Kate: Ice Castles

I'm going to take a break from nattering about skating classes because, frankly, I've been off the ice for two weeks due to travel. Today was supposed to be my triumphant return to the ice, but I appear to be developing an upper respiratory infection, so instead the plan for today is to take it easy, then go skating for three hours tomorrow.

Moving on! Last night Candice and I decided to watch Ice Castles, a delightful movie from 1978 about a girl overcoming adversity to become awesome at skating. OR SO WE THOUGHT. Warning: there will be spoilers in this post, though I kind of feel like getting angry about spoilers from a movie that is THIRTY-THREE years old is a little silly.

We expected the movie to be bad because it was 1.) about ice skating and 2.) made in the 70's. What we did not expect was the movie to be BALLS TO THE WALL CRAZY. We were tweeting throughout the movie, and here are some examples of our feelings as the movie went from "Wow, everyone in this movie is just here to cash a paycheck" to "Um, the main character appears to now be an attic-lurking zombie wearing her dead mother's clothes. What?"

"So Ice Castles is as schlocky as I hoped but everyone is napping through this movie. Also lololol a full house at Regionals."

"Apparently triples were just crowd pleasing acrobatics back in the 70s. Why would anyone want to do them? #icecastles"

"I'm already tired of watching split jumps holy crap. #icecastles"

If you've seen Showgirls know how hilarious it is when everyone is practically salivating over Nomi Malone's "abilities." That's pretty much what was going on with this movie. At one point this character is so over-awed by the main character's "natural" "talent" that she has like a meltdown... at a Christmas Special. Where apparently the main character qualifies for Regionals? WTF, Ice Castles?

And at first it seems like family fun (well, not that Showgirls was ever family fun, the comparison ends with the amazement over "talent"), and then suddenly the main character is playing with her nipples in front of a mirror. And that, my friends, is where the movie really veers off into insanity. We were tweeting away sarcastically about dated ideas about jumps and hilariously full houses at lame competitions, and then:

"She's had one glass of wine and now she's molesting an ice sculpture. #icecastles"

"Let that be a lesson to you all. Don't skate after drinking champagne. It leads to blurred tantrums about how you CAN'T SEE! #icecastles"

"Oh my god now she's a blind zombie wearing her dead mother's clothes. This movie is 900% more crazier than anticipated. #icecastles"

Yup. SPOILERS: She tries a double axel at a party, falls, hits her head on a table and goes blind. She then spends the next half hour lurking in the attic at her dad's house, wearing her dead mom's clothes and refusing to shower. You should watch this movie for the scene where her ice skating mentor kicks her ass up there, it's totally just like "The Miracle Worker". EVEN EXTRA SPOILERS: The miracle is she learns to skate while quasi-blind and comes back to kick ass at... Sectionals. Not exactly a Rocky Balboa triumph over the best the Soviets has to offer. More like a mild triumph over the the best a portion of America has to offer. But the point is it took pluck, I guess.

They remade this movie in 2010. Oh, yeah, they did. Clearly, Candice and I must watch it to see how they deal with this whole "doing triples is a parlor trick!" issue. And also if the 2010 version is just as crazy, with the attic lurking and the blind ass kicking and the random nipple touching.

So there you have it. If you've ever wondered "Hmmm, should I watch Ice Castles?", the answer is clearly a giant Y-E-S. Just make sure you have strong drinks and a good friend to commentate with, otherwise it's going to be two hours of bafflement. Don't worry. We'll let you know if the 2010 version is just as amazing. We're here for you, my dear four readers. We've got your back.

Candice: 5 going on 50

So me and my heating pad have been getting reacquainted. Perhaps like the Electric Blanket character from The Brave Little Toaster, my heating pad is happy to be cuddled again once more despite the shift in Texas towards spring. As for myself, I'd really rather I didn't need to desperately cling to it in order to stay in bed or get out of it.

