Just Can’t Shut Me Up

Posted on June 19, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

Hi again.  Today is my 29th wedding anniversary.  In a week we head off for our third “honeymoon” – our first was driving out to San Francisco directly after our wedding.  We had some of our wedding flowers in a soda can with water for the ride.  We mostly stayed in cabins along the way, stopping at Mt. Rushmore, The Badlands, Yellowstone and the Tetons.  I distinctly remember having a cabin in Yellowstone with thin walls.  On the other side of the wall was apparently a family.  The kids woke up at an ungodly hour and I remember being really pissed off.  Why couldn’t those parents keep those kids quiet?  Didn’t they know they had an adjoining cabin?  What horrible parents they must be.

Uh, humility check.  Fast forward 3 or four years and somewhere along the line we were called by management to shut our kids up.  It wouldn’t be the last time that happened…

Our second honeymoon was in Hawaii, maybe four plus years into the marriage.  Mom and Dad Horton came to take care of Joe while we went off for a blissful 10 days on the Big Island and then Maui.  The first night we were there on the Big Island on the Kona Coast, the power went out.  The amplifiers of the hotel next door went silent and all that lit up the pier and waterfront were tiki torches for the rest of the evening.  It was quite romantic indeed!

Now we head off to Alaska.  We are like kids on Christmas Eve we are so excited.  As mentioned in a previous blog, we got a great deal at the best time of the year and it includes four days of land travel and a week of cruisin’.  Al goes to Denver for his job gig tomorrow and we meet in Kansas City for niece Lauren’s wedding, then fly directly to Fairbanks.  I have heard from so many people that it’s almost like having a child – no one can tell you what Alaska is like – it is so grand in size and beauty.  So I’m not even trying to imagine.

We will be taking planes, trains and ships on this journey of a lifetime.  I won’t have computer access but I am taking my notebook so I can write quickly and without writer’s cramp as I’m there.  I will also be reading How to Write a Nonfiction Book by Bobbi Linkemer – it’s not so much the writing piece but more the process.  It seems to answer all my unanswered questions.  Where to start? How to find an editor?  How to get started on research?  Blah blah blah.  The subject matter has been chosen – the how and why and who cares of long marriage.  I have now bounced this idea off many people and am getting enthusiastic encouragement and many people who are willing to tell their stories.

As always, if my writing can touch one person I’ll be pleased. If it touches many, so much the better.  One thing I’ve noticed since taking this short sabbatical – I MISS it.  All of a sudden I find myself throughout the day thinking “I’ll have to remember that for the blog.”

Talk to you later….

 

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Is It Over?

Posted on May 30, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

I haven’t written in awhile and I’m wondering – it is over?  Is this part of my writing journey over?  What’s going on here?

Let’s see, it is almost one year since the silent retreat that sent me home with a desire to get it all down.  Since then I’ve written almost two hundred articles – this is number 199.  Since then I’ve left the treating patients part of my physical therapy career behind.  Since then I “cold called” the behind the scenes people at my job and asked for something to do that was not direct patient care.  Since then I have become the person who trains the clinicians to use the computer program out in the field for documentation.  Since then I have been part of a team that educates staff regarding the new Medicare guidelines.  This is a never ending job because Medicare continually has “new guidelines.”  (Welcome to government bureaucracy.)  Since then I have been positioning myself deeper into the back office as the rehab expert at the agency in hopes of having a full time position in the future.  Since then I have connected with an old MU friend who in turn connected me with a woman who has asked me to contribute to her website blog and perhaps in the future carry forth her mission to help caregivers take care of themselves. Since then I have volunteered at Friendly Visitors, a subset of Meals on Wheels and have been paired up with an old dude – we’re trying to get fishing off the Martinez pier but the weather hasn’t cooperated.  Anyway, it fills my need to be with and be helpful to the geriatric set.

Since then I have opened myself to other possibilities.  The idea of “being” a physical therapist for another ten years made me sick to my stomach, not because I didn’t love it, but because it has become too stressful and somewhat boring.  I have seen many women my age and older who are just doin’ the time now, waiting to retire, not passionate anymore about being a physical therapist.  I couldn’t bear to be that person.  It was a grieving process to be sure – how did that enthusiastic 26 year old get here so quickly?

So now I have decisions to make.  I need to make time to grab the opportunity to write a blog on a real website.  I need to really look at my curriculum vitae and write down some of the things that are not physical therapy related.  I need to start my outline for the book I really do want to write about what it takes to be in a long marriage (Mom, are you ready to be interviewed?)

