Jon and I headed up to a ski resort on Saturday to do some boarding, and since it was my first trip this season my stomach was a tangled stew of anxious flip-flops, a welcome feeling because sometimes I think the Prozac works too well, makes me sort of immune to all emotions, not just the yucky ones. Nothing is too stressful anymore, but maybe, sometimes things should be stressful? Does that make sense? Like, I could be standing at the top of that snowy mountain and slip and start to fall to my death, and instead of fighting to grab hold of something I’d just sort of go with it, and be all, hmm. The end is near. Isn’t that neat. And as the snow choked my robotic heart, I’d quietly mutter my last words: “Malfunction. Malfunction.”
Unfortunately, the weather here has been unforgiving, and since the temperature hovered around ridiculous degrees, we cut our day short and headed home early. It was just too cold to enjoy ourselves, and once we had taken off all our gear and climbed back into the car I discovered that I had not pulled my fleece hat over my right ear far enough. And that ear had been pelted with freezing wind and snow so badly that it had hardened and swelled to twice its normal size. I would have adjusted the hat a bit had I known what was going on at the time, had I been able to feel anything. But the cold made it so that I didn’t even know that my ear was about 15 minutes away from rotting off my head. And people ask me why I don’t like winter in Utah. Maybe it’s because there is a very good chance I might be walking around with half of my face missing AND NOT EVEN KNOW IT.