Yesterday was my first day back on the ice after almost five months of doing nothing. My first thought; “I’m home. Finally home.” The air was cold, a dry kind of cold and smelled and tasted metallic. I felt like Bambi, taking my first shaky steps back out onto the slippery ice. It was hard to feel my edges and I was sliding all over the place. But after a while, it didn’t matter. I was back in my element, my blood was rushing, my heart was thumping harder and my soul was soaring. I was back and it felt divine.

This morning I felt like I’d been run over by a train. But God, it felt good. There were muscles I hadn’t used for months and they were shocked into existence again. I have blisters the size of Manhattan and my legs feel like jelly. Yes, parts of my body are hating me right now, like parts of my poor back, but I don’t really care. I am finally skating again. We will go up every Tuesday from now on, my husband will do Kung Fu while I skate. It’s not enough to do it once a week, but it’s a start.

I am still aiming for Adult Nationals in May 2009, but it’s going to take some doing. My back need to heal properly and I have to get some of my jumps back, not to mention get flexible again (not that I was very flexible to start with….), and get back into spinning. Thankfully, we are only allowed to do up to double Toeloop in Adult Gold (this does mean that I have to learn double Toeloop, a jump that I’ve always hated), you used to be able to do up to double Loop, but they’ve changed the rules. This year, there were only two girls in my age group at Nationals, and they didn’t do anything TOO hard. The girl who won landed a -2 double Sal and no Axel. Girl No.2 did nothing over single Lutz. Looking over the protocols, it would feel almost like cheating to go into Adult Gold. Maybe I should do Adult Masters Ladies Novice instead, where they do a little more. I’m going to talk to someone at USFSA about it, and hopefully, I don’t have to test (hah, in my dreams…..).

I don’t think Cathy and our little girl enjoyed skating yesterday. Their feet hurt, and they could probably think of a million things they would rather do than skating. But this was my night, and they just had to bear it. The little one had had fun all day at Tae Kwon Doe camp (I so want to spell Kwon with an A, I think it’s an occupational hazard…) and we skipped skating last week so Cathy could get her fabrics. It was my time to do something I liked. The poor things looked pretty miserable skating round and round out there. They probably did an hour though, which is very good. We’ll do it again next Tuesday. Yay!