The eyeball is g-g-g-gone

I had to give the new avatar a little more exposure, so the eyeball that previously identified me to all in blog-land is outta here. Y'all already KNOW I've got blue eyes, and it was getting kind of boring, and Trina got herself a new avatar and I want to be just like her when I grow up, so I bowed under the peer pressure (a heavy burden, let me assure you) and started something new.

Of course, there's no real sense having an avatar that looks just like me, becuase who's going to be compelled to come play with a middle-aged "blond" lady who's soft around the middle (and sides, and bottom, and, oh crap, everywhere) and needs glasses to see but not to read and who notices the little lines around her mouth are no longer little and maybe she looks a little like a ventroloquist's dummy in strong light with all the lines and whatnot?

Who? Anybody?

I thought as much. Middle age is boring, except that now I know a ton of stuff that I didn't know way back when, which makes me more INTERESTING at least, and possibly even FASCINATING at best, but you can't tell that from just an eyeball.

It's ever so MUCH better to be a ghostly white punk-girl in all black with pink hair and some very cool shades.

Just like when I was in my 20's.

==========================

And so, a story of me in my 20's, that goes a little like this:

I once skiied down a black diamond slope at Killington,* in a snowstorm, at dusk.

On my ass.

Rhetorial questions time: Did you know that it's difficult to see the moguls on a wind-scoured ice sheet that a ski slope becomes when burnished with 40-mile-an-hour winds? Did you also know that once ON the hilltop there's no way to get down OTHER than under your own power, because the lifts do NOT pick up, they only drop off? Did you also know that crying and hanging on the arm of your supposed beloved-of-the-moment will NOT convince him to walk down the slope with you, and may even go so far as to prompt him to taunt you for WANTING to take off your skis and hike?

Well, now you do.

Once the tears and flop-sweat had dried up somewhat, I realized that here was no other way for me to get down the slope than to sit and scoot and claw at the face of the mountain with my mittened hands, because I do not now, nor did I then, have 3-D vision and, stupidly, refused to wear my glasses because if I did I would not look like a cute snow bunny, so everything just looked like a purplish-blue glacier of doom somewhere under a swirling vortex of snowy death, forcing me onto my cute size-8 snowpants clad ass in fear for my life and limbs (forget the dignity).

(That was one looong sentence, wasn't it?)

I had (I thought wisely) chosen to skirt along the outer edge of the slope, near the trees, in order to avoid the madmen and women who had chosen to actually SKI the hill of fear; however, what I had not taken into account was that there are moguls even near the edges of slopes, and that sometimes those moguls are the launching pad for people who like to "ski the trees" (at dusk! in a snowstorm! insane!), and that my gray ski jacket may have blended in a smidge too well with the shadows that remained of the aforementioned moguls on the purply hillside of terror, rendering me maybe a little bit invisible as I ass-slid my way toward a nice glass of burgundy, and so I not only had to sit and ski, ignoble and defeated, down the decline of doom, but I had to watch out for those insane thrill-seekers who had a life goal of scaring me to within an inch of involuntary micturation with their aerial derring-do and near-decapitation.

(again, just one sentence. what is my problem here?)

And where, you ask, was my supposed beloved?

Waiting for me at the bottom of the hill, after skiing the trees.

(*don't quote me here, but I think it was the "Ovation," which I've since (today!) learned is one of the most difficult slopes to ski in New England. Go. Young. Me.)

======================

So, there you have it. A fine example of "something I would NOT do now that I'm older" that I stupidly did as a younger person because I simply DID NOT KNOW BETTER.

Heed me, you post gen-X-ers out there (or whatever the 20-somethings are called now), heed me well. Because of my vast knowledge base, finely tuned self-preservation skills, and aversion to injury or embarrassment, you will no LONGER find me freezing my ass off on some dark frigging icy ski slope in a blizzard trying to wipe frozen tears off my face so I can see enough to avoid being conked in the head by some crazed speed addict!

Unless you dare me.

Because, even though I might LOOK grown up doesn't mean I don't have some stupid left in me.