winter (?) weekend

I figured out what an east coast skier is this weekend. If you've ever been on a ski lift ripping off your jacket liner - hell, ripping off your *jacket* and stuffing your gloves into your pockets then you know what I mean. I think it officially reached 60 up on the mountain yesterday but it sure felt warmer than that. It was a good time, though.

We came back with no broken bones, but we are beat up. DH told me he merited applause from the ski lift on a few of his wipeouts. I didn't get any applause, but I did think I died. See, this took place because we are a family of newbies (I was going to use a much more deragatory word, but decided to be nice). Bootlegger is a fun, intermediate run. This was the first time I could really ski down it - I mean, I'd been down before but with my brakes on the whole time. This time, I was really skiing down it. So we were a little bummed when they closed it for some races yesterday. And happy when they finished the races and opened it back up. "Hey!" we all four said in unison, "let's go down Bootlegger!!!!!" 'Kay. From the voice of experience now, I can tell you that racers TEAR UP a slope. We zipped on over to Bootlegger and the other three in my family whizzed off down the slope. I started down a little tenatively and was thinking, "Golly gee, there sure are a lot of piles of snow on this slope now." And that was just about the time that my skis stuck into a particularly large pile of snow while my body kept going (this is called momentum), and I ended up sailing over my skis and falling smack on my cheekbone. I saw a flash of light (I am not exaggerating - this is what had me freaked out) when I hit and I lay there for a second wondering if I died or had only broken my neck.

Fortunately, it was neither, and I was somehow able to pick up and continue down for another massive wipeout on that slope. By the time I got back down to the ski lift, John was preparing to pull off his snowboard and run up the mountain to find me.

But guess what - we're going again in a few weeks. Dumb? or Forgetful? Take your pick.

We didn't come home with only bruises though. E picked up some horrid virus this weekend. She was able to hold off actually being sick until about 5 minutes before we pulled into the driveway (thank goodness for plastic bags that happen to be lying around the van). I have spent the evening being absolutely ORDERED around, which, wearing my mom hat, I am more than happy to do. My job has been to hold her hair back and hold cool washcloths to her face while she's sick, clean out the vomit pail, rub her feet, fetch her cold water, stroke her face, and watch Shrek 2 with her. And you'd better believe she lets me know if I'm lacking in any of these tasks. Poor boo. She's been throwing up every 20 minutes for the last 5 hours. So I get her through it and then go eat chocolate kisses because it's distressing to see my sweetie hurting so much.

I'm trying to think of a nice unifying moral to tie together these stories. Sometimes life sucks, so eat chocolate while you can? Hardheadedness is often beneficial? Even the stubborn among us end up cleaning out the vomit pail now and again?