This was written yesterday with breakfast, baking my second Apple Wrapper Pie, rolling and slowcooking the turkey breasts, McDonald’s lunch, peeling carrots, potatoes, cutting french beans, steaming cauliflowers, Christmas Eve dinner, cleaning up, watching Il Grinch, interrupted sleep, screaming excited kids, opening Christmas gifts and two long hot showers in between.
Before I go peel the carrots, I should just stop playing the hanging skin and the clotted blood ball on my upper lip with my tongue. And before I go turn the turkey rolls in the slow-cooker, I should just get this bloody story out of my injured mouth. Ha!
So I went skating for the very first time in my life yesterday, December 23rd 2009 – Dee‘s birthday. Yes I did. With a complete awareness and full knowledge that the act would involve a lot of falling, I actually had a 96- hour-long debate with myself that ended up with a 2-word decision and an exclamation mark:
TRY IT!
I did. At 1030hrs Thursday morning, our little Johnson family was the first enthusiastic lot to get to the skating rink at Kitreena’s school. Kitreena was the first to get on the tennis-court size ice sheet and she just went gliding! Well, after two or three learning flops, of course. But yeah, the roller-blading skills sure helped.
It took me at least 20 minutes between getting the skates on – in that -10°C weather – and getting into the rink. Not to mention that it took me 2 falls near the bench, and another when I entered the rink. (Well, I didn’t really want to mention the three falls. But hey… I got up three times, didn’t I!)
At the speed of two inches per second, I was gliding away – if you would want to please me and call it gliding anyway – for a good half an hour trying to get to the other side of the rink when my Canadian hubby glided by to give me some useful tips on skating. Of course, he was born in a refrigerator‡, he could skate as soon as he knew his alphabet! I believed him.
I could see, just like what Be suggested, that it made sense to lean my body a little forward as to give the momentum to the ‘glide’. So I listened and I tried it out. I leaned forward, slightly bending my knees, pushed through the air for about three waddles, and there I went…
DOWNWARD!
The next thing I knew my left knee hit the ice, then my palms and then my face. I fell! And it was the true and high definition of falling flat on one’s face, I thought. Well, at least that’s the first description that came to mind when I was down there facing the music ice.
In less than five seconds I could feel something trickling down my front teeth. And it took me no time at all to grind my teeth to check if I had to wish for My Two Front Teeth from Santa this Christmas. Sure enough the loss at that point was just probably half a cup of blood and the shape of my upper lip.
Between getting up and getting out of the rink, I had a mouthful of blood and a cashew-nut size of flesh from my upper lip hanging, waiting to be spit out. And when I finally did get out of the rink, get a little hole dug in the one-foot snow into which I could get the mouthful of blood spit out… I realized the lip flesh is still in tact and could not just be pulled off. Blood came rushing out when I tried to get rid of it.
The whole time I was trying to get my skates off, my winter boots back on, and my blood wiped… I was counting nothing but blessings. Boy, was I ever lucky! I am not done counting yet. Not sure when I will be, but until I can slow down counting, I will keep my bloody mouth shut and keep a list of gory thoughts in the draft for another post.
‡ refrigerator = Calgary, Alberta
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