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"Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." The cricket's song.

~Charlotte's Web, EB White

In elementary school, one of my teachers read Charlotte's Web to us, page by page, doing all the voices and acting out the scenes. I had read the book on my own, but really enjoyed her reading it to us. The passage above is from one of my favorite parts of the book, although it always makes me sad to read those lines.

I was thinking about the crickets and their song over the weekend, when I was out on the lake in my parent's boat. My favorite spot on that boat is the lounge chair/couch at the stern, right above the engines. Quite literally on top of the engines. Which are loud. As you can imagine, this does little to help my already poor hearing, but I enjoy watching the wake behind the boat, and the jet-skiers who play in the waves the boat makes. This particular boat ride was probably the last of the season, always a bittersweet thing.

It was a chilly ride, even though it was a sunny and reasonably warm day. Soon, it will be too cold (and impossible, but I'll get to that in a minute) to cruise around the lake. The leaves around the lake are starting to change, just small hints of red and orange on sporadic trees. There isn't much undeveloped land on the lake, and we drove past some of the showpiece houses on the northern end. Everyone is getting ready for the closure of the season - the state drains about 20% of the water out of the reservoir in October - and it is always sad to see people pulling out their boats, securing the docks and boat lifts so that they survive the harsh wind and ice of the winter.

The lake is a man-made reservoir, and like many in Ohio, has a muddy bottom. So the water isn't the crystal clear blue of the Gulf of Mexico, or even the bluish green of the big lake, Erie. More brown-ish, although in the right light in the summer, it appears to be a deep, navy blue. Once the wind picks up, and you get a passel of boats on the lake, it gets rather stirred up, and can look as muddy as the Ganges sometimes.

Uncle State of Ohio lowers the level of the water in the fall because the ice in the winter would destroy the dam at the lake's northern edge, between the expansion of the water when it freezes and the enormous pressure brought to bear on the dam from a lake full of ice. Understanding the reason behind the lower level of water doesn't make it any nicer to see; if you ask me, the lake looks forlorn when landside docks don't reach the water, and the muddy bottom is exposed to the cold light of day.

I grew up around boats and water, am comfortable on the water even though one of my greatest fears is dying by drowning. Fatalistic? Yeah, maybe. Hey, I've never claimed that I'm reliably sane. But there isn't much that is more soothing to me than floating along on a body of water, be it on a powerboat or sailing, or even on a pool float.

Watching the wake a powerboat makes has always fascinated me. In the Gulf down in Florida, if you're in the right spot and going the right speed, dolphins will come and play in the wake, leaping out of the water to plunge back into the slipstream the wake makes, seemingly so close that you could reach over the stern and pet them. You never know when or where they will pop up, so it is always a thrill when they do. I half expect to see them here up nawth, too, even though I know full well that there's nothing even close to the size of a dolphin in any of the fresh water lakes where I play in the summer time.

I remember an animated film from my childhood about unicorns that did a neat trick of changing the waves and the spray from the ocean rolling in on a beach into galloping unicorns. (The Last Unicorn, for those who care.) The Swedes use an expression that translates literally as "white horses" when describing rough seas, and I have enough imagination and am enough of a six year old in my head -still- to be able to see those vita hästar in the powerboat's wake.

The light changes as the summer dies; the diamonds dancing on the water are something you don't see in the wintertime, even on the sunniest of days. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for that; the changes in the proximity of the earth to the sun from summer to winter; the change of the amount of daylight, something scientific, but I don't know (or care) what that reason is; to me, it signifies the death of the summer, and I can hear the words "summer is over" in the crickets' songs. (Active imagination or actively insane, one or the other!)

Fall is my favorite time of the year here, so bittersweet indeed is the change of the seasons to me. As much as I love the crisp, cool days the fall brings, the occasional whiff of (illegally) burning leaves, cold apple cider, pumpkin cookies, the gingerbread I begin craving as soon as the temperature drops, and the beautiful color show that nature puts on for us in September and October, there is something inherently sad in summer leaving us. I understand the Greeks and the Romans for coming up with mythology that explained the winter as a season of Demeter mourning Persephone. The shorter days ARE sad. Beautiful, colorful, crisp and near-perfect, but sad nonetheless.

Ladies and Gents, welcome to 2009

This is a storytelling post.  Unfortunately, unlike the other storytelling posts, this story has no end.  Yet.

Laundry might be the bane of my existence.  It is never, ever, ever done.  If things are running along swimmingly (which, um, when, exactly does that happen?) I would start a load of laundry in the morning, allowing it to run mostly while I'm at work, because it is loud, and obnoxious.  That load would be tossed in the dryer when I got home, and folded before I went to bed.  Then, there would not be what the Fly Lady calls  "Mt Wash-More."