I need to clean off my desk.  (Oh boy, THAT again).

So I’ve been feeling guilty about not writing here, and so I will place this on hold.  Will I be back?  Will it become something else?  Will what I’ve written over the last year be the seeds for something else – written or otherwise?  Who knows, but I need to push something off my plate, and I think this may be what gets set aside for now.

I know some of you have followed this blog fairly regularly.  You know, it is hard to describe, but one of the things that I note about writing for me is that if I have an imagined audience, it all comes flowing out so much more easily.  I recognized that years ago when email came onto the scene.  Emailing people about daily life as a mother sounded so much more interesting than what I wrote in my journals to myself.  So anyway, for you silent readers out there, I can’t thank you enough for reading what I’ve written here.

It wasn’t just about the writing, it was about the journey.  You helped change the course of my life, the way I think about the next half of my life, allowed me to open my brain on these pages and thus open the possibilities beyond a great career that paid well and for that reason seemed inescapable and my “destiny.”  Turns out, my “destiny” is still unknown, but writing this blog helped me in some crazy roundabout way that there is more out there for me, deeper potential to be realized, more to write about someday.

More to write about someday.  Don’t unsubscribe. This may just be a temporary hiatus – actually I hope that is the case – but I felt I wanted to explain why it’s been so deserted here.  Have a great summer everyone!  Perhaps Alaska will have some great stories that I can share (“I didn’t expect when I went on the whale watching boat that I would get so excited I would fall over the side and end up looking into the big ol eye of a whale…)

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Hampton Beach, New Hampshire

Posted on May 17, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

We have to go back someday, Al and I.  It was the summer before I began PT school, the summer we got reacquainted at the baseball game.  A summer of Chicago Symphony under the stars at Ravinia, ball games in the hot bleachers of Wrigley and picnics at the lakefront in Evanston ended with me returning to New York for a visit and him going to Hampton Beach with our friend, Gerry. Gerry’s aunt and uncle had a little beach house there and they would be staying there with Gerry’s parents, George and Esther.

I went to New York and would be ending my trip in Vermont.  Somewhere along the line Al and I spoke on the phone (sometimes I wonder how we survived without cell phones – this all came about in a matter of hours on land lines, unbelievable now) and he tried to convince me to come to Hampton Beach.  I wanted to , but there was one problem, I was down to my last dime.  I had enough money to catch a bus from St. Johnsbury, VT to Springfield, MA.  Al told me he would help me change my plane ticket from MA to Chicago.  It all happened very fast, and within a few hours the plans were made.  I caught the bus and landed in Springfield, much to my dismay there was no one at the bus station.  Here I was, no cell phone, completely broke, no ATM cards, 25 years old, sitting in a bus station, no one there for me.  I remember breathing deep yoga breaths as I wondered what the hell I would do if no one came.  Finally, Gerry came bounding in and off we went.

First stop – gas station for gas and Al threw six packs of cigarettes into the back seat, two of which were mine.  Also unbelievable at this point in my career.  We headed straight for the beach – it had a classic boardwalk, and we partied the week away in the sun, taking a foray up to Maine to see the Grateful Dead outdoors, stopping at a little bar somewhere along the way that played Chicago Blues music.  We were in our prime.

Esther was an alcoholic on oxygen and it didn’t matter how strong the guys poured the drinks in an attempt to get her to retire to bed, she stayed up half the night every night.  Thinking back I’m kind of wondering how we weren’t all blown to smithereens with the oxygen and cigarettes sharing the kitchen space.   We played cards til the wee hours almost every night.  And laughed a lot.

During the day the beach was glorious, we’d stay out until the sun went down, go home for dinner and head back out for the beach night life.  Dave Mason was live in a quaint boardwalk saloon, where we went after we had taken a walk out onto the rocks in the moonlight.  Foolish acts # 1530 in my life – we walked down the narrow spit of sand,  past the rocks that bordered the beach.  I lost my glasses and in those days I only had them or contacts and wearing contacts at the beach was not a pleasant experience. It was the first time Al saw me in utter panic over something like that – just recently he saw it again when I thought I left my cell phone sitting on the toilet paper holder at Best Buy – some things never change.  Miraculously Al found them again on the sand.  It was all meant to be.  Fortunately, while retracing our steps to find my glasses we also noticed that the tide was returning. Midwestern kids.  Duh.  Tide goes out, you walk on the sand. Tide comes in, you die on the rocks.  I was glad I lost my glasses at that point.  God only knows how far we would have walked, stopped to kiss, and walk some more before we were swept out to sea.  Quite a romantic way to die, I suppose…

One evening the beach was emptying, and Al and I snuggled under an umbrella in the sand – close to under the boardwalk I suppose – and were makin’ out.  We surrounded ourselves with umbrellas so I suppose it probably got a bit hot in there, but we laughed when a couple of guys walked by on the boardwalk and yelled “Give it to her once for me.”  Well, I never, at least not in a public place.

