The upside to not being able to skate

The bright side of not being able to skate for awhile:

• your body finally gets a chance to heal itself. Not just the big injury that has sidelined you, but also that nagging pulled muscle in your ribcage (for instance) that keeps getting better until the next practice when someone slams into you in just the right place.
• there is way less laundry to do.
• You don't have to keep spraying your stinky pads with Febreeze every other day and air out your skates and your skate bag. And you don't have to deal with the smell when you forget to do that.
• you don't have to lug around that gigantic bag of gear when you go to practices or scrimmages.
• Instead, you can bring a camera and focus on taking awesome shots of your fellow skaters.
• You can actually focus on your real job.
• you can spend more time with your honey.
• You can spend more time with other skater's honeys -- not like that! I just mean when you're sitting on the bench you get to have conversations with other folks on the bench, folks you might not get a lot of hang out time with. It's a nice chance to make new friends!
• You can get more involved with other aspects of your league -- people always need more help doing committee work -- just ask around. Or try your hand at coaching or managing or whatever. You may find a hidden talent.
  
• Depending on your league, you don't have to pay dues if you're injured!
• If you are having problems with people on your league, or politics, or whatever crap goes on in everybody's leagues, it's a nice time to take a break from all of that or at least take a step back and re-examine it from a different perspective.
• You can find a whole new group of people to talk about roller derby to -- your doctor, your nurse, your physical therapist, the people in the waiting room, etc. etc. Don't forget to bring flyers with you!
  

Okay, that's all I got. That said, it is frickin' awesome to be back on skates!!!