Three weeks ago (that's three, as in almost a month) I was failing to master choctaws when my feet went out from under me and all 900 feet of me (approx.) hit the ice squarely on my tailbone. I got up again and skated for another 15 minutes in an effort to prove that I was tougher than skating. And maybe I did, but by that night I had a lovely purple bruise blooming like a flower in a crack of concrete (get it?) and a lot of soreness. Skating got the last laugh, but I thought with the fading of the bruise, so to might the pain fade.

Nope.

Nope times 100.

For a few days walking and sitting and sleeping and existing were all reason enough to be in pain. Walking, sitting, and existing did eventually became comfortable again, but sleeping (ALAS! My FAVORITE thing) did not. Even taking ibuprofen before bed was laughably ineffective. For the past three weeks no matter what I did, I would wake up roughly once every hour as the pain punched through my slumber and demanded that I roll over and try to find a more comfortable position. Once or twice there was nothing for it, even lying on my stomach hurt and I just had to wait for sleep to win out over the discomfort.

Thus, the most embarrassing Google search in a long time: "falling on ice butt injury." My butt, it was injured from falling on ice. Last time I posted I wrote about how I felt skating was, in some ways, an expensive and showy waste of time and money. Now I feel like skating is turning me into a hybrid baby old person, someone who falls constantly; someone who when they fall looks up at the ceiling in pure shock that such a thing could happen before clutching their hip and whining about not being able to get up; someone in need of some miracle cream to cure their butt woes.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a miracle cream. Or even a miracle pill. According to WebMD I either have butt cancer, or I'll just have to be patient, stay active, avoid positions that hurt, and either ice it or using the heating pad until the pain disappeared. I was worried ice would trigger some sort of PTSD attack for my poor traumatized butt, so heating pad it was. It helps. I used it Sunday and, though I still woke up, slept much better than I had in a while. I used it last night, and woke up only in a little pain. Five extra minutes lying on top of the heating pad made me simultaneously more capable of getting out of bed and less willing.

And yet still I shall skate. Neither cold, nor lack of talent, nor lack of money, nor aching butt will keep my from the ice.

My butt isn't too happy about that, but oh well.

Kate: Breaking News: Nine Year Olds are SASSY.

We got split up into groups in my last skating class and told to create a footwork sequence. The tiny blonde nine year old who was clearly the bossiest member of my group (in a group the includes me AND Candice, trust me, that is impressive) was like “let’s start with a twizzle!” I informed her that neither of us could, in fact, twizzle. She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look of disdain usually reserved for parents or people who don’t know who Justin Bieber is. “What? You can’t TWIZZLE?” In my head, I was like “Um, I can DRIVE and VOTE and STAY UP AS LATE AS I WANT, so NYAH” but out loud I just asked her to show me what to do.

Why was I in a class full of sassy pre-teens? Well, I’ll tell you.

Candice and I were doing the whole Adult Workshop class thing for a while, but that class was full of people and became really stressful because we just couldn’t seem to learn anything new in the crush. So we decided, what would be a better idea than switching to a footwork class with one of the most popular coaches? A footwork class that just happens to be full of nine year olds and one other adult besides us?

Let me tell you, people, there are a lot of better ideas than that, at least if you want to hang on to your dignity.

I feel that we have made it clear that we’ve made peace with the lack of dignity that comes along with learning to figure skate, though, so we were pretty much in heaven. Except for the part where all those nine year olds could do WAY better than us at footwork. Wait, hang on. Let me rephrase that. They were doing way better than ME. Candice could sort of keep up with them as they were galloping across the ice, doing three turns and Mohawks and whatever like little mini gazelles. I was always the last one lumbering across the ice, struggling to get the footwork sequences or turns or whatever we were doing.

I got really, really frustrated in that class. It showed me that my half-assed approach to practice is really coming home to roost as we come up on a year of skating and I’m still struggling to learn the most basic of things. The coach who ran the class managed to keep me from exploding in a ball of frustration by 1. Expecting me to try as hard as I could and 2. Encouraging me when I got things right. It’s so basic, so childish in a way, but all I really needed was someone besides Candice to be like “I know you can do this, so shut the hell up and DO IT. Awww, that was good, try again.” I’ve been practicing more often so that I don’t embarrass myself when I go back to classes. Magic of magic, wonder of wonders, my footwork has really improved.

