to the Wall and this time we tried some wood paths, but there was so much snow everywhere that I rather broke into some sweat with our inadequate equipment, as we don't own wide powder skis, and kind-of drown in this abundance; furthermore, we don't use ribbons, which leads to trouble like the one with Lisa's lost ski. Still we went without an accident. After a late lunch, the children went out again and I went back to ski downhill. After another hour and half my legs ached so much that I swapped for cross-country, and stretched a bit on the meadow. Meanwhile the skies clouded over and half way into my loop I began to regret not having donned a proper jacket with a hood, and skiing goggles instead of cycling ones — snowflakes kept falling behind my collar and in my eyes, and the wind kept turning spitefully so that I would always end up going upwind.

Meanwhile, Hippo and the kids visited the store and purchased the desired t-shirts. Lisa, being a girl, has one with a PINK skull, of course. So now they can be heroes at school. Tom wore it right on the next Monday, without even laundering it. Lisa had to wait, for on the same Monday she was scheduled to present herself in a costume of a famous American. She had chosen Charlie Parkhurst, a legendary local stage coach driver. Besides having been regarded as one of the fastest and most reliable drivers, who even shot one of his would-be robbers, the most notable fact about him is that he was a woman. She lived her whole life masquerading for a man, and apparently was one of the first women to ever vote in elections — women had no right to vote in 1868.

I was a little worried how Lisa would manage such a presentation — instead of practicing on the weekend, we were enjoying snow. She did great, being the born comedian she is, with a feeling for speech and gestures.