One of my favorite things about fall is Evans’ chili. He will usually make ten gallons at a time, which sounds excessive, but is not. We share it with family and friends and will freeze a few gallons, but we are ready for him to make it again within a month. He makes a meaty red chili with big chunks of onion and dark red kidney beans. It is the perfect fall food.

One of the highlights of the early fall in Crested Butte is the annual Chili and Beer Festival. Both professional and amateur cooks make chili and compete in a taste-off. Twenty-five area breweries and cideries compete for the best beer, cider, and ale. 

In 2017, our first September in Crested Butte, we found out about the Chili and Beer Festival and bought last-minute tickets. Our friends Welch and Anne were visiting so we planned to go at noon. Evans and Welch went fishing that morning, and Evans fell and was swept downstream. By the time he recovered, was home, dry, and ready to eat chili, it was almost two o’clock. This is a popular party, so most of the chili was gone. I don’t drink beer, and cider gives me a blinding headache, but we enjoyed the party, the live music, and the atmosphere. What chili we did taste was not nearly as good as Evans’. He decided that he would compete the following year.

In 2018, our friend Welch was again in Crested Butte for The Chili and Beer Festival. I was back in Nashville for a wedding, but Evans and Welch have been a great team for over forty years. Evans cooked chili, and he and Welch served it with a good response. However, Evans learned that all the other contestants, even amateurs, had a more prominent presence. Their chili had a name. Their tables had decorations. So, the plan was to make the most of 2019.

In 2019, we made plans early. Evans named his chili Paradise Divide Red. We took pictures of Paradise Divide and made plans to have a banner made. We had a logo designed and ordered embroidered aprons and t-shirts. We went shopping and bought thirty pounds of ground beef, three flats of tomatoes and kidney beans. That night Evans’ sister called to let us know that his mother was gravely ill. Evans caught the first flight to Nashville, and I set about canceling orders and trying to find a home for thirty pounds of ground meat. Happily, the kind lady at the design shop agreed to hold our designs for the next year and did not charge us a kill fee. I joked about having thirty pounds of ground meat I needed rid of, and she offered to take it to feed the Gunnison High School Football team. It was a good solution, but no chili festival.

In 2020, well, everyone knows what happened in 2020. There wasn’t a chili festival.

But 2021 was going to be our year. Evans asked Welch to come, but he couldn’t. I was going to serve as the alternate chili assistant. We re-ordered the banner but decided maybe we didn’t need aprons and t-shirts. I ordered purple aprons from Amazon. We bought all the ingredients. Evans got out all his tools. We were ready.

On Friday, Evans began to cook. I stayed out of the way and offered to wash up. Our house smelled wonderful all day. He cooked from noon until after five. We each had a bowl of chili that night for dinner, and it was great. Because both pots would not fit in the refrigerator, he put the chili from one pot in Ziplock bags and put the other in the fridge.

On Saturday morning, he went downstairs to begin heating the chili. We were going to preheat it at home then keep it hot on gas burners at the festival. While he did that, I started getting ready. When I got out of the shower, I thought, “that doesn’t smell right.” I decided that chili just doesn’t smell good at 7:30 in the morning. As I was drying my hair, Evans came upstairs and said, “I’m out.” 

The chili in the big pot did not cool overnight in the refrigerator, and it was bad. Ten gallons of meat, tomatoes, onions, and spices had turned exceedingly rancid. It isn’t that chili doesn’t smell good in the morning. BAD chili does not smell good in the morning. 

There was nothing we could do. There wasn’t enough of the good chili to serve and no time to recreate what was ruined. Evans was devastated. I was heartbroken for him. How could something so good go so very bad so quickly?

He had tasted the bad chili, so I was convinced that he would have food poisoning. While he was crushed, I kept waiting for him to also throw up. 

About 11:00, we started getting texts from friends saying, “Where are you?” We had to explain, in text, what had happened. We could hear the music from the band at the festival. We stayed home and watched the Vols lose. It was not a good day.

Once the chili had cooled, Evans threw it away in five kitchen trash bags, then in a lawn and leaf bag. Our dumpster locks to keep bears away, but I don’t think the hungriest bear would have tried to eat this. It was vile.

We had a neighbor over that night to have a bowl of the good chili. But after that, I froze what was left. Neither of us could face even the best chili for a while. 

So, next year we are covering all the bases. Evans is going to make sure Welch has it on his calendar. We have decided he is the key to a successful chili festival. Evans has a plan to cook and freeze his chili in small batches to avoid a repeat of the rancid chili nightmare. I am, yet again, going to stay out of his way and offer to wash pots and serve the masses. We may also get our priest to come bless the chili pots to make sure that all the evil spirits of 2019, 2020, and 2021 have been banished. 

We have in Crested Butte many things that we don’t have in Nashville, majestic mountains, innumerable wildflowers, trout-filled rivers, and highs in the ’70s. Sadly, there are a few things we don’t have that, as a southerner, I take for granted – like Sister Schubert’s dinner rolls. If you are unfamiliar with Sister Schubert’s, and you live east of the Mississippi, I encourage you to go out and buy several pans just to keep in your freezer. I know there are at least three in my freezer in Nashville, which did me no good at all when we had to take a dish to a pick-up lunch at church last Sunday.

Evans and I attend All Saints, a tiny Episcopal church here in Crested Butte. We like to belong to a church family and have made good friends. We are too small to have our own building so the UCC lets us use theirs after their Sunday Service. When we have a priest (which, at present, we do not), we share them with Good Samaritan Episcopal in Gunnison. But, even with a supply priest only once a month, twelve to thirty of us show up most Sundays. Last Sunday was the annual meeting followed by a light “pick-up lunch,” which I guess means no forks. 

