Monthly Archives: February 2022

room shift

We promised L her own room on her tenth birthday.  We converted our guestroom to her bedroom, with the agreement that she’ll evacuate if we actually have guests.  With Covid and my parents’ and in-laws’ health issues, we sadly haven’t been having many guests lately.  (Feel free to come and visit any time, friends.)  We’d been dragging our feet a bit because of not wanting to disrupt S’s sleep; she’ll be moving in with B, but for now, she’s co-sleeping with Jonathan and I.  When she was fussy, which isn’t terribly unusual, J would seek refuge in the spare bedroom, and that won’t be possible any more.  In any case, we finally pulled the trigger and L is delighted to have her own room.  When I was her age, I wanted my own room so much but there wasn’t enough space in my parents’ house.  It’s nice to give L her own space as she approaches puberty and just grows up.

Making the move involved all kinds of furniture moving – hauling the desk upstairs, moving nightstands up and down stairs, etc.  And since Jonathan’s back has been bothering me, it was a good workout for me, in lieu of running today’s pouring rain.  Now all the extra clutter is all over the place.

And yes, L does have a thing for stuffed animals, especially for the white tiger variety.

Ski days

I took L skiing on Tuesday up at Summit at Snoqualmie.  Schools are all out this week in the Seattle area.  As a result, it was mobbed with kids who were mostly beginning skiers.

The resort had ONE green run open, and that one green run was a very short run.  (The place has something like eight green runs in total.)  The lift line was extremely long and chaotic, since it spilled outside the railings organizing it.  In addition, since this was the easiest run, the lift was constantly stopping as kids fell getting on or off.  They had no liftie helping get people on or off – they were all huddled in their little buildings.

It was 15 degrees.  Two runs in, I was frozen and asked L how many runs she wanted to do.  She said three more, and I thought privately we could maybe manage a couple more, but after the three runs (five in total), we were so frozen we could barely make it back to the car.  It was BRUTAL and just not all that much fun.

(With that said, L did a great job skiing the green run.  She is definitely capable of skiing easy greens at this point.  I know some kids get there in a day, but we move a little slower in our family.  I’m proud of her progress.)

Today, L was at a sleepover, so I took B down to Crystal.  Crystal is 90 minutes away compared to Summit’s 45 minutes.  It’s also more expensive and just generally more everything.  But it’s just so much better.  It had three lifts open supporting green runs, but the lifts were high speed lifts, and the runs were more like 900 ft instead of 250 ft, so you spent way more time skiing.  And despite lots of people and kids skiing – minimal lines.  It was just night and day.  We had a great time.  B mostly skied the bunny hill, but did have one successful run down the mountain on a green run.  The greens are much tougher at Crystal than Summit, so I do think she’s making progress.  And, most importantly, she had a great time.

I also had a great time.  Crystal has the hardest green run I’ve ever skied – Queen’s Run.  On my last trip, I mainly skied the easier runs and tried Queen’s once, and it was a bit hairy.  Today I skied it several times and felt quite confident by the end.  I think with one more full day I might be able to try the easy blues at Crystal.  When I last skied, before L was born, I was able to ski the easy blues at Crystal, so I feel like I’m getting closer to where I used to be.  I’m definitely not there yet, but I’m getting there.

But mostly, it was just so fun going down the mountain in the sun and fresh snow and just enjoying the spectacular scenery.  It’s a good distraction from the various other things stressing me out in my life.

 

 

 

the limpics

Thoughts on the Olympics . . .

  1. Thanks for a friend’s login, I had access to nbcolympics.com, and I thought the coverage was stellar.
  2. I am thoroughly distressed by the Valieva disaster.  I haven’t followed figure skating in years, and I guess I’ll go back to ignoring it.  Also, I feel like every time I get excited about an athlete or story, it turns out to not be real.  See: Lance Armstrong.  Valieva is apparently on three heart medications (two legal), and I just find this really sad and disturbing.
  3. Though, really, Russian figure skaters on drugs is not as scary and sad as Russians invading Ukraine.
  4. I haven’t watched alpine skiing in years, and I loved watching it during the Olympics.  Especially the downhill and super-G.
  5. I hate that there is so much emphasis on the Olympics in some sports.  No person’s life should be defined by how they perform on one day every four years.  I love that skiing, for example, has other pinnacles of achievement, and honestly don’t think Shiffrin’s failure to perform, for example, at Beijing is all that meaningful.  She has had many other successes in her career.
  6. I think programs to increase participation by athletes from countries without snow are silly.  Very silly.  It would be far more worthwhile to try and increase participation among poorer people and countries that DO have snow, like lower income communities in the US and Canada, and poorer cold countries like Kazakhstan and maybe the southern extremes of South America and Africa.  Who cares if people from Tonga or Jamaica participate in the winter Olympics?
  7. Some Olympic sports are seriously lame and boring.  Curling.  Nordic combined. The sliding sports.
  8. Women should be allowed to do quads in the short program of figure skating.
  9. I enjoyed watching biathlon.  Though cross country skiing is one of the most PED-rife sports around.
  10. The difference between men and women in some sports, like the half pipe, is huge and striking.  It’s much, much smaller in others like figure skating.  To me, this points to the fact that cultural factors are huge in achievement in sport.
  11. Being in Beijing right now as a foreigner seems like a nightmare.  I particularly feel for the athletes who were disappointed in their performance.  Really, almost any cold place in the world would have been a better choice than Beijing.
  12. I am sad they are just about over.

And yes, my recent interest in skiing is not exactly a coincidence.