Big Derby Girls Don't Cry

The Retirement Plan

2011-07-26T11:26:00.000-04:00

New DERBY post on my new blog!!! Check it out by CLICKING HERE

NEW BLOG: Portraits of the Ordinary

2011-06-21T13:42:00.003-04:00

Hi, Readers!

I've started a new blog that launched on June 22, 2011: Portraits of the Ordinary

While this site will remain up, I encourage you to join me at Portraits of the Ordinary, which will be the primary location for future blog posts.

Thank you for reading!

Cindy (aka, Tara)

I Can't Top THAT

2011-04-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

Last night over dinner with a coworker and a fellow conference attendee, we were having a discussion about tattoos, when it came to light (like it always does) that I "do roller derby". After a discussion of injuries and rules my dinner dates both commented, "Well, I can't top THAT," to which I replied, "Yeah, neither can I - I wish I was still skating."

Despite all the other drivers in derby, no one can deny the ever looming presence of ego - not only how ego plays into a derby persona, but how the ego of being a rollergirl plays into your non-derby life. For people outside derby, a rollergirl epitomizes coolness, toughness, and utterly complete independence. While I'm not quite sure how these same people view women who were once rollergirls (eg, retired skaters), I know that at an intuitive level I feel less cool, less tough, and less independent when I'm not actively skating as part of a team. I felt this way when I was out for the rest of a season with an injury, and I feel this way now as a retired skater.

In a way, derby is like an ultra super mega fun merry-go-round. Before you're ever on it, you can see that it looks like fun, and you want to jump on. While you're on it, it IS really fun. And when you inevitably have to get off the derby merry-go-round, you once again are on the outside looking in, only this time you know just how fun it is and you're really sad you're not on it. The reality is that derby is so popular right now that there's an ever-revolving door of new and different skaters, and there's this fear when you're injured or retired that you'll be forgotten by your team, by the derby community, and by derby fans at large, and these things in part or in whole can cause a person to lose a significant portion of self esteem that was at least partially gained while she was actively involved in derby. In short, it blows.

I've never experienced this type of separation anxiety in my life before. From a young age I was always anxious to move on to the next better thing. I moved out of my parents house when I was 18, and I never looked back. I was working full time before I finished college, and I never once longed to be a full-time student again. I've played a wide array of sports over the course of my life, but I've never once been so attached to one that I've allowed myself to be at least partially defined by it. Then there was derby. But, why?
I'm not confident that I know the answer to this, but I find it interesting that the global outsider's view of what a rollergirl is meshes with what I know to be true, and all this combined seems to put a spotlight on the fact that those labels and assumptions can no longer truly be applied to me. I'm Madonna in the 90s, or worse yet, the Baha Men. Who? Right. I reached a peak in my life that was me actively skating and now what? I don't know how to return to normal life. STILL. Will I ever do or find some other role to play in my life in which I'll be able to recreate or exceed the success I found in my participation in derby? I really hope so, because even though I feel like I'm really busy racing back and forth daily to do or find something that will give me the same high derby did, I'm not finding it. I've made myself really busy, but even within the chaos I've created, I'm tragically bored. At the end of the day, like my dinner dates, I can't "top THAT." And I want to.

For me, I feel better by staying involved with those who do still skate, and while I can no longer strap on my skates and block for my jammer, I can participate at the admin level and hopefully use my bank of institutional knowledge to propel our teams, our league, and our sport forward - a metaphorical whip from the sidelines. Still, I often feel like a shadow of who I once was. While I'd love to be physically able to skate again, I know doing so would only postpone my having to deal with these feelings later, and return to skating or not, I'd like to figure out how to happily move forward and at least "top THAT" in my own mind.

A Pole Dancer I am Not... Yet

2011-03-24T10:42:00.001-04:00

I wouldn’t say I’m an adrenaline junkie in the typical sense. I don’t jump off cliffs without a parachute, and I always wear my seatbelt, but I’m definitely attracted to trying new things that force me out of my comfort zone. I think that when we place ourselves in these positions we learn the most about ourselves, and those things we learn can help us to grow. Last night I placed myself out of my comfort zone, with nothing to cling to but a stripper pole.

Last weekend after having been asked by several different friends to join each of them for a different after-work exercise outing, I decided that for a month I wouldn’t turn down any exercise invite – I would just go – because, after all, doing something (regardless of what that something is) is better than sitting on my ass doing nothing, which I’ve been doing entirely too much of lately. On Monday I had a date to run several miles at the Lake, and last night was my debut attempting a pole-dancing class at Xpose fitness in Arundel Mills, where I was definitely pushed out of my comfort zone.

Let me start with this: I am not a dancer. Yes, I am known to tear up the dance floor at roller derby after parties, Pants Off Dance Off nights, the Lith Hall, and the occasional gay bar, but I’ve also had some liquid courage and according to my recollection there are typically no mirrors around me. I actually really like to go out dancing, but when I’m there my goal is to have fun with my ladies. I’m not moving for anyone else but me, and I could give a shit what I look like when I do it. I feel the music and I move. While pole dancing may eventually be about feeling the music, it’s certainly not in the beginner class! It’s all about the moves, which are quite frankly extremely difficult to mimic.

I was pleased to find a very diverse mix of ladies attending this class, and I was even more pleased that the instructor didn’t live up to my idea of what a pole-dancing instructor may be like. Instead, she was funny and the opposite of what you think of when you think of most fitness instructors, who in my mind at least, are all peppy petite blondes with tiny voices. No, last night’s pole-dancing instructor reminded me of a rollergirl, which instantly put my mind at ease. Until she started moving.