Instead, what actually happens is I manage to wash about 3 loads a week, and the clean clothes get tossed on the couch in the living room, and I fold them on Saturdays, catching up with whatever is left over then, too.

One weeknight last week, I came home and took off my coat, hat, scarf.  Have I mentioned lately that it is bloody freezing?  Anyway, I turned away from the closet, and I noticed that a sock had fallen off of the couch.  It makes the house look even messier than really is, and bothers my OCD-urge to have everything put in its place, even when its current place is not where it really  belongs.  So I walked over and picked up the sock, and that, my friends, is where the true trouble began.  Because that innocent black sock was soaking wet.  Not damp from the dryer being out of order, but soaking wet, dripping wet.   From the ceiling above, a drip, drip, drip from a crack we had repaired before we moved into this house.   Dammit.  There went my planned evening of a few glasses of sangria, dinner at a nearby Mexican place, folding the laundry, and going to bed.

Following the trail of water across the ceiling led us upstairs to our bedroom, which is the largest room in the house.  The wall in question had a desk up against it, and we pulled that back to discover a patch of damp drywall, damp enough to push our hands through to the insulation behind.

DH, once upon a time, was a firefighter and had to pull walls down searching for any errant flames, so he attacked the wall and pulled out insulation that was dripping wet, just like my sock.  Bugger.

We pulled off about a 3 square foot area of  that drywall, and discovered a hell of a mess.  Behind the soaking wet insulation was not a pretty picture.  I know almost nothing about construction, so my terminology may be inaccurate, but sometimes that's the way it goes.  The studs that frame the house are covered with a composite material, which looks like particle board.  I know, I know, it is not particle board,  rather, it is an insulating material that is between the pink fiberglass insulation INSIDE the house and the aluminum siding, OUTSIDE the house.  The wall joins up with my neighbor's section of our duplex and creates a 90 degree angle very close to where we ripped all that wet drywall off.  With a flashlight, we took a peek at that angle, and discovered a wall of ice between the aluminum siding and the particle board stuff.  You can reach into it, run your hand up and down that ice wall.  

What I don't know about construction could fill a library full of novels, but I do know that ice shouldn't really be *behind* the aluminum siding.  We had a contractor come the next day, someone we have worked with in the past, so we trust him.  

I have no idea what he did to fix it.

The ice, however, remains a problem, because it is still there.  Whatever contractor J did, it was to keep more water from coming into the house.  The ice that is already there has to go out the same way it came it; via the path of least resistance, and as liquid.  Which means that we will be cleaning up water for quite some time to come. 

Sigh.  

In the meantime, two rooms of my house are torn up, furniture shoved away from its usual spots, and, while not quite the hassle and expense that the leak has caused, something that adds little bit of fuel to this already messy fire.....

My laundry still isn't done.

On Keeping Yer Fat Yap Shut. Or....not.

It is a fine line I walk between over-sharing (hello, mental illness) and keeping myself from being too personal, writing about things that I probably shouldn't.

Its...just...

When something good happens, I want to shout it from the rooftops, even when I maybe shouldn't.  When something is sucking in my life, writing about it is cathartic for me, even therapeutic.  It is very difficult for me to just not dump it all out in a verbal barrage of often meaningless drivel.

(Hi, interweb, BTW.  I sorta missed you while I was away, and sorta didn't, too.  Being back to my usual routine is good.  Being back in the freezing-ass-cold north is *not* good.)

This time around, it is a good thing that I want to over-share about.  A great thing.  A wonderful honor and amazing opportunity, and I. Can't. Talk. About. It.  And of, course, I'm dying to.  Urgh.

Shall we talk about the news instead?  We shall.  The topic du jour upsetting me:

The Israel/Palestinian conflict.  Or, should I say, the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  There is no "right" side to this, IMESHO.  That said, it really bothers me on many levels that Israel is working hard to unseat a democratically elected government.  Like Hamas, don't like Hamas (and I don't) they are the party that was elected in free and fair elections by the Palestinian people.  Where do you get off bleating about "democracy" if you are working to get rid of a democratically elected government?  Regime Change begins at home, people.

I have been watching with much fascination the various cabinet appointments of President-Elect Obama.  An interesting distinction between the Idiot Administration and Obama....daily press conferences.  What a concept!!!  Government operating without stonewalling.  Wow.  I say watching with fascination because it seems to me that he is choosing moderates, across the board.  Not the super-radical liberal nuts that I think many on the opposite side of the aisle feared.  I don't envy the work that the incoming administration has in front of them; fixing the economy is one huge m-effing job.

