BS has had a tough schedule over the past 2 months. besides a challenging full-time job, he has been taking a class that meets 2xweek and requires homework virtually every night as part of his program. less time with BC and me, less time for himself. it has been a cranky time.

yesterday, he took his final for that class, so today, he wanted to make a concerted effort to spend time with BC and me. bully for him, i say. after we finished running a.m. errands, he wanted to surprise BC with a visit to a local outdoor ice rink. understand that neither BC nor BS can ice skate. i am probably the only one out of the three who can; but as i am 7 months pregnant, ice skating is not exactly a recommended activity for me. we arrived at the rink. its fairly expensive to do this – BC and BS together cost $17 for the experience. but we figured, ah, BC will skate and hold onto BS's hand, who will not skate but merely walk on the ice.

to quote John McLaughlin: “WRONG.”

they would not allow BS to walk on the ice. he would need skates. BS, as i mentioned above, can't skate. the odds of him pulling BC down were tremendous. and i thought, oh shit, i will have the joy of taking them BOTH to the ER. but BS is a determined kind of fellow, for those of you who don't know him. he saw that his little girl really wanted to skate. he knew he had started something he couldn't really pull away from. “i'll skate!” he said.

and they did. well, sort of. he held on to the rail, and BC held onto his hand. they literally dragged themselves once all the way around the rink. it was a slow trek, but BC was so thrilled to be on real ice skates, holding her daddy's hand, and trudging along. after once around, tho, the thrill was gone and she decided that she had had enough for her first intro to skating. “i want to learn to skate. i want to practice every day,” she said. (first i will have to find a local rink that isn't thousands of miles away 😉

but i was proud of both of them: her for trying something new, him for just doing what he had to do. which is so very like him, anyway 🙂 $17 is a lot to pay for a short experience like that, of course, and it rankled me slightly, cheapskate that i am; but when we brought the skates back in, the guy who i think runs the place saw us not complaining about the price or anything and he gave us $8 back. “because you are nice people and aren't complaining,” he said.

hey. didja hear that? finally getting rewarded for being a nice person.