I almost feel like I needed a pre-beginner class to teach me how to move my hips, legs, and ass in all those various swaying figure-eight motions I always just assumed I knew how to do, because in reality – in front of a mirror – I really can’t move the way I thought I could! But I tried, I kept moving, and I found that I really enjoyed and excelled in the more athletic moves like spins into back bends (you got to pick up those dollas somehow). Then we moved to the floor – hello, abs! The back bend transitioned into placing your shoulders on the floor, lowering your hips down, raising your chest up, and doing a bunch of shit with your legs in the air, constantly moving. This all resulted in walking on your ass half way around the pole and then strategically getting back up, all the time staying in the correct proximity to the pole. Wow. Just, wow.

I joked last night that I’m build for efficiency, not for the viewing pleasure of others. In all seriousness, I’m used to using my body to accomplish a task, whether that be running, performing offensive or defensive derby moves, or just doing some action repeatedly. I’ve always been able to get the job done, but I’ve never said it was going to look pretty. I’ll sweat, I’ll hustle, and I’ll push my body to accomplish seemingly difficult tasks, but what I am REALLY not used to is moving my body in a way that’s visually appealing. It’s difficult. Very difficult. So, hats off to strippers everywhere.

When I left last night my first thought was, “No way in hell I’m coming back.” Seeing myself fail miserably in a mirror was a big blow to my self esteem, but by the time I went to bed last night I realized that there’s no way in hell I couldn’t go back. Putting myself in an awkward position once did make me learn something about myself, but going back and working on improving the aesthetics of my body movements – something I’m not naturally good at – will build character. Since being retired from derby, I don’t challenge myself enough by trying to overcome something I’m really bad at, and I need that. I need to be knocked down a few pegs on a regular basis so that I have something to work on.

The verdict: I’ll be back on the pole next week, and in the meanwhile I’ll be practicing a lot of ungraceful body movements in the full-length mirror at night!

Just a Job

2011-03-21T14:28:00.000-04:00

As I get older I find myself asking my friends’ children some of the same questions that adults asked me when I was a child, especially “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I think my earliest answer to that question was veterinarian. That morphed into space shuttle pilot for NASA, which then became engineer (I had no clue what that was, but my mom thought it paid well), architect, writer, and English teacher. When I ask kids these days, I get answers like “I want to help animals” or an emphatic “skateboarder!” Maybe it’s a product of having been a child in the 80s, but I never had lofty aspirations – they were always really practical. When I hear the excitement or loving compassion that’s behind the answers I hear today, I start to lecture. “Don’t ever give up on your dreams,” I say, “You can do anything you want, and you can always find a way to make it work. Don’t settle.” Ten year olds don’t get settling, which is refreshing.

In college I settled on editor. Now, 15 years later I have a job. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like my company, I love my boss, and I enjoy the work that I do, but if I wasn’t being paid to do it, then I wouldn’t do it. This constantly causes a barrage of mind fucks. First and foremost I can easily slip into caring too much – so much that it’s detrimental to my health. It may not be my life’s work, but I spend 40+ hours a week focused on this one thing, and when shit goes wrong or gets held up, I can take it personally. Today I had a very sad discussion with a coworker who came to see me to confess that while the challenges in her department fall under her preview, her hands are tied. Above all else she was concerned what I thought about her professionally. It was heartbreaking, yet it’s something I see over and over again: the responsibility some of us assume is not proportional to what’s expected of us. Put simply, we care too much, and in many cases those of us who strive to move forward and conduct business as if we actually had a personal stake in it get burned when we hit a wall and are unable to do what we know needs to be done. Forget the asinine reasons why we hit those walls – focusing on them will only give you early heart disease – instead, relax and find comfort in the fact that this shit happens all the time in every industry. Unless you own the business, you shouldn’t ever take it personally and you shouldn’t care so much that you do take it personally. Naturally, this is easier said than done.

While I appreciate the free market capitalistic society in which I live in that allows me the opportunity to live the American Dream (make shitloads of money and move to an island owned by another country), I feel like I’m neither well poised to take advantage of what it has to offer, nor do I know what the hell I would actually want to do if given the choice. So instead, I do what everyone else does, and I get a job that pays me to live my life on the weekend. I’m reminded of this each time I find myself caring too much about my job, and it makes me feel like I need to scramble to find something more meaningful and more personally fulfilling. That, or trick myself into believing that what I’m currently doing actually is fulfilling. I really don’t want to continue to do this for the rest of my life, and I can’t tell if that makes me a whiny spoiled brat or someone with a higher purpose.

Going back to that question asked of every American child, I don’t know what I could have been told that would have changed the direction I took. Part of me thinks it was unavoidable. I guess the bigger question is what now?

2011-03-08T14:51:00.002-05:00

I write, but I can’t finish anything. Everything seems complicated. Unresolved. Unhappy. Too many secrets. And no one wants a buzz kill. More time has passed than seems necessary to recover, yet recovery is not even imminent. What now?

The 2011 To Do List: New Year Resolutions

2011-01-03T15:25:00.001-05:00

I love writing lists, and since this obsession began during my childhood the New Year Resolution list has been a favorite of mine until recent years. Don’t get me wrong, I still love list making, but these days making a list containing such ambitious content is enough to make me light-headed and queasy. At some point several years ago the New Year Resolutions list, which really is supposed to be a list of goals or things to aspire to accomplish in the new year, became one more “to do” list that I saw as an inevitable list of failures. As a Project Manager I deal with to do lists in a daily basis. I LIVE by to do lists, and I can have as many as five going at any one time. The problem, however, is that which makes me a good Project Manager (the ability to bring all tasks to fruition on or ahead of time) makes me a neurotic and miserable human being.

