After pic

I’m sure there’s still ice under there somewhere but it won’t deter me from taking out the compost (for now) although I didn’t actually do that today. I spent three hours meeting with Amazon Woman today and I was fried after that. It was a FUN meeting, we were “translating” a document from corporate policy-type verbiage into stuff that applied to our product.

Three hours is a long time to focus on one thing (and my damn internet kept crapping out to boot) so we occasionally veered off into other topics. One of which was Olympic ice skating. A disclaimer: I am not really watching the games this time around. For one thing, I have no clue about where they are on TV.

And what about that ice skating stuff, huh? I can’t sort it out but some of my facebook friends are sure trying.

First. I was never much of an ice skater but I could make my way around an ice rink without difficulty. Most of the winters of my youth there was a homemade ice rink literally steps away from my house. For a few years the next door neighbors made one between our houses (on our property mostly). I sorta remember they had hockey boys. But there was usually also one on the basketball court DIRECTLY across the street from our shabby little Superior Street bungalow. Skating there was particularly fun because it was lined by waist-high snowbanks so you could get going really fast, then LAUNCH yourself onto a snowbank, turn over and look at the stars, laughing like a hyena the whole time.

We were not wealthy but I always had DECENT if not fancy ice skates. I was born with a toe that turned in and had to be “corrected” with a “brace”. I don’t remember wearing the brace but I knew that I had worn one and in baby pics of me I see a sock-like thingy. We were NOT wealthy but The Commander did NOT mess around about any kind of footwear.

So. The facebook gals. A lot of girls my age took figure skating lessons down at the local hockey arena. Some of them were really good although I doubt anyone was landing triple jumps, not to mention quads. Every year there was a big Saturday afternoon extravaganza that we went to and I was always envious. Part of it was I envied their skating abilities but you have to know it was also about the SPARKLY COSTUMES.

Mom would not let me join up. I don’t think this was about money. I think she sensed there was “drama” going on, if not with the kids, with the Skate Moms. And she didn’t want anything to do with it. Having managed a youth theatre guild for a number of years, I know about that kind of thing. I became a skier instead. Oh never anything more than a competent amateur but it was more in line with the stuff my family did up in the land of the ice and snow. That’s a YouTube link and may come with an ad. oo-oo-oooooo-oo.

At any rate, all of my childhood skater friends are buzzing about this on Facebook even though I don’t think most of them have skated in decades. They think the young Chinese Russian skater was paid to fail? I dunno. Just what a frickin’ mess. And she’s 15!!!

P.S. I am not watching the Olympics this year.

3 Responses to “After pic”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I haven’t been watching either which is sad because I used to love them. Not so much now. Enjoy(ed) the ice skating and the skiing. Never understood hockey or curling. I experienced the drama in gymnastics and ballet and wanted nothing to do with it. It was toxic!

  2. Jay Says:

    We turn them on and watch what is on. We have 2 channels to choose between, so a bit of a choice, and a bit of everything. Not stressing about USA. I am most interested in Ski Cross. We had tickets to see it at the Vancouver Olympics, but they cancelled our tickets because there wasn’t enough snow in the standing area. We did see curling and hockey. And the best was the Paralympics hockey a few weeks later.
    It helped that Ashlan’s apartment was across the street from one of the hockey arenas.

  3. Pooh Says:

    The ski cross, and the snowboard cross are a lot of fun to watch. In the mixed cross race the man was 40 and the woman was 36. He was from Iron River, in the UP. You know, the UP is Upper Michigan, as one clueless announcer exclaimed.