Manic Happies

Hello, and welcome back to the crazy.

It is hard to describe, except to those who have lived in a mountain town, the manic, frantic insanity that is a mountain summer. Everything else gets dropped because everything that requires working outside has been back-burnered until those fleeting few months. Outdoor projects and home repairs take up a large portion of regular people’s summers, but when you are responsible for the repairs, repainting, deck repairs, etc on over thirty homes…it gets nutty. Not to mention all the recreation that is literally outside your door and reproaching you every day you don’t get out and enjoy it. Our summer was a haze of hard work, interrupted by paddleboarding and mountain biking and trail running and road biking and pulling the kids around in the bike trailer and swimming and so many things, interrupted by me tearing a quarter of my face off, which put an abrupt stop to all the recreation but provided us an opportunity to replace the flooring and do some home repairs of our own, since the sun and wind made being outside almost unbearable for me until the aspen leaves started to change color and my face started to heal enough to enjoy being outdoors again.

Actually, the mania only ended about a week ago, when winter’s first truly cold snap hit. As temps dropped into single digits, we finally remembered to do things like breathe and bathe. I stopped getting out of bed early every morning to trail run and started working on winter weight gain and muscle atrophy in earnest. Now that the ski season is hitting full swing, B is spending more hours at work appeasing our guests and less time at home doing computer work, limiting my opportunities to get out and exercise, so I may as well just commit to gaining a good ten pounds and losing significant leg strength between now and next spring.

Daniel had a rough two months this fall, a lot of fevers leading to two different hospital stays. One of the unforeseen consequences of living in a tourist destination (which wouldn’t have been unforeseen if we had given it more than an hour’s thought when deciding to move back up here) is the fact that every day, someone drags in a fancy new virus from wherever they flew in from. And since most of the local working class is in the hospitality and service industry, and send their kids to school sick so they don’t have to miss a day of work, we get exposed to such a toxic viral sludge every day we venture out our front door, it’s hard to stay healthy. And here is where I must thank the woman who holds the most influence over Daniel, aside from me: his preschool teacher. Being surrounded by tiny germbots every day has turned her into a master of handwashing policy, a disinfectant-weilding Joan of Arc wading into battle against daily armies of viruses and bacteria. And when she starts to lose the battle, she tells me. If she suspects kids who have been out sick are going to be sent back to school still contagious, she tells me. If the school has an outbreak that will inevitably break through her defensive disinfectant lines, if the janitorial staff has unfilled positions resulting in bathrooms not getting cleaned, she tells me, and we keep Daniel home until it is relatively safer to send him back. In the meantime, she packs a box of the week’s activities and crafts and books for him, so he can keep up with whatever his classmates are doing without him. On extended absences, she video calls us with her own phone for morning circle times, so Daniel can contribute to the songs and questions and activities at least for a few minutes. Our preschool experience in Loveland was alienating for me as a parent, teachers were distant and dismissive, and I had no line of communication with them. Our experience up here has been totally different. It was probably worth the move for the school, but now we might be stuck up here while our kids are in school, since we don’t know that we’ll find another school quite like this small, friendly one.

I haven’t been blogging lately because I have started another project, as insane as it is ambitious: I’m writing a book. I want to provide a resource to parents who have just had the rug jerked out from under them by their kid’s cancer diagnosis. But not just a practical resource. I want to write a book that can provide an irreverent, true look at the messed up world of childhood cancer, one that can help them laugh and cry about the craziness and feel a little less alone. If I make any profit, I want to be able to donate some of it to childhood cancer research. I want to be able to have it be a resource to parents who need comic relief and truth bombs and solidarity in the middle of their worst trauma, and to have it be low enough priced they can afford it while also having immense financial stress. So instead of blogging, I’ve been writing book chapters whenever I get a free moment. It started as a directionless commentary on life sort of book, but it kept straying toward being a niche sort of book aimed at cancer parents, so it has sort of officially been reclassified as such. I’ve also been trying to find a way to monetize this blog without being obnoxious, which might mean moving it to a new hosting site. I’ll let you know if that happens. I’ve located an upstart hosting platform that pays per view and per upvote (in its own cryptocurrency, which can be converted into USD) as it works to establish itself in the blogging and social media world, so it might not hurt to move it over there, but most of the content is less personal than what I share here, so I’m doing more research.  And I have been doing a ton of research into finding ways to work from home without doing multi-level marketing, because I refuse. Girlfriend has limits to how hard she can sell herself, and I have discovered the payoff is just not worth the effort. This has involved doing a ton of research into developing a private label product, which I think has potential, but oh my, the beaurocracy and safety testing and insuring and registering and applying that will be involved is daunting.

