Public Humiliation

So I haven't really written about my humiliating ski lesson last week. The one that I'm still sore from...4 days later. The one where I stamped my skis and said a bunch of bad words--not always under my breath. Or how about where I thought I was going to fall into a tree well and die.

I love skiing. Although last week I was unsure why, exactly.

It has been fun to see the boys learn to ski (except for the crashing--I could do without seeing/hearing about THEM crashing). To see them go from just wobbling around on their skis to skiing better than me, in Declan's case. I take lessons because I want to continue to improve. And, I don't want the boys to be that much better than me, if I can help it. I'm competitive that way.

Anyway, last week I was in the horrendous ski lesson. It was a male instructor and two other men. One dude was 65 and is having a knee replacement in March. And he pretty much tore my legs off all day. Not that I find that embarassing or anything. But I wanted to challenge myself. I'm sort of stuck at this high intermediate level and I want to be better. I want to ski steeper runs with more confidence. I want to ski bumps. I want to ski powder.

I was feeling all confident and went out with this group. I was OK at the start, but then, I wanted to leave. I wanted to ski into the trees (without hitting any of them) and hide until they all went away. Maybe ski patrol could just find me in their sweep at the end of the day and I could say I got lost or separated from my group. We were coming down runs that were making me whimper and say things like, "I can't! I'm afraid!" And I was.

Then there was the point that I was just sliding down a run on my back. As it was a steep run, I was going pretty fast on my back. Faster than I'd actually been going on my skis, I'm pretty certain. As an FYI, a lot of snow goes down your coat in that position.

After one ridiculous descent, the instructor, who was really good incidentally and I'd take a lesson from him again, came over to me. I was standing to the side of the lift line shaking the snow out of my underwear. The two other men in the group sort of skiied past me because I think they knew the instructor wanted to talk to me. So he skis up. I can't tell if he's amused or horrified.

Him: "Um, what happened there on Cataract?"

Me: "Which part? Where I slid down on my back? Where I slid down on my side? Where I fell backwards? Could you be more specific? Or did you mean where I almost ran into the tree before that vertical drop?"

I was kind of grumpy at that point.

I struggled through three embarassing black diamond runs before the old guy's knee was giving out (FINALLY my prayers were answered--I thought I was going to have to get all Tonya Harding on him to take him out) and we had to go to some cruisers to finish up the day (I have never been so relieved).

I've spent the last four days cringing thinking about that lesson. I've had a chance to lick my wounds, pretend it really wasn't that bad, and bathe myself in Ben Gay.

Tonight I stayed up late to finish my work so I can go do it all again tomorrow.

Totally whack.

And on Today's Episode of "As the Emergency Room Turns..."

In the last ten and three quarters years, I have spent more time in emergency medical situations than I did in the entire first 32 years of my life.

I remember when I was in fifth grade and my teacher, who had two boys, would tell stories about how his sons were constantly breaking or spraining appendages, requiring stitches, or getting general injuries requiring medical attention.

Having two sisters, I totally couldn't relate. Girls. We just don't tend to end up in the ER as often, apparently. At least not in my family.

As a result, I feel woefully unprepared for the medical drama that is associated with boys. You know, like scalpings, impalement, hypoxia, wrist breakages, other miscellaneous scalp lacs and head traumas. Please note: not all of these injuries belong to the little people in this house.

Anyway, for the last two days, the boys have been at Learn to Ski days for school. Since they would be skiing until 3:30pm each day, I took advantage of the opportunity to take a ski lesson myself.

I won't go into the various forms of torture my ski instructor put me through, but today, I wasn't so eager to run back out to the mountain. So I stayed home getting caught up on work. Around 12:45pm, I realized I was going to be finished around 1:30pm and since I had to go to the resort to pick up the kids anyway, I figured I'd at least go make a couple of runs to be sure all of my limbs were still in working order.

Thirty seconds later, the phone rang. It was Eamonn saying that he had just received a call. Declan had "taken a digger," in his words, and was at the mountain's medical center.

