Moojinorbit

I mean, not all the time, but after hours or days or the same activity repeatedly, yeah, I get bored. I feel the need to do something that captures my own interest–like find a bar somewhere and talk to my fellow stoolmates.

I’m not one of those people who can hang out with kids for hours, inventing new games, or new rules to old games, and keeping little ones entertained endlessly. I’m not the aunt that walks in the door and all the kids happily scream and jump on. (Tanya, you’re kind of that aunt, and I admire it about you.) I can play with my nieces or nephew for awhile–coloring, reading, playing chase or hide and seek, running around outside–and they seem to like me quite a bit (Nolie, perhaps, being a temporary exception who screamed for the first year of her life every time she saw me). But I don’t have that kid stamina, where I gotta keep doing the thing for hours until the kid poops out from happy exhaustion.

And you know what? I don’t think I ever honestly was that person, even as a kid. My cousins Steve and Eric and my brother Bill and I had a lot of stuff we liked to do, like play Star Trek in this huge tree in their backyard. But I was pretty much over it after about 90 minutes. (Maybe that had something to do with the fact that I always had to play Ohuru, the only woman on the ship.) Still, whether it was Micronauts or dolls, Monopoly or tetherball, I’d eventually get bored. Except when it came to swimming pools or making forts in the living room; that stuff I could do endlessly, after everyone else went in to watch cartoons.

This should give you an idea of the kind of kid I was: in fifth grade I used to get up in the morning and go jogging. It felt good. Eventually, though, that turned into picking up a couple of my friends and going to a third’s to throw rocks at her window and try to wake her up.

Mom, you may remember that one of the family’s nicknames for me was “Big Ears.” Why? Because when I got bored with the kid stuff, I’d find a place at or near the adults and just listen to whatever they were talking about. I was a totally relational kid; that was part of my survival strategy in our fractured family. But, frankly, I think that’s just how my analytical brain works: it interested me to pay attention to people, what motivated them, what they said, who they were.

So I had an awesome time sledding with Reilly and the gang today. I went down with him 6-7 times, but I wasn’t up for 20-30, so I went off and strolled the shops downtown by myself.

Am I a freak?

I picked the place we’re staying in pretty much blind. After my dad asked, back in January 07, if I’d spend Christmas with him and I could pick the place, I thought about and ultimately chose Crested Butte. It’s one of my favorite small towns, but aside from a job interview with Western State College back in ‘03, I’d mainly only been here in summer. I wanted to ski it, plus it’s off the path of glitzy, Aspen-like resorts full of moon boots and white minks. It’s much more mellow, like a 1970s ski mountain town, except with enough little sophisticated restaurants to keep your palette interested.

So that turned out to be a good choice, but the condo I flat lucked onto was nothing short of a miracle. This place, The Mule Barn, is literally an old mule barn that has been restored into four little units on a street in the town of Crested Butte–not up with all the stacked condos near the resort. I don’t think the website does it justice, but am passing it along for anyone interested. I’m already sure I’m going to check dates for 2008 and book it again. Who’s going to join me this Spring?

I don’t know if I can describe the interior, but it’s something like Swiss Family Robinson meets Little House in the Big Woods–but with all the relevant modern amenities. It’s cozy and warm and sleeps us all comfortably, which is great. But it’s also so NOT a cookie cutter condo, and the décor is completely “Cowboy”–a la my dad. We’re talking, little stuffed raccoons peeking out from a huge varnished log beam that runs vertically through the spiral staircase that gets us from the bottom floor (bedrooms and bathroom) to the living room and kitchen upstairs. Wait, let me correct that: two squirrels on the beam on the bottom floor, and a raccoons on the second floor. And that doesn’t account for the mounted wall ducks, buck head (of course) and some small canine-looking mammal that no one can figure out.

We’re talking 19th century snowshoes on the walls, an antler chandelier (see below) huge vaulted ceiling, and barnwood everywhere. I mean, there is literally an old stable door from, presumably, this building when it was a mule barn, hanging from one of the walls, and I just love all this greying wood.

The werid thing is that somehow with all that kitsch–and I know you’re not going to believe me–the place manages somehow to not be tacky. Maybe because there is so much authentic stuff in here and on no wall is there too much of it. It’s not procelain ducks with bows or whatever. The living room couch, despite being red plaid with some kind of bearskin draped over it, is comfortable, as are the four other chairs, including the faux cow rocking chair. The fireplace is awesome. And did I mention that “my” bedroom is this roomy loft under vaulted barn ceilings with skylights in the roof? So I can see into and be a part of everything going on in the living room and kitchen below, but when I wake up in the morning, everone’s downstairs in their bedrooms and I’m just laying there gazing at snow drifting onto skylights.

Living room view from my loft (taken with my computer camera). Note the antler chandelier:

And below is looking up at my skylight at about 4:30 yesterday, after pooping myself out on the slopes with my dad. What this picture of course can’t show you is the gorgeous bent branch bed frame crowning the head of my pretty little queen-size. Or the lovely dressing table I’m using to write on.

I don’t know; none of this really captures it. The bottom line is, the place is perfect and we’re having a lovely time. My dad’s keeping his political and religious sentiments to himself so far and is so overblown with gratitude that we’re doing this that he’s easy to tolerate. I do find it annoying that he has to in some way convey to every local we come into contact with that he was once a ski town local [insert ski instructor, bar owner, or whatever the context is] himself.

Example: Yesterday on a hard turn my 20 year-old Nordica boot literally broke out of the binding. The plastic split at the ball of the foot, leaving me with a hole in my sole and no way to get back into my binding to ski down. When the ski patrol happened upon us and arranged for me to be transported down the hill to rent a new pair of boots, my dad had to tell everyone in the vicinity how the same thing happened to him once and he had to walk across a parking lot with his broken book. I mean, it was all about him.

Example: Today we’re strolling past a local guy shovelling his Four Runner out of a huge snowbank. My dad has to go off about how when he lived in Mammoth (read: I was a ski town local), it used to snow 6 feet at once and he found himself in similar predicaments. Who cares?!!! But that’s him.

It’s fun and noisy and sweet. The gang went sledding midday today while I crashed into a nap I think I’d needed for about a year. And then this afternoon for some reason everyone zoned into what they were doing (reading, or in Reilly’s case watching some Jimmy Neutron video) and I felt myself in a nest of love. I actually read a chapter of a book I want to read, and meditated for a full 20 minutes.

Now I’m going to pop a Rioja and call it good.