I told the guys I would make all the sandwiches and generally be a lady in waiting since I had no more money, if they would support my second week of vacation.  It was a deal.  At one point Al turned to me and said “You really don’t have a dime, do you?”  Nope.  When we returned to Evanston, Al told me to go make a couple of sandwiches, at which point I said two words that he remembers to this day: “Vacation’s over.”

What, you thought I would remain a kept woman?  Not.  But when we sing “Under the Boardwalk” during our spring concert this year, I get all misty eyed thinking about that beautiful week in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.  “On a blanket with my baby, that’s where I’ll be…”

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What Dogs Eat

Posted on May 16, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

I heard an ad on the radio this morning, a guy saying his dog loves Such and Such Dog Food.  He’s tried expensive dog food, cheap dog food, organic dog food, and his dog hasn’t like any of those as much as Such and Such Dog Food.  I do not understand this at all.Ed will eat anything, and George before him.  Here is a list of things George would eat.

Anything on the kitchen counter, including but not limited to:

  • breaded scallops, specifically: breaded scallops that Al had taken great pains to prepare – dipping into the flour, dipping into the egg, dipping into the bread crumbs, rinsing his fingers in between each scallop so that they wouldn’t get lumpy, letting them rest on a rack to “set” while he went to check the ball scores…oops, all gone; never ever seen Al so mad. Al doesn’t really get mad.  He threw a folding chair a la Bobby Knight that day.
  • a cake made to look like a big Leggo for Jeff’s third birthday, oh it was scrumptious looking I know – made in a bread pan, topped with two cupcake “Leggo pegs,”  frosted with red buttercream, resting on the counter while I went up to grab some real Leggos…oops, again
  • frozen Easter ham defrosting in the sink, we cut off the “bad” part and cooked it anyway
  • 5 pounds of raw beef ribs
  • basket full of Easter candy; no he didn’t die, but he was damn sick all over the bedroom floor

Things we know he ate from our doody duty in the backyard:

  • several times it appeared he ate rags
  • several times it appeared he ate ropes
  • multicolored crayons
  • don’t mean to gross you out but sometimes dogs eat their own doody – there are pills for it that stop it – friggin’ dogs; that’s why I don’t like dogs to lick my face…

Other stuff:

  • the bread we got from Acoma pueblo – homemade, sitting on the floor of the front seat while we went to the bathroom.  oops.
  • I’m sure the guys will remember more stuff when they read this.

On to Ed The Dog:

He will eat anything on the kitchen floor – he does not get on the counters – hey, we are human, we learn.  I don’t have to worry about anything I drop on the floor while I’m cooking – garlic, popcorn, onions, tomatoes, avocados, meat of any kind.  He’s a Kleenex eater – just yesterday we put him in our bedroom because the cable guy was here, when I went to let him out he  was walking around with a piece of tissue from the trash can hanging out of his mouth, oblivious to the fact that he a)had been busted and b) looked ridiculous.  He’s getting old, he doesn’t even slink around anymore like he’s done something wrong, just waggles his tail and smiles with the Kleenex hanging out of his mouth.  He also eats grass like a cow when he’s outdoors.

As far as dog food – are you serious?  Both of them would eat anything you put in their dish.  They get good old fashioned Purina Dog Chow or Kirkland or Whatever Is On Sale at Petco.  Ed will also eat cat food if given half a chance.

I dunno about that guy on the radio, honestly.

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Ice cream

Posted on May 13, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

Just when I think I’ve run out of things to say, something like this comes along.  First, some background.  I was talking to my sister, lo so many eons ago, and she gave me a great tip – you can freeze those bananas that have started to go bad.  Now, I’m not sure why I needed this tip at that time  – why was I buying so many bananas, and why were they going bad?  Now, it seems, between Al and Andy and me, we can’t keep enough bananas in the house.