When we’re young we’re taught that life and its components are linear – there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end to just about everything. We’re also taught to finish what we started. This type of conditioning has really fucked with my head as an adult, because I become extremely disappointed in myself when I can’t finish something I’ve started or when I don’t have closure to something. It’s just now, at age 32, that I’m beginning to suspect that life and its components are NOT linear, and most things do not ever get resolved, which is a pretty big pill to swallow for a person like me with a Type A, perfectionist personality. It’s only in light of this new revelation that I’ve decided to once again revisit the New Year Resolution list, but this time it’s being taken with a huge grain of salt (that can be contained in those large buildings managed by the department of transportation in areas of colder climate). So, without further adieu:

Get new website up and running.

I’ve got two blogs out there and I constantly have ideas for additional topics I’d like to write about, but I need a formal location in which to organize the chaos, hence: new website. When I got married last year two friends offered to build the site for me as a wedding present – one would write the code behind the components I wanted and the other would create the actual design. As much as I hate creating extra work for people, this is the year I need to get this done, and I suspect once it’s finished I’ll feel a lot less scattered and chaotic – at least as a writer/blogger/whateverer.

Begin to write fun book.

Hey, look! Another writing goal! Last year I silently lamented over a completely nonsensical personal need to get more “professional” writing out there before I could do anything “fun”. Then several months ago I had an epiphany: this is my god damn hobby, I might as well do the fun shit first (or, hell, how bout JUST the fun shit?!). I have a topic in mind that I’ve had for a while. It’s even come together quite organically and coincidentally over the last year, so my first official move in accomplishing this goal will be in the form of scheduling some formal interviews with people to whom I’ve already talked. I’m actually really excited about this goal, because the process itself of writing the book should actually be a lot of fun. Stay tuned, and god so help me if I’m truly known for this topic after it’s all said and done!

Do fun things with food.

I love to eat, but perhaps even more than I love to eat I love to cook. I’ve had the daydreams of owning a restaurant, but I know how difficult a business that is run and make profitable, and when it comes down to it I really just want to cook, so I have another goal this year to do fun things with food. Fun things with food? What does that mean? I’m not quite sure yet, but I read an article last year in Bust magazine about underground dinner parties with strangers and I’ve been intrigued ever since. It works like this: you finalize a menu, calculate a price per person, somehow put out a call for dinner guests, and then everyone shows up to eat that day and you cook them dinner. I need to figure out if there’s already a scene like this around Baltimore, and if there is I need to figure out how to become a part of it. Tips on this one are appreciated…

Figure out this piriformis muscle bullshit.

I almost didn’t include this on here, because it’s kind of along the lines of “keep breathing”, which is a given. It’s a tough medical nut to crack. It becomes inflamed and tight because it’s not a strong muscle, so to prevent that you have to strengthen it. Yet, when it’s inflamed, I’ve been told I have to do nothing (just gentle stretching). Then, inevitably, I reinjure it doing just about anything on my first try back at some sort of cardio or strengthening program (even cardio that is ultra-low impact and doesn’t even make me sweat), and I’m back at resting and gentle stretching. I’m beyond frustrated that this has semi-permanently sidelined me from skating, but I’m also not doing everything I can to make the process go any faster. I need to get my ass up an extra hour early to do my PT stretches and exercises, and then I need to dedicate another hour each night to doing the same thing, and I need to just suck up the fact that I can’t do cardio right now and have needed to purchase larger pants because of it. Oh fucking well. At this point, I don’t see any other way around it.

Learn to knit.

I almost didn’t include this one either, because I actually solidified plans this morning to be taught to knit in two weeks. I suppose, instead, my goal should be to learn and continue to practice knitting on the regular. I’m hoping I can learn to make some cool shit, but more importantly I’m hoping that having something to do with my hands while watching TV will keep me from feeding my face full of junk. Then maybe I can ditch the larger pants!

Finish kitchen.

I’m financially irresponsible. There, I said it. Money burns a hole in my pocket, and my struggle to save has precluded us from finishing our kitchen for the last seven years. This year, however, I want things to be different. I want to be able to save some money each month that will go toward finishing moving our kitchen out of a room the size of a closet and into a room the size of an actual kitchen. We started this fall and have already redone the walls, floor, and ceiling. Next step is to hire a plumber to move the water and gas lines, then shorten the existing window, then purchase and build cabinets, and finally, purchase and install new appliances. This is a project that will evolve over time, and I’m fine with that – as long as it keeps evolving and doesn’t sit stagnant. My goal, really, is to save money to finish the kitchen and keep things moving. I can do this!

And now for the conceptual part of the show… These next few goals are things that I know, due to their very essence, cannot be checked off a list, because they can’t ever truly be accomplished. Instead, they are things that I should continue to strive for each day as life plays out, expectedly and unexpectedly.

Go with, and not against, the flow.

I have a tendency to be really passionate and work really hard to accomplish my goals, so much in fact that in my drive to reach the end goal I often become blind to changing circumstances and annoyed with any proposed change of plans. This is especially true at work. I’m no stranger to shit happening, but I would like to learn to tolerate it happening better than I have in the past. When I sit back and really examine the things in life that upset me, they’re all little nit-picky self-imposed bullshit things that boil down to “I’m upset that X didn’t happen exactly the way I wanted it to”. Indeed, I spend way too much time trying to shove square pegs into round holes instead just going to find the round pegs. I want to relax more and not stress out over the dumb shit. I want to learn to go with the flow more than I currently do, because I highly suspect I’ll save myself a lot of grief and be a happier person in general.

Seek discipline to find balance.