Baking at 10,000 feet above sea level is always an iffy proposition, so I ruled out sweets of any kind. I can usually manage a cobbler, but that requires a fork. Cheese biscuits didn’t seem substantial enough for lunch, and I wasn’t sure how Coloradoans would respond to pimento cheese and/or cucumber sandwiches, so we settled on tenderloin with rolls. Evans makes delicious tenderloin. It is always expertly seasoned and cooked to perfection. All I needed was dinner rolls.

I knew it was a longshot, but I looked in three stores for pans of Sister Schubert’s. I was willing to settle for any kind of dinner roll. Nope. King’s Hawaiian now makes a savory roll that is pretty good, but they don’t even sell the regular sweet ones out here. I finally found a couple of bags of frozen dough balls. 

Saturday mid-day, I took the bags of frozen dough out of the freezer, coated them with butter, and put them in two pans to thaw. By dinner time, they weren’t yet soft. I rechecked them when I cleaned up after dinner, and they were thawed but had not begun to “double in size.” Then I sat down to watch the Olympics and promptly forgot about them. 

About ten o’clock, I remembered I needed to bake the rolls. No problem. It was late, but they only had to cook for fifteen to twenty minutes. I went into the kitchen and found the blob that had begun to eat my counter. Each of the seventy-two rolls had quadrupled in size. They had risen past the Saran Wrap, over the edges of the baking dishes, and onto the counter. 

Let me clarify that this is ten pm in Mount Crested Butte. All grocery stores within one hundred miles are closed. (I am not exaggerating.) Salvaging this blob was my only plan. I figured I could maybe cut them apart when they came out of the oven.

Remember how I coated everything with butter? That butter dripped off the part of the dough that was oozing over the pan, straight onto the burners in the oven, creating smoke and setting off all the fire alarms. I turned on fans while Evans raced around dismantling fire alarms because we live in a townhouse with neighbors on both sides. 

The only thing to do with the baked result was to take a picture of it and laugh. We turned it out of the pan as instructed, not that we have wire cooling racks out here. The outside was charred, the middle was quickly deflating, and the edges were doughy. It did smell good. I will give it that. 

On Sunday mornings, Crested Butte has a farmer’s market. The most popular booth is a bakery from Paonia. There is always a line. I was in that line thirty minutes before the market opened. As the line grew behind me, I watched the bakers set up loaves of bread, croissants, pastries, and pies. I didn’t know what I was serving with that tenderloin, but I knew where I was getting it. When I finally got to the front of the line, I explained my debacle to the young man, and he sold me a loaf of herb-olive focaccia and a loaf of onion rosemary sourdough. It wasn’t rolls, but it would have to do.

I raced home, cut the focaccia and sourdough into small squares, and packaged it up on trays.

Once lunch started, I realized I could have set saltines next to Evans’ tenderloin, and no one would have cared. Toward the end of the gathering, one of our fellow parishioners just stood next to the tenderloin, spread dijonnaise on slices, and ate straight from the tray. Ok, that was utterly inappropriate, but it tells you how good the steak was. 

That night for dinner, I salvaged what I could of the roll/loaf/debacle and had my own version of steak and rolls for dinner. It was a long way from Sister Schubert’s, but it wasn’t bad.

The Gunnison, Colorado Cattlemen’s Days Rodeo is the oldest rodeo in the state of Colorado.  The first night is Tough Enough to Wear Pink night, which is the largest and most lucrative Tough Enough to Wear Pink event in the nation.  Cowboys, Cowgirls, and most of the attendees are decked out in their best and brightest pink to raise money to fight breast cancer.  Every penny they raise, over $33 million since 2005, stays in the Gunnison Valley to support cancer patients and their families.  

If a rodeo contestant wins while wearing pink, he or she gets an additional $1000 in prize money. And they are going all out.  Some of the top national contenders compete each year in barrel racing, calf roping, team roping, bareback, and saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, and bull riding. 

We went Thursday night, proudly wearing pink.  Evans didn’t have a pink shirt, so our first stop was the merchandise tent where he was thrilled to find a shirt in his size.  Along with our friends Troy and Kathy, we were four very pink patrons. 

We arrived very early.  Evans thought it started at 5:30, but that was when the gates opened.  So, we had an hour and a half to wander the food trucks, bar tent, and do some serious people-watching.  We also found great seats before the stands filled up. The “pre-game show” is entertaining.  Both local and visiting rodeo queens parade out on their horses.  In addition to the Cattlemen’s Days Rodeo Queen and her court, Miss Rodeo Colorado and Miss Rodeo New York rode, waved, and were generally fabulous.  Instead of ballgowns, they wore sparkly chaps and hats but make no mistake, those are cowgirls under all that glitter and glamour. 

When the Rodeo Queen rode out with the American Flag for the invocation and national anthem, I started crying and couldn’t stop until she was out of the arena. Out here people take the national anthem very seriously.  Everyone stands. All hats are off. People sing. One young man was walking to his seat with four beers precariously balanced when they started the invocation.  He set those beers in the dirt, whipped off his hat, and put it over his heart.  I boo-hood.  After thirty-six years Evans is used to me.  

Kathy and I went to get dinner just before the events began.  We ordered hot dogs, a hamburger, and a barbeque plate.  At the last second, I saw someone with what looked like a brontosaurus rib.  I told the lady I would have one of those too.  Somehow, we made it back to our seats with enough food to feed our section, which we promptly finished off. (Except for the brontosaurus rib.  That was too much even for the four of us.)  I also learned not to wear white jeans to a rodeo especially when you are eating in the stands. 

