• About
  • Contact

Her Ace in the Hole

...rarely relevant, sometimes cheeky, almost honest.

You are here: Home / Archives for Just Plain Awesomeness

Lunch with Aron

January 15, 2014 By ace 7 Comments

My best friend Jenny once told me that if she could do it all over again, she would work full-time when her children were young.  Because of her seniority (ha!) and many years of experience, she has decided that the early years are pretty easy, then the older kids become, the more they need you.  Her theory is when children are small, they just need the basics.  Food, hugs, bottles, naps, Tonka trucks.  When they approach middle school, it’s math tutors (since you can’t remember anything above pre-algebra) and rides all over town and makeup and hormones and nasty friends playing junior high head games (which really never quit, at least for girls…).

Now Jen’s wisdom makes total sense to me.

I think about this concept almost every day, and I sense that I’m doomed.  This is because my kids are only 4 and 8 years old, and I feel like they are sucking every spare minute out of my day.  A great example is this post I’m writing…I’ve been thinking about it for over a week three weeks now and have honestly not had thirty minutes to sit down and compose it.  I had to get Beatty off to school this morning and wait until the amazing nanny named Dani arrived to even fire up my computer.

Yes, I am paying someone to play with my child so I can write on my blog.

Speaking of kids and their activities, a few weeks back we were up at Snowbird ski resort playing in the beginner’s area with Beatty and Sloan.  My wrists aren’t quite healed enough to ski, so I was following Sloan up and down the hill over at the magic carpet as Brad was trying to teach Beatty to snowboard on the Chickadee lift.  I sent a text to our friends Dave and Melissa, figuring they would be up there since Dave is one of the grand pubahs at Snowbird and Melissa spends many of her weekends up there so she can catch a glimpse of her husband.

Dave replied back that yes, they were there, and they would be eating lunch with their daughter Meredith and Aron Ralston at about 1pm, so I should come say hi.  Perfect.  A break from Sloan.

The name Aron Ralston didn’t click with me, but it did sound vaguely familiar.  I figured Dave mentioned it because it was someone he and I went to high school with.  Oh, ho ho…WRONG!  So I moseyed over to where they were eating lunch, and Melissa waved to me from their table.  When I sat down, Dave and Aron arrived with their salads from the salad bar, and I looked at Aron and said,

“Your name sounds familiar.  Do I know you from somewhere?”

See how shy I am?

Aron just sort of looks at me, then Dave jumps in and says,

“Yes, it sounds familiar because he’s a celebrity!  He had a movie made all about him!”

That was about the time I noticed his bionic arm, so I got all excited and exclaimed,

“OH YEAH, YOU’RE THE GUY WHO GOT STUCK IN THE ROCKS*!!!”

*(is that a weird thing to say??  I didn’t look at Melissa, but I got some very strong vibes that I was perhaps embarrassing her a little…)

But then Aron said,

“Yeah!!  I’m the guy who cut off his own arm!!”

Which immediately put me at ease, because I think anyone who has something crazy or different about them makes me think we are kin, brothers-in-arms, long-lost buddies – even though the craziest thing I’ve ever done was fish my own turd out of a toilet at a party because it wouldn’t flush down and I didn’t want my friends to see it floating around all night.

Then as we all talked, I loved him more because it seemed that he was just a dang cool dude.  Easy going.  Friendly.  Open.  It’s good to be an open person, because with me there, you never know what I’m going to say or what I might ask someone.  I promise, I do try my hardest to not make people uncomfortable.  Well, OK.  I try not to make them uncomfortable if they’re not an asshole.  And Aron is NOT an asshole, which was awesome, because it means we got to talk about his ordeal while he had his lunch.  I haven’t seen his movie, nor read his book, so all I know are the basic details from the news about what happened during his climbing ordeal.

My mind immediately started queueing up the questions I wanted to ask him, and I also checked out what he put on his salad for lunch.  Things like this are important when you meet a celebrity.  I think there were some beets on there, as well as something that looked like cottage cheese, because it was white.