Wow, this seems like a contradiction to the previous resolution, but really it’s not. On a daily basis, discipline in certain activities provides the structure you need to achieve comfort. Going to bed on time, not drinking like a louse during the week, and showing restraint in eating whatever the fuck you want when you want will certainly make me less neurotic and upset at the consequences of my lack of discipline: perpetually being late to work, feeling like a lazy bum who never does anything, and having to buy new pants.

I realized the other day that one reason I loved actively skating so much was because of the level of discipline it introduced into my life that I otherwise don’t have. Yeah I hated having to make X number of practices a month and not drinking on a Saturday night so I’d be good for All Stars practice on Sunday morning, but these things made me a better person who, despite the mild discomfort associated with having to show discipline at certain times, was generally happier than I am when I can do whatever the fuck I want to do (or not do) at any given time. This is a resolution I’m going to have to remind myself about a bunch, I bet .I’m kind of embarrassed that I’m 32 and just now learning this, but better late then never, eh?

9. Talk it out.

I talk a lot. On here, on Twitter, on Facebook, and to friends, family, neighbors, and cashiers everywhere, but I struggle to talk to anyone in depth about my problems. In my efforts to not be a buzz kill, I hold all these toxic problems inside and then I get sick or I just shut down emotionally because they haven’t been dealt with. I want to learn to talk my problems out instead of holding them in. It works swimmingly when I remember to do it, but I don’t remember to actually do it so much. Hopefully listing it here will help it stay in the forefront of my mind.

Look for opportune opportunity, and don’t be afraid to turn down inopportune opportunity.

I’m the type of person who’s generally willing to give anything a go, meaning I take on things that both enrich my life and suck the life out of it. Moving forward, I need to assess opportunities that are presented to me better, and just because I’m asked to do something doesn’t mean I should say yes to everything. I should, however, say yes to truly opportune opportunities, and I shouldn’t be afraid to sever ties with opportunities I took that have turned out to be inopportune. Time is of the essence in life, and while I shouldn’t beat myself up for those things that I thought were opportune but were not, I should just move forward with the best of intentions.

Do something each day that makes me happy.

I’m quite predictable, really. It’s funny looking back on it, but it’s never funny when it happens. Naturally, I’m talking about that all too common occurrence that is me throwing a hissy fit before bed that I hadn’t done a single thing that I wanted to do that day. It makes me angry to go an entire day without doing something that makes me happy, yet it does absolutely no good to throw a tantrum in a seeming attempt to get time to stop and give me a “bonus” hour not otherwise included in the standard 24-hour day. What I want to do is MAKE TIME for myself each day before bedtime arrives. Again, not easy, but if it were it probably wouldn’t be on here.

Well, that’s my list. I probably could have come up with more resolutions, but I think this list is manageable, if not a bit ambitious. While I’m partially inclined to print this out and keep it someplace easily accessible in order to hold myself accountable, another part of me wants to do with it what I did with all those other childhood lists: set it down and forever forget about it. I think I’ll take the middle ground here. Getting it down on paper was good, but printing it out may be a bit too anti-number seven ;)

What resolutions do you have for the coming year? I’d love to hear them!

Waiting Room

2010-12-03T13:16:00.000-05:00

This morning I lamented on Twitter about some frustrations I’m having regarding my job: “I'm in the position now where I'm stuck managing the urgent, but I also have an urgent desire to move forward w/other things and I can't”. And it was only after I posted that tweet that I realized the way I feel about my job mimics how I feel about the happenings in the rest of my life as well.

At work I’m stuck beta testing and managing the new release of an online application that has taken so long to develop and launch that my team and I are already over it, yet no matter how hard we try we simply can’t do anything to push this release out the door any quicker.

Outside of work, I’m anxious to get back to derby, and this morning I got a text from our All Star captain about some discounted personal trainings she’d scored. While I really could stand to lug my “bowl full of jelly” to these workouts, I can’t just jump right back into derby at this point in time either because I’m dealing with the emotional rollercoaster that is a terminally ill relative. On top of that, I’m stuck in the vortex of sadness that is the winter holidays. Three years ago at this time, I lost my mind and I didn’t know why. Last year at this time, I began to lose my mind and it was then brought to my attention that this may be a pattern. This year, I know full well what to expect, but in a way it doesn’t make it any easier. While I secretly long for the magic that was Christmas for me for so many years, I can’t help but feel apathetic and sad – like the best of times are behind me – because I’ve come to realize that this time of year will always symbolize wanting and loss, and I can’t ignore the reasons behind those feelings now that I know they are there.

As an aside: I’m having a real hard time with the holidays this year. Maybe it’s the incessant news coverage of “people spending money” and “good retail outlook”, or maybe I’ve just had another layer of the veil peel away, enabling me to see things as they truly are, but I hate that the holidays are about little more than fattening the wallets of retailers and buying people shit they don’t really want or need that will eventually fill landfills. Even the people who usually seem to have it right are talking out both sides of their mouth: Live life consciously and sustainably, but BUY ALL THIS CERTIFIED ORGANIC SHIT PACKAGED IN THE RECYCLED SMILES OF CHILDREN FROM 3^RD WORLD COUNTRIES THAT WE’VE OBTAINED VIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS!!! If I had my druthers, I’d plan a holiday season filled with thoughtful, meaningful, and sustainable useful presents and actions, but since I seem to have misplaced my druthers, I’ll note this on my To Do list for Christmas 2011 and simply fly by the seat of my pants this year.

Back to being stuck in the urgent but urgently wanting to move on… There seem to be instances in life where by no fault of our own we’re condemned to some sort of personal purgatory, be it our jobs, our relationships, our family, or our something else entirely, and although it may be a hard pill to swallow in our faster, bigger, more society, sometimes there’s absolutely nothing we can do but ride out the wave of shit and try not to get splashed in the process. I get frustrated when I can’t make things happen, but I’ll be honest: I’m tired. I’m real fucking tired. I’ve been struggling against the inevitable, because it’s in my nature, but the more I struggle, the more shit splashes into my boat. I’m tired of being covered in shit, so until things run their natural course, all I can do is sit calmly and try not to freak out that I’m surrounded by shit.

