It’s been a rather stressful week, beginning with a loose temporary crown last weekend,  an infected earlobe (dang earring!) a couple of days ago, and a skating fall/bruised knee yesterday (gosh, dangnabit!). But the kicker was on Wednesday, when I was out on the tandem bike with my husband and we hit a patch of ice and went down. I whacked my elbow, pulled a muscle in my neck, and hit my head on the pavement.

Luckily, my helmet held up just fine. I didn’t get a bump on my head, or feel like I was dazed in any way. We got back on the bike and headed home, grateful that nothing worse had happened.

A few hours later that day, I had a skating lesson. The first part went just fine; I didn’t feel any effects of the fall (the neck pain didn’t kick in until the following day). We worked on allowing for more hip displacement on some of my basics (this really helped both my warmups and progressives). And then we moved on to the first part of the Foxtrot.

The idea behind this is to get me to put different moves together in a more challenging way by soloing some of the compulsory dances. The Foxtrot should be a fairly painless way to do this, since I learned this dance many years ago and have done it a lot since. I passed it standard level (with a solo) and even spent three seasons competing it in different Adult competitions.

But as we went through the first sequence of steps, I started to go all over the place. I thought that it might be because I haven’t really worked on the solo for many years, and it’s never been one of my favorite dances anyhow (though it’s not as bad as the European Waltz. By the end of the lesson, I was frustrated and ready to throw in the proverbial ice dancing towel.

It wasn’t until I got home and was just sitting at my desk feeling a bit nauseous that I realized that I probably had a mild concussion. Not enough to register, but enough to throw me off the Foxtrot wagon.

Though I felt way better by the evening, I took it easy for the next couple of days, just in case.  And I’m happy to say that things seem to be back to normal: no more muscle pain and the dentist glued the crown back on so I can eat crunchy things again. Even my earlobe is better. Hooray!

And one thing that I did figure out  when trying to do the tuck behind on the Foxtrot is that I have been thinking about the inside edge–and especially my free hip position–all wrong!!!

More on that later once I’ve gotten this all sorted out. But for now, time for a nice cup of tea and a sigh of relief that the week is over.

Nothing but mellow, feel good music, please.