Poor Melissa.  I think she might have been nervous.  I’m such a bad friend.

Anyhow, Aron Ralston is the guy that went hiking and climbing alone in Southern Utah and had a boulder fall on his arm, trapping him in a slot canyon.  He was there for days – TOTALLY STUCK MAN – then he cut off his arm right above the wrist, saving his own life and giving him the chance to hike out and get help.  Freaking crazy.  I mean, SERIOUSLY.  Would I have the courage to cut off my own hand??  I really don’t know.  James Franco played his character in the movie “127 Hours“.  Aron was here in Utah and up at Snowbird for a fundraiser/gala for Wasatch Adaptive Sports, in which he was the featured guest speaker, and Dave and Melissa were skiing with him a little before he had to prepare for his speech.

Since all of them were kind of stuck with me sitting at the table, and I wasn’t going anywhere soon, (I mean, I had about a bazillion things I wanted to ask this dude) I started off our lunchtime conversation in the most appropriate way I could muster.  I asked Aron what sort of thing he actually used in that slot canyon to cut his hand off.

And guess what?  He wasn’t offended or anything, which I LOVE, and he told us in detail, which I also LOVE, and that gave me the courage to ask lots of other questions like, were you left-handed before the accident?  And, when you were amputating your arm, did it hurt…bad??  (Yes.  Yes it did.)

Oh, by the way, he used a multi-tool device to perform the amputation.  You know, those things that have like little tiny scissors and a knife and a small screwdriver in them.  No particular brand.  I didn’t ask, he just offered that.  (I guess a lot of people want to know what brand.)  I also had to know which component of the multi-tool actually did the best job of cutting flesh and nerves and stuff.  It was the screwdriver.

THE SCREWDRIVER.  Amazing!  I never would have guessed!

As I was bugging Aron, he wasn’t eating because he is polite and doesn’t shovel food in his mouth while strange women ask him personal questions.  This was impressive because I’m sure the poor guy was hungry.  Dave worked up the guts to ask him what happened with the hand he lost.  YESSSSSSS.  I couldn’t wait to hear!!  The tale is actually quite fascinating.

I guess that when Search and Rescue teams are sent out to retrieve people – or parts of people – their job and duty they’re sworn to is to bring home everything.  Leave nothing behind.  So when Aron was at the hospital in Moab, he told them details about where he had been and where they could find his hand.  He remembered exactly where to go.  They sent their team out and it actually took two days to get his hand out from under the rock, because the boulder was so heavy they had to bring in some sort of winch system to lift it.  Then they retrieved the hand and put it on ice (just in case, which was really nice and all, but the chances of re-attaching it were zilch…) and came back to the hospital and asked Aron what he wanted to do with the hand.

He said this was kind of a tough question for him, because he was like – I DON’T KNOW…WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE HAND??

The Search and Rescue people told Aron that some people would bury it, and others would have it cremated.  He chose to have it cremated.  I read on Wikipedia that later he went back to the slot canyon and sprinkled his hand ashes there, since that’s where he felt they belonged.  This makes sense to me.

However, let’s remember that Aron was sitting with Piper Benjamin, the person who likes to discuss things that do not make sense.  This turn in the conversation was getting me really, really excited, because I can think of a dozen things that he could have done with the hand, and I’m pressing my lips together REALLY HARD so I don’t shout them out and make a scene or offend my new friend.  But of course, OF COURSE, I had to ask Aron if he considered keeping the hand, and if he did, what would he have done with it?  I guess he really never considered keeping it, which is fine and all, but I’m pretty crafty and I know that there are a few ways you could shellac or dip it in something in order to preserve it.

Aron humored me a little by playing along with my game, and he said yes, maybe you could keep that hand you cut off yourself and put it on your mantle above the fireplace.  As a conversation item.  A showpiece.  And then I think Dave offered up another pretty safe idea for what could be done with a severed and preserved hand, but I wasn’t really listening because my mind was racing with the possibilities, and then your very appropriate friend Piper shouts out,

“OR….YOU COULD PUT IT ON A DRESSER IN YOUR BEDROOM AND USE IT AS A RING HOLDER!!”

