First day at Snowy.

Christmas costume rehearsal.

Yeti, full of eagerness and expectations, was waiting for snow or blizzard — and still nothing. On sixth of December, our closest ski resort, Snowy Range (which is in visible distance from the mountain ridge of the same name, but still somewhat lower), was opening for the season, and I could not miss that. Only one lift was operating (when I don't count the training meadow) and only a couple of runs, but since I have a season pass, it was worth it. I was curious how I should cope with it all — with my aching feet, legs and back, with the fact that doctors definitely "don't recommend falling". The first challenge was putting on my ski boots — I thought I would pee myself with pain, but when I managed to cram my feet into them boots, the pain stopped. It even seems that immobilizing helps — good feeling lasted not only throughout skiing, but for the rest of the day.

Falling was a bit harder, since I did not manage to heed doctors' recommendation — I threw a somersault right within the first fifty yards; I don't even know why and how. I had to be very nimble during the act, because despite remembering my skis flying over my head, I landed softly, on my side — with both skis still attached, as the binding did not disengage. Just as I managed to congratulate myself to such a great feat, a basic complication emerged which can be described as "skiing while being an old lame hag" — I discovered that I could not get back on my feet — whilst wearing my ski boots; attached to the skis, having an aching back and arthritic knees, it simply DOES NOT WORK. After about five minutes of vain attempts, during which I felt like a tortoise turned on its back, I had to admit defeat, take off the skis, and recover on all four. Another problem ensued — how to put the skis back on in a steep slope and sticky snow, without losing my poles, gloves, skis — and self-respect.

Going caroling.

Christmas soaps.

In the end I regained an upright posture, and after gathering my wits about me, I figured out that I had not suffered any harm and that I would be able to continue skiing. One cannot keep it being fun for long, given only three open slopes, but it was enough for starters. Tom was still enduring finals that day, and therefore did not accompany me, but I hoped we would ski together sometimes. As it happens, he got a seasonal job at the resort's rental and service counter, and it comes with an employee permit; perhaps he shall have some free time to ski. Theoretically they should be able to do so within breaks in their shift. We shall see.

December did not bring us any glorious snow endowment. Eventually some of it came down in the mountains around Christmas, but not on my Nordic tracks, which are only one mountain range farther east, nor in our lowland. That's a serious bummer, as we experience true winter temperatures. Nights in Fahrenheit teens, days in thirties, swinging up and down — and nature looks gray and bleak. My goaties don't begrudge the absence of the white stuff, as it means they can still go out and graze, and when I have the time, I take them on walks outside their run to have some excitement. Their dedicated pasture is all eaten and dried up; the rest of our property still has a few spots with weeds and grass.

Douglas Pass, CO.

Lisa wanted to visit Double Arch.

An ordeal by fire awaited us (i.e., me and my goaties) before Christmas. My goat breeder friend Anne had an idea to take our goats caroling to retirement homes. Anne had arranged all formal affairs, but it was quite clear that the whole thing would be a giant improvisation from both ours and the homes' sides. I picked Rory and Ozzy for this task. The boys are (still) relatively small, very cuddly, and trust me incredibly. Sometimes too much — like when I need to push them out of their shed for a moment, they don't understand at all and keep reassuring me about their devotion and that they will be good weathers and do their best to help and assist me. I was therefore hopeful that they'd present themselves in a good light in the homes. Still I was aware that there's always a risk associated with goats, for they are able to enter THEIR own improvisation into any situation and cause some calamity. I bought fancy Christmas themed dresses and jingle bells s for the boys, and nervously awaited the important day.

The weather on the important day was, of course, nasty with an icy northern wind. Besides that, just on that day the parking in front of that specific home was full, and we had to park on the other side of the building and drag our poor goats across a park and around a hospital. I congratulated myself for convincing my colleague Shilo to come along and help me with loading the boys. This way we each put one wether on a leash and went. Being just two, the boys cooperated, it usually took to get one moving and the other one followed.

December sun.

Landscape Arch - remains beautiful and impressive.

Next battle awaited us at the entrance — put booties on goats' hooves and equip them with diapers. The boys were merely taken aback, but I sweated in the ice cold wind like a barn door. The actual visit then proceeded fine — goats are, in my (naturally, completely unbiased, objective) opinion, great therapy animals. They're intelligent and cuddly, but in contrast to dogs, they don't bite or scratch, nor do they issue threatening sounds (like barking or growling). They enjoy being petted; Ozzy had in the end picked his temporary bed at one lady's wheelchair footrest — we only noticed when the lady noted that the goat was laying on her feet. Another lady was boasting that when her son calls her in the evening and she'll tell him that they had goats at the home, he will think she has totally lost her mind. And and old cowboy, who wore his cowboy hat and boots even whilst in a wheelchair, could not tear himself away from the goaties. So I hope that the folks at the home enjoyed our visit and that we had brought some variety into their lives in this de facto hospital environment.

