Despite the sore knee, despite the smashed toe...still rolling with my girls...

First practice of 2010...!

How amazing and wonderful to be back in the arena with my team!!

I tried on my skates a couple hours before practice to see if I could get my blood-spurting, Mt. Vesuvius toe in there without reactivating the red fountain of gore that it was a few days ago...check. Next I lifted my other leg up slowly to see if my knee would snap in half from the weight..I could feel the extra weight straining my knee, but nope, no snapping...Woo Hoooo! That put and end to my over-active imaginings of what it would be like to try and skate again...I felt much better at that point. I wrote on my facebook and the lovely Chilli Jam from Australia left me a nice post. It's been so grim since Nov 17th, waffling back and forth wondering if I could or would ever skate again...It's been like being a wounded animal in a pack...

Though I used to get dressed for practice out in the arena on a bench or something.. this time I wanted to be in the Cat House with the ladies...When I first went in the arena, cleaning day was still happening and I saw Pinkie Lee, and Ammo, and Block N Deckher first in the pro-shop, then Sheeda Bomb with a vacuum, then I saw Kileron, (who has a very sweet smile, btw). Next in was Stihl Queen, who for some reason, we like to hug sometimes...generally we aren't a huge team of huggers, and yet the love is overwhelming between us...at least that's how I feel when I see each of them...Stihl's husband bought her a pair of Wicked skates for xmas, she's very excited! Jodrlicious was back after a long time, Chisel Bit, Twisted Trixie, P.Fork...11 of us attended the first practice of this new year and new decade....and I was armed (or legged?) in my new GIANT Triple Eight knee pads.

To be safe, once I was dressed I brought everything except my laptop with me on the first trip across the floor..No need to fall and break it, I thought. The first step down to the floor, (which is like one inch high), was iffy, it hurt my knee when I stepped down and you know you turn your knee out ward a bit. After that it was ok, I took it real, real slow. Having not moved at all in like 7 weeks I really needed to just stretch and relearn in a sense how to move. When Coach QQ came to the floor, the ladies were in the center circle stretching. Everyone was sitting down and I got this horrible feeling that if I sat down I wouldn't be able to get back up without help. So I stood there, like a silly, while Coach laid out the 2010 season for us.

We're adding a half an hour to the Sunday and Tuesday practices now so that the first 45 minutes can be new player practice time, and the rest for other players. And we've moved our monthly meetings to the second Sunday of each month.

I was tempted to jump right into drills again, but I didn't at first. I just skated slowly, stretched etc. I got a charlie horse on the bottom of each foot a few times..three times I had to remove my skates. That started to happen towards the end of last year and I'm not sure why. I laced up a little looser and went on about skating the best I could. Jodrlicious was free skating around a bit and in a hilarious moment we plowed right into each other...and it happened in like slow motion...Very funny...Luckily I landed on my right hip (and no I didn't have my padded shorts on)..it didn't hurt too much and we took the time that we had laid out on the floor to chat a little and catch up... :)

At one point we did a little rehearsal of our 'show warm-up' that was cool and with time we'll be really smooth and solid looking while we do that...I did participate in that and luckily there's only once that we take a knee so that is ok. I can do that I think. Mostly I'm concerned about landing hard and being able to get up again quickly.

As soon as Coach Q sends me the group photo from practice I'll post it...

It's nice to be back on the Sweet Alyce blog and I would like to thank everyone who reads it...thank you!

See ya'll on Tuesday @ practice!

∞♥☮∞ Sweet Alyce 3.14 ∞♥☮∞