Kathy offered to go get everyone drink refills.  After she had been gone a while, I felt guilty and went to help her.  She was halfway through a monster line that did not appear to be moving, just growing. We made friends with all the people around us, watched what we could see from our place in line and chatted with the charming cowboys who were running the event.  In Nashville, when most men wear boots and hats, they look a little try-hard. Here, they make your heart race.  These are real cowboys, and they were all raised right. For the record, let me add, Evans is a real cowboy. He doesn’t dress the part in Nashville, but here he is home, and it is obvious he belongs in cowboy boots and Wranglers. 

We had so much fun, Evans and I decided to go back Saturday night. I wisely found regular jeans that would fit over my boots.  I am not proud to say I can wear a belt Evans wore in high school. We were both thinner in the late seventies. But it is a beautiful belt with a gold C on the buckle and I love it.  Evans wore, as he does whenever he is wearing jeans, a belt with a buckle he won for calf-roping when he was in high school.  He won it in this very arena at a high school rodeo competing for Aspen High School.

Saturday night was Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy night honoring the long-time, multi-generational ranchers who are the backbone of the Gunnison Valley.  These are the people who live rodeo on their own ranches taking care of their livestock. It is not uncommon to see cattle being driven up Highway 135 from Gunnison to Crested Butte throughout the summer and you are likely to be stopped by cattle or sheep on several local roads that intersect free range pastures. 

The pre-event festivities included eight girls, mostly teenagers, but one who was much younger, doing a choreographed flag routine on horses.  I did flag corps in high school.  I can’t imagine doing the intricate choreography that these ladies did on horseback while carrying flags.  If I cried at the National Anthem on Thursday night, I was a sobbing mess watching these girls on Saturday.  One young lady was markedly smaller and younger than the rest.  She did not have a flag, but she got every step right and never missed her mark.  She made up for the lack of flag by waving maniacally at the crowd and we all waved back. 

Unlike Thursday night, nothing was moving me out of my seat on Saturday.  I wanted to see every event. I have listened to enough George Strait to know that the contestants needed to stay on whatever they were riding for at least eight seconds. Evans explained when someone fouled, or “broke the barrier,” or did whatever might disqualify them.  He also pointed out why some were scoring higher than others.

I love sports and was completely engrossed.  I also know that rodeo is inherently dangerous, so every event was nerve-wracking.  One of the top contenders, who is either smart or has been at this a while because he was wearing a helmet instead of a cowboy hat, was bucked off the bull and stomped. He got up, but I saw that bull step on him.  He was wearing a flak jacket.  I think they all were.  He walked off, but I saw an ambulance leave the fairgrounds about fifteen minutes later.  I am guessing he went to get a sternum X-ray.  

My favorite contenders of the night were not professionals.  During team calf-roping, a local father and son team competed.  They were by far the fastest and cleanest team in the arena.  This was a fun night for them, but I expect they have roped calves for lots of long days because that is their life.  The crowd went wild when they brought that calf down.  

In some ways, the star of the show is someone we never saw.  The rodeo announcer was amazing.  He, along with his sound man, kept the crowd informed, engaged, and entertained.  He interacted with the rodeo clown during his routine.  He told you something about each contestant and encouraged applause even for the ones who did not do well.  He did country music sing-alongs that ranged from The Kentucky Headhunters to Roger Miller. He made it all make sense to the newbies without boring the veterans. I expect he travels to rodeos just like the cowboys do.  I look forward to hearing him again next year. 

This is only my second rodeo, but it will not be my last.  Next year, I think we will buy the three-night package.  

We have been in Crested Butte for almost two weeks. We have not hiked, or biked (never going to happen), or fished, and yet we have been busy. That is the thing about CB, I love just being here. We are reconnecting with neighbors and friends and meeting new people who have moved in since we left last September. Crested Butte has become very popular and not just for weekend visitors or vacationers. We have at least five new permanent or semi-permanent (like us) neighbors. 

After driving twenty-seven hours in two days to get here, we were exhausted so it took us a few days to acclimate. The first task we usually undertake is buying flowers for our deck. It is our own version of the Queen’s flag. Flower baskets show we are in residence. Last winter, Evans participated in an online auction to try to save the town’s movie theater. One of the things he bought was a gift certificate for flower baskets. The benefit of shopping for flowers in July is they are half-off. I now have flower baskets bigger than my porch. There are petunias in my hair as I write. 

Crested Butte is a very small town. There is one grocery store, one hardware store that is also a gas station and a mini-mart, and several boutiques, outdoor, fly-fishing, or mountain biking shops. Gunnison, which is thirty miles away, has two grocery stores, two hardware stores, and a Wal-Mart. What there is not, is a full-service nail salon. You can’t swing a dead cat in our neighborhood in Nashville without hitting six huge nail salons, which is why I have pretty false nails in Nashville. I made the mistake of not having them taken off before we came out. Evans is a sport and agreed to take me to Montrose, a town bigger than Gunnison that does have full-service nail salons, as well as a Target, a Dairy Queen, and a Murdock’s. Murdock’s is a ranch store which is different from a farm store. That could be its own blog post. Suffice it to say it is Evans’ favorite. 

We usually wait until I hit the mid-summer stir-crazies before we drive one-hundred miles each way to Montrose. It is an even bigger challenge now because it is a two-lane highway that is completely closed Monday through Friday while they widen the road. The drive is beautiful. It winds through canyons, along the Blue Mesa Reservoir, and into the high desert near the San Juan mountains. We have learned to always have a full tank of gas, because that is all there is between Gunnison and Montrose. This is not a heavily populated area. 

We drove through Montrose to look around before my mid-afternoon nail appointment. I spotted a liquor store on the far end of town, and we decided to stop. Evans’ Covid hobby has been collecting single malt scotch. He has, shall we say, several. The one thing he has not been able to find is a Brucihladdich Octomore. I have no idea why it is special, but it is. The people at all the liquor stores in Nashville just shake their heads sadly when he has asked for it. I tried to special order it for Christmas to no avail. I looked for it in Florida and they had never even heard of it. We wandered into this liquor store on the outskirts of Montrose, Colorado and found TWO BOTTLES covered in dust. They had been MARKED DOWN because they were not selling. I squealed like a six-year-old and made a scene. Evans was more than rewarded for taking me to town to get my nails done.

