The high road: rocky with a great view

[ciluzen]

Pax, HaWho, and fabulous JellyB...thank you for the bday wishes! It was a very nice day/week. I really am grateful for the people in my life now. I have so much good happenning. I'm also learning that when something "bad" happens, I need to change the way I look at it, not dwell so much on how bad it is and then allow it to cause me stress.

Here's an example. I went to take my final exam for my pre-req class. I am proctored through the library next door on all of my tests and exams. I got all set up and the librarian/proctor entered the password the university had sent her...and it didn't work! We tried everything including calling the help line, but they were in another time zone and already closed for the evening. So, no test for me. I thought about it and decided...

I was being given the opportunity to study more. Maybe I wasn't as ready as I thought and the opportunity was being given to fix that. The "gift of time", if you will.

So, tying in to that thought...I went skiing yesterday. I had made plans to ski with my meetup group today, so I decided to go up alone yesterday for a light half-day. It was a beautiful blue sky day. I wondered if XH was headed up, as somehow I actually haven't seen him since he encountered my ski group.

I was there early and was able to be one of the first people on the lift. Its actually a big ski area with many lifts and multiple peaks and ridges, so I'm always amazed when I do run into XH. I realized that not much grooming had been done and most of the runs were ungroomed with heavy snow with a thin ice crust on top (it snowed snow the day and evening before then froze). I'm not so good at forging may way through that (some good skiers love it), so I was pretty challenged. I fell twice on one run.

I made my way to the lodge and saw XH putting his skis on. I threw caution and DB to the wind and smacked him in the leg with my ski pole. He had just gotten there. We ended up skiing all day and doing lunch and a beer break together. Usually I make a point in paying; this time he wouldn't allow it. He ALMOST allowed a compliment out as we were sking...about me skiing well. He cut it off- he makes a point of not complimenting me.

We talked, I listened. But I talked and asked questions, too. I learned a lot about what is going on in his family, at work, and listened to his "negativity" as he put it. He did say he heard I got in to my program and offered his congrats.

Anyway. It was nice to touch base for a bit, but man are my legs sore. Now I think today is going to have to be the half day of skiing.