Okay, so, if you read my last post, you will recall that I have a particular aversion to cold weather which then extends to winter sports. We all know I don't ski. Or snowboard. Or toboggan. But I did write that every year I think about going ice skating but never do, which is good because I hate the cold and am at risk of bodily injury.
So I get through the holidays without killing anyone or jeopardizing my relationship and January comes around and we get this round of very warm weather. Thanks to my new and unimproved schedule-designed-by-Attila-the-Hun, I have varying days off during the week, so the Spazz and I were spending a nice Monday together. We decided to go to Santa Monica and hang out on the Promenade (I haven't done that very much since I moved here and for good reason: once they threw Midnight Special under the bus, I resented the whole lot). As we drove toward the parking lot, I noticed the ice skating rink and remembered my blog post. Wouldn't it be romantic, on this 75 degree day, to skate with my honey in Santa Monica?
So I suggested this activity. Yes, the just-had-my-knee-fixed Giant Dwarf asked the Southern California-raised Spazz if we could go ice skating. And he appropriately responded: "are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, for your knee?" And I responded (rather flippantly, I may add): "why not? wouldn't it be a good test to see how well the surgery worked?"
(Spoiler alert: the surgery was successful. The knee fared quite well during this ordeal.)
So we headed on over to the rink and rented our skates: we were the only ones there at that time. Having the whole rink to ourselves was a mixed blessing: there was no one to bump into but also, being the only ones on the ice, we were highly visible to passers-by. We both gingerly started skating, but the Spazz was quicker to pick it up: I attribute Spazz's natural talent for ice skating to his lifelong pastimes of surfing and skateboarding. I have to. Because I could not master the balance portion of teetering on thin blades on frozen water, despite the fact that I took figure skating lessons as a kid.
The Spazz kept warning me not to fall backwards and I was successful in following this advice. Rather, I took the less-followed path of decline: I fell forward.
On my front. On the ice. And while the upper half of my torso was somewhat protected by the two mounds of fat that have been oversexualized and worshipped for centuries, the area directly underneath my breasts hit the ice with a force so strong that it knocked the wind out of me. So there I was, splayed on the ice, barely breathing, and feeling a pain I had never felt before.
Once I got my normal breathing rate back, that pain started to intensify. Taking a deep breath caused a sharp pain in my ribs; coughing and sneezing caused excruciating pain.
I had rather successfully cracked my ribs while participating in a leisure activity.
But, being the offspring of my frugal father, I was not about to let my $12 rental fee go to waste, and so I continued to skate. If that's what you want to call it. But the Spazz and I continued to go many laps around the rink, even as more and more people joined us on the small surface and young children did triple axles around me as I shuffled forward.
We finally decided we had enough and left the rink as the workers there reminded us that our entrance fee will allow us to come back anytime until midnight that night. I cannot believe I even briefly considered doing that, but I knew in my heart (and in my ribs) that we were not returning that night....or possibly ever.
Cracked ribs hurt. A lot. Breathing hurts. Sneezing and coughing are full-blown assaults. And when a week later I was nauseous and about to vomit, I quickly took a Zofran before I risked upchucking my actual ribs. Thank goodness I didn't just eat oatmeal on a Virgin America flight (see my post from 5/13/11).
So, once again the fates proved to me why snow and ice is antithetical to my existence. Okay, I guess it's really more accurate to say that I was not blessed with a natural athleticism. But let's just say that snow and ice only make me even more of a klutz. Oh, and in regard to my brother who thinks I'm a pansy-ass for not skiing or participating in otherwise winter-y activities: he and his girlfriend just went skiing in Utah a few days ago and she tore her ACL on her first run.
So it's not just me.
