Skiing

It is ALMOST winter break. What are my fantastic plans for winter break? I don't have any.

I would love to go somewhere warm and wonderful. However, I am happy to just be without plans. Perhaps, Joey and I will go skiing. Well, I'll go skiing and he'll go snowboarding.

I am a good skier, not amazing, but not bad either. I attribute this to my above average rollerblading skills. In middle school, I rollerbladed (Is that a verb? Sure, why not?) anywhere from 3 - 8 miles every day after school. I would carry my discman. Wait, your wait? My discman, a portable CD player. It was a thing. The iPod hit big in 2001 while I was in 8th grade. Before that, we had portable CD players. They were large, inconvenient, and unreliable. If your CD had a scratch, it wouldn't play the song or it would get stuck in a loop. 

Just to give you an idea of the size, I googled, "holding a portable CD player." 

That's right, as a middle schooler  it took two hands to hold this bad boy. I played one song over and over again, I can't believe I am even admitting this due to the fact that this song is so embarrassingly awful, it was O - Town's All or Nothing. Simply watching the first thirty seconds of the music video makes me cringe. 

The outfits, the serious boy-band addressing the camera, the outfits, the hair, the combination of the hair and the outfits. 

 They were really an amazing band with countless #1 hits, such as "All or Nothing", "Liquid Dreams", and... nope, that's it. Two big songs. Then they faded from the spotlight, never to be heard from again. 

O-town, lovers of the color red and denim.

Please note, I did not drool over these guys. They weren't close to the Backstreet Boys' Brian Littrell level of cute. Look at this adorableness - 

Adorable Brian Littrell circa 2000

From the ages of 9 to 11, this was my celebrity crush.

Wait, PAUSE THE STORY, Joey just walked in the door. He didn't say anything, he just let the door swing open. He then stepped aside to reveal that my keys were sitting in the door's lock. I looked at him and he shook his head and started to laugh. I am silly.  

Back to the story, I was really sidetracked. For rollerblading, you use each leg individually, so skiing came naturally. Snowboarding, well that's another story. 

I AM TERRIBLE AT SNOWBOARDING. I've tried many times. I'm just awful. You strap both feet to one board. Ew. Then, once both feet are strapped in, you contort yourself into an uncomfortable crouched position. You stay in this position for the duration. Ew. And because you have to be in this crouched position to keep balance, if you want to come to a stop, you have to fall down. FALL DOWN? What? That is the exact opposite of what I want to do. Fall into ice and snow? Pass.

I don't care if snowboarding "looks" cooler, I am a skier. My mom is a skier. My dad was a skier. Oh, that reminds me of ANOTHER story. 

This is the story of how I learned to ski. I learned to ski at the age of 5 or 6. Somewhere in that age range. 

Our family took a trip one winter to ski. We packed the car and headed to the mountain. Wearing a giant poofy winter jacket, which covered uncomfortable waterproof snow overalls, they're a thing, I was ready to take on any mountain.

We arrived at the resort. At the ticket counter, my parents enrolled my younger sister, Jessa and I in skiing lessons. I didn't want to take lessons. I just wanted to ski. 

After setting up the lessons, my family headed to the equipment center. A nice woman fitted my boots and skis. At the tender age of 5-6, you are required to wear a helmet when skiing. I guess requiring helmets benefited me, seeing as how much damage I managed to inflict on my head over the years. That just left the ski poles, which hung along the wall. I walked up to the wall, looking for poles appropriate for my small height. 

"You're too little for those" a voice boomed behind me. 

I spun around to see an adult, a man, a stranger. I looked at him with big eyes, frozen in fear. When the feeling returned to my legs, I bolted back to my parents and Jessa. 

I wanted those poles. How was I supposed to balance on skis without the use of poles? I couldn't wrap my little 5-6 year old brain around the idea of skiing without poles. 

To be fair, I can imagine giving small children poles seems like it would be a major safety concern. If you a bunch of kids poles, I imagine at least some of them would use them as swords, light sabers, and hit each other with them, leading to accidents. Without a doubt, someone would be without an eyeball very quickly. 

We left the equipment room and headed outside. My parents brought us over to a group of kids, who looked just as confused, terrified, and excited as I was. I noticed they too were lacking poles. This was ski school. This was lame.

