(Views from the cross country ski trail)

It’s been a rocky month filled with aches and pains, both mentally and physically but Wade and I are doing our best to stave off the threatening challenges in our lives. His working hours have increased and I am upping the ante on mine, doing the best I can to hone in on my talents and unabashedly sell my writing to create some extra financial support. My usual humorous and playful attributes are hiding behind my veneer of confidence.

In my Aspiring Writer’s Group, over at Mom Bloggers Club, I came up with the name SEAPODS for those of us who are determined to make something out of our writing and who deal with the mixed emotions that rejection spurs on like self pity, empowerment, anger, exhaustion, forced positive thinking, optimism and desperation .

Spring fever is helping to raise our spirits, at least for the boys, who are bringing out their lacrosse gear and throwing the ball around in the warm sun but for Wade and I, where spring fever invokes a different kind of restlessness, the romance will have to wait until we schedule a weekend away. For now we stop with our eyes half closed to sleepily kiss good morning as we pass each other on the stairway and we continue to have impromptu clandestine meetings in the closet. I miss him and relish every short but sweet interaction, the brush of hands in the kitchen as we fight for the coffee pot and the flirtatious text messages that we send each other during the days.

Sometimes it all gets too much, the stress, the fear of what lurks around the corner, the sorrow for our friends who are struggling worse than us but we all forge on.

I do my best to push everything aside and reconnect with the children because they too suffer from the strain of the poor economy and so I went on a school field trip to the Snowmass Cross-Country Ski Center with Axel.

When he got off the school bus and ran toward me with a big smile on his face, his golden hair shining in the sun, all my troubles melted away. It’s always the children who bring rays of sun back to the dark.

He and his two little friends relished having me all to themselves, without any teachers berating them with rules, and they took me on their adventurous tour around the fields, spurting forward with abounding energy and than tossing themselves head first into the snow to cool down.

Axel’s best friend

At the end of our breathtakingly beautiful day with a clear, blue sky and surrounding mountains swathed in a white blanket of snow, Axel and I went off to enjoy our time alone together and I again listened intently to all that he had to say.

“Brevitt worries too much. He’s like Mr. Murry Mouse, a skitter, scatter, scurry mouse, a flurry-about-in-a-hurry mouse,” he said referring to Karma Wilson’s book, “Mr. Murry and Thumbkin.” As we shooshed through the sparkling snow we developed solutions to cure Brevitt’s high anxiety problem.

That night Axel brought out his guitar to play for us for the first time. We sat and listened, holding back our comments that he was strumming too hard and totally off key and I smiled fueling up for what troubles the next day would bring me. Bring it on, I thought to myself, bring it on!

Life can be so hilarious sometimes, although I am not always laughing.

Take the other day for example, my girlfriends and I were having a long overdue rendezvous and as our little ones shot nerf darts at each other Gretchen mentioned that she felt it was okay to try to save the world as long as we knew how to detach ourselves from our cause. I wondered what she was talking about? How can one be so attached to a cause and yet detached at the same time?

The next day I was at the drive through at the bank and I noticed that all of the people waiting in line  had their engines running, despite the signs plastered everywhere to turn off their engines to help reduce their carbon emissions.

My blood began to boil as I observed the happy, smiling people chatting on their cell phones, oblivious to their wrongdoing and I fought back the urge to make a public scene and end up on the front page of the paper with the headlines, “Mother in Flaming Mini Van Fights to Decrease Global Warming at the Drive Through”. Is that what Gretchen meant by detachment? To care, but to not impose your views aggressively onto others?

The day after that, after a week of suffering back spasms and missing the epic week of skiing of the year, I realized that my smiling philosophy was in bad need of an adjustment and so I went to The Win Health Institute in Basalt to take their weight lifting class, which offered a pay by donation policy.

As my luck would have it, I had gotten the schedule mixed up and so decided to work out in the gym. I am not much of a gym rat and usually take my pent up aggression outdoors or to the yoga room for release, where I can meditate in my own space and not be subjected to or subject myself to the energy of others. Inevitably I got into an altercation with a tall, thin, manicured women who clearly needed to be going nowhere fast on the treadmill next to me.

Being technically challenged, I was surprised to suddenly hear my friend talking to me through my earphones as I listened to my iPod on my iPhone.

