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The Olympics–especially the winter Olympics– are the only sports events I’m ever interested in watching. As I type tonight we’re watching ski cross. Does anybody else just get a queasy sense of vertigo when the athletes come around that big curve and launch over the edge of a cliff?
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I have been skiing twice. When I was twelve, I fell and couldn’t get up, and I quit. But when Alex was a baby, I tried again. We went to Tahoe with my mother’s family, and Christian and I took turns taking care of the baby. My dad was supposed to watch Alex for one afternoon so the two of us could ski together, but Christian tore his meniscus that morning. So my dad took me out instead. At the end of the afternoon, the sun slanting steeply across the mountain, Dad said, “You’re doing well enough, I think you could handle a blue run.” So up we went. I was getting shaky in the legs from tiredness when we crossed the black run and swept around a final corner and I found myself facing what looked like a vertical dropoff to the base of the mountain.
“I can’t do that!” I wailed. “I’m taking my skis off and walking down!”
“Yes, you can. No, you’re not,” my dad said patiently. “Just make wide sweeps back and forth, and you’ll be fine.”
I don’t quite remember how I got down that, er, “hill.” I do know I fell down a lot, and I know my poor dad didn’t get to enjoy his last run of the day.
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As long as we’re discussing Olympic sports, let me focus on my favorite for a minute. I just found out that Dorothy Hamill runs a dream ice skating camp for adults? Supposedly it’s open to all levels. That’s on my bucket list.
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Bedtime reading has been suspended for the duration of the Olympics. The whole family is glued to the TV (with the possible exception of Michael Mayhem). When I picked Nicholas up from school Thursday I interrupted an Olympic marathon. He and his classmates had just finished bobsled runs (he won the gold) and ice skating (they were using paper plates as skates).
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Keeping to the Olympic theme, I’m grateful that the concerns about security have been addressed enough to prevent the bombings we were all worrying about.
It was interesting to see Putin in the first days. He just looked so flat and unemotional. He wasn’t much of a salesman for Russia being an inviting place. Come to think of it, I remember feeling a great deal of frustration with Putin in an earlier era of my life. If he hadn’t fired his entire cabinet, thus throwing the adoption bureaucracy into chaos and adding a year to the adoption wait, we might actually have gotten to go through with the Russian adoption. Don’t get me wrong; I love my children and I believe my family is what it was meant to be, but I still wonder, with a pang, what our family might have looked like if not for Putin’s political mess.
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This week began with a funeral for the husband of a musician friend. I took Julianna and Michael along (they apparently took angel pills that morning, because they were phenomenally well-behaved). It is always a privilege and an honor to help with music for a funeral, but this one even more so than most, as I got to work with a huge collection of music ministers from around the diocese and beyond. Since then the week has turned into a sprint of music writing, which is incredibly energizing. Actually, so was running yesterday morning. It felt so good to exercise outside. And then Michael strong-armed me into a ride in the Burley, so I got to enjoy the 68-degree morning while it lasted. Which was good, because the temperatures plummeted after lunch.
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Everyone who weighed in this week on my blog burnout said the same thing: it’s the kid stories, Kate. I am pondering some redirection, and working out an idea for the season of Lent. And while I do I’ll leave you with this:
Have a great weekend!
Kathleen M. Basi 
I, too, have been skiing twice in my life. In neither instance was the view nearly as good as the one you included here. I had no reason to continue the madness. 🙂
If Putin can’t smile while watching the Olympics, I’m thinking he just can’t smile. It was painful to watch him. I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and say the worry of hosting such an event was wearing him down.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as angel pills!! I could use those every once in a while. 🙂
🙂
I’m not a big fan of winter olympics. The summer olympics, however, are a very different story. 🙂
As for the blog burnout…man, I don’t post enough to get that I don’t think! I have just been stagnant lately. I have ideas, but don’t really know where to go with them, so I just run through my weekly things when I get a chance.
You know, I was thinking of you and your love of basketball when I posted this, and thinking how different we are. I can’t stand all those run up and down the field/court games–soccer, basketball, football, even baseball I only tolerate because my husband is such a Cards fan. I love the unpredictability of the winter sports–the ski cross, where things can change so quickly, and I love to watch the grace of the bodies conquering the mountain, leaning almost parallel to the ground to take those corners at angles that would have me turning into a snowball on the way down. And of course, figure skating. The summer Olympics I only like the swimming and the gymnastics, really. We’re all so different. I admit sometimes I get bitter that the mainstream sports get so much focus when the ones I like get almost none. 🙂
Skiing was a once-and-done thing for me. The friend who took me–who would later become my hubby!–took me up to a hill that scared the daylights out of me. I still haven’t quite forgiven him for it. 🙂
I’m going to head over to your blog burnout post now, so this might be a day of double comments from me!
Skate camp with Dorothy Hamill? SQUEEEEE!!!!
Dorothy Hamill has an adult skating camp? How have I never heard of this? So, so fun! And I’m sorry about the blog burnout. I think that hits all of us from time to time. I’ll vote for kid stories too!