I stood around for a few minutes, anxiously awaiting my chance to glide down the freshly powdered slopes. As I stood there, day-dreaming about my time on the slopes, two college-aged instructors introduced themselves. 5-6 year old thoughts while the instructors talked: They look nice. They talk a lot. Why are they still talking? Please, stop talking and let's ski already. Why do I have to wear these pants? Why are these pants connected with straps? What did Mom call them? Overalls? Well, overall, I don't like them. I don't like these poofy clothes. Can we ski? "Ok, everybody line up  at the lift" they announced, snapping me back to attention. We lined up for the mini ski lift that would take us to the top of the bunny slope.

At the time, the bunny slope looked HUGE! Sitting next to my sister, I felt a knot in my stomach turning as we ascended. I looked behind me to see how far the ski lift had traveled, when who was in the lift behind me? My dad! What? My dad wasn't supposed to be there. The other kids from the group were supposed to be behind us. I thought it was the COOLEST THING EVER that my dad managed to secure the lift behind us.

I kept looking back to make sure he was still there. This was very good as the options were a) still be seated comfortably behind us or b) laying on the ground after a traumatic fall from the ski lift. At 5-6 years old, option B hadn't crossed my mind. I just thought I would turn around and he would be gone. You see, my dad was magic. If something needed to happen, he made it happen. That sounds slightly old school mafia-ish. My dad was not in the mafia. My Zeide knew some men in the mafia, but that's another story. 

Anyway, as we got off the ski lift, we shuffled off to the bunny slope. All twelve of us lined up at the top of the hill. Now, in the eyes of my 5-6 year old self, I was looking down a GIANT mountain, not some easy-peasy bunny slope. 

Instructor: "To go, your skis should be french fries, side by side. If you want to stop, make a pizza. Let's try together."

They still teach this. 

This is the worst advice EVER. You DON'T make pizza to stop. If you do this, the tips of your skis will overlap, you will lose your balance and fall down. 

In the above picture, you see two girls trying to stop by making the pizza shape with their skis. The girl in the front is about to have her skis overlap, lose her balance, and fall. The girl behind her is already has her skis overlapping, she is going to fall. This is how it works because small children don't have the strongest ankles, so when the skis overlap, your ankles turn inwards, you start to feel wobbly, you try to use your arms to regain balance, but because they refuse to give small children the poles, the child is left with nothing. All they can do is wave their arms in the air, trying to grab onto anything within their arm's reach, but alas, there is nothing to grab, and instead, the child crashes to the ground, face covered in snow. All because of the pizza shape and a lack of poles. 


 To the left of the bunny slope was the ski lift while to the right of the bunny slope, woods. The instructor ushered us closer to the woods. We lined up prepared to descend down the colossal slope. "Alright, ready, set, go!" The instructor called to us. I watched as different kids attempted their way down the mountain. At first, they all appeared to to have a handle on this new activity. "Well, that's easy enough," I thought to myself. 

With that, I took off, repeating, "french fries, pizza, french fries, pizza" over and over again  in my head. I looked up and panic overcame me with the realization that I was headed directly into the woods, more specifically, I was about to run into a giant, snow-covered pine tree. 

Does anyone see me? Does anyone realize that I am about to be lost in the woods? TREE!

I can only imagine onlookers watching my struggle. The slope couldn't have been at more than a 10 degree angle. Therefore, I barely gained any speed and inched my way down the hill. Then, for no reason whatsoever, I turned and made my way towards the woods, at a crawling speed. I am sure the onlooker would think, "There she goes, down the hill. She is doing ok. Hm, why is she turning? She's turning to the right towards the woods. She is headed straight towards that tree. Well, she isn't going fast enough to reach the tree. She won't hit it. I'm sure she will stop in time. -pause- She's not stopping. Uh-oh.  -Watch me hit the tree - Oh, I hope she is alright. She looks alright."

That's right, I crashed into the giant pine tree. And by crashed, I mean slowly approached and bumped the tree. I was fine, but I decided at that point that perhaps skiing wasn't for me. 

