Oh My Aching Arse

When I decided to take up snowboarding everyone I told warned me it was going to be a painful experience.   They were wrong.  Despite countless spills and scrapes I always felt pretty decent after boarding.  Until Friday, which turned out to be a banner day for wrecking things.  The first thing I hurt was my poor sorry arse which took such a bruising that I am still today sitting on a cushion.  I hit the ground so hard I got an instant headache, even though my melon didn't touch the ground.  I tell you, that's just not right.  72 hours later I still have a headache, nothing too bad but it's just not going away.  I think I gave myself whiplash.  Just to put this whole thing in perspective for you (yes my four quasi-regular readers I am addressing this blog to you) I was at the bottom of the ruddy bunny hill when it happened.  Then, to make the night complete, I somehow managed to rip the bottom of my left boot, I think when I skidded to a very fast halt in an attempt not to flatten some schmuck who had the great misfortune of falling on their arse right in front of me.  I somehow ended up standing on the back edge of the board on one foot.  I had no idea my board could bend like that...  So now I have to find a new pair of boots to go with my click-in bindings...  I'm feeling very sorry for myself...  But still looking forward to heading back up the mountain as soon as possible.  Hopefully I can get new boots by Thursday.

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A New Obsession for 2008

People often criticize me for being obsessive.  I rarely say anything to them about it, but it kind of bugs me.  First off, it's my life, and I'll live it the way I please thank you very much. Secondly, just because they might happen to be  jaded and bitter about the world that surrounds them doesn't mean that I have to be (and you'd think they'd notice that I was nice enough not to point out their lack of enthusiasm, but no).  Maybe it's just that when I do something I do it with all my energy.  Whatever.  There is a point to all of this.  I have found a new obsession to go along with the new year: snowboarding.  I really can't explain it because at any given moment (if I stop to think about it) I am terrified by the thought of sliding down a mountain with both feet strapped to a single board.  So every time I arrange to go up the mountain with someone I have to psych myself up.  And then there I am, sliding down the mountain at an incredibly high rate of speed still totally, completely freaked out of my mind.  And inevitably I fall, usually on my ass (so far my all time coolest trick is to fall on my ass, do a backwards somersault, stand up and keep going), but sometimes right on my face, and on one memorable occasion rolling sideways down the hill, which is somewhat less fun than one might imagine when you take into consideration the fact that I had 149 cms of fiberglass and wood attached to my feet. Still, the pain of those moments is fleeting, and I get back up and keep on heading down the mountain. And I always have an awesome time.  So much so that I really wonder why it is I waited until now to learn to do this.  It could only have been easier if I'd started 10 years ago.  On a bit of an aside, learning to snowboard was a 2007 New Year's resolution.  I might be 12 months late, but I'm finally getting it done.  In the hopes that 2009 will bring another breakthrough of a similar sort I hereby resolve that 2008 will be the year I get into disgustingly great shape, find a dream job as a travel photographer, meet the man of my dreams and win an obscene amount of money on the Super7 or 649 (which I realize will require that I actually buy tickets).  Oh, and I resolve to be nicer to everyone too, even if they bug me. Look out 2009. Here I come.

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Happy New Year, I Guess...