Now, over the years I've worked to stay calm in a crisis, but the first words out of my mouth were, "Why did they call you insted of me?" Not, "Oh no! My baby! Is he hurt?" Maybe I need to be a little less calm in a crisis and not worry why the medical people didn't call me since I was the one on the emergency contact forms (Turns out, Declan gave them the wrong phone number for me, but remembered Eamonn's number perfectly. I reminded him that BOTH numbers are on the back of his helmet...and in the pocket of his coat...).

Anyway, I was still in my workout clothes so I threw on real clothing and ran out the door.

Declan had been skiing down a steep-ish run and, in Eamonn's words, "took a digger," hitting himself in the nose with his ski pole on the way down and leaving a nice pool of blood in the snow which always creates a lot of excitement--all of that red on the lovely contrasting white, right? Because there was a lot of blood and he was dizzy, his ski instructor called ski patrol and Declan became the first person in our family to have the honor of being littered off the mountain on the ski patrol sled.

Sweet.

(I had a million questions about how comfortable that was. He said it wasn't that bad.)

An x-ray confirmed there was no serious injury. Words like "nasal contusion" and "mild closed head injury" are on the discharge papers (as in, his nose is bruised and he bumped his head). However, he is restricted from any sports for the next week. He'll be cleared to play hockey just before his game next Saturday (good news since he's the goalie). They take head injuries very seriously these days.

Once discharged, he ate a cheeseburger the size of Texas with a side of fries and then ran down the Beaver Creek cookie lady to get one of the free, warm chocolate chip cookies that are given out every day at 3pm.

I'm pretty sure he's feeling just fine.

See you next time on "As the Emergency Room Turns." Or not if we're lucky. Ha.

'Twas the Night After Christmas

One of my favorite Christmas albums (now converted to a CD because who has a turntable anymore?) is by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians and it was one of the annual albums put out by Firestone. I think my parents got these free each year when they put snow tires on. Speaking of which, remember the days when people still put snow tires on in the winter? (We still do that out here and they're actually on more months of the year than our summer tires. But I digress)

So, back to Fred Waring from Firestone.

Side 1 is the "fun" side and has great versions of Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The last song is 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (in fact, it's the name of the album), but it has a little add-on that always made me a little melancholy when I would hear it because it kind of sums up the end of Christmas. When you're a kid, you aren't about the anticipation of Christmas (not like now, when I'm old. Er.). You just want Christmas to GET HERE NOW.

So the add-on to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on the Fred Waring album goes like this:

'Twas the night after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The presents are scattered and broken I fear, and St. Nicholas won't come again for a year.

The children are nestled all snug in their wee little beds, while memories of sugar plums dance in their wee little heads.

Mama in her kerchief, papa in his cap, are settled at last, for a long winter's nap.

We actually had a great day after Christmas. We had discussed going skiing, but when this morning rolled around, I felt very unmotivated. It wouldn't have been hard at all to convince me to stay home.

Fortunately, Eamonn was more motivated and we had a great day out in the fresh air--which we badly needed!

Finn had his first day with poles (you don't typically ski with poles until you reach a certain level) so he was pretty excited. Or so it seemed when I was following him down the mountain with his WOOOO HOOOOs flying over his shoulder.

I could be mistaken.





Now I'm bingeing on leftovers and watching White Christmas.

Again.

End of the Season

Today was the last day of the ski season at the resort where I worked again this year. It was time. I found myself grouchy and impatient with guests, even on my last day last week.

I know they're on vacation. I'm grateful they come here and spend their dollars when they have many other choices. Working in a resort does make me think about my own behavior on vacation. Am I late places? Maybe sometimes. But I do find it strange that people show up for a ski lesson at 10:30am or so and expect to be accomodated when the lesson started at 9:00am. Do I obey the traffic laws? I try to. But if I got somewhere and an area used roundabouts instead of 4-way stop signs and I was unfamiliar with said roundabouts, I might ask someone how to drive on them instead of doing crazy things like stopping on them or driving all the way around in the outside lane.

There are countless other things, but the season is over and I can refrain from complaining. Until the summer visitors get here.

I had planned to take a zillion pictures of the boys and their friends skiing today and I didn't get my camera out once. It was hot. The snow conditions ranged from great to horrible. I was concentrating on not blowing out a knee on the last day.