I didn't ski again until I was 12. This time, I made sure I used poles. It turns out, I am really good at skiing. Again, it is probably due to its similarity to rollerblading. After going again and realizing that the pizza method is quite useless for me at least, as using a different method to slow down, which I call weaving, I found myself hooked on skiing. Joey and I make sure to go at least once a year. However, we usually go more frequently than that. 

Well, I guess I do have plans for the break now. I am going skiing. Hooray!

Point of the Story: Just because you don't do something well the first time doesn't mean you should give up. If I had, I wouldn't know how much I love skiing. Other point, my middle school years were fantastically embarrassing, but I'm ok with that. 

Interactive Notebook

Going home for the holidays is not a hassle for us as our family homes are a mere 30 minutes away from where we currently live.

Spending time with my family is always interesting. First, I was introduced to what I can only describe as my mom’s interactive science journal without any science.

A Sample Page of Mom's Notebook

Let's look at this notebook together. First, everything is in lowercase cursive. The left page has a message written on it, business card pasted in, and then the curious part, a sticky note stuck to the notebook. Why didn't Mom just write the phone number down in the book? I know what you are thinking, maybe she didn't have the book with her, that's fair. However, once she had the notebook, why not just pick up a pen and copy the information from the sticky note on to the paper? But maybe that's just me. 

Now, let's look at the right page. This page better exemplifies the entirety of the Interactive Notebook. 

First, we have a cupcake turkey. I asked my mom why she cut this out and put it in the Notebook of Wonders. She explained that Jessa had made this one year and she wanted to remember.*** WHAT? Wouldn't you take a picture of the actual cupcakes Jessa made? Unless the cupcakes looked really bad and in that case you wanted a happy cupcake memory. 

UPDATE***: Apparently, Jessa never made these cupcakes. This means that my mom cut out a picture of a cupcake turkey and pasted it in the notebook because it was cute. Oh wow, that sounds like something I would do. I am my mother's daughter. 

Below the turkey cupcake is a recipe. The recipe doesn't have a title, so we have no idea of what this dish is called. The recipe doesn't have measurements because those are overrated, but it does call for 2 eggs. Thank goodness the egg amount was written down, otherwise this recipe may be somewhat confusing. 

This let's-write-down-a-recipe-but-not-include-any-measurements-except-for-the-eggs-since-egg-amounts-are-crucial is a thing with my mom. One time I asked her for our recipe to make latkes and this was our conversation

Me: Mom, what is the recipe to make latkes?

Mom: Get some potatoes, peel them, boil them, shred them, add some onion, egg. Then add some flour

Me: How much flour, Mom?

Mom: Until it looks right. 

I am going to pause here to let you take in what my mom said. "Until it looks right." That has to be the most useless direction ever. I have no idea what "right" looks like. I will never be able to recreate some family recipes that have been passed down for generations because I have no idea how much of each ingredient to use. 

Me: -confused silence- What does right look like?

Mom: Oh, you know. It looks - right.

At this point, I usually become slightly aggravated as "right" is not a standard measurement. If she had said, "one or two cups," I would have very easily dealt with the 16 oz variance. But by giving absolutely no indication to the amount means it could be as small as 1 tbsp of flour or it could be 1000 cups of flour. I have no way of knowing!

Me: Ok,  - deep breath, trying not to sound annoyed - you didn't actually tell me anything there. 

Mom: I don't know, it just looks right.

Me: -annoyed - Great, thank you. This has been incredibly helpful. 

Mom: Oh and add salt and pepper. 

I have no words. The worst part is we have this conversation over and over again for different recipes. Perhaps, I will never learn. 

Mom uses her interactive journal to remember things. The only problem is, she doesn’t always remember what it means.

The top half  has "ms. pacman" in reference to our Ms. Pacman machine. Side Note: My ENTIRE family is AMAZING at Ms. Pacman. My mom was always really good at Ms. Pacman. Then one Chanukah, my dad got us a Ms. Pacman. My sisters and I played it every day for years. We became really good at Ms. Pacman. We never get the opportunity to demonstrate our skill though as playing Ms. Pacman isn't really needed in everyday life. I couldn't add it to my resume. That would look silly. I am not the best Ms. Pacman player in the world, but I am better than your average Ms. Pacman player. However, our Ms. Pacman broke years ago. So now, it sits in our basement, collecting dust. We called all of these different repair places who told us to bring it in. 

