I Kill Trees

When the computer clock reads 11:27 I have one goal--a clean agate page. (For most of you who are A. not working for pennies and B. not newspaper nerds it's enough to know that I do the dirty work for the sports desk.) And at 11:35, after the first run, I'm humiliated at red ink smeared across the proof. Love that chaser deadline which cleans up my page and means only a few lucky souls get to laugh at the genius arranging prep scores the next morning.

Today to honor Earth Day I attempted to lay off the paper, to make my corrections while staring at the computer screen. The problem came when my tired eyes began to itch (I blame weird computer graphics and lighting). The problem increased as I began scrolling and skipping large sections. On paper I go line by line as taught in kindergarten. In the tech world I believe in short-cuts, unfortunately they fail me more often than I'd like.

The solution glared me in my principled eyes—print I must, as many copies as necessary for that perfect page. I felt a pang in my heart for everything arboreal. It lasted a couple minutes and increased in intensity when I thought about the episodes of the day. I’d been using exorbitant amounts of paper towels and tissue all day.

I’d washed my hands after every sneeze. No, not just my sneezes but the 53 sneezes of my students, plus the paper towels used to wash their hands and the double and triple layers of tissue to help them blow their noses and protect my hands. And once, maybe twice, I just watched as a child threw away an used paper towel.

The Reduce, Reuse, Recycle poster of youth flashed through my head. Briefly. I cleared my desk and tossed out the stack of paper I’d used in the past five hours. Happy Earth Day, I killed trees.

Spring Breakdown

Spring Break. The breaking through of buds and blossoms, hormones and crazy schemes. Or it should be and in my not too distant past was. Spring Breaks for the high school me usually meant a trip to Utah to hang with my college attending sisters. And when I switched to the U spring break occurred in Costa Rica.

But spring break as a teacher just means sleeping in a bit and going to school to bleach the toys and organize the room. What I wanted it to mean was four days of snowboarding, until I found out that my resort closed Sunday and my holiday started sixteen hours later. (enter expletive here)

So then I remembered the fun of the volcano, dancing, jungle and beach of Costa '05. I could trade in my sweats for shorts, and my mom had offered me the use of my old room in Lamar. Tempting. However in adult world there is no spring break and I had the obligation of three other jobs to contend with. Poolside in the ghetto it was.

Poolside staring at a pool cover shivering in sweats, sipping hot chocolate and watching large quarter-sized snowflakes land on green blades of grass and crumple delicate pink, purple and yellow flower petals.

The good news: SPF 15 more than adequate for such conditions. The bad news: poolside is code for couch in this scenario.

gogg-less

Sometimes ideas are genius in their very nature. Generally mine are not and I miss the foreshadowing of the misfortune to come. So this time when my great idea involved working early Saturday morning and meeting Trav for one last afternoon of snowboarding I banished all negative feelings.

The stomach churning was probably from the acidic orange I’d just eaten. The growing 48-hour headache was from being cooped up indoors all week. The tight calf-muscles were effects of dehydration. And a 30-minute late start only meant I’d have to ride with the nose pointed down the mountain instead of the parallel lines I love.

On the mountain Trav and I saw short lift lines and splashed our way through the snow. Even the dense rain clouds and warmish temperature didn’t clue me in. Maybe I thought it had to be a dark and stormy night for calamity to fall. I blamed undesirable conditions for my lack of balance and by the last run I felt a rare thrill.

On that run we had the mountain to ourselves. No small children for me to injure. No fast riders to injure me. And Travis was pulling tricks old school Nintendo style. I watched him crouch down and ride out a flat (when I say crouch picture Nintendo graphics and that’s what he looked like, arms straight out). He helicoptered down while I made mounds of slush to ramp over. And on the death hill he flew leaving me with an echoing call of WAHOO. That deep booming Hall voice could be used for avalanche control. And then it was done, the season over and the end of the winter of Trav and Bre.

And as a mark of rebellion, or maybe I subconsciously wanted to commemorate its greatness, one self-fulfilling prophecy stole my happiness. When Travis gifted me with my white and blue pinstriped goggles I loved them immediately. He immediately cautioned me not to scratch the lens. After months of reminding myself not to two weeks ago I did just that. And as we said goodbye to each other and to the mountain I failed to notice my missing scratched goggles, lying on the pavement near my car.

My paranoia of ruining the perfect gift came true.

Reasonably Responsible

There comes a time in every girl's life when she asks herself, Do I really want to go to work? Yes, but not when work means missing out on fun and fun means a full day of snowboarding followed by a great outdoor concert in Park City, Utah.

Having been out of work for half of my post college career I do value the structure, income and sense of social duty that a job provides. I went a little crazy with weeks and weeks of a free schedule. Actually I think that was only because all my friends were at work and I felt left out, alone in slacker world.

So when the opportunity came to rotate through four jobs during a week, I foolishly accepted and threw my free time (weekends too) off the face of the then snowless mountains. Karma stung me with snow storms immediately. And this was the year I'd dedicated to conquering snowboarding, season pass included. It's been a struggle and I've thrown shoes. But today it hurt the most.

