Crown Center

opened this morning!!!! Three days ago it was 75 degrees out, and today it only got to about 45, so it was perfect weather opening day. Hillary and I got there around seven, mostly because neither of us could drag ourselves out of bed any earlier. There were already a TON of people there.

We ran into some people; the skating community is a pretty small one.


Hillary and I were our typical selves.

After the free skating session concluded, we went to Panera for bagels, then up on the skywalk at Crown Center that connects basically all the buildings.

Then we went exploring in Crown Center.

I needed a new winter coat, so we left Crown Center and went to the mall, where we searched high and low for an acceptable coat. The winners:

Crown Center being open is awesome. You can buy an unlimited skating pass for either $40/$60 (I can’t remember which), where you can go and skate any time you want. The rink is open every day, usually 10am to 10pm, November to March. It’s practically empty during the day, so wonderful for college students. Plus, what can beat skating outside?

Figure Skating Club(s)

Our season is quickly coming to an end, and by July 1, figure skaters will need to renew their club membership. I am in quite a pickle; by no means do I want to rejoin my current club, KCFSC. However, the other two clubs in the area aren’t any better, and I know less people in them. I really want to join another club just to slap KCFSC in the face, but the mature side of me knows that it will probably just backfire.

What I would really like is to not join a club at all, and just become an individual member of USFSA. Clubs have an insane amount of drama, which is the biggest reason I want to leave KCFSC in the first place. Which in turn makes no sense, because every other club is going to have just as many problems. Becoming an individual member, though, is not as wonderful as it seems. I will have to pay about 50% more for club ice time and test session fees, I won’t get a cool club jacket (although you have to pay like $120 for those), if I do decide to compete again this season, I won’t be “representing” a club.

I am really stuck on what to do. Since I begin college this fall, it is highly unlikely I will be skating a lot, given that I plan to double-major and all. This means in turn it is highly unlikely I will compete.

What do I do?!?!? Make myself happy and join as an individual member, or suck it up and rejoin KCFSC and reassure myself I won’t be around much?

I should also mention that the membership options for clubs include Home Club and Associate. Home Club is self-explanatory- you get all the benefits I mentioned previously. Associate, you join to get some of the benefits but with a higher cost. This season I was a Home Club member of KCFSC and an Associate of LCFSC, one of the other two clubs in the area. I do not wish to rejoin LCFSC, as I am even angrier with them than KCFSC for different reasons. I could join as an Individual Member and then join KCFSC as an Associate, but I still do not want to give money and satisfaction to KCFSC.

I should just quit.

Stupid Non-Friends

Okay, I should really write about my twelve-freaking-hour long drive down here to New Mexico, but I realized I hadn’t vented on here about this certain friend of mine that has been driving me crazy. Plus, the drive wasn’t really all too eventful.

*Name changed

This thirteen-year-old girl is Elise*. She and I kind of became friends in, oh, November? We skate together… (duh, where else would I find young teenagers as friends.) Anyhow. We drifted apart recently, mostly since February/March, because of “bad choices” I apparently make. I have no idea why she feels she should be lecturing me, the one that’s four years older than she is and doesn’t involve her in anything “bad” I do, but whatever.

So we hadn’t talked in awhile; she usually texted me every freaking day. Come this past Thursday (the 5th), the day my figure skating club is holding its annual banquet. My mom and I had decided not to go, partly because it cost an ungodly amount of money, partly because the restaurant is close to an hour from my house, and party because my dad was in Seattle and my brother refused to come.

I get a text around noon Thursday from her. I can’t really get my point across unless I put up the whole conversation, so here goes:

Elise: Why not? Ur still part of the club and evry1 gets a trophy!
Me: Neither me or my mom wants to, I don’t need a trophy
Elise: Ok well ppl will think that u dont want to honor the club (?!?!??!!?!)
Me: Lol that’s okay I’m not too concerned
Elise: U should b there they do so much for us and we should give them something back
Me: I’m only part of that club because Jamie is. (My coach.) I’m not skating past the few times in the summer so I really don’t care they get my money already other ways.
Elise: Ok well i guess u can just b a pain so bye!
Me: Wowww. Learn some tolerance honey. I’m also not the only one not going so chill the heck out
Elise: Well sorry! And btw i am calm! who else isnt going?
Me: A lot of people aren’t going there’s like 200 members you actually think they’d all go (Also to add, my friend Kate wasn’t going, but I didn’t feel like involving her so I left that out.)
Elise: Well some ppl dont live that close unlike u! Some ppl live in omaha and st.joe
Me: I don’t live close to Overland Park at all dear. (Restaurant name) is a good 50 min away lol. Why do you care so much that I’m not going its just a banquet geez
Elise: Ummm yea. But ur missing out on fun. Bye
Me: Hahah unfortunately I have better things to do tonight. Later
Elise: Whatever! Bye!