And everyone was quiet for a moment.

A bit more quietly, I offered up a weak “like you could slide your rings on the fingers, you know?  …ummmmm, and keep it on your dresser in your bedroom?”.

Then Aron said,

“Now that’s weird.”

Oh.  Yeah.  I guess it is.  So I’m really glad I didn’t tell him that I was also thinking that it could be used as a soap dish in the bathroom or as a way to spank or scare your kids when they are being bad or you could put it on the kitchen counter to lay spoons on while you are stirring stuff on the stove.

Aron, as gracious and kind as he was, broke the awkward moment by telling me that after he had thought about amputating his hand for a couple of days, really figuring out how he could get it done, when the time came to do it, he was actually smiling.  He was smiling as he cut off his own hand because he knew that it would allow him to continue living.  He would be able to see his friends and family again, play dominoes with his dad another time, and be able to hike and spend time in the beautiful outdoors, exploring once more.

This really touched me.

You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.

Because it made me realize that in life, sometimes we go through unimaginable pain.  Times and events that border on hellish that we force ourselves to get through.  Sometimes we have to let go of things that are so dear to us, or people who feel like they are really part of our flesh and bones, and it hurts.  It hurts terribly.  But somehow we let go of that part of us that we before couldn’t imagine living without, and we continue walking forward – sometimes with a smile on our face.

When I realized what Aron had just shared with me, and how it made me think about the incredible spirit of humans, I felt overcome with happiness at his and our own ability to persevere.  We are all so much stronger than we ever can know, and sometimes people cross your path to share a conversation that will remind you of this.

Thanks, Aron.  I totally owe you a salad.

aron-ralston-and-piper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Just Plain Awesomeness, Useless Celebrity Knowledge Tagged With: 127 Hours, Aron Ralston, Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah adventures, Wasatch Adaptive Sports

Pregnancy is Hot and Sexy. Well, Let’s Pretend.

October 13, 2013 By ace 2 Comments

It has taken me a freaking long time to edit the pictures of Jen from when I visited her in Portland.  I did mention in my last post having to crawl around on the floor of DSW to pull out shoe boxes and shove shoes on her swollen feet.  Which I gladly did because Jen is the kind of person I want with me when I take my last breath.

I’m not kidding here.

Sometimes you are lucky enough in life to find someone who understands you so well that you don’t have to explain shit to them.  A person who sticks by you for thirty years like a turd squished into the deep tread of a sole on a brand-new pair of Doc Martens.  This friend knows you will fuck up once in a while and forget her birthday, but she knows you still love her and will send her a really great present from the guilt you feel about the whole deal.  And a friend who will be there when others choose to drift away, because sometimes that happens in life.  But this friend is not a drifter; she is on your permanent rubber lifeboat and she will beat the hell out of that third weirdo on the lifeboat with her wet granny panties when he starts to say things about how my leg is looking really tasty.  She will throw his ass off the boat, and you both will roll around laughing about his horrible body odor, unibrow, and ugly-ass feet.  But in a later conversation you will both agree how you still would probably have sex with him if someone paid you five million dollars.  In cash.

When we took these pictures of Jen, the options were scarce.  We waited until 5 o’clock at night to even start her makeup, and it was raining buckets so the light outside sucked, and then we kept cracking jokes about stretched-out vaginas, old nipples, and thirteen-pound babies.  All this wasted lots of valuable time, so when I got the whole thing set up, I had to get kind of creative.  It made taking pictures a little challenging because we were relegated to her bed, where at least I could attempt some sort of backdrop and the lighting in there didn’t look like the inside of a Wal-Mart.

