Guess what everyone! I learned to ski this weekend!

Awhile back our friend Shannon brought up a top secret birthday trip for her husband, Al and invited us. I had been talking a lot about wanting to learn to ski and it just worked out perfectly. Except that top secret part. I wanted so badly to blog or tweet or Facebook (verb?) about it but I didn’t/couldn’t.

However, after arriving at Al and Shannon’s house at 5am on Friday, that top secret embargo was lifted! I WAS GOING TO LEARN TO SKI THAT DAY!!

We went straight to the resort and Adam and I got our ski lessons rental set up and went to wait in the lesson area while everyone else went off to snowboard or ski.

The lessons were fun – there was a group of maybe eight of us (skiing, Adam did snowboarding) and our instructor, Weston. We did some stretches, learned how to snow-plow, stop, turn, walk up a tiny “hill” sideways and fall and get up.

Let me be a little more clear however.

• I learned how to snow-plow and stop after several tries.. my pizza wedge wasn’t wedgie enough sometimes.
• Turning was actually rather easy for me, compared to stopping. When it was my turn to go between Weston’s poles he put into the snow (maybe five feet away from each other) he decided to “make it harder” and put them only two feet apart. This prompted me to shout “You’re picking on me!” and he said “No, just making it more challenging!” and I then reminded him I hadn’t even been able to do the easy one. So I said OK, so I just go straight through the poles. He said if I did that (as opposed to turning between them) then he’d make it even harder for everyone else. So I looked at the group and apologized in advance.
• Walking up a hill: I was angling my skis the wrong way and was literally battling with the nothing-hills I was trying to shimmy up. At one point my back was to the instructor, who was in the middle of teaching about falling, and he said to me “Jen, I’d like you to see this!” to which I turned around and said “I would too!” (and everyone had a nice chuckle).
• Falling and getting up. Ah yea did you just read the last bullet point? I didn’t get to pretend-fall or practice getting up but I just took mental notes when he lectured. I got to put it to the test later on.. three times.

When it was time to hit the bunny hill, the instructor chose to ride with me and two other girls in the class. Both of which had fallen a lot during the lessons and were rather slow. Why was I in this group? Cause I was so damn slow at walking up the hill. (At first, then someone gave me pointers and I magically flew up the hill each time. So there.) But I was happy, I wanted all the help I could get.

So from left to right in the lift line: Weston, Chick1, Me, Chick2. We’re in line, waiting for the lift so we can sit down… and Chick2 is ready to sit on the railing, not so much the seat. So I grabbed her sleeve and basically pulled her into her seat. Up we go.. and once we’re at the highest point I decide to announce that I’m terribly nervous about this and really trying not freak out. HELLO- THERE ARE NO HARNESSES UP THERE.

Time to get off the damn lift… I get into position… and swoooplunk. I fall. I fall because Chick1 and Chick2 have fallen as well. Weston has to help me up because I’m a goobered mess on the snow now.

Then we do some skiing.. in chunks.. until I fall again. The chicks and I are slow; and I have only fallen once since the lift at this point. I run through all the options Weston taught us and after trying a few, I just take my skis off and get up. So much easier that way. Snap snap I’m back into them and make my way down to the group. After awhile I made it all the way down to the bottom and Weston meets up with me to give me his peptalk I’m sure he tells everyone. Regardless, it’s a nice gesture and I even share the reason why I’m out there learning to ski (all the while trying not to cry – not because I’m sad but because I was so proud of myself for accomplishing my goal.)

Oh I haven’t mentioned one this yet.. the pain. Just because I’ve lost a ton of weight doesn’t mean I’m in the best shape yet (I have lots to go!!) but I’m better than where I was 5+ months ago. However, my muscles are sooo not in shape yet; my calves and thighs were BURNING and shaking at this point. Thankfully it was time for a break and to meet up with everyone else.

After lunch everyone hit the bunny hill with us. This time, with me riding with Al and Shannon I didn’t fall off the lift! Totally smooth right off the thing. Take that Snow Lift Thingie! In yo face!

I followed Shannon as we criss-crossed the hill, taking numerous breaks because if I didn’t I think my thighs were going to detach themselves and run away. Or simply explode. That would have been messy.

After struggling a bit more down the hill, all the while still enjoying myself and speeding up here and there, I found myself getting really tired. It was starting to snow at an angle and my goggles were fogging up. I was hitting my threshold, my friends. And I was maybe.. if being generous, halfway down the damn bunny hill.