Oh, and of course, I can't close the post without mentioning my perennial bitch, the weather.  It is January in Ohio.  Bleh!!!  Cold, overcast, and with the added delight of freezing rain today, I'm so glad to have a roof over my head, warm slippers on my feet, and a warm bed to crawl into.  I miss the Florida sunshine already.

It is NOT winter.

Not yet.  December 21, more than a month away, is the official start of winter.  But you wouldn't know that from the weather today.  

Why yes, that is what it looks like outside.  The picture is fuzzy because it is snowing so hard that it made the scene blurry.

I like snow.  I don't like the heat, when it is 90 degrees and 100% humidity.  But I do not like snow in November, especially 6+ inches of snow in November.  We're forecast a grand total of about 7 inches, if (and that's a big if) we get everything the weatherman says we will.

November.  Not even the start of winter.  We've got a long way to go until spring, usually late March in this part of the country.  Winter.  I'm already over it.

Left foot in, left foot out, and ya do

the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself about.....

Now that you'll have that running through your head all day (you're welcome, I'm sure)....

I was originally going to write about being buried under more snow than I remember for a long, long, loooong time, but then, going out the garage to get my 2nd can of soda to mix my 2nd drink, I caught myself dancing a bit and had another idea.

The weather is shit. No two ways about that, not at all. Without t'internets, life would be dull indeed under a level 2 or 3 snow emergency. (I've lost track, and anyway, either one means you're supposed to stay off the roads so that the guv can clear the streets, dangerous road conditions, blah, blah, blah, blah.)

By all rights, I ought to be bored out of my pretty little skull. What's a girl to do other than drink some rhum and zero-calorie vanilla soda? Normally, I don't condone drinking soda at all for myself, its full of corn syrup and other things that are bad for the whole body, not just bad for the diet. But...we're home, not going anywhere, there's a ton of booze in the house, there's no reason not to.

I've also got a whole bunch of yarn, and three or four projects on the needles that just might get finished over the weekend, with nothing better to do. I finished the eyelash scarf, shorter than I planned, but I got bored with just 15 stitches knit every single row, so I cast it off at about 7 feet long and started making a matching hat with the leftover yarn.

But what I was thinking about as I was mixing my drink was that I'm doing much better mentally. The last week has been better. And I don't just feel that way because I've been boozing a little, either. It seems that the Lexapro has kicked in, and with the combination of the two meds added to the fact that things have picked up on the job front, I'm doing better.

My shrink and I had a discussion where she urged me to work on having my sense of self-worth tied to what I do for a living. Still workin' on that one.

My resume has been out on the web on various job sites for years. Since I worked for ye olde evile bank. I left there in 2004, so let's guess from at least 2003. I get e-mails from recruiters for financial service companies all the time...they see my 7 years of banking experience, and want me to come be a securities broker for them. T'anks, but NO. All of a sudden, though, I'm getting hits on the resume from every angle. I have no idea what's changed; the economy's in the shitter (sorry, but how would YOU describe it?) and I've not updated my information on any of those sites since about 2006.

So I'm popular all of a sudden?

Mystifying, but fun.

If I get the job that I'm going to interview for next week in a place far, far away, WellBehaved will be updated infrequently for a little while. Going dark, if you will. But I'll keep ya updated on how that goes.

Am I excited about that interview? Sure. At various moments so hyped that I want to jump up and down like a little kid, and at others, so nervous that I'd like to vomit. I want this job. I want to knock their socks off in the interview. Keep your fingers crossed. I know I will be.

At the moment, though, rhum and vanilla cola are calling me. Loudly. And my hat knitting project, and an interesting movie on the telly....

Chill

I like the winter.

I like watching the snow fall, I like curling up under a warm blanket with a good book, a cup of rich hot cocoa (laced with a dash of Frangelico, if you please) and settling in for the night while I listen to the wind outside.

I like seeing the world covered in a blanket of white, looking clean and new. Its almost as if everything that was dirty is suddenly clean, anything that was broken down and disused suddenly has new life.

I love the pine trees around my home right after a big snowfall, when the branches are covered with snow, which falls off or blows away in the wind over the subsequent days.

I like the sun (when we do see it, which isn't often) bouncing a dazzling reflection off of the snow, so bright that sunglasses are just a minor help, looking like tiny diamonds scattered across the ground.

I like when the cold in the air steals your breath away, shocking cold, even though you knew it was cold outside, you're still surprised by the intensity of it.

But.

Somehow, it seems as each winter passes, I'm affected more by the cold each year.

