NSCD

For the past nine weeks I've been volunteering with the National Sports Center for the Disabled up at Winter Park. This program has been one of my greatest sources of joy since arriving back in Colorado. Each Thursday I wake up before the sun and drive two hours up to the mountains wondering what sort of challenge I'll be faced with that day.

For the first few weeks we worked with autistic children who all had varying degrees of the disorder. Some kids were very low functioning, nonverbal and pretty much not at all interested in skiing. Most of that group played in the snow and tried on the ski gear, but never got on the slopes. The other half of the group were high functioning kids, some of whom were verbal. I happened to be matched with an eleven year old boy who never seemed to stop talking, but he was a dear heart and was very enthusiastic about skiing. Most people with autism love their routines and don't like to change it up, so my student skied the exact same run for five weeks in a row. While it became a bit monotonous for me, he absolutely loved it. We gradually accomplished the goals we set at the beginning of the season: to overcome his fear of the chairlift, to work on turning and to pick up the pace and ski just a little bit faster than he started out.

For the rest of the weeks, I've been matched with different students with different issues. On week six I worked with a woman who has MS and is very fortunate to be alive. Thanks to some experimental drug treatments, she has gone from being paralyzed and bedridden to walking and now skiing. She has some balance issues and a huge fear of falling, so we skied very slow that day. It took us about two hours to make it down the run, with one volunteer behind her with tethers attached to her skies and me in front of her skiing backwards to assure her that we wouldn't let her fall. It was a huge accomplishment for her.

On week seven there was some bad weather and rough road conditions preventing half of the students from making it up from Denver, which meant I had a free day of skiing. I felt guilty that I was enjoying the slopes while a bunch of the other volunteers were working with students, but that guilt wore off around noon when the snow began to fall and the slopes were covered in powder.

Week eight was by far the most challenging day of teaching as I was placed with 4 deaf students, all of whom wanted to snowboard. While I've been snowboarding for the past seven years, I haven't taken any clinics to help me know how to teach another person how to snowboard. Then there is the fact that the students were all deaf creating a huge obstacle. We made it through the morning with a little frustration and whole lot of laughter (mostly them laughing at me and my terrible sign language skills), but we all had fun which is the most important thing.

The hearing impaired group left for home at lunchtime and I was assigned to help out another group of snowboarders, this time a group of teenage boys. They all live in a house in Denver which is part of a substance abuse program and "last chance" before being sent to juvenile hall. These boys have some crazy stories. One of them stole a car from a drug dealer, was pursued by police in a high speed chase all the way from Denver to Colorado Springs and ended the chase by rolling the car. By the way, he was only fourteen at the time. All the other boys have committed various offenses, primarily having to do with drugs or stealing. Most of them grew up huffing various substances to get high which has resulted in some developmental disorders. But despite all this, they are really great kids. They just haven't been given the chance to prove themselves. When we're on the slopes they lose their identity of juvenile delinquent, and they become kids on snowboards.

Yesterday was week nine and I was again assigned to work with the teenage boys from the group home. We got them off the bunny hill and managed to help them down a blue run. I can only guess how great this made them feel since none of them are very good at showing emotion. I'm hoping it was the highlight of their week because it certainly was mine.

Next week is the tenth and final week of the program which is bittersweet. I'm going to miss it very much, although it will be nice not having to devote fifty percent of my income to gas money!

Cleaning out the junk drawer

Every six weeks or so, I empty out the junk drawer in my nightstand which accumulates all the stuff that I like to put off to take care of later. Today it occurred to me that I've created another "junk drawer" in the form of my blogger account since I've become really good at starting posts without finishing them usually because I don't think the topic is worthy of posting. Consider this a cleaning out of my blogger junk drawer of all the randomness that has been going on in my head in the past two months.

Colorado is really dry. I think I managed to use the same tube of chap stick the entire time I was in Mississippi where the humidity kept my lips moist and healthy. Colorado is radically different. I think I've gone through 4 tubes of Burt's Bees since I got back here in November. If I keep this up, I'll probably have invested enough money in chap stick to pay for Burt's condo in Aspen and a deluxe hive for his bees.

