happiness can be found in a pair of old skates, a free rink on the mountain where they play old french songs and a mexican-quebecois flirts with you in the cutest way possible, leading to a language barrier as you discover that you no longer speak spanish and never learnt french. In skating alone, remembering the crossover and rediscovering that you have no use for a hockey stop. In watching a long line of hassidic jew children run/march/teeter along the side of the lake, chaperoned by tutors who speak in a very proud anglophone. Sometimes one of the children slips off the edge onto the ice, and even though it's a little mean I grin because they remind me of a line of marching penguins with a clumsy waddler here and there. In understanding snippets of French. In daydreaming as you skate. In a beloved pair of climbing pants worn skating. In running errands literally, dodging the crowds and venturing in climbing pants into stores where it is really not acceptable to wear climbing pants. In the slightly melting snow, saddening but yet somehow joyful.
The past few days have held only benign adventures, but life can't always be a whirlwind of excitement.