On Friday the 13th we had arranged for even two caroling visits — of which one got canceled, as that particular home had a virus going on and went into a lockdown. The other home did not work out for us — they have carpets and therefore insisted on careful diapering of the goats — and I did not quite succeed with the boys even assisted by two competent people. The boys would always manage to shift the diaper and pee out. I gave up after a half hour — my back was horribly hurting, and the unnerved boys would pee ever more frequently, and I reached a conclusion that we were trying too hard and in the end, no one was enjoying it. Thus we waited at the entrance, gradually accompanied by more goats who did not endure the diaper, becoming an impromptu diaper-changing station. After all, perhaps it was not a complete failure, for right above the entrance were windows to the isolation ward, and patients from those rooms had at least some break in their boredom through watching goats mill about the parking lot — since they could not directly participate.

Lisa kept scrambling up everywhere.

Scrambling is a bit harder for us.

When Anne and I planned the affair, we encountered a problem, what to bring as presents to the homes. One can hardly distribute candy among people with health issues. I wanted something related to goats, and eventually delegated myself to manufacture goat milk soaps. My friend Doris made some for me in the fall, flavored with tea tree, because whenever I return from my round through the homestead, where I dig in assorted effluent, I have a need to scrub my hands quite thoroughly. Doris also gave me a coffee soap. Besides my love of coffee and its aroma, soap with coffee grinds has the advantage of being mechanically abrasive. When I subsequently discovered that the soap base can be purchased and one only needs to add custom ingredients, the decision was made. Of course I could also produces soap from scratch, but it's not a very good idea to slosh lye inside one's house, and going outdoors in Wyoming is not a good option — either it's horribly cold, or horribly windy, mostly both. Seeing me squirting flavored soap into silicone forms, Sid claims that I have become a Soap Queen — well, we shall see.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining — the absence of snow meant that we could set out in our minivan on a pre-Christmas road trip to Moab, Utah. We shuffled things around and this year took Lisa along, while Tom stayed at home to take care of my goaties, taking turns with my colleague Shilo, depending on their respective work shifts. Having learned our lesson during our previous year's trip, we tried to time our progress to reach Douglas Pass during daylight. We stopped in Laramie only long enough for Lisa to jump aboard, not even breaking for a lunch. Even so it was close. It was me who drove from Laramie to Douglas Pass. Lately I had a feeling that my life keeps getting out of control — problems with my spine and feet will likely require serious rearrangement of my lifestyle — beginning with my job, where I simply won't last for six to eight hours standing and and walking, through the homestead (I can't lift a bag of feed, can't dig a hole for a tree seedling, have trouble bending down to tending to a milking goats), to my hobbies — apparently my horse-riding days are over, I can't commit to long hikes (sometimes even short ones, see below); I should not fall (e.g., during skiing — much less during rock climbing) and so forth. That day I spent behind the wheel and had at least the car under my control, has helped quite a bit.

In the year 2012, BOTH kids fit in that hole.

Lisa has outgrown her mother.

Or perhaps the vacation helped — the fact that for four days I was someplace completely different and did not need to cope with work, goats, chickens and household. Besides, I like Moab. It's a small town surrounded by pretty rocks in all directions, where we still haven't seen it all, and where we can expect discovering beautiful places for the rest of our lives.

In the shortly-before-Christmas time, it sports considerably fewer people, hotels are cheaper, restaurants less crowded, and parking in National Parks is easy. Lisa wanted to see Double Arch, which features in one of the Indiana Jones movies, and thus we decided to visit Arches. We skipped it the previous year, and thus visited now after four years of absence. The parking lot near the Arch was almost empty, and we spent with no other company under the Arch for some twenty minutes.

Then we drove further to Devil's Garden — where we haven't been for years (according to the Journal, since 2012). To see something new, we turned off the main trail, first to Tunnel Arch and then to Pine Arch, and only then continued to the Landscape Arch. That one, with its three hundred feet span, is still beautiful and impressive. A well maintained path finishes under the Landscape Arch, and one must scramble on rocks to follow the trail up to a crossroads to Navajo Arch a Partition Arch. I must say that in those twelve years, Lisa did not change — she still climbs up somewhere with no regard to her old mother risking a stroke. Unlike in spring 2012, the park contained only a minimum of people, and we found ourselves on our own again in Navajo Arch. Perhaps it was also the contrast of the new nice path to the Landscape Arch, which discourages tourists from continuing along the wild other part.