Apparently back then this tip was welcomed with great fanfare and before you know it I had a stash of bananas in the freezer.  Then it occurred to me – uh, now what?  I had 25 frozen overripe bananas in my freezer – what was I supposed to do with them? Every time I opened the freezer door bananas would fall out.  They’d get in the way of things I was trying to put into the freezer – bananas don’t stack well and generally speaking frozen ones seem to move around independently of human intervention.  I’d put them in the shelf on the freezer door, and they’d be skulking just behind the door waiting to ambush me when I opened it.  Or they’d hide deep in the freezer so that you couldn’t move the neat stack of freezable storage containers into the corner.  After one such episode of wrestling with frozen bananas, I got giggling so hard I called my sister and demanded to know why she had told me this “tip.”  Was this some kind of adult sibling rivalry thing or what? After we regained our composure we realized that except for banana bread and the chocolate dipped frozen banana treat (I never did get the hang of that) there probably wasn’t much point.  I quit saving bananas.

Until now.  Dateline May 13, 2011 (holey moley it’s Friday the 13th – stay away from creepy abandoned houses and weird looking guys with knives today):  I open my Facebook and one of my sons has posted this article link: How To Make Ice Cream With Just One Ingredient.  Ok, I’ll bite.

Bananas.  Freeze em.  Whirl em up in the blender.  Rich creamy ice cream.  Of course right now I’m out of bananas (a fact that starts my day off with annoyance as I grab for my daily cereal banana).  The author states you can add stuff if you want – honey, chocolate – for a two ingredient ice cream.  I’m definitely going to try it.  It cracked me up, though, that the article said that she found out about this when – are you ready? – her SISTER called her and told her she’d been freezing bananas and then pureeing them into ice cream.

Jan, you’re the older sibling.  You’re supposed to have the skinny (har har har) on this stuff.  You know that the number one tenet in the Horton Family Code of Honor  is “a day without ice cream is not worth living.”  HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW THIS?

I can’t wait to try this. I have been watching my fat intake (yes it’s working, thank you very much for noticing – that and my addiction to WiiFit) and ice cream deprivation is my biggest bummer. Bananas are not exactly lo cal come to think of it – one large is 135 cal – but it’s better to have bananas lying around the freezer than a tub of vanilla ice cream, which can turn my self control into soft creamy frozen confection  with one spoonful.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

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Star Crossed and Starry Eyed

Posted on May 6, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

One more reason I am crazy about the guy I married: he loves shooting stars – I mean how romantic is that?  When Halley’s Comet came around in 1986 and Joe was just a year old in a car seat, we went out with friends to Mt Diablo, I think, in the middle of the night, to see it.  We took lots of pictures of ourselves and Joe in the car seat, telling him as if he understood that when he was 75 years old he would be able to say he was at the last go round as well.

Over the years Al would be our leading astronomer as we pulled out sleeping bags and blankets to watch the Perseids every August from our front patio or rooftop.  One year he dragged us up to wine country to see a less famous but even more spectacular comet – we had to get up at 2 a.m. for that, took all our stuff out of the cabin and settled on the ground – you could really see it, too.  The kids were pretty little and it is doubtful that they have a conscious memory of it, but those are the kinds of things that form little brains into instruments of wonderment.   Star gazing while camping – a given.  We used to get our star maps out to find constellations but after a while that gets kind of silly and all you really want to do is stare.

One year Al and I went off to a marriage retreat.  We were really struggling – the program was called Retrouvaille and is  for marriages that are at the end of their ropes.  Our counselor told us Marriage Encounter was like an oil change.  Retrouvaille was an engine overhaul.  I remember sitting in the car on the way to the peninsula retreat house and thinking “well, this is among the last times I will have to put up with this SOB’s lousy driving. ” I was not convinced things were going to improve.  Obviously I was wrong and it was a healing weekend that allowed us to move forward.  The boys were being cared for by a young man in the community and when we called home on Saturday an excited and take-charge Joe informed us that the meteor showers were occurring and that they had big plans to get up and watch them – which they did.

Among all the things that went down that weekend at the retreat – the letters to each other, the times talking it out, the prayers, it was that phone call that reminded me why it was worth putting up with Al’s driving (he’s really not that bad, I just don’t like not being in control) for another 40 or 50 years.  If nothing else, he has been the best father to my sons that a woman could ask for.  And of course, there is so much more “else” that keeps me starry eyed.