Since our trip, we are settling in, acclimating, and reconnecting with friends. Concerts are finally back and more crowded than ever. People were so glad to be together, you could barely hear the musicians. There were twenty people at church on Sunday plus we had refreshments on the lawn afterwards. The farmers market took over Elk Avenue on Sunday and I stood in line with half of CB to buy bread. It was worth the wait. The mountains have been hidden behind smoke from the Utah and California fires but are finally visible today after a couple of days of pouring rain. I am wearing a sweatshirt over another shirt, because there is a cool breeze, but it is too pretty to be inside. Tonight, we are headed to a rodeo. We may not have nail salons in Crested Butte, but what we do have more than makes up for it. 

It feels very strange to be in the middle of 2021. I am not quite sure how it even happened. One minute it was March of 2020, and I was insisting that this pandemic thing had to be blown out of proportion and the next thing I know it is sixteen months later. A lot has happened in the last year, very little of which has been documented or recorded in this blog. My best friends have asked me when I was going to write. People I barely know asked me when I was going to write. My ready answer has been, “there is nothing to write about.” Which, of course, is a big fat lie. 

Last year happened. A great deal happened actually. People I love died. Langley moved into her own condo complete with renovations. Evans developed an infection in his knee that became a six-month medical ordeal. I tried, in vain, to landscape my yard. We came to Colorado for the summer and even hosted guests for a few weeks. There was plenty to write about. Not all of it was funny or awkward, but life happened. 

Before I could write again, I had to admit to myself that I did not write this past year because I am a brat. I like to say I was not my best self, but I was really so much worse than that. I had a low-grade, quiet, pity party all year. I blamed the pandemic, but it was me. I was bored. And restless. And generally unhappy. And what made it all worse is I knew, I KNOW, that my life is probably the best it has ever been.

Since I no longer work forty-plus hours a week, leading meetings, making decisions, writing on deadline, I focused my energies where they didn’t belong. I meddled in Langley’s life. I quarreled with Evans. I took my poor, elderly dog to the vet so much that we had to give our Colorado vet parting gifts when we went back to Nashville. I gained weight. I lost weight. I gained it back. 

My friend Carol told me I needed to go back to work. We were floating in her pool at the time, so I said no. But she wasn’t wrong. Another friend had a major life change and I immediately started giving her intense instructions on what she should do next. I caught myself mid-rant and realized I was not actually adding value and maybe I should hush. She knows my offer to “help” still stands, but I am guessing she has it pretty well in hand.

I had a fairly new friend say to me once that she expected I was pretty good at staying in my own lane. If she only knew what a controlling, managing, lunatic I am when I am not actively having boundaries. 

I made myself so crazy with my desire to fix other people’s lives that I thought about focusing all that (toxic) energy into writing a book. (Says the girl who hadn’t touched her blog since December of 2020.) Let me assure all my publishing friends that I shelved that idea as soon as I thought it through. You will not be receiving unsolicited proposals from me, although I am pretty sure I still know how to write one.

So, now that I have admitted I have been a pill, I am more than a little controlling, and I have way too much time on my hands, what is the plan? First the pity party is over. Years ago, when I was whining about something, Carol (the one who told me to get a job) told me to “Wallow fast. You have two minutes to be miserable then you need to get over yourself.” I am pretty sure she tapped her watch and said “Tick, Tock.” Carol don’t play.

The next step starts with writing this blog again. We are back in Crested Butte and there are concerts, street fairs, art exhibits, and wine tastings planned. I have committed to go hiking with my friend Terri (almost) any time she asks me. I am waitlisted for a Pilates class. I have things to do, friends to see, mountains to fall down. 

And, finally, while I don’t want a job, I think I will reach out to a few agents and publishing friends to see if any wannabe authors need a hand with a proposal. It is not meddling if someone asks you to tell them what to do and how to do it. I need to focus all this energy into something positive. 

So, look for my blog at least once a week and maybe more often. Crested Butte had a fantastic Fourth of July parade, and our drive out here took twenty-seven hours. I should be able to find something to write about. 

Thank you for asking me to write. I love connecting with friends, and friends I don’t yet know, through this blog. Thank you for your patience if you are reading this after more than a year. I will be finding the good and the funny, and of course the awkward regularly going forward.  

This year the Clements are facing the same struggles as everyone else in America.  We can’t entertain or go to Christmas parties. We can’t hug our loved ones. We have lots of other things taking priority over our normal Christmas, so we even scaled back our decorating especially outside.  It did not make sense to spend an entire afternoon on a ladder to hang wreaths on a house you can’t see from the road. 

Our house is on a major road in Nashville. It is set back from the road behind trees and woods. For years I have had the idea to put light-up deer at the end of our driveway looking like they are coming out of the woods.  We have real deer all over our property and the smart ones stay away from that end of the driveway, but glowing deer would be so festive! 

Earlier this fall I saw five-foot tall, light-up glittery deer at Costco.  I should have bought them right then but didn’t.  I told Evans about them and he said to get them.  And, of course Costco was sold out.  I haunted the Costco website until they came back into stock and ordered them immediately.  Those were some popular sparkly deer, because they were sold out again in an hour.  The huge box came and sat in my front hall for over a week.

