For the past month, Abby has been learning to swizzle, glide, and remain upright on ice.  Under the guise of giving her additional practice, I suggested we return to the rink for the public session after her morning lesson.  Her acceptance was no less enthusiastic than if I had offered her Taylor Swift tickets and a box of Thin Mints.  

Little did she know I had a motive of my own.  Little did she care. 

Hoping to learn a trick or two for the afternoon session, I decided to pay more attention than normal (meaning no Kindle time) to the surrounding lessons.  When I spied four young girls bedazzled in ponytails and teeny skate dresses, I thought I had found in them suitable trick teachers. 

Not so.  Skating figure eights with ease whist undoubtedly contemplating triple lutzes, they were way out of my league.  

I’ll admit I’m prone to hyperbole.  For example, when I wrote that a boy zipped past me clutching his woobie on the ski slope last winter, I had embellished a bit.  Though a child really did zip past me, it wasn’t with woobie in hand.  But I am not exaggerating about their skating skills.  Nor am I exaggerating about what happened next.  

Following the lesson, the littlest of the three figure skaters toddled up to her mother, accepted a proffered binky, and popped it in her mouth.  A kid with a binky could skate figure eights around me.  The realization, though humbling, was far from deterring. 

We returned that afternoon for Abby’s stated (and my covert) mission— Abby, to practice swizzles and staying upright; and I, to mitigate the effects of Molasses Men cutouts.  Joining us somewhat reluctantly was Todd, who generally prefers more life-threatening activities such as downhill skiing and mountain biking to ice skating. 

If for no other reason than seeing Abby smile at her own accomplishments, the afternoon was journal-worthy memorable.  But her smile wasn’t the only thing worth writing home about.  Our afternoon also included the treats of observing a birthday girl and company wearing inverted cone hats on the ice, and skating hand-in-hand with Abby to her favorite (and mine), Ours. 

Not all the moments were so pleasant, however.  While waiting in line for our rental skates, I had to reveal my Mamma Bear claws to a boy who spat at Abby for no apparent reason.  And later, Todd experienced a fall on ice that resulted in bruised ribs and an exemption from all future skating endeavors. 

He’s feeling better now, mostly. 

As for Abby and me, I see boxes of Thin Mints on the horizon.  Therefore, I see more skating sessions in our future.  I’m willing to bet Abby won’t object to either. 

********** 

These are the songs we could recall from the skate session.  Any playlist that includes Lisa Loeb and Hootie is list-worthy in my book.  This collection tends to be more old school than the roller rink playlist, which means some were from my college days and I didn’t have to perform extensive lyric searches to identify them. And I firmly believe Adele can sing no wrong. 

Ice Rink Playlist 

1. “Californication”- Red Hot Chili Peppers
2. “Stay”- Lisa Loeb
3. “Let Her Cry”- Hootie and the Blowfish
4. “Back to December”- Taylor Swift
5. “Ours”- Taylor Swift
6. “Fireflies”- Owl City
7. “Where I Come From”- Montgomery Gentry
8. “Jack and Diane”- John Mellencamp
9. “Jessie’s Girl”- Rick Springfield
10. “Easy”- Rascal Flatts
11. “Set Fire to the Rain”- Adele
12. “Dirty Little Secret”- The All-American Rejects
13. “I Gotta Feeling”- The Black Eyed Peas
14. “Little Too Much”- Natasha Bedingfield

Our new skates are in and so is the extended play list.  “Another One Bites the Dust” seemed fitting more than once at the rink last weekend.  But Adele is my particular favorite.

1. “We Found Love”- Rihanna
2. “You Da One”- Rihanna
3. “5 o’clock”- T-Pain featuring Lily Allen & Wiz Khalifa
4. “It Girl”- Jason Derulo
5. “Last Friday Night”- Katy Perry
6. “Without You”- David Guetta
7. “Moves Like Jagger”- Maroon 5
8. “Stereo Hearts”- Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine
9. “Dynomite”- Taio Cruz
10. “Thriller”- Michael Jackson
11. “Billie Jean”- Michael Jackson
12. “Baby”- Justin Bieber
13. “Never Say Never”- Justin Bieber
14. “Tonight”- Enrique Iglesias
15. “YMCA”- Village People
16. “Yeah!”- Usher
17. “Dirt Road Anthem”- Jason Aldean
18. “Grenade”- Bruno Mars
19. “It Will Rain”- Bruno Mars
20. “Lighters”- Bad Meets Evil
21. “Super Bass”- Nicki Minaj
22. “Another One Bites the Dust”- Queen
23. “We Will Rock You”- Queen
24. “Pour Some Sugar on Me”- Def Leppard
25. “How You Remind Me”- Nickelback
26. “Country Girl (Shake it for Me)”- Luke Bryan
27. “Marry the Night”- Lady Gaga
28. “This City”- Patrick Stump
29. “Someone Like You”- Adele

When the day finally arrived—60 days and a 30-degree temperature drop later—for me to wear them, they seemed like everything I had imagined they would be.  They were stable enough to climb five stories at work without wobbling.  They looked good with A-line and pencil skirts alike.  Best of all, their zipper-free design kept them from snagging my tights as had all their snaggletoothed predecessors. 