I dress in layers all winter long; yep, I wear long underwear and I don't give a shit who knows it. Being warm is far more important. That extra layer or sometimes two when it is particularly bitter, makes a big difference. If I didn't tell you, you'd never know, anyway, because it is thin enough to hide under even my tightest jeans.

I learned how to layer properly in Sweden; where I lived, just off of Lake Malaren, the wind was biting and bitter, especially when you got close to the lake shore. The whole town is on the shore, practically. I learned the importance of a scarf in keeping warm; hence, perhaps, the obsessive scarf-knitting this winter.

This winter hasn't been particularly bitterly cold; I remember colder ones. But I don't remember being so cold myself in winters past. The only time my toes are warm is right when I get out of bed in the morning, or right after stepping out of a hot shower. Otherwise, they're like little blocks of ice.


Last night, after work and dinner and even a little time spent writing, I changed out of my corporate slave clothes into jammies, thick sock, slippers, and a robe, then wrapped myself in a blanket before beginning to work on my latest hat, a cable-knit dazzling white, made with super-bulky yarn. DH watched me wrap the blanket securely around my legs, and raised an eyebrow over the robe, which is very heavy.

"Cold?" he asked, sarcastically.

"Does it show?" I asked, snarky.

He laughed, and chuckled again later when I pulled another blanket out to wrap up in.

Jeebus, I'm cold.

Unnecessary

The weather is ever-changing here in Oh-hia-ia. One of the very few things that I like about living here is that we have four distinct seasons; there's no mistaking summer for winter or vice-versa.

Although the actual date of winter is a few weeks away yet, we've been having a sample of winter's fury over the last few days. The wind, bitter, biting, and at near gale-force over the past few days has blown down power lines and trees. Overnight last night, each time I woke, I was reminded of people interviewed on the news after tornadoes; they always say that it sounds like a train. As it whipped around our home last night, I wondered if we were about to have an out-of-season tornado, because it sounded like a train had taken up residence on tracks that must invisibly circle the house.

And then it started to snow.

All day Monday, the snow was propelled to the ground with such stinging force, were you silly enough to leave any skin exposed, you'd be sorry.

I went to see my hairdresser, and was frozen walking across the parking lot. The salon is near my old place of employment, and for no reason other than self-torture, I drove past the old office.

It was dark, cold, snowing. Really, it couldn't have been more bleak. The signs identifying the place have been removed; I took the sign off of the front of the building myself, back in June. The bigger sign, near the sidewalk, was still there the last time I had been there. I don't know when it was removed, nor where it went. The blinds are all drawn, making the windows look like dead, empty eyes.

There was a time when this action would have sent me into a tailspin of agony, a long bout of self-flagellation, wondering why I couldn't have done something, anything, to save the facility from closing.

I'm mostly past that; circumstances far beyond my control converged into a unique situation that forced the closure. I know that now. I hate it when people tell me that something, "isn't my fault." Own up to your mistakes, take some responsibility for your own actions. But the loss of my old job wasn't my fault.

I'm still not to the point that I think that the loss of my job was a good thing; I can finally view it as an opportunity for a new direction. My new job is taking me on avenues I never expected, an adventure that I'm still not sure I can see the end of.

Needless torture, that walk down memory lane. It is still too painful to remember the good, fun, positive things that happened there. But it hurts a little less than it did a few months ago.

I found some of my old business cards in a bag I hadn't used for a while. Losing a job you love is like experiencing a death of a person, someone you loved. Just when you think that you're mostly over the grief, you stumble across something, like those business cards, that bowls you over and makes you catch your breath, trying to hold in the grief until the moment passes you by. So perhaps voluntarily choosing to drive past the old office was foolish, opening me to more grief needlessly.

To my extreme surprise, in the light of a new day, it isn't painful. But yes, it was unnecessary.

It IS still snowing, and fucking freezing.

Monster. Asthma. Synonymous .

Tuesday, and time for another installment in my Brain Dump series.

I am an asthmatic. I was diagnosed with asthma at 19 years old, and it has always seemed odd to me that no one picked it up before then. The very first time I thought the asthma might be something other than a hyper-sensitivity to environmental irritants, I was out to dinner with my parents, and this was before Ohio passed the smoking ban. We were in a small, family-owned restaurant, and someone near us lit up a cigar. I hacked, and hacked, and hacked some more, and both parents insisted that I make an appointment to see our cute family doctor.

When I got in to see him, Dr. Hottie had me breathe into a tube (which tests lung capacity), gave me a breathing treatment, had me breathe into a tube again, and just like that, I was slapped with the label of asthmatic. I got a prescription for Proventil as an added bonus. Yay.