Last Sunday afternoon I took advantage of the beautiful warm day to decorate our mailbox with live greenery and magnolia leaves. (It’s a thing in Nashville.) Then I dragged the huge box of glitter deer into the car and drove it to the end of the driveway.  After pulling out the huge wrapped bundles, that looked like smallish dead bodies when they were lying by the road, I realized I could not tackle these by myself.  I drove back up to the house and convinced Evans to help me. He is recovering from Covid and is facing unexpected knee surgery, but he is a great sport so he agreed.  

The deer were packed from the factory with the heads, legs, and antlers stuffed inside the body cavities.  They looked like shiny victims of satanic animal abuse.  

When we disentangled all the body parts, the actual assembly wasn’t that bad.  It was a two-person job, and Evans is much better at that kind of thing than I am.  We found a flat area coming out of the woods and staked them into place.  I was so excited.  We both were.  It was a great idea, and it was going to look as amazing as we had hoped.

Evans went back in and I ran extension cords from the road to the house. Just so you know, the driveway is four one-hundred-foot extension cords long.  I plugged them in and went inside.  I was tired and it was almost dark.  Langley came in later and asked why the deer weren’t lit up.  It was too late to figure it out, so I waited until the next day. 

Yesterday, I checked the cords and found where they had come undone.  I re-plugged them in and admired my glittery deer as I pulled out of the driveway.  I caught a glimpse of them as I came home just after dark.  They were magical and beautiful.  It was exactly what I had envisioned.  I was so excited.  There are hundreds of cars on that road every day.  I knew drivers would love our glowing glitter deer as much as I did.

About nine o’clock, Langley came in and immediately asked, “where are the deer?” We just stared at her.  It’s not like you can miss two full-sized glowing deer when you pull into our driveway.  She insisted there were no deer.  She even went back out and walked to the end of the driveway and took a picture of where the deer should have been.

They did not last three hours.  Someone pulled over on Hillsboro Pike and stole our glitter deer.  I can only hope they threw them into a car so that that car is now and forevermore covered in glitter.  With carjackings, unexplained highway murders, and home burglaries on the rise, I should not be surprised at a deer-napping. I could only laugh at myself for being so naïve that I thought I could put glowing, glittery deer out of sight of my house and think they would stay there through the Christmas season. 

We are not going to replace them this year. My more gifted partner is down for the count until his knee is repaired.  Even if Costco still had any, I couldn’t secure them any better the next time.  I posted about it on Facebook and someone suggested I put out new “bait deer” complete with camera and GPS tracking devices.  Someone else suggested a Ring camera, which would be great, but I don’t think the signal would reach from the street to our house.  And even if we saw someone snatch them, we couldn’t get to the end of the driveway in time to stage a rescue. Also, people are crazy, most Nashvillians are armed, and they are just glittery deer.

I am choosing to believe that they are making someone else’s Christmas happy.  At least until that person goes to bed and wakes up to find their ill-gotten deer gone yet again.  The Grinch or some Bubba in a truck stole our deer, but they left us with a great story. Maybe next year we will try again with a security system, or as someone suggested a tree stand to keep watch over them.  

When Covid first hit, I didn’t believe it was a thing. I could not wrap my head around the idea that a virus could shut down a city, much less the world. That kind of thing happened in third-world countries, but not in America. I posted on Facebook asking if I was crazy or was everyone else over-reacting? My friend Deborah assured me I was crazy, then went on to provide news articles and statistics as to why this was a real threat and I should pull my head out of my own…sand.

So, I got careful. I wore my mask. I stayed home. I used hand sanitizer. And then I got bored and there was an opportunity to volunteer with a charity doing work in North Nashville. I still took precautions, but I was out and about. I went to the grocery. We went out to dinner once that was an option. I went to water aerobics. I was careful, but summer was coming. Surely it would be better soon.

Evans and I went to Colorado for the summer. The trip out was enlightening as to where people wore masks and where they did not. In Crested Butte, which was hit tragically hard at the start of the pandemic, positive rates are very low. Almost everyone wears their masks (unless they are from Texas and have a great deal of money. I wish I was making that up.) We wore our masks, used our hand sanitizer, and had a fairly normal summer, just one without concerts, street fairs, festivals, or parties.

We did not get Covid, but I had a bad case of Covid-fatigue. Covid-frustration. Covid-depression. We stayed in more than normal. Our elderly dog almost died and required a great deal of care so that was distressing and demanding. Colorado was still beautiful, but I didn’t enjoy it like I knew I should. It is safe to say I was not my best self.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that there has not been a blog to read since August. When friends asked me to write I said there was nothing funny, clever, or even awkward about slogging through a pandemic. Writing that makes me realize what a self-pitying downer I was/am/have been.

So, now we are home and heading into the holidays. Evans is back in Colorado for what should have been a hunting trip, but it’s 2020 so that didn’t happen. I helped a close friend get ready for a move. We spent a lot of time together, especially because she is moving away. I saw her more in the last three weeks than I have all year. Aaaannnnddd, she has Covid. No, I did not wear my mask. Yes, I sat across from her and drank wine. No, I didn’t maintain six feet of distance. In my defense, I did not touch or hug her – which was very hard.

She called last week to tell me she was positive and I was exposed. I immediately called Langley and told her that since I was exposed, she was exposed. We began the desperate search for a Covid test on Veterans Day. We found one. Langley took it because she was banned from work until she had a negative test. I finally got a test the next day at Meharry. Langley got her test results on Friday and she was negative – YAY. Unfortunately, she could not go back to work until we had my test results. I finally heard Monday night at 9:30 that I too was negative. Langley was able to go back to work yesterday, but since I was exposed repeatedly, I have been housebound through the whole fourteen-day period.