I floated on snag-free, Clark Artisan comfort all day long.  And then the time arrived for me to remove them.  That’s when I discovered the flip (and darker) side of zipper-free boots.  They may not devour tights, but no matter how stretchy the material, they are nearly impossible to take off without the assistance of another person or a hydraulic rescue tool.

The pink clearance sticker suddenly made sense.

For the most part, I’m able to wear the boots these days without incident.  I try to plan their wear for when I know somebody will be available (and willing) to remove them.  That person is usually my daughter.  It’s humbling to need a 6-year old’s assistance undressing, but I’ve made peace with it as restitution for all the diapers I changed.

But I don’t always plan so well.  Sometimes I forget and wear them to work on days when I need to work out over lunch.  That’s when I must resort to my best yoga-contortion moves in the most discrete corner of the gym’s locker room I can find, which isn’t very discreet at all.  That’s also when I pull a back muscle.

Replacing them would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Apart from being semi-permanently affixed, they are the perfect boot.  Some days I think I’ll never replace them.  And then I look at this picture…

And I know I will.

Pictured below is batgirl with “Tree face!” two Halloweens ago.  (An exclamation point seems appropriate here because that’s how I say it now too.)  She’s smiling because:

a) I didn’t make her wear a princess costume.

b) She doesn’t realize I’m going to take a share of her Halloween bounty afterwards.

and

c) It’s impossible not to smile when you see that tree face.

But what I like even better than my neighborhood tree face is a naturally occurring tree face…or three.  I’ve started a photo collection of naturally occuring tree faces observed while hiking.  One is more obvious than the other two.  You might have to use the childhood eyes that let you turn cumulus clouds into snowmen and fire-breathing dragons to see faces in the other two. 

Here is the obvious one.  Eyes, nose, mouth.  Definite face.

This one looks like an alligator face to me…sort of.  I definitely see an eye and a mouth ready to chomp.

I encountered the tree pictured below while hiking at Camp Judy Layne in eastern Kentucky with my friend, Raccoon, a couple of summers ago.  You might need your cumulus cloud vision for this one.  I spy one eye, a bulbous nose, a set of lips, and a prominent chin.  A deciduous Karl Malden if ever I saw one.

This morning will bring the 950th “Tree face!” squeal for Abby.  And this weekend, if I’m lucky, will bring another naturally-occurring tree face discovery.

The visit began harmlessly, as most library visits do (and should).  I was there to beat all the other kids competing participating in the summer reading program.  And my grandmother, an unabashed book junkie, was there to get her theology fix.  Following a brief visit to the children’s section in the musty, alphabet-carpeted basement, I sat as instructed by my grandmother in a chair among grown-up books while she meandered to Dewey Decimal class 211, Natural Theology- Concepts of God.

Those who know my grandmother know she can spend more time browsing books than most people can spend sleeping, or even breathing.  And so I sat in that chair for many minutes hours.

If you make a young child sit in one chair long enough, oh say two hours, she will find something about the chair other than reading in it to amuse herself.  If that chair happens to be riddled with hundreds of finger-sized holes, there’s a good chance she’s going to stick her finger in one of them—especially if that child is me.

Like the child who pulled the proverbial cat’s tail, I quickly realized the error of my ways.   Within seconds my finger began turning red, then an alarming shade of oxygen-deprived purple.

I didn’t want to get in trouble for sticking my finger in a chair, but my aversion to amputation trumped my fear of Grandma’s censure.  And so I called out for my grandmother.  She tugged and coaxed to no avail, and then she called for reinforcements in the way of a reference librarian.

With a dollop of hand lotion, the librarian successfully liberated my by-then swollen finger.  And that’s how I learned first-hand never to place my fingers in anything other than gloves…or cookie dough.

Several years later the city built a new library—furnished with, to my relief, new chairs.  Little did I know I was about to encounter something even more nefarious than a chair doubling as a Chinese finger trap.

That something was a crush on a boy from my algebra class who had aqua-blue eyes in the manner of Bradley Cooper; an LA Raiders coat; and—at all times—a girlfriend (or two.)  He also had issues with solving for x and y—and, being the nerd opportunist I was—I offered to fix those issues.  Week after week, we met in the library to solve quadratic equations and graph linear inequalities.

Week after week, I looked deep into those blue eyes hoping he’d see me as more than just a tutor and ditch his girlfriend(s) for me.  Around the time I ditched my headgear and first set of braces (about a year later), he did; but not mutually exclusive of other girls vying for his attention.  And that’s how I learned, over the course of a year, to beware of boys who struggle solving for x and y.

My library trips these days are tame (and crush free) by comparison.  I check out movies, music, and—when I’m competing participating in the summer reading program —oodles of books.  I amble down aisles, looking at spines and flipping through magazines, for more time than some people sleep.

And I content myself with learning the rest of everything I need to know the easy way—by reading Dewey decimalized books from the comfort of a solid backed-chair.