My next class will be with adults again, though. Seriously, y’all. Those kids are BRUTAL.

Candice: Wait why am I doing this again?

At some point in the last week I probably would have sold my soul to go back in time and not pick up skating as a hobby. Between the misery of being over invested in the state of Japanese skaters after the quake and tsunami as well as figure skating World Championships which were to have occurred in Tokyo, and the misery of being unable to sleep because I hurt myself sort of badly skating, I was ready to wash my hands of it.

Beyond that I was also experiencing a major crisis of faith. Kate and I are toddling up to our first full year of skating and lessons. With the exception of a two-month break from classes, we've been making a concerted effort at this for a long enough time that everyone is expecting some results. On my birthday a few months ago, my sister who had not yet seen me skate at all asked me if I could jump. I suppose I can, a waltz jump has the word "jump" right in the title, but my waltz jumps leave something (everything) to be desired. They're about as timid as they can be without never having both feet leave the ground. My sister smiled encouragingly at what I managed to show her, but didn't exactly express any awe. It was okay, I wasn't that impressed myself.

A month later I'd learn the lead up to the half flip jump, but after being taught how I never received any follow up on why it didn't feel comfortable. It's not my instructors fault really, there was just too much else to teach. I was still struggling with some aspects of 3-turns, my spins, my spirals, my lunges, and pretty much everything. I've already had to dial down my expectations a lot from where I'd started, but I never would have believed that mastery of a Basic 5 skill would still be just out of reach after a year of trying.

It was beyond frustrating. Even embarrassing. What an obvious, and overly advertised waste of time. And all this after posting about how Bright Girls give up when things get hard. It was right there in front of me, "Keep working, keep practicing," but still I was pouting. In an effort to prove the article and everyone wrong, I went to my practices and spent an hour and a half on the ice each time. By last Friday I was still frustrated, still half-thinking about quitting.

Yesterday I went to the rink with Kate and at the end of an hour and a half I realized I could do a LFO (left forward outside) 3-turn, LFI (left forward inside) 3-turn, and LFI mohawk on a circle. I did a RFO 3 turn, RFI mohawk, and an RFI 3-turn on a circle. During my last class we were taught twizzles and the choctaw step. As of yesterday, I can do an ugly example of both going one direction.

For those of you keeping score at home: 3 new types of turns that I could not do last month (inside 3-turn, twizzle, choctaw). I also completed a pretty good looking LFO spiral. I think we can all be proud of me.

Last Thursday I skated by myself and practiced my waltz jump and, while they're not going to win any medals any time soon, by the end they started feeling like actual jumps. My lunges and spins are... improving. A little. Too little if you ask me, but horrifyingly the paragraph right above this one seems to indicate that I will still have keep to skating, and keep trying to improve them because they may, in fact, get better.

Ah well.

PS- A shout out to everyone who reads and the few that comment. I get beyond excited about each comment, but I can't figure out who to reply directly to you. No matter, just know I'm thrilled about you.

Candice: I'm Not a Natural But...

I just came across a wonderfully insightful article, The Trouble With Bright Girls at the Huffington Post website. The article is based around a study which revealed the following:

...Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses.

Hello, Candice's reaction to High School, how are you aside from being perfectly summed up?

Psychologist Carol Dweck has discovered the way in which girls are praised have affected their outlook on difficult tasks. "Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their 'goodness.' When we do well in school, we are told that we are 'so smart,' 'so clever,' or 'such a good student.' This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't."

Hello, Candice's entire life since birth, how are you aside from being a mind blowing revelation?

A little back story, my dad was a tall, smart, creative, funny and hard working person. This, according to my mother, meant I was also destined to be tall, smart, creative, funny and hard working. To listen to her tell it, I didn't have to try to be any of these things, they were just coded into my DNA. Done and done, all I have to do is sit back and wait for my innate talents to bloom.

With the exception of being tall, obviously that attitude was not exactly true. Through a beneficial confluence of circumstances I did manage to become 5'10", get on a few honor rolls, a Dean's list, etc. My creativity, nascent in the "drawing things with crayons" phase of life, did in fact blossom once I entered the "write well enough to put a story together" part of life. Funny didn't really all come together for me until high school and the internet. That just leaves hard working.