I woke early to hit the mountains with my personal instructor and guide, know that the fatigued and exhausted state of my body would only hold up for a couple hours. Perfect because I had a few things to get done later and a late work shift. Wait. My poor body wanted a full beating. I tumbled down the last run because my muscle control disappeared. Frosted in white I stared at the lift aching for one more run...or for a warm shower and twelve hours of sleep. I got neither but stumbled onto the gondola.

The ache grew when I heard the sound check and saw the stage for the concert. We debated and fought with time. Time won and we turned our backs on fun. I thought about calling in sick. A lie of sorts but I am sick of work. And then the weight of responsibility crushed my spirit. I would go to work and smile while there. But I would listen to my ipod and be anti-social. Karma kicked me for my bad attitude. I didn't need to be at work. In fact they didn't think I was scheduled to work and I spent two-and-a-half hours waiting for the phone to ring. It rang once, and when I answered no one was there.

Next time I will reasonably ask if responsible is really necessary.

Intimate Aisles

While shopping in Europe I watched as women grabbed a shirt or pants and yanked them over (or under) the clothes they were wearing. I remember thinking this was odd, but an incredible time saver. No hassle of finding someone to assist you, waiting in line for a dressing room, or being locked out of said dressing room. Brilliant.

Unfortunately I never quite figured out how Euro sizing worked so I generally wasted my time looking for someone who worked at the store and understood me. Once I got back to the States I cut my shopping time in half. Instead of trying on shirts in the dressing room I simply stripped down to a tank top by a mirror and quickly pulled things on and off for verification of fit.

All this time I’d been thinking I’d revolutionized American women’s way of shopping. (Guys have been doing this for years, or skip the fitting process altogether?) But today I saw that the Wal-Mart shoppers are steps, years even, ahead of me.

In passing I saw a woman in a bright green shirt trying on a nude colored bra. She lifted and placed, lifted and placed, and pulled straight as I processed the image. The contrasting colors must have been on purpose, so she could carefully see where the lines of the garment would fall.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing and tried to redirect my male companion. But mostly I wondered if she ever dreamed about going to school in her underwear.

In the Eyes of the Beholder

In the hallway four women breathed four sighs as they gazed through the glass doors of the elementary school. Prisoned inside three of them remarked on the lovely day, one rolled her eyes in disgust. A warmish day does not automatically translate into beauty.

Looking across the valley I could barely distinguish the Oquirrh Mountains, a few ridges peaked through the haze. Outside at recess my opinion refused to change. My definition of beautiful excludes dust particles, air pollutants, fumes and evaporated salt.

Outside on a beautiful day my eyes don’t itch, my skin isn’t clogged by air irritants and my snot isn’t black. On a beautiful day the warmth of the sun beats on me. Today the warmth of the thick air suffocated me. I felt like I’d wandered into a spider web and the poison from the spider’s bite would crush my lungs.

Those poor fools, I surmised, have never lived in open country. A twist in life once again makes me long for the comfort of home, Lamar. There on the open plains I grew up with clean air (if you don’t count the large percent of methane). The blue skies continued past the horizon, swallowing the sage brush.

Every day offered new shades of sky blue. The blue of winter days lured you unsuspectingly into the bitter cold. A cold that seemed to condense the color and deepen the color while stretching it far above you. The color so rich and a sky so thick you believed that bundled up you could wait outside for the sky to reach its saturation and fall on you.

The blue of spring released the frost bound color scattering it across the sky. Those days the blue looked faded, light, carefree. Or maybe it was waking after a slumber, not quite warm and slightly pale.

Summer heat brought dizzying shades starting with a light blue against a sunrise that burst into a shock of variations. Against a sharp roof you saw a deep penetrating blue that bleed into a lighter ring around the sun—I suppose I should mention I spent some time staring at the sun as a youth. That is why you are reading a blog that uses blue fifty times without a clear description of the hue—And when the storms brewed the sky swelled into royal blues and violets that gave way to a midnight blue contrasted with streaks of white burning light.

In autumn the cobalt blue skies dipped to greet you in the mornings, whisper to you at noon, hug you after school and kiss you good night at dusk.

The High Plains—blessed with four seasons producing 365 beautiful days.

A Family Affair

Like every happy family mine has traditions. March brings a family sport to the forefront as we fill out brackets for the NCAA tourney. In a family pool we all try to beat each other, no loyalties, lots of trash talking and year-long bragging rights for the title holder.

Unfortunately basketball is my least favorite sport and my family knows it. Not to say it wasn’t fun playing Horse on our half-court or watching the four-peat state champs that we called the twins or Phil’s handiwork in the War Party (a group of boys sent in run the other team into the ground). Good memories but I refused to play in high school and developed something of contempt for the sport.

That contempt and my lack of sports spectating enthusiasm may be why members of my family seek to dethrone me as bracket champion. I have a habit of choosing well in the brackets, leading at intervals and finishing above at least half the family and one or two of my brothers (who know everything about sports).

This year I’ve been challenged. Smack talk through emails, a change in pool domain, predictions of my demise. They’ve even opened the pool to “anyone else we deem worthy”. Hoping for an outsider to take my crown? Yes, all happy families have their traditions. So I will traditionally fill out my bracket. As every year I know nothing about the teams, haven’t even heard hype over a favorite while working the sports desk at the Tribune.

Completely oblivious but blessed with an ability to test well and interpret stats, plus the random picks by mascot and color approval, I set out to defend my position at the top and frustrate the Hall testosterone.