ice skating...part 1

so sunday was my very first ice skating lesson ever. the night before i dreamt that i showed up in one of those ice skating skirt outfit things with the flesh colored hose and white skates. the outfit was aqua. i'm not sure what that dream was about, other than i do remember wanting to wear one of those outfits really bad when i was little. anyways...i did not wear that to my lesson, if anyone was wondering. instead i opted for jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, which was not even close to being warm enough for the frigid temperatures of the ice rink. i made a mental note never to wear one of those little skirt outfits as soon as i took the ice. i just don't think those are even practical. they need to be in ski outfits instead. they keep the rink at about 50 degrees. after the lesson, i was thinking about how when i was little, the positives always outweighed the negatives and i wondered when that changed. the negatives where louder to me than the positives at my first lesson. like i said, i was cold. my hands where cold and my ears where cold. actually, my ears where more than cold. they were freezing to the point of wanting to wear earmuffs....(which says something, because that would definitely put a damper on my ice skating fashion.) but i didn't even care because they hurt so bad it was making my whole head hurt. i kept on covering them with my sweatshirt covered hands which would make me sort of lose my balance. the next negative was the rental skates. they hurt my feet really bad. i don't wear shoes other than flips very often, so these skates are going to take some getting used to. the instructor said that we should get our own skates because they are way more comfortable and have sharper blades so that you can actually do the moves better. (the rentals have to be dull to avoid people cutting themselves...but dull blades don't grip the ice very well.) i told chad about this little "glitch" in the whole ice skating experience. to which he replied, "we are not spending $150 on ice skates mindy." i did a huffy breath at that response. i'm not sure he's taking this seriously. i did really enjoy skating though...putting aside the freezing and aching feet. we learned to "swizzle" going forward and backward; change direction; glide on one foot; and how to hold our arms (that was my favorite part!) at one point, i found myself thinking, "just think...at some point, michelle kwan was learning this very thing." then i also thought, "too bad she was probably 2 at the time." i did find myself getting a tiny bit distracted by the little girls in the outfits, with their own white skates doing spins and jumps in the middle of the rink. i wonder when i will advance to the middle of the rink?? the highlight of the lesson was when the instructor told me that i was not a beginner 1...but could be in the level 2 class! and that was while i was skating with my hands over my ears!! i'm really excited for my next lesson. i'm going to have to figure out something to do about my ears, and think about a way to talk chad into my very own skates. i mean...we need to think about this logically. you don't see people making it to the olympics with rental skates!!