I have to work hard at being a hard worker. If I think something will reflect poorly on me as a person I will diligently work at it until absolutely no one can deny that Candice should not be chastised, and should even be praised. If I think I can get away with it though, oh the corners I will cut.

Which brings me back to high school (and then college), when I could do a paper in the hour before it was due and pull a B+. I could coast through math and get a passing grade. I could do the summary, annotated bibliography, and first draft of a paper and then not turn in the actual final draft of the paper and pass the class. So I did. My intelligence was never really doubted by my teachers, but my ability to get shit done definitely was. I've stated many times that if I could just go back in time and slap myself across the face, and tell myself that doing homework DID have a point and that point was opening doors later in life, I would. In a heartbeat.

I'd also tell myself to get up and move. My basic motto about sports was, "If at first you don't succeed, write it off and never do it again." If running was hard, then why bother running? Not being able to run didn't affect my intelligence, my creativity. All I had to do was show up to PE in order to pass the class, so I cut all other available corners that required effort. And more importantly, required I fail the first few times.

Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., "If you would just pay attention you could learn this," "If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.") The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren't "good" and "smart," and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.

They're talking about schoolwork here, but where I needed to hear it most was physical activity. Kate likes to say she was a natural at skating, a little whiz at the ice from an early age which she later abandoned in pursuit of tween-age ennui. It's an aspect of skating that we simply cannot share with each other. The first few times I was on ice, I was slow, I fell, and I was not a natural. Replace "first few times I was on the ice" with "any sport I ever tried ever and you've got the summary of my ability to instantly pick up a sport.

For me the ice is something I have to "pay attention and try harder" at. All the time. Every time. Working a regular schedule means that I'm able to make a weekly appointment with myself to skate for an hour that I rarely miss. Kate's had interruptions here and there described before in this blog. If I had to say who had practiced the most, it would be me.

And after almost a year of skating there are things Kate can do better than me, and things that I can do better than she can. The results, unique to each of us, are roughly even. Our enjoyment of the sport? Dead even. The result of the experiment is that if I'd put in time, effort, and practice as a child I might well have been a decent player of any sport. A star? A natural? I suppose not, but I can confidently say that doesn't detract from the value, and enjoyment I could have had.

This article was a lesson learned too late in some ways. I can't go back and re-do my years in high school and undergrad. I can't go back and tell myself that volleyball might have been a worthwhile thing to keep trying at. I can use the lesson now, in skating, at my job, and in a lot of other things.

Candice: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

I've made a lot of jokes about figure skating being the sport of masochistic loners what with the lack of an obvious team effort and the falling. But if you know me, you know I'm the opposite of masochistic. I'm a hedonist! I love fine food and wine to excess! I love lounging in bed, or on a comfortable couch! I love cotton and satin and velvet! My ideal vacation is much more "9 hours of sleep, stroll through a museum, fine dining, sit in a park, and people watch" and much less "Camp out and then go white water rafting at 6am."

So really, it makes no sense for me to be in this sport. The boots are uncomfortable. The ice is hard and cold and wet. I've fallen so hard I still felt the bruises two weeks later. Getting ready for more vigorous jumps I find myself thinking I should really cut back on the cookies if I ever want try an axel. Skating is completely antithetical to my way of living.

And yet, I adore it.

Added to this unpleasant mix, is the recent development that from time to time my knee hurts. The pain is nothing to write home about, I think it ranks somewhere between "a little stiff" and a "twinge" but my reaction to it surprised me. I had this weird moment of, "I'm an athlete, bitch."

Which is of course, not true. I spend roughly three - five hours a week on the ice. Max. This past week I went four days in a row and by the fourth day I was like, "Lord, what am I even doing here?" That hardly constitutes living and breathing a sport. And anyway, I'm pretty sure knitters could at least knit every day and still call themselves a hobbyist. And I'm sure if they knit every day their hands would be a bit crampy and they wouldn't really think much of it.

