Are you still there, readers?

Oh my beloved readers, I have neglected you. I promise, it is mostly because I haven't had a lot of really interesting things happening.
Practice last night was definitely fun. We have gained access to the warehouse for an additional hour. This makes our league able to better address the needs of our newest members. The practice starts at 7, with basic skills training and drills. The vets are allowed, and encouraged, to attend this portion of practice, but not required to do so. I decided that I need the practice with basics. I am still learning, and I know that I am not the greatest skater.
We worked on walking in our skates, and crossovers. I still need work on derby stance, as it is difficult for me to maintain. I practice this at home in the evening, wearing my skates in the living room, standing in derby stance in front of the TV.
At 8, practice shifts to endurance and more advanced skills drills. This is where things got tough for me. For some reason, my skates weren't fitting quite right and my left foot was cramping up. Usually, I can just skate through this, as pain is a daily occurrence for me. Last night though, it just kept getting worse and worse.
We practiced stopping and turning around, specifically the turn around stop. My biggest mental stumbling block right now is turning around and going backwards. For some reason, it scares me to death. I tried to do the turning around, and did work with England to work on the mechanics of the turn. I understand the workings of it, now I just need to make my brain agree that my feet can do that.
We also worked on "mohawking" which is skating sideways with the feet parallel looking like this _l l_. Can you picture it, oh readers who don't skate? This is everything about skating that scares me. I am proud of myself, in that I was able to face my fears and attempt to make my feet do this. I actually did make a couple of tight turns when skating wrongways (clockwise) but just can't make my brain let my weak leg turn. I took a couple of epic falls, and have quite a lovely bruise on my right thigh where I landed on my skate. It is HUGE. At least it seems huge considering that it was just my wheel that I hit and it is about 10 cm across (that's about five inches for my metric challenged friends) and shows signs of possibly getting larger in the next couple of days.
Gyro makes me look like a fool. She is skating like she was born to do it. I am so proud of her. She makes me want to be a better skater. I can't believe how well all our new girls are doing. They are all picking up skills like my girls with easter eggs.
I love my league.