colorado

Tonight I sit here at my desk with the remains of a fantastic dinner scattered about me.  I felt it necessary to cook a good meal after the crazy/awesome/exhausting weekend I had:  pan-seared steak (thin cut... let's be honest, I didn't go crazy.  Steak is expensive!), gluten-free alfredo, peas, and a small glass of red wine (my first drink since October).  I've been off the medication now for at least a week and a half or more and so I figured I could probably have a glass of wine, so long as I made sure to douse myself with water and follow it up with a couple of fiber supplements.  I am seriously old.  Today when I went to the grocery store, I literally contemplated buying dates vs prunes.  I finally walked away after five minutes of standing there and realizing that I was actually having this debate within myself.  You have to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, this weekend was amazing.  I am seriously sleep-deprived, but it was so worth it.  It's frankly a miracle that I made it through teaching this afternoon and back home without falling asleep along the way.

This weekend, I learned how to ski.

It was incredible.

I went as a chaperone on the youth ski trip with my church.  Totally free for me, so long as I could manage to put up with 40 high schoolers for a weekend and not kill myself on the slopes.

And let me just say, skiing was so stinkin' hard at first.  I swear I fell like 30 times down my first time on a slope that was way too hard for my own good.  One of the other female leaders on the trip had promised she could teach me.  Right.  But then the resort was giving out free lessons and I had an hour of one-on-one time with an instructor who showed me what I needed to be doing and everything got way better.  After that, I probably only fell a total of 5 times in the remaining day and a half that I was there.  It was awesome and totally made me feel like a rockstar that I was able to learn and get down some modest green slopes with relative ease all in the same weekend.  And the whole trip did nothing except to feed my love of beautiful mountain scenery, snow, and cold-weather sports.  I hope my future husband can one day support both my art and my newly-found need to go to Colorado every now and then.  He'd better take me on plenty of ice-skating dates too while we're at it.

I learned a lot about myself on the mountain too.  Skiing is actually a lot like performing at the keyboard.  You really have to just learn to shut everything and everyone else out (even those crazy snowboarders who come flying down the mountain at 90 miles an hour), focus on completing one stretch of slope at a time, concentrate on what you're doing, resolve not to be passive in your efforts, and yet let your subconscious take over to some extent.  I will forever equate the two in my mind from now on.  And I can't wait to get back on the slopes again.  It was so quiet and peaceful up there.  Cold and white, with aspens and evergreens everywhere.  It was perfect and beautiful.  Totally worth feeling like I'd been hit by a truck for two days in a row :)  Not to mention the 20-hour bus trips both ways.  Oy.

And now...?  Well, now that I've pushed myself past the point of physical and emotional exhaustion, I'm going to finish my modest glass of cab, take my dishes to the kitchen, and crawl into bed.