My Outside Feels Just As Bad As My Inside

With all the snow and ice the last two days, I've only been at work for yesterday's 1/2 day since the 31st. I'm not comfortable being on the road with a city full of people who don't know how to drive in it and, as of yesterday's phone call from one of the corporate honchos, the Seattle area offices are closed so the Portland area offices should close at the discretion of the managers. I called my boss last night to say if things were the same today as yesterday on the roads, I wouldn't be coming in. The heat in the office doesn't work right, so she and I were sharing the pain yesterday of frozen fingers and toes...you just can't work like that. Highways are closed all over the place and the MAX isn't even running. People have slid into each other and trees and most anything else you can think of and abandoned their vehicles on the sides of roads around the city. It's crazyness.

So, since yesterday was such a winter wonderland, around 3ish Trip and I decided to go sledding. The only problem with that idea is that we don't have sleds. Being the ingenious kids we are, we headed over to GI Joe's and he buys two 6'x9' tarps for $3 each. These things are slicker than shit and we knew we'd fly down the hills on 'em. We proceeded to Mt. Tabor (home of the soap box derby I went to over the summer and some of the best hillsides in the city) and it was already starting to get dark. Not too many people left up there but the street lights were starting to come on and the die-hards were still zipping around on runner sleds and cardboard and innertubes. We plowed up the 50 or so stairs to the top of the hill above where the cars park and looked down at what lay before us.

The hill drops off at about a 75 or 80 degree angle for around 50 feet, flattens out for about 15 or 20 feet and then slopes down again at maybe 45 degrees for another 25 or 30 feet shooting you out into the parking lot. Yeah baby yeah. I watched him wrap himself up in the tarp and go flying off the edge, mostly sliding on his back and side facing forward until the middle, where he got turned around and slid the rest of the way into the lot going backwards. It didn't strike me until my third run that the potential for catching air coming off the first slope was damn high if you were laying right but I found out the hard way as I slammed down and wrenched my neck, back and hip. I took a minute to catch my breath, staring up at the sky as bits of ice scratched at my face, wondering if my lungs would freeze if the air I struggled to suck in didn't warm between my mouth and them. I finally sat up and then got up and shook it off, plodded back up the stairs and did one more run before I had to call it quits and just watch. For that short time, I forgot about everything and just enjoyed being a kid again. All the head noise disappeared and, for about two hours, I was 12 again, playing in the first snowstorm after we moved to Santa Fe and feeling like everything was right with the world.

Today, I hurt. I feel like I did some hard core workout and pulled everything possible in the process. My neck is screaming, my back is tweaked, my ribs are sore and my ass...well, it's thawed out quite nicely, thank you very much. Today, I know 12 is long gone and the simple things like playing in snow are temporary distractions from the real world. The girl I am right now is as real as you can get - no bullshit, no pretense, no facades, no lies. Just me. Far from perfect, but real. Here. Now. Waiting.

Between my hurt outside and my hurt inside, I could use a hug...

*listening to Idlewild - check out the lyrics to "Out Of Routine", "Stay The Same", and "In Remote Part"*