Through my 20s, I would sometimes control the asthma better than other times. At various junctures, I had prescriptions for: Advair, Allegra, Allegra D, Proventil, and another allergy med that starts with a P that I can't even remember. Proventil is a rescue inhaler, you are supposed to use it when an asthma attack overwhelms you. I despise the side effects of Proventil, so I've always been very stubborn about using it. Unless I cannot breathe at all, I refuse to use it. It makes my heart race, gives me the shakes and makes me more jittery than a 13-year-old on a sugar rush. It ain't pretty.

When I have an asthma attack, it sounds as if I'm dying. I've told close friends over and over that unless I actually fall over and start turning blue from lack of oxygen, they are to ignore the hacking cough and wheezing that accompanies an attack. They're pretty good about doing just that, much to my relief. I like the spotlight, yeah, but not when I am gasping for breath with tears streaming from my eyes and my nose running, from the sheer force of the coughing.

I'd like to be able to completely ignore the fact that I have this condition, but it has been very difficult to do that over about the past two weeks. Living in Ohio means that we have 4 distinct seasons, a very clear differentiation between winter, spring, summer and fall, and whenever the seasons change, the monster comes out to play. The worst transitional times are from winter to spring and summer to fall, as each time the pollen counts, mold counts, and other allergens are out in full force.

There are more than a few types of asthma, exercise-induced, environmentally-induced, et cetera, but mine seems to be mostly related to environmental factors, like allergens. Besides the blooming trees and flowers and mold and dust, cigarette smoke really bothers me and sets off the monster. Cigar smoke is worse. Makes you wonder how on earth I ever smoked, but I did, from about 16 until about 18. I am really glad that I no longer have that habit.

Big temperature changes, going from a well-heated building to outside in the cold, or walking into a really warm, damp room after being someplace cold and dry will also set it off.

The attacks start out as a little tickle in the back of my throat, as if I've swallowed a small bit of goose down. Sometimes, swallowing hard will get rid of it. Sometimes a sip of really cold or really hot water will soothe it. The urge to cough to get rid of whatever 'it' is becomes stronger if the water tricks don't work. Taking a deep breath becomes difficult, it catches in my throat and then I've got no choice but to cough, a ragged, deep, drawn out hacking bark of a cough, that sounds like perhaps a chunk of my lung might be expelled soon. I can exhale all I want, as I cough, but taking a breath in is like sipping air through a straw. After you've just finished running a marathon.

That's where the wheeze comes in. As my lungs scream for more air, the rest of my body is still being wracked by deep coughs, and a little, tiny sip of air is all I can get in. It makes a small noise, a wheeze that can sound like a death rattle. Which will further convince the uninformed observer that I'm about to die, because it can also sound like an injured animal's last cries.

Bad asthma attacks (as opposed to 'good' ones? No, as opposed to mild ones.) are painful, causing aching abdominal muscles from the coughing, and a tightness in the chest. An invisible giant's hand is squeezing your lungs for all he's worth, and then when he suddenly lets go, and you're able to breathe, the tightness relaxes after a few normal breaths. It only disappears after the attack is completely over, usually ten minutes or so later.

The last time the asthma was badly out of control for me was October of last year, when the last vestiges of Indian Summer finally died away and the leaves began to fall from the trees. The temperature changed from hot and humid to cool and then chilly. I'd have terrible attacks on the way to the gym every morning, after leaving my nice warm bed and heading out into the cool, pre-dawn chill.

Because I got really damn tired of starting my workouts short of breath, I called the doctor's office and requested an appointment with our family doctor. Dr. Hottie gave me Singulair, Xopenex, and Advair that time, and after using each for about a week as prescribed, I ditched the Xopenex (another rescue inhaler) and the Advair, and took the Singulair daily until the weather finally decided to just be fall, instead of jumping back and forth from summer to fall to summer to winter to fall again.

When the very first signs of spring began appearing, daffodils and other early spring flowers pushing themselves up through the snow, I began taking the Singulair again every day. That was about three weeks ago, and over the past week we've seen outdoor temperatures range from 13 to 70F, about -10 to 21C. Trees are blooming, flowers too, and my allergies are bad, making me want to scratch out my eyes and find some perfect cure for the raw skin around my poor nose. The monster is always just out of sight, hiding on my shoulder or behind my ear (he's little, you see, until a really severe attack, which makes him grow to gargantuan proportions) when he decides that he wants some attention, and then he harasses me.

My mind is seriously in the gutter, because re-reading that bit about the monster growing has me thinking about other things that start small and grow large quickly...uh. If I have to 'splain it to y'all, it loses some of the funny, so moving on....