Navajo Arch.

One follows cairns when walking on Slickrock.

Alas, this year the hike turned out to be too wild for me as well — I had to break out my cane going up to Navajo Arch, and upon returning I rejected the detour to Partition Arch, for I began to feel that I'd be glad to just make it back to the car; I sent Sid and Lisa to go without me. They caught up with me at the crossroads, where I sat, pulled out my sports tape, and began to fixate the worse, i.e., right foot. The rest of the hike is in a fog, with the only entertainment being a jolly group of Buddhist monks from California, and originally from Burma. I assured them that since an old crippled hag with a cane managed to scramble up those rocks, they would be able, too.

I made it back to the car under my own steam, but then we went straight to a store to buy a larger supply of sports tape and insoles. Lisa massaged my calves a bit (interesting how much foot pain depends on calf muscles) and I stuffed myself with ibuprofens and taped my feet for the night. I endured it only a few hours, then I had to rip it off, but somehow all that must have helped, for on the following day I was able to walk.

We drove out to Needles, where we wanted to take Lisa around Potholes and Slickrock. I planned to cut the Slickrock loop short as needed, but in the end I hiked the whole way and was OK. One never knows what will work out and what won't — I can no longer underestimate preparations, or fall asleep on laurels and skip taping only because I feel well at the moment.

On Saturday we sped back home again, to relieve Tom in taking care of my goaties, and to escape crowds. Driving past the Arches entrance, we noticed it sported a mean line of cars, it must have been a ZOO in the park. This way we got back home a few days before Christmas, to finish preparing the few things we needed for the holidays.

Carol marches on - with Needles in background.

Colorful layers.

And then Christmas rushed in. Both Lisa and I had a physical therapy appointments on Christmas Eve morning. That may not be altogether unpleasant way how to spend your holidays, especially when rounded up with a thematic movie and eggnog. We also put together our traditional potato salad — and awaited Tom, who was blessed with a shift at work. Having arrived sometime past six, it gave us the signal to start baking our fish and prepare our presents. All those things took place (I hope) to an overall satisfaction.

The twenty fifth was another holiday, theoretically, but three quarters of our family were packing and preparing to leave. Tom and Lisa both had work right on the next day, for which they leave at six forty five. I had set up another steroid injection into my spine — and the only open time and place was Laramie, twenty sixth, at seven thirty in the morning. It was more reasonable to sleep over in Laramie than to rake one's nerves so early through those roughly fifty miles of a mountain pass.

I was not quite convinced about how much I wanted that particular injection, but it almost did not hurt this time — and it appears it may have even worked to some extent. At least my feet stopped buzzing (as much) and now they "just" hurt from the plantar fascia. I drove myself home afterward, hoping that for the rest of the day, and perhaps even over the few following days, I could "lie down" a bit and not do much. Yet in the afternoon Sid called that he was feeling very sick and headed for urgent care. They bounced him off to a hospital — for not showing proper symptoms of kidney infection, but since he had enough pain to cause vomiting, they insisted on running him through a CT to find out. He spent three to four more hours at the hospital — most doctors were closed and thus the whole county ended up at the ER. His finding of kidney stones was positive in it not being anything worse. The negative part was that nothing could be done about it and they sent him home to wait for it "to pass". He got some useless pills and ended up moaning at home. Such was his ultimate Christmas swag.

Lisa on the edge.

Christmas was logistically complicated, yet it still arrived.

I, on the other hand, felt quite well after my injection. Mostly, I was able to sleep after a half year of failing to do that; one does not even realize it, but after one wakes with each turning in one's bed, being afraid it would hurt, a few nights devoid of fear and waking up, does miracles. Yeti began to stick out its horns again, needing to get out, and so I took him skiing. Snow was pitiful, but we completed a small loop through the woods. Honestly, with my back I did not feel like busting any record.

Lisa came home on New Year's Eve; Tom was — for a change — at work, but we already have a tradition of not celebrating it. A few fireworks could be heard by midnight, but houses where we live are so far apart, it did not even infringe. Either way, we were already in our respective beds with out maladies — let us hope that the new year will be (much) better. I mostly wish it to be rather very boring — that we won't be forever always fixing something, arranging and improvising and visiting doctors or offices. And that perhaps my health settles enough that life will be possible, and with it, plans for some future.