Artsy Instagram Photo to cover up the lack of focus

The one thing The Dormouse has consistently said she wants for Christmas is a pair of ice skates.  Now aside from the obvious gonna-grow-out-of-them-in-six-months issues that a gift like this presents, the other major issue here is presented thusly:  She doesn't know how to skate.

 Yet, this does not seem to be a dilemma to The Dormouse.

 So when we took a quick trip to New York City this weekend to do the Christmas-y things New York has to offer, like the store windows at Macy's and a Hansom cab in Central Park, she begged and begged to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center.  

So here's the thing. I really do love that city, but those obvious, iconic areas that everyone knows about New York like Times Square and Rockefeller Center are about my least favorite things about New York.  And however much I hate those crowded, homage to advertising, areas, I hate them twice as much during holidays when they are full of tourists. 

And yes, I see the irony here at this point, my being an Actual Tourist and all.

But I am not a grinchy-grinch and the last time we were in Times Square together, The KoH had just had his wisdom teeth removed, was riding pretty high on Percoset and spent his time yelling "Skree-yeee!" from a prone position in the back seat of the car.  (there's a story there, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort)  It's not surprising that he had no memory of Times Square that time and he wanted to see it while sober.

So I sucked it up and got us a hotel in Midtown.


Back to the ice skates.

After forty-eight hours of "Can we skate now? can we? can we? pul-eeze? now? can we skate? can we? can we? can we? skateskateskateskateskateskate?"

And:

"If you ask me one more time to go skate we are never skating, EVER!"

 And:

 "Now?"

We finally headed over to Rockefeller Center on Saturday afternoon.

Mistake. 

 There were so many people we couldn't even get to the tree.  So after pushing and shoving strangers for awhile, we turned around and left.  

 But then I used that thing where I get up earlier than the rest of the world to my advantage and the next morning we were out by eight am.  Helpful tip: For the most part, New York sightseers don't really get up to go ice skating that early in the morning.   There were still a lot of people but we went back and got in with very little waiting and almost no taking our lives in our hands while we waited on the corner to cross the street.



The Caterpillar didn't really enjoy the skating much.  She just lay there like a slug. It was her only defense.
 

Eventually, The KoH took her off the ice to walk around and dump a tray of hot chocolate over her head. 

Not intentionally.

That's a story I can't tell because I wasn't there.

 I can, however, tell the story about combing her hair out a few hours later.  It was not pretty.

 Back to the skating:
 
The Dormouse tried a little harder to learn to skate than The Caterpillar, but she had a hard time. It was maybe the worst ice I've ever skated on because even at nine am, so many people had already been there, there was an inch of groves and snow shavings everywhere. And there were a lot of people trying to stop and take a photo in front of the statue (like us) so that made it even more difficult.  

 But we made a conscious effort not to be irritated by people because after all, we wanted that classic picture too.
 
Maybe a little less classic than expected.

Shortly, after we took this photo (which I LOVE, by the way), she tripped over someone who stopped to pose here and hit the ground.  I, a mediocre skater at best (I can pretty much skate forward and not fall, but that's about it), had skated around in front of her to help her find a way around the picture takers, so as she was trying to get up I wasn't right there to steady her and she fell again and bounced her head off the ice.  Then she grew a second head above her eye.

So that was fun.

Not completely sure if the ice skating bug is still there, but we eventually did get that classic photo.