Again, if I had my druthers, maybe while I’m sitting here floating up shit’s creek I could do something useful like meditate or exercise or work on myself in another productive way, but I’ve misplaced my druthers. If you see them, please send them my way. I miss them dearly. Joking aside, life is never all or nothing or black and white – in fact, it’s some of this, some of that, and a whole shitload of gray. When we’re in these personal purgatories, (in my mind, at least) there should be an understanding that shit happens and we should take it easy on ourselves until these things pass. If that means putting the other things you really want out of life on hold for a bit (and it usually does), fuck it. If there ever were a time to put things on hold, it’s now. I see other people around me blaming themselves for not being able to carry on like normal or do anything during these very difficult times, and it makes me sad because I see them making things worse for themselves when they really were never to blame in the first place.

I suppose I should take a bit of my own advice and just relax. As badly as I want to get to the next stage at work and at home I need to know although I can’t make it happen just now, when it can happen everything will be there waiting for me (including those in-addition-to-derby personal training sessions to get rid of my bowl full of jelly). Patience is a virtue. Maybe I’ll become a tad more virtuous this go around. Hey, a girl can dream J

The ONLY Bag You'll Ever Carry to Yoga

2010-12-01T14:52:00.001-05:00

Several months ago I found myself annoyed to be carrying two to three bags with me to yoga class, of which one would inevitably get left behind or have me making a mad dash back in from the parking lot, so I decided to create a bag that would allow me to carry damn near all my accessories that I roll with on the regular AND a yoga mat. Peeps liked the prototype and asked if I'd be making them available for sale. After much thought, I decided to forge ahead with an initial production of two styles. Alas, here they are - available for the holidays and all (see Etsy for the second pattern with birds)!

The bags are $75 each and can be purchased here on my Etsy site. If you're local to Baltimore, email or DM me, and we can work out delivery, so you don't have to pay shipping!

From Etsy (AtomicChiffon):

This large, yet airy yoga mat bag allows you to carry everything you need in ONE BAG to yoga class!

32" across and 7.5" deep, this bag holds one over-sized yoga mat (or two regular mats, doubled up) in the main compartment of its fully-lined interior. Additional features include:

- An interior pocket at the end of the bag that snugly holds all size water bottles
- An extra-large 11" interior zippered pocket to hold valuables such as sunglasses, keys, cell phone, and "mom wallet"
- Main compartment secured by 4 ties in much-desired open-air design to combat sweat retention and stink
- Duo over-the-shoulder carrying straps made wide for comfort
- Exterior fabric designed by Cilla Ramnek
- Durable and machine-washable

Finally, the ONLY bag you will ever need to take with you to yoga!

Care instructions:
Machine wash, hot 140°F (60°C).
Do not bleach.
Do not tumble dry.
Iron, high temperature.
Do not dryclean.
Shrinkage 4%.

Return to Derby

2010-11-30T15:06:00.000-05:00

My decision to retire from derby wasn’t an easy one, but even as I sit here now reflecting on my first practice in 9 months, I realize that for better or worse I made the right decision. I desperately needed a break so I could insert some semblance of balance back into my life. I desperately needed to hand off (once and for all) various derby duties I had needlessly accumulated. I desperately needed to get some new hobbies. I desperately needed to spend time with my family. And, last but not least, I desperately needed the time away from derby to realize that whether I’m actively skating or not, my life is so abundantly enriched by being a part of derby that being a part of it is something I actually want to do now and in the future.

Last night I attended my first derby practice since last February, and I while I was exceptionally nervous going into it, I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. When I walked in, it was partially as if I’d never left. With the people I knew, I picked right back up where I left off it seemed (except they kept asking me how I was doing throughout practice, which was nice). It was like coming home for the first time after having gone away to college or moving out of your parents’ house; it’s familiar, but there is something odd about being there as well.

The one thing I could not get over last night was how heavy my skates felt – I literally got lower leg cramps just from wearing my skates for the first hour. My endurance? Shit. Absolute and total shit. However, I was happy to find out that I hadn’t lost many of the skills and moves I’d worked so hard to learn – thank you, muscle memory! My legs hurt today, but it’s a good kind of hurt – it reminds me that with enough hard work I can do or be whatever I want. I still have a long road ahead of me to build up my endurance and sharpen my skills, but I’m happy to be on that road. In fact, I think for me that’s all I ever really need out of life: direction. I’m at ease when I have a general idea of where I’m going.

So, what are my goals for the coming year? Balancing derby with the rest of my life, and to satisfying my highly competitive nature by jamming on a home team would be divine. I need to be realistic in my time constraints, which unfortunately preclude me from aspiring to return to the All Stars, but at least I know that. God so help me in several months, however. I know I tend to become delusional over time…

The Internet is an amazing tool that really does bring people from all over the world together, and I see the effects of this in no greater way than I have in the derby community. I have no idea what I thought would come from this blog when I started it. I was hoping that it would act as another mechanism for bringing together a group of women who identify with themselves the way I identify with myself, but I’m continually astounded that you actually DO identify with the things I go through and find my recorded experiences to be inspiring. I get lots of emails and DMs from both longtime readers and people who just found the blog, and my biggest reward in this (if there is one) is hearing how something I wrote played a part in helping someone start something, continue something, or straight up kick something’s ass. And these stories, in part, made me realize just how important derby is to me and how much I love being a part of it. For that I thank you a million times over.