Bring it in. Bring in the heavy machine. Even after we tell them it's in our basement, they still expect us to manage to carry the machine up the stairs. A Ms. Pacman machine weighs 300lbs. It is also incredibly bulky as it is 3 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 6.25 feet tall. A standard interior door is between 30 and 36 inches, or 2.5 to 3 feet wide. That means after we somehow managed to get the 300 pound machine up the stairs, we would have to get it through a doorway that is too narrow. 

HOW DID MY DAD GET THIS MACHINE IN OUR BASEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE? 

After we somehow managed to either a) defy the laws of physics and magically gets the arcade game through the doorway without issue or b) destroy the door, putting countless dents in the walls, and probably rip chunks of dry wall onto the floor, (definitely b) we would then put it in our truck, OH WAIT, we DON'T HAVE A TRUCK, I can't magically make trucks appear when I want them, load Ms. Pacman, and then bring it to them. 

Then AFTER they repair it, we have to go through the same hassle again. Meaning, we would again need to find a truck, load Ms. Pacman, get it into our house, and then through at least 2 doorways. That whole ordeal leaves way too much room for possible and probable destruction of rooms, doors, imaginary trucks, etc. 

Wouldn't it be so much easier just to send someone out? According to the Ms. Pacman Repair Companies, no. Rude.

So my mom is forever stuck with a sad, broken, lonely Ms. Pacman machine, who longs for the days when children gathered around her, playing her game, laughter and happiness enveloped her world, and all was right. Woah, too much personification there. Now I am sad for the Ms. Pacman machine. Poor Ms. Pacman. 

Ok, let's move on.

In case you can’t read the bottom half of the page, it says, “spoke with that letter c with a line over it means “with.” Growing up, I thought this was the normal way to abbreviate the word “with.” As if it was an accepted abbreviation in the English language. It turns out this is NOT the case and most people have absolutely NO IDEA what it means.

I just looked it up and that symbol is latin word for with, “cum”( prounounced koo-m) for example graduating magna CUM lade means graduating WITH great honor.  Look at how much you are learning by reading my blog!

According to the internet, this abbreviation is used for medical prescriptions. This explains why when everyone else in middle school was using cool abbreviations like, “brb” and “g2g”, I was deemed odd for using the c with a line over it.

Where was I? Oh yes, “spoke with bill; divorce texas.” Please note the fact that my mom has some weird thing against capital letters. All letters are lowercase in my mom’s world. The only reason she has any capital letters in her papers is when the computer autocorrects for her. I believe she once explained that she didn’t see the point of capital letters. “They know what I mean” was  my mom’s argument.  

I tried my best to decipher my mom’s cryptic message. Who is Bill? Was he planning to divorce a state? Was Bill secretly trying to get Texas to secede from the United States? Doesn’t he know secession is illegal in the USA? Also, why was my mom involved in this possible secession? My mom has never even been to Texas. Not true. One time, we took a flight to somewhere, maybe FL? Anyway, we stopped over in Texas for an hour. It was a really nice airport. I was 10 years old. There was a cool sculpture for the kids to play in. The sculpture had different piano keys on the floor and when you ran over one, the key played its note. 

That's a really cool idea when you have one, two, or maybe even three kids running around. It makes a cool tune. However, when you have FIFTY kids running around, it sounds a hot mess. BLARRGGGHHH was all I heard while running around. It was still fun. I liked that place. 

But stopping in an airport does not count as visiting a place, so never mind. 

I showed my mom her note. She looked at it and thought hard. Then she began laughing at the realization that she had no idea what it meant. Therefore, this interactive notebook that my mom keeps to help her REMEMBER things is clearly not doing it's job. 

Point of the Story: Today you learned about secession. It was ruled illegal in 1869 by Supreme Court Justice Salmon, yes Salmon, P. Chase. Also, don't put full-sized arcade games in your basement unless you know someone who will come fix them if they break. Also, if you know this person, please tell me who they are. 

Final Question of the Story: How did my dad get the Ms. Pacman machine in our basement in the first place?