When I'm working out each morning, the last thing I want is to have an attack happen on the treadmill. I could fall and hurt myself, yes, that's a concern, but more than that, it attracts unwanted attention from the other early-morning gym rats that make me feel like I've got a flashing neon "check out the freak" sign over my head.

Here's a cheerful thought about asthma. There is no cure. All I can do, besides taking medication daily when symptoms are bad, is increase my lung capacity through cardiovascular exercise, and perhaps move into the middle of the desert, where there's little or no pollen.

Most of the time, it doesn't bother me. I don't think about it every day, nor do I dwell on it when it isn't acting up. I refuse to carry around a rescue inhaler because it isn't that severe for me, and I'm too stubborn. I don't wander around wearing a badge that says, "I have asthma!!! Feel sorry for me!!!" And that's because until it rears its ugly little head, I mostly forget it is there.

Last Tuesday I wrote a post about OCD. Asthma today. Y'all are going to really think I'm falling apart, a mess, or truly in need of intense therapy, as my own mother suggested the other day. I simply prefer to think of myself as one of those eccentric geniuses. At least I entertain myself, cause it makes me giggle, describing myself as both eccentric and genius.
(Heavy on the sarcasm there, in case it doesn't translate to the written word.)

Dammit. And Fcuk.

I was supposed to travel to New York City today to visit my sister. My flight was canceled. So I called my sister and she suggested Amtrack. Which I checked, and sure enough, a train was leaving from Pittsburgh in about an hour, so I got in the car, drove most of the way to Pittsburgh before I figured out that I wasn't going to make it. A flurry of phone calls, and I found out that there was another stop nearby, and chances were good that I could make it to that stop, so I drove there.

And I missed the goddam train by about 20 seconds.

So more phone calls, to the airline, to DH, to thesister, and there was a flight later that I might be able to get. I made the decision to stay in the Pittsburgh area and have lunch with a friend. The airline had suggested that I call after noon. Dutifully, I did so, and no, I can't have a seat on the seat on the later flight. Why? All New York City regional airports are closed due to a massive snowstorm working its way up the east coast.

No trip to NYC for Lucy. Dammit.

Winter Wonderland

Skiing is one of the joys of life for me. I don't get to do it very often, but when I do, it makes me happy to be alive.

I had a perfect day on the slopes. Perfect weather...in the 20s, sunny, very little wind. Near-perfect conditions...groomed trails means that there has been snow recently, and the resort has taken some giant machines and driven them over the snow, making it uniform in depth. It is rare, in this region of the country, to be able to ski on fresh powder, the glory, be-all end-all of skiing conditions. At least, it is for me, because I don't live close enough to a ski resort to head for the hills as soon as fresh snow falls.

Every year, the first time I go skiing has the same emotions attached to it. A little bit of trepidation...what if I've forgotten the skills I've learned over the past 23 years that I've been a skier? A little bit of worry...what if I fall? (I am compelled to note here that I rarely fall. I'm too cautious of a skier, I don't take unnecessary risks, I rarely ski so fast that I can't stop myself. What can I say? I'd rather not be injured.) And a lot of elation, because as the saying goes, even a bad day skiing is better than a good day at the office.

Standing at the top of the hill, I take a deep breath of cold, clean country air. Peek'n Peak's elevation is only 1800 feet, so you can't really call it a mountain. At least not in my book. I have on a pair of goggles, a band around my ears, my iPod, a neck wrap, my ski jacket, ski pants, gloves, and three layers of clothes underneath the ski gear. On my back is a Camelback, a hydration system that I find imperative for a good day on the slopes. It holds about 64 ounces of water, the RDA of 8 eight ounce glasses of water. It has a tube that goes over my right shoulder from the bladder that holds the water. The bladder is held in a backpack, in which I also carry lip balm and tissues. I sip water at need by biting on the tube, not the classiest method going, but it sure beats carrying around bottles of water.

On my feet are new, brand-spanking new ski boots, bought last week. I've never had brand new equipment before, so that's exciting. My skis are Kastle, very old. I have a pair of Scott poles, also very old, but I see no need to replace either. They still work, and I have newer bindings on the skis, so they're fine, safe, and effective. I get occasional guff from other skiers while on the lifts, when they see my skis, asking me just how old the skis are, but with new skis and bindings setting you back about $500....yeah, my old stuff is fine, thanks. I got the Kastles when I was 13 or 14, and they were used when I got them, so a good guess at their age would be between 15 and 20 years old. I've replaced the bindings twice in that time, most recently maybe 5 years ago.