I don’t know why I’m the type of person who tweets every thought or blogs every memory. I guess I have diarrhea of the finger tips. Regardless the reason, it’s awkward at times to consider the audience at the other end of the Internet. I write this blog, in part, as if no one is listening, because if I think about it too hard I’d be entirely too freaked out to write at all. In a weird way, derby gave me my voice, and when I’m skating I speak more freely. I hope to be speaking more freely this year as well.

As I’ve been making this slow transition back to derby, I’ve found myself pondering the following question over and again: If I hadn’t joined derby when I did in 2005, would I join derby now? It’s a tough question to answer, mainly because derby has shaped me into a much different person than I was 5 years ago. Truth is, I don’t know how I did it or if I could do it again, but I keep coming back to the idea that it’s within human nature to crave hard work. While I know I have a long and hard road ahead of me, I am happy to be back on the road. It’s familiar, yet daunting, and while I know what lies ahead, I’m happy to continue traveling that road with a slightly new and renewed perspective.

Spoiled

2010-10-29T13:22:00.000-04:00

I’ve truly never considered myself spoiled until just recently. Instead, I consider myself a woman who knows what she wants and takes it, and also until just recently I considered this to be a very good thing. I can now say unequivocally that I am spoiled, but things weren’t always like that.

Growing up, we went through periods of “have” and “have not”, but even when we “had” I wasn’t ever spoiled. Although she never controlled the purse strings for the family, my mom made damn sure my dad held them tight. Growing up poor, she wanted to make sure our needs were provided for, while my dad, raised straight middle class, was more concerned in my individual ability to earning all those extras that I wanted. If you work hard then you can play hard is something I learned in not so many words at a fairly early age. I gladly worked hard to do my chores and earn my allowance, and I never minded working hard because the payoff was always adequate. However, in the times of “have not”, I knew well enough not to expect the opportunity to earn an allowance. Instead, I made sure not to rock the boat, and I held my breath until we made it past those points – the last of which was about a two-year period of severe instability ending when I was 11 years old. From that I developed many lifelong goals that I still hold on to today, some of which you’ve heard me talk about here before. Namely, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to ensure I’m stable enough that I always have a place to live. That’s a fairly easy goal to meet: find and secure shelter. It’s that basic goal that stemmed from a very bad period in time that I think has ultimately contributed to my spoiled nature as an adult.

During those two years that we were without a home things were tight. Food was tight. It sounds severe, but there really was no, “I’m hungry, let’s go find a snack.” Food, like money, was carefully portioned, and like I did with my prior allowance, I largely enabled myself to give up food as enjoyment so as to “not rock the boat”. I didn’t even really think about it at the time this was happening – I just knew it was how things were going to be for now, and I always held out hope that things would get better – if not when I was a child, when I was an adult. Then I’d have control over my own destiny, and I could provide for myself, getting what I want. One day I woke up an adult (last Tuesday, FTW) and realized my daydreams as a poor child had come true – I had not only secured a home, but I had also secured a life where I was able to conceal past wounds and consume until I had more than made up for the sacrifice I made in those two years some twenty years ago.

I found myself wanting to Tweet the other day, “I’m not used to not getting what I want.” It was then that I realized I’m spoiled. And it’s true, I’m NOT used to not getting what I want, and lately it’s been causing me a world of hurt in my heart and in my head, because I don’t just spoil myself with material things – I also expect others to bend to my will. God only knows how those of you who know me put up with me.

Another downside to my knowing what I want and taking it is my relationship with food. I realized last week while on my first week of Weight Watchers that I’m really not used to telling myself no. I want it, I get it, I eat it. I may know things are bad for me, and trust me I do self-regulate with food in other ways. I do have rules. For instance, I really try to only eat one processed item a day and eat whole foods the rest of the day, but I do this because I know it’s good for me and my body. It’s the quantity and variety of whole foods that I use to spoil myself. It fits my guidelines, but it’s more and it’s different, so I want it. Really, that’s my mantra with everything (not just food): it’s more and it’s different, so I want it.

Could I really be making up for those teensy two years of lost time with a life of varied obsession?

I’m scared that I am. It’s funny how intuitively I’ve been obsessed (in other ways) with the idea of balance for the last year or so. It’s like I knew I need a more balanced life, but maybe I just can’t figure out how to truly make it balanced until I address the source of the imbalance? Man, I hope I’m not over thinking things.

In an attempt to gain some balance and shake my compulsion to make up for that two year period of past painful events, I think an easy place to start saying “no” is with food. Now, I’m not going crazy here, and I’m not going to say “no” all the time – I’m not going to deny food as an element of celebration associated with holidays or birthdays, but I really could stand to deny varied overindulgence as a way of coping with, say, a day of stressful meetings at the office remedied by a large dinner and dessert.

Balance is hard, y’all. But I think figuring out your unseen motives in life is even harder. While I may have a long standing track record of spoiling myself, I think that’s relatively okay, but I do need to consider who I am without all the shit I yearn to consume. What I truly need to learn to be okay with is just being, and that, my friends, may take damn near a lifetime to perfect.

Life's about…

2010-10-25T13:42:00.000-04:00

The last few months have been both agonizing and enlightening – agonizing because here I am stepping away from this life that I love, that I created and that I placed myself in, and luckily enlightening too because here I am realizing that is where I belong. Sometimes I suppose you have to walk away from something you love if only to find out once and for all if it’s where you’re really supposed to be at that point in time.

Most of my “deep thoughts” (in quotations, yes…) come to me when I’m alone, reflecting, but not so this weekend. I knew this past Saturday night was going to be epic if for no other reason than my bestie and I getting to see Greg Dulli perform in Baltimore – that’s right Baltimore (not DC)! We’re old, we’re somewhat set in our ways, and it was lovely to be able to see an artist who we love 15-minutes from our houses. Not to mention, Greg Dulli fucking rocks (even though we had what could be considered an extended “awkward exchange,” which I’ll get to later).