But Tara and I skiied last Friday in incredibly great conditions. I thought the view into this tree run was pretty.


Then we skiied in and I crashed and burned the whole way through it.


This is the view from the top of one of my favorite runs--Rose Bowl. Tara is a little dot down at the bottom of the picture.

Now I'm ready to put the ski gear away and look forward to summer. This week I will be washing all of our ski garb which will likely trigger a snowstorm.

Just wanted to warn you.

Beer. It's What's for Easter.

The boys and some friends enjoying a little apres ski on Easter Sunday.

I'm kidding, of course. They didn't drink beer. They did shots.

Kidding again. We would never let them do shots on Easter.

We woke up to this:


But later it cleared and we headed to the mountain, met up with some friends, and spent the day skiing.

Finn was crabby. Found out later he was getting sick. We made him keep skiing because we want our kids to be tough mountain kids. And we're clueless. And we wanted to stay until it was s'more making time at the fire pit.


We made it to the fire pit. The kids made s'mores. I ate 4 homemade gourmet marshmellows (toffee x2, vanilla bean, kahlua). I didn't drink any beer because I didn't want to ruin my preparation for my detox food plan I was starting on Monday. Apparently I didn't feel the marshmellows would be a problem.

Preparing for Easter, the day before.



We're now busy eating a lot of hardboiled eggs. Well, not me, because I'm trying to be a gluten-free vegan for the next two weeks. I'll report back on how that goes. I've discovered it's really hard to be a gluten-free vegan when you decide to make brownies for teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week. Let alone the week after Easter.


Hunting for eggs. Note the hockey bag in the background. It's usually packed away by this time of year. This year's a little different. More on that later. . .




Here's the view out the back door this morning.


At least it didn't happen on April Fool's Day.

What Unemployed People Do When You're Not Looking

(I have no idea why the sound didn't upload.)

"Are you actively seeking employment?"

Um, yes?

As of yesterday, Eamonn is unemployed again. It's the nature of the beast in this economy when you're a carpenter. It seems to be causing me more angst than Eamonn. He seems remarkably relaxed.

In fact, with some new snow, we decided to go skiing today. As you can see.

This little clip is was taken in an area at Beaver Creek called Stone Creek Meadows. It's part of one of my favorite runs, Rose Bowl.

Anyway, about the unemployment. We were discussing different home projects he could accomplish while unemployed. I was getting kind of excited about some of them.

In fact, I suggested that he start some sort of demolition project in the house. That always seems to guarantee he'll get work--right after he starts tearing things up.

Then we got home and he already has some irons in the fire for work. Which is great and exciting and eases my mind about some purchases I recently made, but that are inappropriate for the wife an unemployed carpenter.

I think my Honey Do list is going up in smoke.

But that's a good thing.

School is in Session

And when you live in a ski resort town, this is what school looks like for a few days each winter:


Declan and his class get the scoop from their snowboard instructor.


Practicing what they learned.


"Mom, you're distracting me."

I feel certain that if I had had the opportunity to learn to ski while in elementary school, you would be seeing me at the Olympics in a few weeks. Or maybe I mean 20 years ago. I guess it's a little late to go now.

Holiday Festivities, Part II

Happy New Year! Now that it's 2010, I'd better wrap up my holiday festivities posts and move on with the times.

Where was I?


I don't think I wrote about the gingerbread house building.


Reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" with Grandma.


Getting cookies ready for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.


Or Santa getting here. Ready to run downstairs and pounce on the gifts.


Gift giving. Declan thanks Finn for the hat Finn chose for Declan at the Make-A-Wish shopping event (I received a necklace. Eamonn received a set of Nascar mugs and hot chocolate). It was beyond sweet when he gave us the gifts he chose.


There was skating and hockey at our town outdoor rink.


How strange that I can't find a picture of myself doing a triple salchow.


And some sledding.


A little skiing on New Year's Day. Remind me to pull my coat down next time so I don't look quite so chubby. Or perhaps it's because my pockets are loaded with: trail maps, cat tracks, tissues in my left pocket, lip balm, tissues in my right pocket, cell phone, ID, ski pass, two granola bars, a baggie of walnuts, tissues in my inside pockets, some cash, camera (actually, the guy taking the picture has the camera, so no excuse there, and to top it all off, I'm wearing a 70 oz. Camelbak. That coat is like Mary Poppins' bag.