So the air is clean, cold, and crisp, and as I glide off of the chairlift, I look around for a map to remind me of the layout of Peek'n. Yes, that is the main resort that I go to, as it is within 2 hours driving distance, and yes, I go there between 2 and 5 times every winter, but they change things around during the summers, and anyway, I like maps. I stand in front of a map the size of a highway billboard, and ponder my routes for the next several hours. I don't like to start out with a run that might overtax my abilities, so I plan carefully.

The sound of the snow under the runners of the skis brings back floods of memories. Racing my sister at 11, 12 years old and again as adults, and she beats me every single time. My dad, encouraging me to enter my first NASTAR race, an amateur ski competition that I first tried around 11 years old. Getting stuck on the chairlift with a family friend at Peek'n, for over two hours in the late 80s, freezing my butt off. J-bars, T-lifts, rope tows. Skiing in Breckenridge with K and E, in the mid-90s. It isn't quite a crunching sound, more like when you rub two pieces of plastic up against one another. Not a grinding, either. Movie sound effects people use cornflakes and cornstarch encased in cotton sheets to simulate the sound of snow under skis...and that's a pretty good facsimile of the sound. Parallel skiing throws small bits of snow away from the skier, and the sssscuuuscchhh of the snow flying this way and that behind other skiers is soothing, right, exhilarating.

Having the iPod while skiing was a new thing for me. When my parents would take us skiing when we were kids, they disapproved of us listening to the Walkman while skiing...dangerous, they said. So it is. At the volume my 14-year-old self would have listened to it, very dangerous. Not that their edict of "No music on the slopes" stopped me from having it, but it was bulky, hard to hide, and cumbersome to carry. My old ski jackets always had inside pockets, but by the end of the day, I would be looking for someplace else to stash the Walkman, rather than carrying it on my person. The iPod, on the other hand, has an armband that I carry it around on, and it is no thicker than 3 credit cards stacked one on top of the other. So not bulky, not heavy, and I wear it on my arm every day at the gym, so nothing out of the ordinary.

I started the day on the hill listening to my "Supernatural" playlist, which is a bunch of classic rock tunes used on the television show. "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas. "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. "Rock of Ages" and "Pyromania" by Def Leppard. "Working Man" by Rush. "Wayward Son" is something I like to run to on the treadmill, and I can now report that it works well for flying downhill on skis too. I've got about 45 minutes of music on the SN playlist, so when I heard "Reaper" for the second time, I stopped skiing for a minute to change over to something else. Since I didn't organize a playlist specifically for the ski trip (which would have been smart), I just told the iPod to play the 25 most played songs, which is a pretty eclectic mix of Prince, U2, Def Leppard, Red Wanting Blue, The Format, and Dave Matthews Band.

Listening to Prince (old school Prince, mostly from the Purple Rain soundtrack) while traveling somewhere around 30 miles an hour on a ski slope is a pretty surreal experience. I have a remix of "Let's Go Crazy", probably my favorite Prince tune ever, that runs almost 8 minutes long, and I heard it about 3 times. That song is going to be stuck in my head for a week, I swear.

I think I've written before about how difficult it is for me to NOT sing at the top of my lungs whenever I have the iPod on. I was a singer all through school, trained with a private opera coach from 13 to about 17, entered contests, the whole bit. I tell you that not to brag, but to tell you that I'm a decent singer. I don't sing in public (meaning on stage) anymore, but I've never been able to resist the urge to sing in the car, in the shower, and yes, while skiing. When Red Wanting Blue came on, I was alone on the chairlift, and I gave in to the urge to belt out the chorus of "Audition". Fortunately, if anyone noticed, I didn't see them.

I skied all alone this time, having been unable to convince anyone to play hooky along with me. And while that's a bit of a shame, it isn't the end of the world. I crave solitude, it is an essential part of my nature. There are days that if I had a personal motto it would be "LEAVE ME ALONE!", so I didn't feel lonely while out there. There is, of course, a crucial difference between being alone and being lonely, and I was alone. I didn't lack for company...since it was President's Day in the US (Perhaps our most useless holiday? Discuss amongst yourselves...) all government offices, schools, and banks were closed, there were a bunch of other nuts out there on the hills with me. I talked to tons of people while the chairlifts took us to the top of the hills. Mostly other Ohioans, which entertained me a lot, as Peek'n is located in Clymer, New York.