After having spent our first few hours out at the CCRG bouts – and after catching a young couple having sex in the VIP bathroom while desperately trying to tinkle before the car ride – Beatdown and I headed over to the Ottobar for our second part of the evening. We thought we got there after the opening band, so we grabbed drinks and got a good spot up front and to the side. Then we saw the opener take the stage and made the very hard decision to leave our prime spot and go get drinks. We’d figure it out – we needed more beer. Another bonus of having the show in Smalltimore is that we know everyone everywhere, especially the Ottobar, so Tecla (aka, Shevil Knievel – OG CCRG) took good care of us at the bar; we never had to wait. We walked back down to the front and got a half decent spot (it was half decent when I stood on my tiptoes). Sure we couldn’t see as well as we could at the other spot, but this second spot turned out to be amazing, because it was one of those shows where instead of fighting the person beside or behind you for personal space, we all became friends and even held spots for each other as we went to get beers throughout the night. We met the guy behind us and his friends first. Then we met the guy on the other side behind us who was a space-encroacher until I asked if I could help him get to where he wanted to go. Then the guy in front of me stepped back and told me his wife said for him to say hi to me – it was my acupuncturist’s husband! By the time we met all these people I had a ample-sized flat-footed clear-view-of-the-stage spot where I could sing and dance and drink and enjoy myself. Then, it was like the set was written just for me. Ya know, those songs you get stuck listening to at a certain period in time? Well, the set opened with my current favorite Dulli song, and I couldn’t have been happier. With my bestie to my back, I looked around, and I couldn’t help but feel all the love that was in that room that night – it was definitely the driving force behind the cool vibe in the audience, and it certainly seemed to be present on the stage as well.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I woke up still drunk with a smile ear-to-ear that I thought: life's about loving what you got and taking chances and having fun – above all: being in the moment. I stepped away from what I love (derby), and I’m glad I realized the extent of my ties to derby and CCRG. I used to think derby was an obsession, and maybe it was that too at some point, but I really truly love my life in derby, and I couldn’t be more excited to be reentering that world. It’s where I belong. At the same time, I think I’m coming back having reconciled who I am. Before derby I was Tara. For the past 5 years I’ve been Cindy Lop-her (which coincidentally was visible to everyone at the Dulli show, because I accidentally left my change of shirt at home). Now I think I’m seeing how I can be both those people, and being both those people makes me really incredibly happy. It’s still not perfect or easy, but what in life is?

As for taking chances, sometimes I think you just got to take a leap of faith and shake things up a bit, otherwise you’ll never really know if what you have is what you want or if something yet undiscovered is that something more you think you’re looking for. Stepping away from derby made me certain I had (and will again have) what I want. Talking to Greg Dulli after drinking that much was also risky. He, like everyone else that night, pointed to the CCRG patch on my jersey and said “roller derby?” and I gave the same response I had to everyone else that night: “I just came from our final bout of the season, and I left my change of shirt at home…” After that, awkward discussions about derby ensued (although Beatdown will tell you I acted perfectly cool , which I still find hard to believe), and the night ended with me getting schooled by a Dulli superfan who, while having Dulli sign his 25 pieces of crap, explained to me very authoritatively that Dulli’s been clean since blah (he gave a date). Dulli, however, was much nicer, thanked me, and told me he had to get up early the next morning. Was it the best outcome? Maybe – maybe not, but you can’t blame a girl for trying, and sometimes just trying is fun in and of itself!

It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve allowed myself to be fully in the moment – from hanging out at derby to being rejected by Dulli. It was a night where even the bad things were good, and I want to have nights like that more often.

Life is Different on the Outside

2010-09-01T23:44:00.000-04:00

When I was young we moved around a lot, not because I'm a military brat, but because my father's job was somewhat political. An election would take place, a new mayor was elected, and before I knew it I'd be coming home from school to a dining room full of packed boxes and my mother swearing nothing was up. I hated moving as a child. Just as soon as I'd made friends and earned the right to no longer be the kid that everyone picked on, we were off, and I'd be back to square one, starting from scratch. Maybe that's why I'm restless. Maybe change is my "normal".

Since I've retired from derby I've enjoyed a lot of alone time. Be it me and my garden or me and the treadmill, I haven't really gone out and been around too many people I don't already know. I thought it was because I can tend toward being a bit of a hermit, but now I'm beginning to think my subconscious knew all along what I seem to just now be figuring out: life's different outside derby, and I don't really like it.

Tonight's kickball game was fun, I guess. I hesitate to pass judgement, because I don't want the people I know who are involved to take it personally or think it has anything to do with the thing they're passionate about - it doesn't. I'm tickled pink that I was invited to take part, but what I saw once I got there was a whole lot of different. The environment was generally inviting, but I'm also a fairly outgoing person who doesn't give a flying fuck what you think of me. I did see teammates who weren't as lucky - no one introducing themselves to them, no one talking to them during the game. It's that same old outsider mentality that large groups of people who know each other tend to fall into - you talk to who you know, and you don't even make an effort to talk to or welcome anyone else.