I didn’t worry about Evans because he is in Crested Butte. He had a friend from here visit him last week. They had a blizzard so they did not do all the things they normally would do. Neither of them felt great, but thought it was just altitude and being tired and all the things we blame when we are puny. Our friend is home now and, since he didn’t rally when he got back to sea level, he had a Covid test. Yep. He’s positive. Tests in Gunnison County are not quite as plentiful as they are here in Nashville. The soonest Evans can be tested is tomorrow, Friday. He should have his results in three to five days. He is supposed to fly home on Monday.

I don’t think he has it. I pray he doesn’t have it. I’m scared he has it. Even if he tests negative, there is no guarantee that he will make that plane. He would never consider flying without a negative test result. His test results could come on Monday and his flight is out of Denver which is a four to five-hour drive from Crested Butte. It’s Thanksgiving week and the CDC just strongly cautioned people not to travel. So, if he dodged the first bullet, he is walking straight into a barrage of Covid sniper fire trying to get through three airports and flying on two airplanes.

I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. For now, neither. There is literally nothing we can do but wait. I want Evans home, with me, safe and healthy. I want my family around my table on Thursday, but three of the eight people who should be there will have been on multiple airplanes within the last week. My brother has already begged off, as he should. I don’t yet know about my sister-in-law and nieces. Thanksgiving for three is not at all festive, but that maybe what we do this year.

I have a new respect for this virus. I will take all the precautions, decline the parties, wear the mask, wash my hands, stand six or more feet away. When Evans gets home, whenever that is, we will be careful together and no more traveling separately in airplanes. We will celebrate Thanksgiving somehow, someway, sometime. I welcome your prayers for quick answers, negative test results, full recovery for our friends, safe travel, and no new exposures. And, while I am still not my best self, I am committed to sharing the awkward and the fantastic more often.

Today is National Dog Day. I know this because the first thing I saw on Facebook this morning was a post from 2014 showing our three beloved dogs Aston, Millie and Percy.

Aston was the most beautiful red Golden Retriever there ever could be. He was Evans’ Aunt Jane’s puppy when she was diagnosed with extremely advanced metastatic cancer. Evans promised he would take care of Aston and from then on, Aston was Evans’ shadow. He liked the rest of us fine, but he was Evans’ dog. He loved his toys (which he did not share and the other dogs understood that), playing ball, and sitting next to Evans.

When Aston was a few years old, we moved to a house without close neighbors. We decided he needed a companion, so we adopted Millie. Millie was supposed to be a “spaniel-hound mix” and we thought she might be about forty pounds full grown. We were wrong. She was a Spaniel-Great Pyrenese (emphasis on the Great Pyrenese) mix and she weighed 115 pounds fully grown. She was our pretty princess, the unchallenged alpha dog, and the owner of all the bones. We never worried about intruders, of any kind, while Millie was around. She efficiently dispatched any animals silly enough to invade her fenced yard although she finally made peace with the deer that lived just beyond the fence.

In 2007, my mother decided she wanted a Boston Terrier. A lady advertised a one-year-old Boston in the paper and we met her at Shelby park to have a look at him. There has never been a worse-looking dog. He was scrawny, covered in mange, had a cleft lip (common in Bostons), and was just generally pitiful. I agreed to discuss buying him after we had our vet look at him. Four hundred dollars later our vet told us the only good things about Percy were his prostate and his nostrils. I called the lady, told her how much our vet bill was and she said to keep him. Mother did. She adored him. She fed him constantly – usually from the table. His mange cleared up and he grew in a pretty brindle coat. He went everywhere she went and slept under the covers in her bed.

As Mother grew older, she and Percy spent more time at our house. Perhaps something had happened in Percy’s first year, or maybe he was just a Boston Terrier with a Napolean complex, but he hates other dogs. He tolerated Millie because she dominated him from the first time they met – and she had about a hundred pounds on him. Aston was the most non-threatening dog that ever lived and even Percy couldn’t not like him, so the three of them became something of a pack.

In 2011, Mother died and Percy came to live at our house permanently. They were three completely different dogs with different personalities and not especially fond of each other, or so we thought.

In the Spring of 2016, Aston was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor on his mouth. The vet recommended palliative care. He lived just over a year and was perfectly happy as long as Evans was in his line of sight. Evans will miss Aston for the rest of his life.

Millie and Percy persevered and in the summer of 2018, they joined us in Crested Butte. They both loved it here, but Millie was in her element. It was cool all the time. There were fields of wildflowers everywhere. Percy loved to race along every trail, going first and fastest while Millie slowly and steadily checked out every bush, plant, and tree. Millie loved to wade in the mountain streams as long as the water didn’t go past her belly. Percy stayed closer to shore.

Evans always walked them late at night, usually after I had gone to bed. One night, as they were walking down the parking lot in front of our townhouse, both dogs took off running and barking like mad. It was all Evans could do to get them under control when he saw what they were after. A Cinnamon Bear was on top of the dumpster. The bear wisely ran away. Since both Millie and Percy were spoiling for a fight, Percy bit Millie. Millie bit him back, in the head, with all her teeth. I am pretty sure that is the last time Percy bit Millie.

In early 2019, we took Percy and Millie in for their regular check-ups. The vet called and asked lots of questions about Millie. Was she eating? Had she acted differently? Had she lost weight? We assured him Millie was her usual self. He explained that her blood work was “not consistent with life.” She continued to be our pretty princess until one day, she wasn’t. Just like that, she was very sick and then she was gone.

I thought Percy wouldn’t miss the other two. They had never been that close. He and Millie had battled for the alpha role their entire lives. They didn’t cuddle up on the same bed or seek each other out. They just lived together. Which goes to show how much I know.

Shortly after Millie died, Percy began to fail. He went deaf. Then he went blind. He stopped eating. We thought he was dying. The vet told us he was diabetic. Considering we called him our little pig-dog, no one was all that surprised. He missed his pack and without them, he grew old. We gave him insulin twice a day and life went on, just slower and lonelier.

