Snow Birds & Beach Girls

I’m not a snow bird or a beach girl. I am, to be quite honest, incredibly unathletic when it comes to skates, skateboards, surfboards, skis and snowboards. Anything requiring balance, edge, coordination, confidence, and speed is pretty much, not in my skill set.

My skill set? Slow, grounded, immobile, fixed, quiet, contemplative. There we go. Super fun, sexy skills. Although I’m not entirely sure that’s what attracted my surfer boyfriend. Because oddly, weirdly, he thinks I’m cool.

Most hot guys with great bodies and interesting tattoos wouldn’t think a girl that wears glasses and carries a book with her at all times sexy. In fact, several other choice descriptions of glasses and bookish female come to mind, starting with librarian and ending with school marm. But hey, to each his own, and don’t try to convince my guy otherwise as I’m getting very attached to him.

As much as I love my books and need my glasses, I’ve realized I need to continue to take more risks, learn a few new tricks, surfing included.

My surfer boyfriend Ty–yes, he has the same name as my son Ty–was here in Bellevue this last weekend and he spent two days giving my boys snowboarding lessons. By the end of the second day, both my boys were having a lot of fun and looking more comfortable on their boards, but I couldn’t forget the first day of the lessons. The day when my boys, and dozens of other adults looked like boneless chickens falling here, there, everywhere.

It was brutal watching grown men and women fall, and fall, and fall. Splat, thud, oof. And why, I ask you, would I want to learn something that makes me splat, oof, and grunt? I already ache and suffer back spasms and that’s just from typing.

Truly, after two days of watching splat fall shriek I’ve decided I’m embracing the lodge fireplace. I’m going to become a true lodge rat–one of those people that wear jeans and hiking boots and sits by the lodge fire with a book and cup of tea and feels quite smug while everyone else tramps through snow and gets miniature iciles inside their noses.

You see, I am very happy being unsporty.

But I like sporty guys. And I’ve written a book about a very sporty guy and now a Seattle television crew is going to be in Hawaii next Saturday filming me being (ha!) sporty as I paddle out with my surfer boyfriend and catch some waves, very much like my character Jackie in Flirting with Forty.

I’m thinking the filming on the beach is going to be painful. I’m already thinking unsurfer-like thoughts (a swimsuit? In January? A camera crew? Shooting my butt and thighs as I drag a surfboard into the water? But I don’t even have a tan anymore! I’m not in shape anymore. I don’t even like the color of my hair…)

Ty tells me that’s the Bellevue woman panicking, not the surfer girl chilling (where, oh where is the surfer girl?) and I’m trying hard to channel surfer girl for the cameras. Surfer Girl requires surfer style which means natural, which means casual, which means bikini and sarong (in winter!!).

Surfer style means I’m going to fall and splat and oof, not on snow, but in the water, and not privately, but in front of a television camera.

Awesome, dude. Right on.

Can someone please find me a lodge fireplace in Waikiki fast?

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