Al stopped by and gave me a great peptalk and told me that it was totally ok if I needed to just walk down the hill; others with plenty of years of experience do it all the time when it is needed. That option made me get a little emotional; I didn’t want to walk down the hill. I wanted to ski! That was what I was here for. But at the same time, my calves and thighs hurt so bad I was shaking. So Shannon unsnapped my boots so I could walk easier and I grabbed my gear and down I went. Adam, by the way, made it to the bottom on his snowboard. He’s always the trooper! I’m so proud of him too for learning to snowboard.

On Saturday, after a long debate with myself, I decided not to ski. The reasons were a mixture of being really sore from Friday’s adventures, the fact that rental+lift was $100, and that I was frankly concerned that I’d only make it down the hill once. Once for $100 just didn’t seem like a good thing. I also considered the fact that tomorrow (Monday) Adam and I are starting our boot camp workouts.

I think I made a good decision; instead of skiing I watched Adam snowboard and people watched for a few hours. I love all the wild outfits people were wearing and I’d also watch how people were skiing, turning their skis at an angle to stop, etc. Adam and Shannon were done around noon so we spent the rest of the time together, walking around in the snow (as it was snowing!) and I even contemplated the Tube Hill.. but again it wasn’t worth the money+time.

Here are photos from our trip:

So my friends, what is my final opinion and the outcome of this trip? — Skiing is totally fun and I plan to do it again; I’d also like to take a snowboarding lesson as well just to see what it is like. Who knows, maybe I’ll like that more!

I’m just so proud of myself that I did this; it’s all part of the new me – trying things I’ve always wanted to do but was limited because of my weight.

So now that “Learn to ski” is being crossed off my Goals of 2010 list (on the left of this page) I decided to add a new one to the list. This summer I want to LEARN TO SURF.

So counting today and March 24th itself.. there’s 30 days until I’m officially 30 years old.*

Am I supposed to be freaking out? That’s what people do, right? I mean, I won’t be able to go around saying “I’m in my twenties!” anymore, because you know I do that all the time.

What to do, what to do..
The month is going to be really busy and I’m actually pretty exhausted just thinking about it.

On Monday Adam and I will be starting up a month-long (three days a week for four weeks) program at boot camp! Working out at 6am Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That alone is going to wipe me out. Add on top of that, swimming at least once a week, maybe more toward the end of the month. Plus treadmill running program and I *might* attempt to start up The Shread.. but I’m not sure if I have the guts to do so just yet. Maybe save that for April.

That’s just the working out that is planned. I’m also trying to plan my birthday party itself and find all the appropriate pieces for my Alice in Wonderland “inspired” outfit. I’m really quite excited over it and hope that everyone that attends will attempt to dress up with a ‘hint’ of Alice In Wonderland at least! But there is still a lot of planning to do.. augh.

*There’s a big chance I’m counting that wrong. You don’t want to know what kind of grades I got in my math classes, ok?

One of my goals was to do more photo projects – and since I set these goals at the beginning of the year, I thought one that would be fun to try was Project 365. Essentially taking photo (or using an old one, but not repeating the dates) each day of the year.

I started out strong, but have officially thrown in the towel on this one. Why? Well I found myself really stretching for daily photos – it became more of a chore than part of my creative interest in photography. Sure I got some “good ones” but in a pinch I’d take yet another photo of Penny or something candid with our little point-and-shoot. Just not what I’m set out to do.

So that’s over. But I did get some good shots in while I was playing along:

You can see the rest of them here.

So life has been somewhat busy the last few months with vacations, holidays, work, and of course general procrastination sucking up a lot of my time. One thing I just realized – I never finished talking about my surgery (heh 5 months later.. whoops). So here are a few things…

After my surgery I was given my own hospital room. I chatted with my parents, Iris and Adam a little bit. I even took some photos from my bed of my guests and the view from the bed. One of the photos was of my Super Duper Neato Morphine Button. On top of the meds they continued to pump into me, they gave me a little clicker to help deal with the pain.

Now, granted I was still coming off of previous pain meds but I didn’t really feel bad at all. Within an hour or so of being in my room they wanted me to get up and start walking. That was a little harder to do. The getting up part, not so much the walking.. though I was really slow. I walked around the halls and nurses station a few times and then would scoot back into the bed. After the get up/get down and walking, I noticed my stomach ached much more. Then it would dawn on me, hey I have my nifty clicker and I was allowed to use it! To be even more specific, I was allowed ten clicks an hour. I never had to use it that much. I maybe used it once every few hours and usually after doing a few laps in the halls. During my walks, I had my IV stand with me. I tried to make my walks a bit more interesting and decided to stop at each photo on the wall and look it over. Have I mentioned I was on various drugs? Yes? OK good then you can understand.

I remember asking one of my nurses how many incisions I had. They told me five. I later found a sixth. Hello! Anyway, they sure didn’t look pretty. Don’t worry, there are no photos of those!

