All my 7 year old has been talking about for weeks is ice skating. He wanted, more than just about anything, to go ice skating. This probably seems pretty tame of a request except for one minor detail: neither me or the mister can ice skate. In fact, I’m 99% sure I’ve never even been ice skating before. But I like to enjoy life and what better way to do that than to put oneself out there for new experiences? Oh, the things we do for our kids.
After requesting that we go to the library today, my ice skater in training and I found ourselves exploring the city looking for things to do. We soon stumbled upon the ice skating rink. The only issue, lack of experience and my accident proneness aside, was that it was raining. Oddly enough, people were still skating in the rain, so I figured “Why not?”. If we were going to do this, we might as well do this, right? I purchased our admission and rented skates for the two of us. Everywhere was wet so we had to just suck it up and pick a spot to get our skates on. Peanut got his on just fine and went wobbling off. I had a bit more of a struggle and was all wobbly legged trying to walk on those death machines. As I was hobbling around like a fool, I made a comment to a fellow mom that this was folly. It was a disaster waiting to happen. She kindly pointed out that I wouldn’t be the first person to fall on the ice. She also said that I would have much better luck if I tightened the skates around my ankles, which I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere but didn’t abide by.  Turns out, that was the trick. I was able to walk to normally once I did that. Meanwhile, Peanut was falling everywhere so I had him come back so I could double check his skates. A brief tightening helped his balance as well. I did one lap around the rink with him, gliding slowly and holding onto the rail. I managed to not fall once, but I noticed skating hurt my feet. Not my ankles, but the soles of my feet were in pain. I also noticed that at a point, I got distracted and had let go of the railing and still managed to not fall. But I called it quits due to the foot pain and watch Peanut have at it. It was definitely an adventure, but we were soaked and needed to warm up. I’m happy that we decided to try this, but I wish it wasn’t so rainy!