I am doing all this, aside from the book, because I am observing the effects of being involved with the lodging company again on poor B. Moving back up here was a good decision, I think, because of all the opportunities it affords us to get out and enjoy the outdoors, but the actual job is doing to him what it always did, even though we swore to ourselves this time would be different. We told ourselves it was going to be just a job, minus the stress of all the interpersonal stuff that drove him to quit after five years of management last time. This time he would simply receive work orders, perform repairs, and not have any management responsibilities, we thought. Except that, after we left, many owners became somewhat dissatisfied with the management, and now that B is back, albeit in a non-managerial position, he still holds their trust, so instead of following proper channels, they now bypass management and call him directly. The same drama that he fled five years ago now follows him again. He thought he would do the bigger repairs, complete them, and be able to come home in the evenings and leave work at work, but he often spends all day trying to get to the real repairs while making minor deliveries, changing lightbulbs, things that I did five years ago when I was able to work. His work orders go undone and pile up, and he gets so stressed out about not being able to get to his actual job that he refuses to take days off when he needs them, while undercharging to the point of making 2009-level wages. Because as much work as there is to do, if we lose our subsidized healthcare, there is no way we can make enough money to make up the difference, but hiring another person would be so expensive for this company he can’t conscientiously do it. In this county, with unsustainably high living expenses, the workforce is transient, long-time locals either have stable jobs or trust funds, and the vast majority only pretend to work enough to finance skiing, drinking, and weed. Finding an employee who consistently shows up for work, has the skills needed to do the repairs needed, is trustworthy enough to allow access to empty homes, and is not a heavy drinker or drug user is like finding a unicorn, and anyone not meeting those requirements would make even more work for B, not less. Not to mention such an employee would require full-time work, and we have enough work for about one and a half employees, not two, so instead of hiring another person, B is doing about fifty percent more work than he should be. Also, I am in favor of legalizing marijuana, but since it has been prohibited for so long, the pendulum has swung pretty severely here toward irresponsible use. Employees who realize it is socially unacceptable to show up drunk don’t realize it isn’t okay to show up high. Our long-time contractors, those we worked with ten years ago, just aren’t as useful as they used to be. Our red-eyed hot tub contractors can’t navigate icy steps anymore, or really any obstacles, so they demand we keep everything much more shoveled and de-iced than they ever cared about before. Our snowplow guy won’t get out of his truck for any reason. It all makes more work for us, as members of a seeming minority who aren’t required to pee in a cup to keep our jobs, but still could. It isn’t even that we have such a problem with an herbal escape now and then, but neither of us can afford to mentally check out, ever, at this point in our lives.

So I am trying to use this time in my life, unable to work except from home as I raise my little boys, to try to transition us toward other income streams that can be managed from wherever we bounce to in the future, or at least research them, so when treatment ends and we are able to make more money, we can do so. We are finally wrapping our minds around the fact that the American dream is dead to those diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. When being broke is the only way to insure one will receive healthcare without going into debilitating debt, one no longer has the option to work hard and achieve financial success. Adulting becomes a tightrope of earning just enough to survive, but not so much to send one deeper into debt, as would happen if we were to lose D’s Medicaid coverage and our healthcare expenses would jump by $30,000/year, as our calculations show they would, should we become responsible for insurance premiums, copays, self-pays, deductibles, and subject to more restrictions on which medical facilities we could use. We cannot even find a plan that covers both our local Catholic healthcare, which holds a monopoly on our area, and the University of Colorado facilities we use in Denver.

The income levels our subsidies are based on do not go far at all in one of the most expensive areas of the U.S. But it has become a real point of pride with us, living well within our limited means and still enjoying many of the benefits those making six figures enjoy, like living three miles from a world class ski resort. We’ve done this by paring down our lifestyle and trimming away all the unnecessary extras to allow us to still do the things important to us, like keeping our vehicles updated and reliable, our home from falling apart, and keeping our priorities ordered to truly enjoy each moment. This means we traded a lovely tri-level home with a real backyard in a decently middle class neighborhood in Northern Colorado for a trailer house on a rented lot, we don’t eat fancy food or turn the heat up to comfortable levels in our house, and we hardly ever drive more than ten miles from home unless it is for work, but our boys have tiny, second-hand skis and ice skates, we know just when the resorts are giving out free cookies or ice cream or hosting dance parties or fireside coloring times, and we’re cute enough when these tiny skiers are out shredding the snow, ski patrol gives us coupons for free Starbucks hot chocolate on the regular. We’re trying to take the principles of minimalism and apply them to a family of four, and it has become a rewarding experience. I know there is value in sentimentality, but selling a decade of things I’ve kept because they have some connection to my past or I’m afraid I’ll miss them in the future has been freeing. The lack of home décor or fancy kitchen appliances and serving ware doesn’t affect our happiness. Our kids sleeping in our bed with us and leaving space in their would-be bedroom to create enormous, messy projects doesn’t make us less happy in the least. Our currency has become happiness, experiences, and memories, which is something that, as long as we have each other, we have unlimited earning potential for. Sometimes, on slow midweek evenings when all the tourists have gone, we sneak into the fancy condos that we manage (please don’t report us for doing this!!) and we go down to the pool, and sit in the hot tub under the lighted ski runs and stars, and pretend we are on vacation, and in that moment, our experience of life is no different than if we had a million dollars and a fancy ski condo. This is what Summit County does for us- it gives us the opportunity to live a lifestyle that others wait for retirement to have, as long as we are willing to sacrifice things like homeownership, fancy cars, eating out, careers. Which cancer has already sacrificed for us, so no great loss at the moment.