Another day, another dollar. Happy New Year to my three quasi-regular readers. I extend sympathies to those of you who spent the end of the old year sick with flu and the like. I myself have been disgustingly healthy, despite an overindulgence in holiday sweet stuff and what has by now become a massive sleep debt (made possible by the generous support of Mackenzie. Thank you Mackenzie). But anyways. I'm back on the island, oddly enough I heard someone playing that old Baha Men song "Back to Island" while I was waiting at the ferry terminal on New Year's day (you know, it goes: "Wake up early one morning kiss my mama goodbye, going back to the island I say, don't worry mama don't cry". Or something like that). A truly twilight zone kind of moment. I had big plans to go snowboarding today, but I crashed yesterday when I got out of class, slept in this morning and as a result my snowboard is still in need of a wax job. Plus it's storming outside, and despite the fact my place is smaller than a squashed shoebox I feel very disinclined to go outside or really even open the blinds.  So here I sit in my dark abode, typing away at the computer again...
I don't know about you folks, but I have as yet to make any New Year's resolutions. Not that there aren't any number of self-improvements that I should be making, it's just that I have been seized by apathy. Maybe it's a hangover from spending so much time with family. Christmas day aside it was good to be home, but if I could do over again I would go to Deroche later in the month, and return here earlier... Things did improve after Christmas, slowly but surely. Of course, they would have been hard pressed to get any worse. Christmas 2007 is the first time in my life when I said I wanted to kill a child and actually meant it with every single fiber of my being...  Not that I would ever hurt a child. But for a while there, I totally got people who drown their children in a fit of madness.
In any case... Starting to feel bitter again, so it's probably best to let that particular dog go back to sleep... It would seem that I have once again written a blog about absolutely nothing (is anyone else starting to sense a pattern here?). I'll add a random picture for visual interest, in case this absolutely riveting entry fails to grip you all on it's own...

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I Hate Christmas

I really do. I try to like it, but inevitably the day turns to shit. Why can't it just be a day like any other? I'm tired of nasty comments directed my way by people who ostensibly love me. I'm tired of people talking about me like I wasn't there. I'm tired of greedy little children. In retrospect, I'd like to retract my last post. It's not good to be home. I'm tired, tired, tired of staying up til 1 in the morning just so I can have the place to myself for a little while. I'm tired of Mackenzie peeing on the toilet seat, never putting it down, waking me up every single morning at the feckin crack of dawn, teasing my dogs, and acting like a boob every night at dinner ("mom, why do you love me so much?") Gag. For the love of god, I'm trying to eat here... I'm so very, very tired of always having to tell him to behave himself, with absolutely no lasting results. And if I have to listen to the theme song for the Berenstein Bears one more time I'm gonna have to go find a bridge to jump off of.
So maybe I'm a grinch. or scrooge. No wait. They, after all, "saw the error of their ways", and realized just how wonderful Christmas is. A prevailing myth in our society. That's never gonna happen with me. And that's because Christmas has nothing to do with love and peace, it's about blatant commercialism and revisiting all the reasons why family members hate each other. So here's my promise to myself, my solemn vow: next year I will be somewhere far, far away from here at Christmas time. No tree to set up, no relatives to put up with, no stress of pretending I give a shit when really I don't.

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So good to be home...

Well folks, I've made it through the first half of the year... For a while there I wasn't sure I was gonna (and I'm trying to ignore the fact that the next half is more sort of like the next two thirds). So far so good, haven't failed anything. Despite the occasional mid-class argument, my inability to not speak my mind, and my tendency to stomp through life in oversize steel-toe boots (that's me, all the grace of a backwoods logger). I'm so glad to be back home in Deroche, land of neighbours-who-know-far-too-much-about-my-business and children-who-don't-care-about-my-privacy (or for that matter their own privacy -everyday I wake to the sound of Mackenzie taking a leak, cause for whatever reason he doesn't feel the need to close the door to the can. so i lie in bed and listen. wait for him to go back to his room. then yell at him to go back, flush, put the damn seat down, and wash his hands). Today was Alexandra's birthday, can't believe the little monster is seven already. Children are rather awkward in that they are a daily reminder that time truly is passing and that you're getting old. If the kids weren't getting bigger (and sometimes it seems like they get bigger by the second), I could conceivably look in the mirror and see the same person who was there five years ago... Not that I regret aging (hafta admit it beats the alternative) it's just that I'm starting to feel it. Maybe. Just a little. And I gotta say it doesn't help when a 6 year old asks you your age and then says "wow, you're REALLY old" when they hear your answer. Although I also kind of think it's the fact that since I'm no longer hanging out with people a decade younger than me that my rather hasty regression to my very early twenties has made a sudden about-face. In any case. This is about nothing, and apparently it's going nowhere so I'm just gonna stop. One of these days I'm gonna set up my Mac and get connected to the internet. One of these days. Until then, no pics from me. Sorry.

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