President's Day Holiday on ice

Took Natalie to Alexa's birthday party at the Mercer County Skating Rink on President's Day.

She done me proud. Natalie sometimes vexes us with her lack of drive and stick-to-it-ness. She can't be bothered to get comfortable swimming, won't really push to ride her bike, and hasn't really been pushing forward with reading with much vigor. We were forecasting a short skate.

How wrong we were. She loved the ice, despite the fact that the ice seemed to love her right back with its frequent embrace. She kept falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up. She didn't make a ton of technical progress, didn't get much smoother, but she stayed out there, and didn't even care if I went off to sit by the fire. She was a very big girl.

I, for my part, got back into skating despite a 20-year absence, and was able to work my way back to being as bad as I ever was. Fast, but largely unable to stop. Tried to skate cross-over around the turn and fell on my butt, injuring my shoulder a little.

If I hadn't hurt myself that way, I would have kept pushing myself till I got some sort of injury, just to prove I had been there.