As I think about this more, this makes TOTAL SENSE and is quite serendipitous, because that bed is where the fetus WAS CONCEIVED in the first place!  This means I listened to the gentle whisper from God to take the pictures in that room.  GOD, I LISTENED!  It’s like an even more real documentation of this little fetus’ beginnings.  The grammar in that last sentence sucked, but anyway, GOD, YOU ROCK.

Why do people not like to use the word fetus?  Really, they don’t.  I swear.  They would rather say “the baby” or “it” even though they are only like 28 days pregnant.  Maybe the word fetus is too close to the word fart.  Or it brings about visualizations of crazy loons who make horrible picket posters to wave around at women’s clinics.  Who knows.

Anyway, here are the pictures I’ve managed to edit and it only took me close to three weeks – which is PRETTY FUCKING GOOD, considering I have only washed my hair once since I returned and I forgot picture day last week at my daughter’s preschool.  Oh yes, and I started to weep as I worked on these photographs, because they made me think about the fact that I will not be at this baby’s birth and I probably won’t get to see him/her more than a few times a year.  Which makes my heart ache and makes me remember how important Jennifer is to me.  Perhaps this is another reason why I wanted them all to be perfect, because sometimes it is so hard to give a loved one a gift that is meaningful.

 

jen-preggo-1

jen-preggo-2

jen-preggo-3

jen-serious

jen-and-kids-1

jen-and-kids-2

jen-rob-1

jen-rob-2

jen-umbrella

After all these cute belly shots, I have to include my sexy mama shot below – no belly showing, thank you very much.  Because here’s the deal – I totally, fully, one-hundred percent believe in editing the shit out of pregnancy photos.  If you have to grow a baby in your belly for almost ten months, you deserve all the edits you can get.  I’m not saying Jen needed very many, because she’s so damn photogenic in the first place.  But if you have gone through hellacious acid reflux, gas, stretch marks, interrupted sleep, rude people asking you if you’re having twins, sore ligaments, swollen ankles, barfing, and trying to have sex with your husband in positions you only see in the Kama Sutra, you should look like Kate Friggin Moss.

Piper will make you look sexy as hell.  You deserve it.  And I love you.

jen-sepia

Filed Under: Just Plain Awesomeness, Why You Should Be My Friend Tagged With: awesome preggo photos, best friends, Piper Benjamin photographs, pregnancy photographer Salt Lake, pregnancy photographer Utah, pregnancy pictures, pregnant pictures tasteful, pregnant pictures untraditional

Counting the Summer in Meters

July 6, 2013 By ace 3 Comments

I’ve never thought of my website as a mommy blog.  Maybe you have, but I think of my website as more of a place where I can talk about turds and fake teeth.

This summer I feel more like a mom than ever.  Actually, I really feel like a chauffeur, and one of those black caps would pair quite nicely with the dark circles under my eyes.  My kids are constantly asking for ice cream and entertainment and they are also constantly arguing about who gets to push the elevator buttons.  ELEVATOR BUTTONS.

That kind of bickering makes you want to lay on the elevator floor with your eyes closed and hum “We Are the World”.

At this point, a walking IV drip loaded with Valium would be nice.  However, I don’t think the metal IV pole would fit inside my tiny Mazda 3.

One thing we are attempting this summer is the competition swim team at the Jewish Community Center where we are members.  Beatty has always loved the water and swimming, but he’s never had any formal stroke instruction.  I knew by signing him up for the team that we were looking at practices four days a week as well as weekly swim meets, but I figured this would be a great way to tire out his 8-year old ass.  I’ve had to endure some complaining about getting off to practice by 7:30 in the morning, but this is easily rectified by plugging him into his iPod Touch and earphones.  Instant happiness.

I love the JCC swim team.  I love the coaches.  I love going to swim meets and being the parent who kneels at the end of the lane bellowing, “GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!!!” at my son or any other little JCC swimmer.

I have a very loud voice.  It feels good to bellow.

Fifty percent of my Instagram pictures this summer have been devoted to little kids at swim team events.  I must share some of my favorite shots.