But again, see my usual roster of activities. Eating, drinking, reading, lounging, none of these activities usually give you much more than a stomach ache, a hangover, or a limb that has fallen asleep because you had it folded for too long (as if you spent so much time not moving that your body gave up and forgot it had hands or feet). When I was a runner I was mercifully free of any lingering pain issues. My knees and ankles never bothered me after I finished the run, and the biggest challenge was just dealing with the burn when I tried to go for a longer time or a faster pace.

So this is new for me. This is something that hopefully will not, but possibly could, turn into something like that "Love Hurts" Gatorade commercial (which is sadly NOT on YouTube). Maybe one day it'll be ME grimacing in pain while covered in fluorescent sweat. Being a hedonist, shouldn't I turn away from this path and look for a comfy couch? No. Instead I find myself thinking, "Hey, it'll be okay, because then I'll know I went the distance." Now I know that's pretty dramatic. The distance for me will be taking two or three test levels.

So I have to embrace and enjoy the melodrama, and delude myself into thinking I'm testing the limits of my body rather than just, I don't know, aging. Otherwise, I'd just stop skating, too afraid that it'll take out my knee someday. Eternal glory is a lot more attractive than "nightly applications of Bengay."

But what is harder to do is have this same attitude toward bruises. Knee pain appeal to my womanly understanding of suffering in silence. Bruises are in direct conflict with my womanly desire to have perfect legs. There's currently a thumb sized bruise on my left calf, exposed for all the world to see because I am wearing a skirt. It's nothing new, a bruise on a knee cap for two weeks to be followed by one on my hip, and then a brief reprieve from bruises, only to get a blister on my pinky toe when I wear the wrong socks to a practice session. Skating was supposed to make me PRETTY, dammit.

Despite it all I keep going. And will keep going. Because I've apparently actually become the tiniest bit masochistic.

Kate: Falling Is Like This

So! In my last post, I was all like "la-di-da, I am amazing at skating despite being out of it for a month, I am so awesome, 2011 is the BEST EVAH, what is up ladies and gents?" Well, 2011 is still going pretty well - I'm behaving like a responsible adult on a pretty regular basis. Somehow I have still managed not to fulfill most of my resolutions, but whatever. The bathroom is clean and my to-do list is being taken care of. I go to bed at a reasonable hour every night and get up at the same time every day. These are all wins.

You know what wasn't a win? Going to skating class last week and getting a slap of reality by falling on my face not once, but TWICE. The first time we were doing crossovers in a figure eight and I went too deep on my edge and BAM, down on my hip. I was so embarrassed - the other girls in this class are doing, like, rotational jumps and camel spins and I fell on a freaking crossover. I got back up, gathered my tattered pride around me and kept going. A few minutes later, our teacher made us do lunges and spirals for warm-ups. OF COURSE the higher level girls are doing better than me, but I managed to do some respectable lunges and spirals without falling, so I was feeling pretty good.

Then. Oh, then. Our teacher is like "So, everyone knows how to do bunny hops, right?" Bunny hops are the easiest of jumps. So we're all like "Yeah, of course, duh" and she's like "Okay! Final warm-up! Do bunny hops across to the other line!" Everyone takes off, bunny hopping away (which looks ridiculous, the jump looks like you've tripped and are stumbling along) and I go, take off, and land.....on my kneecap. And then flop to my stomach, my left arm taking my weight as I collapse completely and slide across the ice, penguin-style.

Why do I always do that?

Our teacher was horrified and rushed over, all like "are you okay?" and I didn't even bother gathering my tattered pride this time because I had none left. I just got up as gracefully as I could manage (which was not gracefully at all) and said I was fine and kept going. The rest of class was pretty demoralizing - I was super shaky, even practicing easy things, and I could not seem to get up the courage to jump again. The worst part was I had spent almost two hours at the rink the day before practicing my jumps and turns and stuff, so I came into class ready to be a bad-ass and was pretty thoroughly demoralized by my complete lack of bad-assed-ness.

Here's hoping this weekend's class is better and kinder to both my knees and my dignity.