Muh Dawg Chloe has three passions at this point in life: chasing my mom's cat, creating yellow snow and hiking. She and I only share one common passion and I hope you can correctly guess what that is.

If I were wealthy enough to move up to a ski town (which will probably be never) I would definitely pick Winter Park because the people are great. They are friendly and down to earth and quite laid back. I've been fortunate enough to meet several Winter Park/Fraser residents while volunteering with NSCD and thus far have not meet one that I didn't like. Last week I met the aunt and uncle of the husband of a woman whose parents go to my church. We started talking up a storm about their nephew and wife even though I don't know the couple very well and couldn't tell you their last name! Despite that, I felt like I was chatting with old friends whom I've known forever.

One of my toenails fell off the other day. No warning at all, just fell off. When I ran a 10K three years ago, I had a toenail fall off, but I knew it was coming because it was black and hurting for weeks leading up to the race. I'm not sure what the cause was this time. I should probably look into figuring that out.

The last time my parents and I ate at Red Robin, a hilarious though unfortunate event occurred. There was a birthday at a table across the restaurant and the waitress was bringing over a special dessert with a balloon tied to the fork. As she walked by our table with the beautiful dessert, the balloon got caught in a ceiling fan which ripped the balloon out and took the fork with it. The fork then proceeded to sail in the air and hit a male patron sitting at the table behind us. As far as I could tell, he was fine, but the waitress was a bit embarrassed as nearly the whole restaurant burst into laughter.

Forbes has named Boulder, Co as the smartest city in the U.S. for the second year in a row. Longmont was not named number one for obvious reasons. Here's an example: our newspaper, the Daily Times-Call has a forum called the T-C Line where readers can call in and anonymously give their opinions about topics. Sometimes there are really smart comments but most of the time the callers are not so smart. My favorite recent entry from Saturday 2/16: "I was wondering where Obama was born, because if he wasn't born in the United States, he's not eligible to be president". The editor added a note about the requirements for eligibility to be president and stated that Obama was born in Hawaii. I really hope this caller is an eight year old who is learning about the U.S. government in school, otherwise, I'm really sad for this adult who either doesn't realize that Obama probably looked into the requirements before spending a boatload of time and money on his campaign, or else the caller doesn't know that Hawaii is in fact in the U.S.

On Valentine's Day 2004 I was a Freshman in college and I had an odd conversation with a friend in the dorms. She and I were talking about guys and our relationship histories. To make a long story short, she came up with a theory to explain my lack of dating. She called it the _____ Curse which stems back to my Elementary School days when I had a boyfriend who's name I leave blank in order to save what dignity he has left. To this day I still have no idea why I did it, but during recess one day I kicked him in the genitals and left him doubled over and crying on the playground. Even though he forgave me for the incident I still feel really guilty and wish it never happened. So, fast forward to the conversation in the dorms. My friend (who is very into astrology and tinkers with witchcraft) believes that the lack of dating in my life is a direct result of that incident on the playground and the universe has sent out a message to all guys warning them about me. Thus they avoid me in order to be spared similar pain. I laughed at her when she came up with the idea, but who knows, perhaps there is some truth to it.

In high school I used to pretty much only listen to Christian music. I definitely don't have the same philosophy today as my iPod has songs like "Crazy Bitch" by Buckcherry and "When I Get You Alone" by Thicke. Both are really awful songs that I shouldn't even like, but I listen to them anyway.

Things that make me smile

I realize the last post was a bit dark, so I should say that I'm doing fine and there is no need to worry (so no more panicked phone calls will be necessary:) Seasons of sorrow are normal and just another part of life. I should also clarify that there were 5 fatalities in the shootings this weekend, not 6 as I wrote. Sorry for the typo.

There are a lot of things that make me smile lately. Here are just a few:

Chloe playing in the snow. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first, but now she loves prancing in it.

The song "I Turn My Camera On" by Spoon. That catchy beat makes me walk like I'm cool.

The National Sports Center for the Disabled. I'll be teaching ski lessons through the program starting in January. First step: try and remember how to ski after 7 years of snowboarding. Sounds like a good challenge.

Wedding planning. I'm not paying for anything and I'm not in the wedding, so it is really fun to just be along for the ride.