Things at which I am bad but love doing anyway

(A tipsy comment about bowling is now a blog post, thanks to a suggestion from Carrie.)
Normally, I hate doing things at which I'm bad, or suspect I might be bad. But some things are just delightful no matter what, and here are four of them:


1. Bowling. I think I might have broken 100 once in my life, and that was surely an anomaly. On Saturday night, I got two strikes, but probably about eight gutters. I can usually get pins down now, unlike in my youth during which, when my youth group went bowling, I was the She-Ra of bowling only because I was so terrible (we were being ironic...get it?), but I'm no great shakes. Yet I love it and will continue to love it, especially if it means I can hear "I Kissed a Girl" and "Crank 'dat" for the first time, mixed in with "Ice, Ice, Baby."

2. Ice Skating. To be fair, I am not as bad as some people. I can usually stay up on my ice skates, can skate forward fairly steadily, and a tiny bit backward. When you grow up on a lake and it is the fashionable thing to have skating lessons, you will tend to pick up a little, but beyond that I can't do much. It is my dream to learn how to skate backward with the panache of a hockey player, or at least to learn proper backward crossovers.

3. Crocheting. I don't crochet much these days, but I go through stretches when that is all I want to do. The only problem is, I usually end up ripping out whatever I've done, because I forget to count, or can't see a stitch. Good times.

4. Painting. Like, art painting (I can paint a fascia board like I was born doing it). Yes, I'm terrible at putting paint to paper, and making something pretty, but the activity is so soothing to my mental state that I sometimes wish I had a little studio set up just for painting. Two apartments is probably enough, though.