I can’t speak too smugly, however, about living low-income and well, because people keep doing things for us. My parents are worried about our boys’ growing brains, so they have gifted us with meat, bottles of healthy cooking oils, bags of avocadoes, bulk nuts that I add to everything they eat to increase calories and healthy fats, things that we do not buy for ourselves because they are too expensive. My boys have entirely too many toys, thanks to their grandparents and godparents and aunties. Daniel’s hands are warm because his grandma keeps him in gloves. Their godmother gives both boys several sets of new clothes each time they jump a size, while other friends keep them in hand-me-downs, and books are something they always have, but we never actually buy, because cultivating their love of reading is extremely important to their extended family. My bestie up here keeps finding ways to enable us to live on practically nothing, with cast-offs from her wealthy housekeeping clients who gift her with the rich-lady items they no longer use, giving me sportswear she claims will never fit her, even showing up early to a sample sale to grab all the good stuff and holding it until I could get there, scoring me hundreds of dollars of new ski outerwear and base layers for like $20 right when my six year old ski coat was falling apart and getting embarrassing. She randomly drops by with lunch, or pays me to groom her dogs or lay flooring in her house, and I sometimes agree to pretend these small things are legitimately worth what she pays, because she is a scary Lithuanian and yells at me when I try to argue with her. She offers to watch my little boys so I don’t have to drag them into the germy grocery store, and keeps offering to watch them while B and I go do something fun together. Friends in Kansas sometimes send things up here with my parents- freezer meals, bags of flour, oat flakes, cornmeal. My boys have a scary New Yorker for an honorary auntie who is also impatient with us arguing with her when she tries to give us stuff, so we say thank you and just hope we can find a way to be there for her when she needs it in the same way she’s been there for us. There is low-income, and then there is poor. Our income is actually much higher than it appears because of all the things we enjoy without needing to buy, because we are rich in all the right ways, because our family, both genetic and spiritual, is selfless and amazing. True poverty, I am convinced, is the lack of a supporting village. Thanks to those who love us, we enjoy a real wealth of happiness and joy and being able to live on very little, and still experience so many good things. My greatest dream is that someday, we will dig ourselves out and be able to show the selflessness we have been shown by our village to someone else in our position.

Daniel is currently home from school as we wait for a virus involving high fevers to work itself through the student population. The weather is warming up, creeping into the 30’s, so we should be able to get out of the house this next week. My face does not do well with very cold temps, due to its lack of circulation in the reattached parts; I worry about doing further damage to the tissue on my cheeks and lips, since I can’t really tell when they are starting to get frostbite. Only a few minutes outside in single digit temps blanches the patched-together pieces that are still working on reestablishing bloodflow and nerve endings. I still can’t freaking believe I did that much damage to myself. I knew better. But recently, I have started being able to close my lips to make P’s and B’s and kissy noises and motor noises, although I can no longer whistle for the dog when we’re out on the trails. The visible damage is only really noticeable when I am not smiling, since a smile pulls the damaged side of my top lip down to where it should be and the scars on my cheek mostly disappear into a laugh line. Sometimes I’ll see a candid photo of myself with no smile, or where I am concentrating and have pursed lips, and I recoil a bit at how disfigured I actually look, and how much the scarring has aged my face, but then I see one where I am smiling or laughing, and I realize that as long as I am happy and I show it, I am me. I’m good with that. Given how much more of me could have been left in that trail above Breckenridge, I could have a gargoyle smile, which would be worse than a mangled resting bitch face. The suggestion of needing some surgical revision in the future is still on the table, basically cutting out the existing scar tissue and putting it all back together more neatly and precisely, using all the new tissue I’ve grown in the meantime to stretch and fill all the spots that got weirdly pulled together when compensating for the missing tissue during the first surgery. Some of the scars that are already shockingly smooth, given the amount of damage, could become all but invisible with plastic surgery wizardry, but honestly, it’s functional. It’s becoming me, a part of my story, precious because it is life-affirming, reminding me how much joy life can offer and how easily I could deny myself future opportunities to experience that joy by mindlessly doing stupid, dangerous stuff. Besides, that would mean weeks of having a mouth full of stitches, more antibiotics, months of pain as all the rearranged parts had to adjust to being stretched in new ways, and I’m over it. Even minor pain is exhausting. My summer of face trauma, pinched nerves, sprained joints, and broken toe, which is finally able to bend a little after four months of ouch (I think the toe thing happened after my last post…I finished a bike race in almost last place, and was running barefoot to put my bike away before a rain shower about a month after the face thing, caught the piggy who had no roast beef in a clump of grass, came down with my full weight on it, and felt it snap) has me in real awe of people who stay functional through chronic pain cycles. Seriously. You rock.

Anyway. Sorry I went all incommunicado and left that gross picture up at the top of this blog for so long. I can’t promise I’ll do better after this, but I’ll try. I’ve tried to at least keep Facebook updated for my nearies and dearies, but I know not all of you check in there. Love you.