Curling at Christmas

Last night was my husband's office party. He works with a lot of extroverted people who tend to be focused on appearances. They're what I'd call the "popular" crowd in high school. With my weight ballooning over the years, I hated going to the party and being the only overweight socially-inept wallflower there. For the last couple of years, I managed to avoid going altogether.

However, the party this year was a learn-to-curl party. And being the curious gal I am, I decided that learning to curl sounded too much fun to pass up despite my social ineptitude. The desire to learn even trumped my trepidation at having my weight loss noticed. Though my weight loss has given me more confidence, some of these people can be catty. I'd just as soon as melt into the wall than be noticed by them.

But I sucked it up, put on a nice sweater and went anyways. I felt a little like a bug under a microscope. I could tell some people had noticed just by their expressions, but blissfully they didn't say anything to my face.

However, when we finally got on the ice, I knew that I'd made a huge mistake. The last thing in the world I wanted was to wipe out on the ice in front of all these people. But then a funny thing happened...one of the fellows on our team who seemed to be about as inept as I was (at curling and at social functions), fell as he tried sliding the rock for the first time. I could see he felt badly and embarrassed so I made a decision right then and there that I'd show him it was okay to fall. So, after he went, I went. I slid, I threw the rock, and then I fell on my bum rather spectacularly. He started laughing which is what I had hoped for.

The rest of the lesson went well and sooner than we knew it, we had won our first round and were playing another team. I knew the people on the other team as they were longtime employees. One of them, a good coworker and friend of my husband's stopped me mid-ice. He hadn't seen me for awhile and was blown away at how good I was looking what with my weight loss. He even touched my chin as he said it. I guess he wanted to point out just how thin I was looking. It was a little weird, but cool at the same time as he isn't one of the catty people and isn't normally a touchy-feely person.

For the rest of the night, I had a blast. I learned to curl, hurry-hard, and not be too intimidated by all these extroverted people. And towards the end of the evening, my husband's coworker again approached me, again complimented me and said that I looked like a shadow of my former self. I found out later that his wife also mentioned how good I was looking to my husband.

This morning my knee hurts, my head hurts, and I have "ice" throat. However, I'm feeling happy and accomplished. The night I learned to curl will go down as one of my better Christmas memories.