We brought him out here last summer and he did fine. He could still outrun us on the trails. We kept him on a short leash because he thought he could beat up all the dogs that crossed his path and there are probably more dogs in Crested Butte than there are people. He traveled back and forth in the truck like a champ. We brought him again in January and he tackled the snow and ice like a sled dog. He even wore little red snow boots.

We thought this summer would be the same, but at almost fourteen, he is feeling and showing the years. He is now so deaf and blind that he doesn’t notice the other dogs. He hasn’t picked a single fight. Sometimes we carry him up and down the stairs. He is slower and his walks don’t go as far.

Earlier this summer he stopped eating. Our vet here said he had abscessed teeth. Before we agreed to surgery, we asked if he could get better or if we needed to make a hard decision. We went forward with the surgery and he came through like a champ. He remained a very picky eater and we thought maybe he was just spoiled. Again, this dog has been fed every treat known to man or dog his entire life. We thought maybe he was old and crotchety and would be fine if I just cooked him chicken and fed it to him warm. When even that didn’t work, we again called the vet. They said to bring him in.

They ran labs and checked his blood sugar. The labs were fine. His blood sugar was completely off the chart. He was so very sick. We didn’t know if he could live. We didn’t know what we should do. We discussed it calmly. At what point do you make the hard call? Then I started crying. We called our vet in Nashville. Evans talked because I couldn’t. Both vets, there and here, thought he could get better. We agreed to try, one more time.

We picked him up from the vet today, on National Dog Day, along with a doggy blood glucometer and an IV port still in his leg. They thought he would do better at home but didn’t want to have to run a new IV if he didn’t. The vet tech who explained the glucometer said several times how sick he was. I carried him to the car, not at all sure we had made the right choice.

When we have a dog, their job is to love us. Our job is to love and care for them. Part of that is to make the hard choices when it is time to let them go. I should have let Millie go a week earlier than we did. I promised myself I would not do that with Percy. When he is too sick to live, I would hold him and say goodbye. As we drove home I couldn’t decide if I was scared, mad, or sad. Maybe I was all three.

He has been lying by me while I have written this. A few minutes ago, he got up and pawed my leg to take him for a walk. This sick, old, battered, bandaged little creature just ran down a hill and up a hill, sniffing and peeing on everything he found worthy. Little neighbor children who he has ignored all summer were riding their bikes and he chased one of them. CHASED HER ON HER BIKE! I sobbed all the way up the parking lot.

He will tell me when it is time. It is not today. We will figure out how to regulate his insulin. I have the vet’s personal cell number and am to call him every time we check his blood to get the insulin right. I have two different kinds of diabetic dog food in the pantry and frozen chicken in the freezer. He’s the last man standing. He is more of a little old man than he is a pig dog, but, he is not done.

It is National Dog Day. In the Clements house, that dog is Percy and he has a lot left to do.

Water is one of the keys to living at a high elevation. You have to drink at least twice as much water here as you would at sea level just to feel normal. I am a water drinker anyway. When I worked, I had my designated office Tervis (24 ounces, orange monogram and lid) and my home and car cup (SIC, 30 ounces, blue, sadly no monogram). My water glass is not unlike Linus’s blanket. I feel better knowing it is at hand. 

About twenty-five years ago, I had a cough that I could not shake. I was in a meeting with two men when I began to cough. Within seconds I was coughing badly and could not breathe. These were not particularly insightful or helpful men, so it wasn’t until I was able to gasp out, “get me water please” that one of them finally found me something to drink. It was a scarring experience, and I have seldom been very far from something to drink since then.  

The first time I visited the Rockies was almost thirty years ago. Evans and I went to Aspen to see where he had grown up. I was fine until I wasn’t. The altitude sickness and dehydration hit me like a bulldozer and he practically dragged me into a diner. I remember drinking glass after glass of club soda and finally feeling like I maybe might live. 

After years of being a Diet Pepsi junkie, I have all but sworn off sodas. I will still have a Diet Coke when I wake up if I am dragging, but now I mostly drink water with a little bit of Orange Vitamin Water poured in for flavor. And, as a rule, I drink plenty. Except for yesterday.

I had booked another day of fishing with the wonderful Ben of Dragonfly Anglers. I was meeting him at 8:30 so I got up around 7. I took a drink of the water by my bedside and got ready. I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich to have all the protein and carbs I knew I would need to hike and fish. I was sluggish so I grabbed a Diet Coke and hurried to the car. Right as I pulled into Dragonfly, I realized I had not packed my Camelback filled with water. Luckily, I found a partial bottle of diluted vitamin water that was rolling around on the floor of the car and was sure I would be fine. I was not fine.

I realized about the time I finished my Diet Coke that I had had little else to drink that day. I didn’t drink a large glass of water in preparation for standing in the sun in the middle of the river. It began to dawn on me that I had made a mistake. 

As in all the best fishing trips, the first hour was driving and the second forty-five minutes was hiking – in waders and wading boots of course. By the time we got to the river, I was dry and a little shaky. I gamely waded into the middle of the water and began to cast mostly in the general direction Ben suggested. The more I flailed, the shakier I was. About twenty minutes into fishing, everything started to go black. 

When I was a kid, there were a few times I locked my knees and went down like a tree. I wasn’t a consistent fainter, but it could happen. In the last few years, with or without locking my knees, I have come close to fainting three or maybe six times. Usually, it happens in a crowded room when I have been standing too long. If you are a kid and you faint, they carry you off the stage. In your fifties, they call the paramedics. So far I have managed to get out of the crowd before I did a full swoon. Once I was at a friend’s house and had to call Evans and Langley to come get me because I couldn’t walk to the car or drive, but at least there were no EMTs.

