a day of celebration

word is that he was surrounded by family and friends until the end. they held his hand and sang to him and told him stories and he was happy until the very last minute. his family is peaceful about his passing and celebrates a life well-lived.

not a bad way to go at all.

sad day

today is a sad day. all around the world there are people saying that exact thing. there must be a million or maybe a hundred million reasons why today is a sad day for some people.
today is a sad day because my friend's father is on his death bed after a long struggle with cancer. i feel sad for her and her mom, and her dad, too, because he never got to grow old and live his life out with his wife or see his daughter get married to the man who asked her daddy's blessing just before he started chemo.
i can't imagine what it feels like to sit by and wait for the person you love to die. the thought of it makes me physically ill. the news was that he won't make it to the end of the day. what do you say? what do you pray for? do you dare hope to drag it out another day? what do you say to your daughter? i don't know.
today my heart goes out to this family. i know there are no words to console grief like theirs.

not taking the hint

so i've taken two pretty serious spills lately on a snowboard. last weekend i tried to ride a rail (again, i know, right?) fell before i even got there and hit my back on the metal corner. only missed my spine by about 1/2 inch. cried (i've tried to ride a rail 4 times in my life and i have cried every single time).
then saturday i took a jump in the baby park at breck. actually got a little air (i'm learning how to pull my knees up when i jump) and then landed it, caught my heel edge and fell backwards, hitting my head pretty solidly (i wear a helmet, of course but it still freakin' hurt) and causing something to crack within my neck. i didn't feel the pain in my neck until about 10 minutes later at which point i realized i couldn't turn my head. since then i have slept almost non-stop. i wonder if i concussed myself or something, because i can't stop sleeping. i'm going to try to take today nap-free. we'll see how that goes.
since i never remember to take the camera where i go, here's my vision of what i look like snowboarding. i accidentally drew myself left-front instead of goofy, and although i haven't seen sun in a while, i don't think i'm that pale, but otherwise, it's pretty much exact. :)

i think so, anyway.

so the point here is... seems like maybe the big guy upstairs is trying to warn me that i shouldn't be trying to hop on and over things on my board like a 12 year old. every injury lately has been a "wow, i was really lucky it wasn't an inch to the left" sort of thing. so i guess i should be taking a hint, but NO WAY

it's just too much fun

houseguest, kids and peace

three things i have on my mind don't really go together at all, but i am going to lump them together into one blog post.

houseguest
my high school art teacher is coming to stay with me for somewhere between 5 to 9 days. i don't know for how long, honestly. he's getting to town tonight and leaving the 24th. that's really all i know. the problem is that i think we lead kind of different lifestyles. ooh, speaking of lifestyles, i have a fourth topic for my posting: phone sex. but that's another story for later. so this art teacher is of a very different religious faith than i am. i think he is offended by foul language and movies of a sexual nature. he doesn't drink at all--although i think he'll go to a happy hour every now and then. i'm not really sure what to do with him, really. when i asked him what he wanted to do, he said he would like to cook for us. that's really nice, but it's not going to fill up 9 days. i guess we'll see. i'm feeling a little anxious about the whole thing.

next topic: kids
my husband and i talked about when we'd like to have kids. he wants them sooner than later. i want them not really at all. we decided two years is a good compromise.
ugh

next: peace
i feel most at peace when i'm snowboarding. the cold wind barely leaking through my goggles, puffs of powdery snow wisping to each side... just the slightest move alters my direction and i'm always just a tiny wrong movement away from a crash... and yet i glide along, blissfully unaware of how i look or who's watching. just feeling in control of my body, but only barely. it's amazing.

and finally: phone sex
our bowling partner has a second job as a phone sex operator on the weekends. she just told me about it monday league night. next week she's going to bring some items from her "treasure chest" and have us play for sexual prizes. i don't know how i feel about it, really. kind of freaked out to tell the truth. i'll write about it if it's anything good.

weekend realization

i came to a startling conclusion this weekend. i shouldn't have been surprised by it, but i was. i don't know when it happened, but i got old. older, anyway. and i don't know if that's okay with me. i mean, i don't feel like i've changed much, but i guess i need to. i still have the same sense of silliness and adventure... a sense that anything is possible if i actually try, but since i'm too scared or maybe lazy to, nothing happens. to me, there are few things better than a night of silliness. maybe even drunken debauchery... a night of stupid funny behavior... a night ending no earlier than the next morning. a night of one fun thing followed by the next... of hugging strangers and singing out loud.
apparently i have few of these nights to look forward to.
my boy and me rented a condo in the mountains for the weekend. it was a sweet penthouse right at the base of a ski mountain and within walking distance of all the town had to offer. we bought it for the weekend through this silent auction to help raise money for homeless colorado. we had huge plans for it... maybe throw a superbowl party there, or invite a bunch of people up to stay with us; sleep where you can find a spot type of deal. turned out we invited two couples to join us, one who just got engaged and another that was married about 3 months ago. the engaged couple's 9 year old (the woman's child from another relationship)'s babysitter fell through. it ended up as 6 20 and 30-somethings and a 9 year old. i can deal with that. things happen, right? well
we were sleeping every night by like 10. the one night we went out to a kind of late dinner, the mom and kid waited in the car for us to finish because the kid was sleeping at the table. there was no silliness. no singing... no hugging of the stranger. we went through maybe like 20 beers total for the weekend. maybe. for 6 adults. 20 beers. one weekend.
that is so wrong.
when everyone finally left, i asked my hubs, "did you have a good time?" and he replied really enthusiastically "yes, i really did" and then i lied and said that i did, too. there was nothing that great about it. truly. and i just know that things will continue to become more and more boring, and that i'm supposed to change and learn to accept the subtleties and enjoy the simplicity of life. well, i don't. not even a little. it eats me up inside because i don't know how to be happy as an adult. i need to let the playful nature of a child out of me or i'm going to explode.
why does growing older have to suck so much? seriously