I hung up three minutes later and thought that I overheard the woman say to her boyfriend, “I just love listening to other people’s conversations when they are on their cell phones.” Not able to hear very well with my dance music thumping in my ears, I mistakenly took her sarcasm for humor and said, “So was it good for you too?”  Her face became very red and she began to sputter, pointing to the enormous NO CELL PHONE signs that were…plastered everywhere.

She did not accept my apology and continued to whine and my  friends on the treadmill next to me mentioned that they thought this would be good blog fodder. Agreeing with them, I couldn’t help but deliver some sass and toy with her for just a bit, even though I was empathetic with her dislike for PDC’s, public displays of conversations.

As usual Karma kicked in later that day and my horrible spasms returned full force. When will I learn that my hot temper and sass feel good when in action but ALWAYS cost me, later.

And so I have learned a life lesson and am now very clear about Gretchen’s words of wisdom. You can try your best to teach people how to help make our world a better place but if you become so attached to your cause that you offend people, than you just may invoke the opposite reaction to your desired outcome.

PS – Please visit my good friend SuZen at her blog, Erasing the Bored, to get better informed about our food.

When we lived in New York City Michele and I, desperate to vacate the city on the hot summer weekends, rented a room in a house in the Hamptons, sight unseen.

The day we drove up to the horseshoe driveway, filled with parked Porsches, we looked at each other in fear. We were hoping for jeeps and jalopies that showed the wear and tear of a life of adventure.

We walked out to the pool area and it seemed as though every New Yorker that we had successfully avoided in our everyday living was sunbathing while chatting on their phones, chewing gum and painting their nails. We felt the cold stares as we walked around looking for a friendly face to melt the chill but their was not one to be found.

That night, after Michele went to bed in a heap of depression at our foolish mistake, I went down to the living room to see if I might give it another shot and find somebody I could relate to and that is when I met Jody, a vivaciously beautiful, green eyed girl with a voracious curiosity for people and we immediately connected, spending the evening catching up on our lives.

Our friendship transitioned back to the city and Jody, with her power of conviction, had me hired with Seventeen Magazine where she wrote her own column on finding great fashion accessories around the city.

The column was perfect for Jody, a true explorer at heart, who knows how to quickly dissect any town she is visiting immediately getting to the core and finding hidden treasures that most tourists would miss.

Jody lives in the northeast but is a part time local here in Aspen and knows the town better than most locals do, always introducing me to the best ski school program or the place to find the best coffee.

When I met her in town the other day, she asked me if I had ever met Wendy who owns The Dark Horse Alley. When I said that I had never heard of her she took me inside the warm atrium of the historic Ute City Building and showed off Wendy’s charming little nook.

It took me a little bit to soak it all in, the cafe tables, the coffee cart lit up by a string of lights, the vintage coca-cola refrigerator where beautiful sugars and coffee acoutrements were shelved, the showcase of packaged chocolates surrounded by  silver almonds and colored rock candy and her tiny kitchen that she somehow masterfully rigged where she and her son and daughter make the Mediterranean, French and Indian soups and baguette sandwiches.

I looked at the menu and my mouth began to drool, have I mentioned yet how much I love food? I ordered the breakfast sandwich, an English Muffin with a thin slice of green apple, grilled chicken and melted Havarti cheese and boy was it delicious.

Treats made with natural ingredients are okay in my book and so after I  picked up the boys from school I surprised them and took them to visit Dark Horse Alley.

Their eyes became enormous as they processed the delectable pastries and sweets and they opted for the cupcake, which I made them share because I’m such a mean old hag of a mommy and I only had three dollars in my wallet.

I could almost taste every moist bite as I lovingly watched them slowly and purposefully enjoy the thick frosting, colored sugar and my favorite french silver Dragees that I told them would turn them blue if they ate too many of them.

As we drove home I became excited about this new life of mine, where I make a concentrated effort to discover the many treasures and interesting locals in our valley. I have many stories lined up and I can’t wait to share them all with you.

**PS – I do receive trade for most of the business establishments I write about but I only write about the ones I love and often, as in Dark Horse Alley, I receive nothing but the satisfaction that I am spreading the word and helping a quality business to survive in a difficult time.

**PPS – When you go to visit Dark Horse Alley, please tell Wendy that you heard about her from me.