The end of that conversation. This stupid shit she talked about, “giving back to the club”, made me FURIOUS for many reasons. We already pay $200/year to just get to SAY we belong to this club. We pay anywhere from $1000-$1600 just for three days of ice time. That does not include coaching and lessons, nor other times to skate. We pay to test, and test sessions cost at least $60 each. When you add in our the thousands we spend on skates, dresses, warm-ups, etc., HOW could you say we don’t “give back”?!?! And then they charge us nearly $20/person for this banquet! Um, I am far from poor but are you KIDDING me?!?!? For something I have been a part of for ONE year?? No thank you!! This club has also totally screwed me over numerous times… but I’ll save that for another entry.

Anyway, she also texted me the next day:

Elise: Hey whats up
Me: (No idea why I responded.) Driving
Elise: Ok then ill leave u alone cuz its illegal to drive and txt at the same time
Me: Lol k I’m texting too many people anyway later gator

I like pissing people off. If she was my age, I would have been a whole lot bitchier; I figured, though, that since she’s only thirteen and a goody-goody I should restrain myself.

Oh, and her mom is also the one that told mine I went to Denver. My mom can’t stand her or Elise now, haha. I love my mom. That really was the only bad thing I did, go to Denver without telling my parents. Well, that and the fact that I’m kinda hanging out with a twenty-two year old. But bite me bitch, that is none of your business and never did I make it yours.

Summertime

Ahhh, summer is so nice.

This morning, I woke up and went to babysit Isabella and Evie. We went to the gymnastics academy; they had a wonderful time running, jumping, and playing as all little kids do. After some no-injury falls, I shuttled them back to their house where we had a delicious lunch consisting of Lunchables. Evie sang us a song she must have learned at preschool; I really wish I had my camera to take a video!

I was supposed to go skate with my friend Sarah at the rink, but the girls’ mom came home a bit late so I just drove over and met her there. They had taken out the ice and closed the rink for about twelve days- it just reopened yesterday. Anyway, the ice was HORRIBLE. There were huge lumps of frozen water on top of the ice, and it was all sloped, so you could stand and still be moving. I’m not quite sure how my coach expects to teach us on that tomorrow… if you tried to spin, you would surely fall out of it and break something.

Sarah, Myah, and I left to go to Sarah/Meghan’s house to swim in their neighborhood pool. Mmm lazy days by the pool, the best! We stayed there for a couple hours, got some lemonade from the kids selling it on the corner, and walked back to her house to just chill.

I got home an hour or so ago and have just been watching TV and eating dinner, since I’m off to babysit for a different family soon.

There really is no point to this entry, except a little picture of my life over the summer. =)

 

**I’m editing this because making a new entry would be dumb; it’s still part of my ‘life over the summer’!

I babysat for the other family this evening, with two little boys- Jack, age eight, and Charlie, age two. The beginning was all calm and everything, they mostly watched TV, and Jack and I played Battleship. Then came on Digimon, so they play-fought with each other. Their mom wanted me to change it to Charlie’s Noggin channel after that, which came the dancing commercials where we jumped, clapped twice, and twirled. Somehow, all three of us started to run around with Charlie chasing Jack and I for, like, thirty minutes until their mom came home.

I’m exhausted.

Woooo, summer!!!!!

Bad Management

I swear, so much drama goes on at the rink. I didn’t really want to write about that here, but I have so much to say I need somewhere to get it out! I’m hoping this makes me feel a little better and helps me move on.
Warning: this entry will probably sound pretty depressing too, even though I actually had quite a hilarious dinner with my mom and brother tonight. Oh, and keep in mind that I don’t actually work here, so this is all what I hear from my good friends that actually do… but this is all common knowledge, for the most part.

*Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent

Okay, so back story: There are three families that own an equal? share of the rink. Jane* is one of the owners. Her daily job is a divorce lawyer. Somewhere around nine months ago, she decided to fire the general manager and take up the position herself, while continuing her day job. The old manager, Bob*, was pretty hands-on at the rink, made sure all the scheduling was done right, all the employees were happy, etc. When Jane takes over, she cuts hours left and right, including my ex-coach, the skating director, Jill*. Jill is far from thrilled. She goes from twenty-some hours a week to five, if she’s lucky. Jill does not put up with sh*t, she wants a business run right, as does James*. (Sorry for all the J’s, I wanted to keep the first initials the same as to not further confuse myself.) James is the guy that holds the position right under Jane’s. He is twenty-two and has worked at our rink for six years. There are things he’d like to change at the rink to make it run a little smoother, but with Jane in the way, it’s getting hard.
Edited to add: Jane is also never around. Us figure skaters are there more than the supposed “general manager.” That is half the problem. 

Jane also has three sons who work at our rink. Malcolm* is one of them, the twenty-one year old. Half the crap that goes down at the rink is his fault, mostly involving trashing the place after drunken nights. Jane lightly punishes him, if at all. Meanwhile, Jill and James are getting pretty furious with her, along with us skaters. Our ice hardly gets zamboni-ed anymore, and she’s double-booked events. Skate Kansas City comes around in April, and some bad stuff happens then; one of the vendors (who owns the only figure skating shop within a 200 mile radius) probably won’t ever come back to Skate KC.

The Skate KC event is the final straw for Jill; her last day was May 7. Keep in mind she was my old coach; I absolutely adore her. Jill is in her sixties, and started skating only in her fifties. She taught me the basics of figure skating, and we learned new elements together. My last grandma died when I was twelve, so she’s kind of been my stand-in. Anyway, with no rules for the employees, she couldn’t take how badly the rink is now being run.

James is one of my good friends. He’s a good guy, he wanted to improve the rink and had plans all set out. Jane was screwing up the rink so badly that he went to the other owners numerous times to find out if there was anything that could be done about Jane- there wasn’t. They are afraid doing something about her will mess up the relationship all three families have, and, after all, they do put in a third of the money. So, James hit a brick wall. The same wall as Jill. He put in his two weeks’ notice yesterday.

I am so ANGRY it’s almost hard to describe. My old rink went down this month last year because of bad management. That place was my home, and I’m still very upset over it. I don’t want this one to go down too. I guess really, all in all, I hate change. I’m really, really going to miss Jill and James, they are two of the people that make up the reason why I love being there so much. Now, because of some stubborn, bad owner/manager, they have been driven out.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Felt good to scream.

Skating Woes

Skating takes a lot out of me.

Subconsciously, I’ve known that for awhile now. You lose time, you lose energy. It really hit me hard yesterday, after feeling so frustrated and upset that I could punch a wall and not care. I guess that would be a good reason to keep pressing on, but the thing is, is that at this point in time, I don’t want to press on.

The frustration used to make me work even harder. I would push myself to nail whatever move, jump, or spin was tripping me up. Sometimes it would take me three hours to get just that one thing, over and over again. I didn’t care, because I loved the sport, and I loved to skate.

I burned out. I skated so much and pushed so hard that now I hate being at the rink. I hate being on the ice, I literally have to drag myself around. A couple of months ago I told my coach, “I need to take a break.” She looked at me and said, “Yeah, you haven’t looked very into skating lately.” Her idea of taking a break was not doing competitions. That was fine for awhile, but she is still fighting for me to keep testing and keep skating as much as I am. Yesterday was the breaking point. I almost can’t describe how I felt… I tripped up on a couple jumps that I know I can do- I didn’t want to work on my moves at all. My heart wasn’t into it. When coach told me, “Those are so close to passing,” I didn’t care. At all. I wasn’t the slightest bit happy. I just wanted to get off that ice. I wanted to quit for good.

Club ice ends next week, which means for the summer I’ll be skating as much/as little as I want to. The end could not come at a better time. I have a lot going on this summer (what’s new), and I won’t be at the rink very often, if I decide to go at all.

I will finish out club ice, and I won’t quit. However, I need to take a long break if I want to keep going- otherwise, I will be done and won’t ever go back. And that is not what I really want.