So, yesterday, I found myself in the middle of the river, contemplating my options. Do I ignore it and it will go away? (No. Big no.) Can I get to the shore under my own power? (Maybe. Maybe not. This is so not good.) Is there any way I can keep Ben from knowing that I am going to faint in the middle of Spring Creek? (Oh please. Oh, please let me get away with this.)

I managed to casually say, “Ben, I think I am going to take a quick break.” I am sure Ben was thinking that I had been fishing all of ten minutes, but I’m the client so ok. I got to shore and sat down. I considered whether I should drink all of the little water I had with me or ration it for the rest of the morning. As everything got even blacker, I downed it as fast as I could. I encouraged Ben to fish for a minute while I rested. Actually, I just wanted him to face the river and not his pasty client who was plunging her arms up to the elbows in icy water trying to keep herself conscious. 

After a few minutes, I began to rally. I honestly believe there was some divine intervention because it seldom ends that well. I managed to reclaim my fly rod and again tried to catch a wily river trout. I have never fished worse. Poor Ben. Nothing we did worked. He scouted. He suggested. We moved upstream. He found fish and had me cast directly to the fish. I swear I bonked one on the head and he just swam away. I knew that I had used up all my good luck by being upright. I could not tell Ben that there was no way I was actually going to catch a fish too. 

I only booked a half-day trip so about noon we again hiked four hundred miles back to the truck. When we got there, Ben said, “Hey, let’s try up above the reservoir!” I stopped thinking, “don’t die, don’t die, don’t die” long enough to suggest that I didn’t want to overstay the time we had booked and take advantage of him. The wonderful Ben insisted there was nothing else he had to do, and he was having great fun. Off to the upper stream we went. 

It was beautiful. The hike from the truck to the river was not as far or as challenging. Again, I desperately and futilely flung bits of elk hair and barbed metal at unsuspecting fish. Again, they ignored me. After about an hour, I convinced Ben that we were snake bit and that it was time to cut our losses. 

By this time, I was no longer in danger of fainting, but I was as parched as the dusty road we were driving. Ben was surprised that I was not disappointed that we hadn’t caught any fish. I was so thrilled I hadn’t landed face down in the water, I considered the day a huge success. He even commented on my good attitude. 

We made it back to the shop and said our goodbyes. When I got in my car, I searched the floorboards for any undrained bottle of anything I might have left there and finished them off. As soon as I got home, I headed straight to the kitchen and downed a quick 24 ounces then refilled my security cup and started again. 

People say a bad day fishing is better than a good day working. That is true. A bad day fishing where you really should have keeled over because you were not smart enough to drink enough water is an excellent day no matter what.

Last year, Evans bought a jeep. It is a 1978 CJ-7. We had to go home unexpectedly right after he bought it, so our first week here was the first time I have ridden in it. You have to throw your leg up and over to get in then haul yourself into the seat. The front seats have lap belts only. The back seat….well good luck in the back seat. We drove it thirty miles to Gunnison to remove the hardtop. All our vehicles are four-wheel drive, but there is a difference in a Nashville four-wheel drive and a 1978 Jeep. Percy and I “helped” Evans get the top and doors off. Then we drove home, no doors, no roof. It was fun, sunny, and more than a little windy.

A few days later, we took the Jeep up to Schofield Pass.  That is a narrow, rocky, four-wheel-drive-only mountain road. Last year it was totally impassable due to an avalanche.  About two-thirds of the way up, I remembered that Evans had mentioned getting new tires.  I realized he had not gotten new tires.  Having had a flat tire on the truck last year, I was not at all certain we would make it home with all four of these older, probably slightly dry-rotted tires intact.  We did.

The next day we took it to Gunnison for new tires.  I am very happy that these tires are thicker, wider, taller, and designed for mountain roads.  I will always be a little afraid of hurtling to my death on a narrow mountain road, but at least now I am pretty sure the tires will not be the cause.  

For the last several days, whenever Evans stopped at a stop sign or slowed down, it died.  He was excited to have an older model Jeep that he could work on himself.  He tried fuel additive. Then he looked up online and found that 1978 CJ-7s have a unique carburetor issue that he should be able to fix himself.  While doing whatever it said, he realized that one of the bolts that held the carburetor in place was missing. (So glad I did not know that on our way up to Schofield Pass.) So now he is under the hood doing something with bolts to lock the carburetor into place.  

It rides rough, although better with the new tires. There is no radio, which is just as well because we would never be able to hear a radio over the wind noise. It is a three-speed, which is fine.  I learned to drive on a three-speed.  Mine was in the column. This one is on the floor. 

It is filthy. Even if I wipe down the seats and every other surface, five minutes on an unpaved road has them covered in fine Colorado dust again.  I choose to see that as part of the charm.   Evans came in from fishing the other day where he had driven the Jeep.  The shirt he was wearing was so dirty that I don’t think it will ever come clean.  You can guess how much he cares. 

We bought a short lead and a harness to attach to Percy when he rides in the Jeep.  He is an old man now, but when he was younger, he jumped out the window of my mother’s car at an intersection so I know how he thinks. The floor is sheet metal, so I bought a Frozen fleece blanket on clearance at Walmart for seven dollars and made it into a dog bed that fits between the seats.  He loves to stand on the backseat with his front feet on the side panels.  That is fine when we are on a mountain road, but he has to stay on his bed with my hand on him when we are on the highway.  

It is so much more than a car.  It is a toy, a project, and a conversation starter.  I have learned there is a special hand signal greeting between owners of CJ-7s.  Who knew?  Ours is bright orange (with some interesting areas of black). Sadly, it is more of a Bronco orange than a Tennessee Orange, but that works out here.  I expect by the end of the summer we will know all the other CJ-something owners in town.  I am excited to be Jeep people now.