At one point they wanted me to start to drink my water and protein drinks. When I took my first sip-swig of water, it was the first time that I had the feeling of wanting to throw up. But I quickly remembered what I had read and knew that this would happen. The water I drank was cold.. cold constricts. My stomach was now about one ounce (instead of about 60 ounces which is an average sized stomach) so it didn’t react very well to the cold water. I closed my eyes and just breathed. Let the cold pass and it’ll be OK… and it was.

It got late and it was time for everyone to go and have their dinners and get some rest. After another round of walking I tried to settle in and watch some television and hopefully fall asleep. I think the whole night I may have nodded off only a few times. I got up in the middle of the night and walked a couple of times as well. I remember watching the news and hearing things that related to work projects – so I grabbed my notebook and took notes. Telling myself to email a coworker about this or that detail. WORKING via hospital bed. Clearly I was on some wacky meds. I watched quite a few infomercials as well, all of which seemed to have very promising products. Again, more notes in my notebook. I also started to write about my hospital experience. Many of which has been posted here already.

Next thing I realized, it was morning and I hadn’t really slept much. My parents and Adam returned and after my Dr called to check on my progress, I was told that I could technically leave whenever I wanted to. They figured I’d actually be more comfortable at home and would probably get actual rest that way. So around 1pm I was released – pushed to the car in a wheelchair (weeee!) and home I went!

Being fat and sitting in an economy-grade plane seat is not a fun experience. I thought I’d share some experiences of mine since there’s all this hubbub about film director Kevin Smith and his booting from a Southwest flight recently (and the added Twitter/Social Media/PR frenzy as a result.)

The quick on KS. He’s a big guy, he’s not denying it, and he had originally bought two seats on a Southwest flight because they’re cheap and it’s just generally more comfortable that way (hello, a place to put your stuff while you enjoy your flight, no elbows to keep away from each other, etc.) He ended up getting an earlier flight, which means ’standby’ and in this new flight, two seats were not available. He got on the plane, sat down and buckled up. The seat belt fit him. The armrests were able to move down. And yet, he was booted from the plane. He then took to Twitter about it, tweeting what happened and generally letting his feelings and mood be known 140 characters at a time. Now it’s bringing more awareness to the need to marry public relations departments with customer service… but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

So that’s his story for the most part.

I don’t have a “kicked off the plane” story but I do understand the humiliation and feelings that go along with the whole “too fat to ride in a plane” issue.

In what I refer to as “my former life”, or at least prior to five months ago, I was at my heaviest when I decided to take a trip to Paris with Iris. I tried to keep that determination that I will do things regardless how big I was – I needed to travel, have fun and enjoy life. Not to say I wasn’t skipping out on things occasionally – I did, but I reallllly tried not to. So off we were to Paris and as we were settling into our Virgin Atlantic seats, I suddenly had a wave of fear and embarrassment come over me.

My seat belt didn’t fit.

I laughed nervously as I tried everything I could think of; I wiggled and scooted and sucked it in. Granted, it did cross my mind that if I had to do all these things just to get the belt to barely fit that it was going to be a very uncomfortable 8+ hour flight. So I gave up and decided to swallow my pride and Iris and I asked for a seat belt extender. Even though the flight attendant was very nice and respectfully quiet about it — she didn’t hold it up for all to see and shout that the big Fatty didn’t fit, thankfully — I still felt horrible about it.

I understood. I laughed about it. But I also felt shame and that it was just another piece of evidence that I had failed myself. Had I gotten that big that I needed an extender? OH and to save just a little bit of face here, I only needed like two measly more inches, OK? Not the whole belt. Ok.. moving on.

Another time, back in 2005 when a bunch of my friends and I did the big European trip, there was a moment of fear again. This time we were on one of the budget airlines, I think Ryan Air or some other one out there. I cannot remember the name. But the seats were terribly small. I wasn’t my heaviest weight then, but still quite a large girl… but the fact that the seats were smaller reduced the length of the belt. Luckily for me at this time I was able to wiggle and scoot and suck it in. The belt was tight but it was closed. Regardless, I still had that wave of fear when I first noticed it was going to be a tight fit.

So I am compassionate for KS and what he had to go through – especially when, according to him, he fit just fine in everything.

When it comes to my situation from my trip to Paris – where do I place the anger? Do I direct it toward the airline for not having longer standard seat belts? No, not really. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be that big and the fact they had an extender was a RELIEF simply because I was afraid they’d make me buy another seat or kick me off entirely. But like I said, I put the blame on myself. That mixed with all the nervous laughter and fear doesn’t make for a great plane ride. I never wish these things on anyone else as they’re just not feelings someone needs to experience.