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Orange Ya Glad Ya Live Here?

Posted on May 3, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

I do not want to live in California forever.  That much is clear, but spring in California – it doesn’t get any better.  We’ve had a very very rainy winter, which I love – fireplace and books and sewing – and now the sun has reappeared and all’s right with the world, and so much sweeter for the constant rain we had.  Mamas and Papas are strolling with their newborns snuggled on their chests and their toddlers in strollers, the parks are filled with people and kids, the tulips have done their thing and now the iris step to center stage, the roses are ready to bloom ( deer: step away from the rosebush, step away from the rosebush).

This is the year our orange tree matured, graduated from college, moved out of the house and started a family of its own.  We have a bumper crop of oranges, I am having to give them away.  They are small, no bigger than a tennis ball.  You can’t really peel them, only cut them in quarters, bring them to your lips and have the pulp melt off the peel and into your mouth.  I have never tasted such sweet and juicy oranges.  I can’t even believe they are from my tree.  The last few years were sparse – no fruit at all one year, and one year we had a showing but the squirrels got to them first.  Finally my efforts of oil spraying to keep away pests and fertilizing have paid off.

Over the weekend we got up bright and early and met our old friend Jeff at Pacifica Sea Bowl, a vintage bowling lanes on the coast that has Sunday morning $15/lane bowling 9-10:30 a.m.  We could have taken photos of the clear and sunny coastline and used them for postcards it was so quintessential.  It reminded me of when Al and I first lived here – newly wed, to each other and the California.  We’d camp at least once a month in the good weather and honeymooned our way to the land of the Beach Boys and I couldn’t believe our good fortune.  We have had many wonderful beach vacations with the whole family.  I often chastise myself that I don’t make time to go to the ocean more often – it’s half an hour a way for heaven’s sake.

I don’t know.  Maybe we’ll stay.  I have made peace with Illinois and now feel it is within my capability to go there each year for a month to soothe my midwestern soul.  And with my Jeff moving to Kansas (you didn’t know?) I will get some wheat fixes in that way too.

I’d keep writing but I can’t wait another second, I need to go eat an orange.

P.S. I bowled a 126, a lifetime record for me.  Maybe I’m actually starting to “get it.”  My average is a solid 84, I was very excited to get that over-hundred and twenty score.  Skiing, bowling, I’m having my second childhood…

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True Love

Posted on May 2, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

As usual, I don’t care what anybody says.  The Royal Wedding was a breath of fresh air in a dreary world.  First of all, the two young people are clearly quite fond of each other.  No fear in their eyes, no obvious wedding jitters, they just stood there on the altar perfectly comfortable in their own little world.  He’s handsome with his mother’s glint in his eye and clever smile and doesn’t seem to care about his balding pate, and no one could say she isn’t a stunningly beautiful woman – could it be her smile?

Many people don’t get what the big deal is about.  And I know, people are starving and all that money was spent.  What I saw money being spent on, though, were intangibles.  Beauty.  Joy.  Love.  Commitment.  Forgiveness (hey nobody threw tomatoes at Camilla and Charles).  A dash of mischief (that Prince Harry, he’s a pip, isn’t he?)  Happily ever after.  Thousands of people in the street waving flags, not burning them.  Crowds of people throwing flowers and smiling and waving, not setting things on fire and killing each other.  Ten times that amount of money gets spent every day on weapons and prisons with no end in sight.

I say toss a bit of money into showing the world what love between two human beings looks like.  Who knows what goodness of the human spirit around the world might be inspired by such a basic and positive human emotion and need – broadcast around the world for all to see.  The  old radio show ‘The Shadow” started out with the warning: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?  The Shadow knows.”

Rather we should say “who know what goodness lurks in the heart of man?”  I think young lovers everywhere may give us a glimpse of the answer to that question.

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Tonight

Posted on April 29, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

Tonight a friend is dying.  She is not a close friend, not someone I talk to all the time, not someone I have ever socialized with much, but a friend nevertheless.  She is dying of cancer as we speak.  Her sister, Susie, is here from Alaska to tend to her.  Susie was one of the first people I met in California, she worked at SF General with me.  She was a bit older than I, a native Californian, talkative, exuberant, full of energy, always smiling.  She is a river rafter, capable of being the “captain” of the raft (or whatever you call that person – basically the person who scopes out the river, sees where you’re supposed to go, and yells at you a lot to ROW! ROW! ROW! especially at the rapids.  Row or die, I guess.)  She had bicycled all over kingdom come.  She went to law school.  She had great parties at her house in SF. She was auntie to my children when they were little.  She left SF to go to Alaska and find a husband, which she did.  Susie makes plans and follows through.