I rode the chairlift early in the day with a fella named Jeff who did his darnedest to convince me to come back to his ski condo at the end of the day to party with a bunch of his friends. I haven't been hit on in a really long time, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I'd been feeling very mischievous when I got on the chairlift, though, so when he asked my name, instead of giving my real name, I told him "Lucy." Thank goodness for that intuition, because the further up the hill that chairlift got, the more uncomfortable this guy made me. I've introduced myself as Lucy before, last year when I was writing food articles, I interviewed a couple of different people, and always identified myself initially with the pen name. I always told the interviewees that Lucy is a pen name, however, not wanting to be dishonest. This idiot on the chairlift got no more than "Lucy" and the name of the big city in my area out of me, and he'll have a right difficult time tracking me down with just those two things, fortunately. Men. We love ya, but honestly, you're all dorks.

I'll be out on the slopes again on Sunday, the 25th, with a few members of my family. I know that most of the rest of the Northern hemisphere is wishing for spring, but I'm hoping winter holds on for a few more weeks, at least, so I can get a few more runs in before the snow melts for another year.

HOOKY DAY!!!

Because I am a very firm believer in caring for my own mental health, today I am taking a hooky day today to go skiing. See ya on the slopes!

Regularly scheduled posting interrupted....

I've caught whatever is going around...intestinal, sinus, and other related distresses, and won't be online until I feel better. DH had this for about a week.....ugh. I'm exhausted, and going back to bed.

Blah. And meh.

The winter storm dumped about 9 inches of snow on us. I went in to work, having no other choice, and spent the whole day doing....nothing. Work was dead, due to the weather. Blah. Boring.

And then on the way home, I was listening to NPR, and I heard a story that has me thinking about the original reason that I started writing this blog, the abortion debate.

In all honesty, I cannot comment about this story because I am not qualified. There are a bunch of states that have passed what are called MISSing Angels laws, which is legislation that gives the parents of a stillborn child a right to a birth certificate. Otherwise, a death certificate is issued, but no birth certificate. I went searching for my own birth certificate, out of curiosity, and sure enough, across the top of it, it says, "Certificate of Live Birth". Therefore, at a stillbirth, one would not be issued.

I don't feel that I can comment about this because I am not the parent of a stillborn child, and far be it from me to say that I understand what these people are going through. Unless you have lost a child, you could never understand what these people feel. I will say that the idea makes me both uneasy...and very sad.


Uneasy, because the anti-choice people have been trying for years to get the law to recognize a fetus as a person, which ipso facto, would make abortion murder under the law in all 50 states, with blatant disregard to Roe v. Wade. The right to have an abortion hangs by such a tenuous thread in this country that any movement towards the anti-choice side could break that thread. And that scares me. As I have said time and time again, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, I have no earthly idea what the heck I would do. My answer to that question has changed over the years, as my life situation has changed. When I was single, 17, and starting college, the answer might have been radically different from the answer that I might give today, at over 30, happily married, with a job that has health insurance. I really don't know what I would do. What I do know is that I don't want a bunch of old white men deciding what I can or can not do with my body.

Sad, because as a woman they interviewed for the story says, she doesn't want to be in the midst of the abortion debate...she just wants a birth certificate for her baby, stillborn at 8 months gestation. I could hear the pain in her voice, and it breaks my heart. There are no easy answers here. Meh.

Listening to: Snowplows driving past, ice breaking off of my gutters, tires spinning in unplowed snow.

WEATHER!

I spend a lot of time complaining about the weather. Which is a very silly thing to do, as weather is one of those things that is beyond our control. You can't change the weather. Complaining about it is a favorite pastime among people who live here, though, I think mostly because the weather is so shitty most of the time. Cold, grey, rainy most of the year, and hazy, hot, and humid in the summer. I'm not the only one who complains a lot about it...we have a saying here, that if you don't like the weather in Oh-hia-ia, wait 15 minutes, it will change.

So this post will be somewhat out of character, because I'm not really complaining about the weather, but (mostly) glorifying in it.

I love the snow. Ohio is grand central at the moment for a heck of a snowstorm, and my corner of the world is forecast about 18 total inches of snow. I live far enough away from Lake Erie that I'm not in the 'snowbelt' region, so I whine a whole lot that we never get what they actually forecast. I would LOVE to get 18 inches of snow, but it probably won't happen.

I spent a moment standing in the snowstorm this afternoon. Listening to the gentle hiss of the snow falling. If you've never experienced snow, then you wouldn't know that it deadens the sounds of everything around you. Traffic is quieter. High heels on a sidewalk don't have their usual staccato tap. The snow makes everything look cleaner. More peaceful. As if everything is right with the world, as it sleeps under a white blanket.

That is, if you're at home, with a good book, a good lover, or a good movie, a warm blanket and comfy sweats. And if you have plenty of hot cocoa. If you're out in that mess, it just sucks.