There was hot chocolate, cookies and marshmellow roasting at the Ritz Carlton. Love that!



And then those individuals who kept skiing and missed marshmellow roasting at the Ritz tried to make up for lost time when we got home.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Cringeworthy

Back in my wild and crazy grad school days, I might have been known to perhaps have a beer or two. . .and get a little silly on occasion. Some nights I might have been a little sillier than others causing some consternation the next day. Marci and I used to call each other the next morning to see if we had done something particularly cringeworthy--just in case our own memories had failed us.

Happily, once I left graduate school, cringeworthy events stopped happening. Until today.

Today I took a ski lesson that reminded me how to be humble. I had a great ski day on my own on Wednesday and apparently I was feeling a little ambitious. Ambitious enough that when the instructor said we might ski some bumps today, I readily agreed. Dope.

When we came out after lunch and headed directly to a black diamond run, I tried to skulk away. No such luck. A few runs later found me sliding down a bump run on my back. As I lay there in the snow, the instructor asking me if I was OK, I told him to just go away and leave me for the coyotes. It sounded like a better fate then trying to get down the rest of the run.

Later, after a miserable trip down the same black run from earlier, I was huffing and puffing at the bottom when a woman, who was skiing with her friends, zoomed up behind me and beamed, "That was so much fun!" I strongly considered knocking her down and poking her full of holes with my ski pole, but there were too many witnesses nearby to later claim that she was attacked by a flock of Alfred Hitchcock's birds. Where is Tipi Hedron when I need her?

So basically, I've been cringing since the end of the day. I hope I never see my instructor, Travis, again. And it isn't even because I was smooching him at 2am after a few too many beers. What a waste.

I'm Giddy with Excitement!

Finn learned to ski today!

I thought it would never happen (again with the positive thinking, I know). Last year, he really wanted nothing to do with skiing. Looking back, it was probably a combination of still not a lot of stamina--he'd only finished chemo about four months before we tried him in a ski lesson--and also what we now know is low muscle tone from his sensory processing issues.

But this year seems to be different. Finn's occupational therapy has really helped strengthen his core muscles (I should be so lucky) and we can really see the changes. He didn't even seem to be able to stand on the skis last year. Yesterday when Eamonn mentioned about skiing, Finn expressed interest and we jumped at the chance.

We went to the Ritz Carlton at Bachelor Gulch. Obviously, the hotel is owned by the Ritz, but the ski area is part of the Beaver Creek resort. Anyway, they have a magic carpet (you'll see what that is if you watch the video below) that is open to the public vs. just being for the ski school. So we went there today and while I was out skiing with Declan (very poor skiing by me, I might add. I think I pulled a muscle in my left foot and thought I was going to have to be stretchered off the hill, but Declan, in a nice role reversal, talked me down.) Eamonn taught Finn how to ski!

Check the little bugger out:


I think he did the magic carpet about 30 times.

Now it's 8:10pm. Why isn't he passed out with fatigue?

As an aside, while I was originally taken with watching Finn, I soon became obsessed with how I sounded on the video clip. In a word: ick. Anyone who has ever heard me talk in person--is that what I really sound like??? And egad. I've got to stop shrieking like that.

And as another aide, WOW, the Ritz? That's my kind of place. Not that we could ever afford to actually stay there or anything. Beaver Creek is known for its Cookie Ladies--at 3pm each day, they come out with warm chocolate chip cookies for the skiiers. Sorry Beaver Creek, the Ritz comes out with hot cookies AND hot chocolate! Oh yes, I am easily swayed by hot chocolate. Clearly, my employee loyalty to Vail Resorts is for sale for the price of a cup of hot cocoa.

This is OK for one more week. . .

. . .and just because the mountain is still open. After that, Mother Nature better move on to bigger and better things.

Tara and I drove to Park City last Thursday and spent the weekend with Erin et. al., skiing, eating, laughing, eating, watching movies, eating. I'm fully expecting that my ski pants will be a little snug if I end up going skiing today. But then again, what's new?