The first time I met her sister was on a river rafting trip.  She is just as nice as Susie.  I loved her the minute I met her.  The next time I saw her was when Susie was pregnant, and visiting me.  We stopped at a Garden Center at which point Susie collapsed in sweat and lightheadedness.  I took her to the hospital where she miscarried.  I called her sister, who came and took over the care for her sister.  I remember looking at each other, our common love for Susie and sorrow in our grief exchanged in our eyes.

I saw her again after Susie’s second, successful pregnancy.  She held a gathering at her house for Susie’s friends and her baby daughter, and regaled us with stories of her string of foreign exchange students.  Her two children were growing up – how does that happen so quickly?  I still liked her just as much as I liked Susie.  How rare is that? Two stellar sisters in one family?

Two years ago she helped me when we had the foreign exchange student from hell.  He was from Brazil, which was her favorite country and she had hosted many Brazilian students.  She took him for a weekend and confirmed that it was him and not us, and that he should have been screened out of the program.  After that she told me to grab Al and come to the city – she had found all the blues clubs and wanted us to join her on Sunday afternoons for great blues music.  We never got around to it.

Now she is dying.  I probably saw her a total of five times in my life, but my heart is breaking as I write.  We shared Susie.  She was always a bright spot in my life when I did see her.  I don’t want her to go quite yet.

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I’m Ba-a-a-ack!

Posted on April 23, 2011 by favoritephilosopher

I’m so psyched.  Yesterday was a breakthrough day for me on the ski slopes.  My patience has paid off.  My new boots are near perfect. They have Super Feet insoles to replace the factory insoles and I now know which buckles need to be buckled tight and which ones are practically for appearance.  I will tweak them a bit more but all in all I was pleased that my toes didn’t fall asleep and I didn’t fall at all.  For the uninitiated, ski boot buckles are almost impossible to close tight enough even when you are twenty years old.  At my age it is impossible.  The buckle at the ankle needs to be good and tight to keep your heel from moving in the boot.  I needed leverage to get that buckle closed properly. In the past I have been ready fora nap just with the effort of getting the buckles closed.

Amazingly enough there is no gadget that I could find on the internet that is made specifically for leveraging ski boot buckles.  So…crafty girl that I am, I put my thinking cap on and came up with the perfect tool – a paint can opener.  The only problem it is needs a cap of some sort because I need to put it in my pocket for adjustments on the slopes.  I can see it now, my Mother rolling her eyes at my funeral because my liver got impaled by a paint can opener during a nasty spill on the mountain.  She didn’t know about it or she would have warned me that it was dangerous, but now it would be too late.  I am thinking a pen top will probably work just fine.

Equipment issues taken care of, the next order of business was my courage.  You might remember from our last installment I was terrified the first time I skied this year after a head-over-heels disaster two years ago, that nearly cost me my knee.  I found out my favorite ski area – Sugar Bowl in Tahoe (sometimes I can’t believe I live 2.5 hours away from a world class ski destination – what was I saying about Illinois?) – not only  has free equipment rentals on general admission days which is every weekday, but also free group lessons.  I have been taking advantage of them and have learned so much about skiing and suddenly – I have my courage back.  Not the courage born of ignorance of what could happen to me because I was not skiing in control, but courage born of knowing how to turn, stop, counteract the urge to lean back instead of crouching forward when I felt like I was going to fall, all kinds of other little tips I have gleaned from taking lessons.

I’m thinking I may just take lessons forever.  It’s not like you aren’t skiing the whole time anyway.  I’m at level two; if I want to make that discount at age 70 I need to keep improving.  Could I be in the senior slalom?  Is there such a thing?  Should I start one?  The ski lessons go up to level 5… Speaking of slalom, on the bunny hill they have the cutest little slalom course you ever saw and I did it.  What a kick! I do it on WiiFit all the time but it’s not the same….

I really thought my skiing days had come to an end after the tragedy of two years ago.  After yesterday, when it all started to come together again, better than before, I feel like I’m 23 years old again, but with a smarter brain.  I hated to leave the hill, and am even sadder that there will be nothing now until November.  But I leave 2010-2011 ski season with a real feeling of accomplishment, confidence and excitement for the future.

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