[singlepic id=1683 w=520 h=440 float=center]

[singlepic id=1684 w=520 h=440 float=right]

[singlepic id=1676 w=520 h=440 float=center]

The itty bitty 6-and unders just kill me.  I mean, look at this little munchkin diving into the water.  Half the time they stop mid-way down the lane and hang on to the ropes just to catch their breath.  It’s the cutest thing ever.

[singlepic id=1682 w=520 h=440 float=left]

[singlepic id=1681 w=520 h=440 float=center]

I die over this last picture of the diver during his team practice.  It’s just so damn cool.  My kids and I like to sit out on the pool deck eating bagels and watching the dive team do their thing.  I tried to talk Beatty into doing BOTH swim and dive team at the beginning of the season, but now I’m pretty relieved he said no because those added practices may have just sent me over the edge of scheduling mania.

[singlepic id=1680 w=520 h=440 float=center]

Our JCC coaches have a pretty sweet sense of humor.  In the picture above, they all dressed up for our swim meet at the Salt Lake Country Club with golfing attire and golf club props.  I immediately got the joke and ran over to snap a picture of the fun.  Throughout the meet, they coached our kids while still carrying around those clubs.  I half expected them to use them to prod kids in the pool who were moving too slow.  That is costume committment, people.

About a week later, I heard that the Salt Lake Country Club people were not happy about our golfing costumes and they actually wanted to file a formal complaint against the JCC swim coaches.  SERIOUSLY??  Holy shit.  SOME PEOPLE CAN’T TAKE A JOKE.

So after that whole fiasco, the coaches took a different approach at our meet against Willow Creek Country Club.

[singlepic id=1690 w=520 h=440 float=center]

It’s nothing but peace and love, man.  Kumbaya.  Share your falafel and pass the roach clip.  FLOWER POWER.

I have some very, very favorite photos of my own little swimmer.  He gets a bit nervous at meets and continually asks me if his event is next – IS IT NEXT, AM I NEXT, IS IT NEXT, WHEN AM I UP???

…which I find so cute.  I love watching him dive in and feel so PROUD seeing him finish those races.  I just want to grab his wet little body in a big hug and run around the pool with him in celebration.

[singlepic id=1688 w=520 h=440 float=center]

[singlepic id=1687 w=520 h=440 float=center]

That’s my little stud in lane three.

[singlepic id=1686 w=520 h=440 float=center]

Being a swimmer is really an individual sport; the ultimate goal is to beat your own best times in an event.  But the JCC coaches have done an amazing job at making the kids feel part of a TEAM – a group that has fun together and supports each other.  I love it.  It is worth all the hot drives, waking up early, whining for a seven dollar breakfast burrito at the pool snack bar, and the wad of dough we are spending on gas.  It is worth it because of moments like these –

[singlepic id=1685 w=520 h=440 float=center]

And yes, Beatty, you will be swimming again next year.  OR THAT iPOD IS HISTORY.

 

Filed Under: Just Plain Awesomeness, OMG! I'm a Suburban Mom!! Tagged With: JCC Hurricane swim team, Jewish Community Center Salt Lake, Salt Lake JCC, swim teams Salt Lake City

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 23
  • Next Page »

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • Lunch with Aron
  • Not Just Effed Up in the Head – Other Places, Too.
  • Pregnancy is Hot and Sexy. Well, Let’s Pretend.
  • Procreation with Piper
  • Explaining

What Piper Writes About

  • Contests
  • Depression is Fun
  • Fucking Funny
  • Get Out Your Tissues
  • Home Projects
  • Just Plain Awesomeness
  • OMG! I'm a Suburban Mom!!
  • Random Acts of Tard
  • Sisterhood of the Traveling Snark
  • Sometimes I Just Need to Vent
  • Things I Love a Little Too Much
  • Travel and Adventures
  • Uncategorized
  • Useless Celebrity Knowledge
  • Ways I Embarrass My Family
  • Why You Should Be My Friend

Copyright © 2021 · Genesis Framework · Log in