I knew a fair number of people on the team - friends from college, ex-coworkers, and long-time acquaintances - people with whom I thought I was on a level playing field, and this is what aggravated me the most about tonight... I played 2nd base, yet every time the play was on second an outfielder or the shortstop took over my position - a dude - because apparently my lack of external genitalia instantly says "I'm incompetent, and I need you to do my job for me." Really? Is that really what you think of all women you don't know? This is fucking REC LEAGUE. I paid my $50 for the 6 weeks, so how bout you get up off my ass and let me get my money's worth you assuming cock suckers?! Even if I did suck (which I don't), and even if I didn't know strategy (which I do), you owe it to me as a paying member of this team to PLAY, good or bad. And don't insult my intelligence by telling me strategy that's dead wrong, cause I'm gonna correct you (which I did). JUST BECAUSE I'M A WOMAN DOESN'T MEAN I'M HERE TO FUCK AROUND. Assume I'm here for the same reason you are, and fucking stop treating women like that in general. For real - not cool!

Derby really did spoil me in a lot of different ways, and one of the main reasons I loved doing it was because I knew I was part of a larger movement toward what I still believe is the greater good. First and foremost, in derby men respect women. Yeah, it's cause we own the sport and made it what it is today, but the guys involved in derby really seem to get it. I don't need them to do jack shit for me, and they appreciate me for who I am. Fuck, they care enough to find out who you are before passing judgement, and they NEVER assume you're weak - EVER. I'm shocked, appalled, and quite frankly disgusted by men who by default treat women like they are weak, and I'm, even more shocked, appalled, and disgusted that this is the norm on the outside. My idea of having fun is not you doing something for me. People learn - they become better people - by doing, by trying. No one grows as a person by having something done for them. I'd love it if people's instant reaction was to at least see what someone else is made of before assuming control of the situation. I like to work hard, and I like to hustle, and so do many other people. Don't take that away from us.

Second, for as much bitching as I've heard about any derby league or team being disorganized or not doing all they could be doing, let me assure you that we've got our shit down compare to other adult sports leagues. For Christ's sake, no one ever even bothered to tell me where our fucking kickball games were being held. Yeah, I know we've got a game tonight, but WHERE?! I had to ask, and even then I got answers based on assumptions - like I'd know where some nameless fucking ice rink was located. I don't know the physical layout of every park in Baltimore City, sheesh! And next time you get ready to argue a call with a ref, consider this: we had one ump per game, and he ejected a captain just for addressing him. Derby, you've got it good, and I don't think you know just how good you got it. I didn't. I assumed the world out there was just like the world in here (derby), but man was I wrong.

I've been thinking about a return to home-season derby, but return or not I still have absolutely no good answer for how to deal with the outside-derby world. I can only hope, regardless of my participation, that derby will continue to serve as a good influence on the rest of society. My natural inclination is to run back to derby and again be part of a world I understand and respect, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm inevitably going to have to face the outside world - if not now, in the future.

Lately I feel like I've been running through a maze hitting nothing but dead ends, and I'm not even sure now why I entered the maze in the first place. At least before I knew where the fuck I was. Now I'm lost and I'm not even so sure I want the prize at the end of the maze if I could find it. Still, I think it's for the best if I chill out here for at least a little while longer to make sure I know what I'm doing and gain some perspective.

Unlike my moves as a kid, I'm in control of where I go now. Not every move's gonna be right, but lucky for me I can decide to move back if I so choose. Life's about many things, but a large portion of life is about happiness, and I'm inevitably going to go where I'm most happy and do what makes me most happy. And I don't mind the hustle or working for it either. In fact, I quite like it.

A Walking Meditation

2010-08-27T15:59:00.001-04:00

In the comments section of this week’s previous meditation blog post Dayglo Divine mentioned some drawbacks to the type of meditation I mentioned, particularly as it pertains to people with ADD. I responded by suggesting a walking meditation. In the form of walking meditation I’ve been taught you focus on the small movements that incorporate walking and focus on saying (in your head) the action you're performing as you're performing it.

As an introduction to walking meditation, the process of walking will contain 3 distinct steps that you will repeat over and over, and as I just mentioned, as you perform each step you should say it in your mind. With practice (over time), you can increase the number of steps from 3 to 7 or 8, but increasing the number of steps also increases the difficulty of the meditation. For our purposes I’ll illustrate the steps you would take in a 3-step walking meditation. Here’s how it goes:

Without shoes, and with 10-15 feet of unobstructed linear space (aka, 10-15 feet in a straight line), begin by standing with the area you’ll use in your walking meditation ahead of you. Focus your gaze downward at a spot on the floor about 5 feet in front of you, with your head at a 45-degree angle. The reason for this is that you want a relaxed posture, but you also will need to see where you’re going. Close your eyes, retract your shoulder blades, and take 10 slow, deep breaths. At the end of the 10^th breath, open your eyes and fix your gaze.
Step 1: LIFT. As you break down the steps of walking, the initial step is “lift”. As you bend one knee and raise one heel off the ground, say to yourself: “lift”. When performing each step, you want to slow the action down so that you’re moving at a pace that is peaceful for the meditation – this will seem exceedingly slow compared to how you typically walk.
Step 2: MOVE. As the ball of your foot leaves the ground, say to yourself “move”.
Step 3: PLACE. As your foot returns to the ground, say to yourself “place”. When I first saw someone demonstrate this walking meditation I asked him after the demo if there was a reason he had performed it walking toe-heel instead of heel-toe. He responded that you should place your foot back on the ground however it feels comfortable to do so. My preconceived notion what that I would walk like I walk when I walk: heel-toe, but then as I was performing the walking meditation for the first time I noticed that it did feel most natural to me to place the ball of my foot on the ground prior to my heel, just as the instructor has. I think it has to do with slowing down the movements that makes toe-heel more natural here. Do whatever feels most comfortable to you.
Repeat Steps 1 through 3 until you come to the end of your open area. When you approach the end, stand with both feet together and say to yourself 3 times: “stop” (aka, “stop, stop, stop”).
Say to yourself 3 times: “turn” (aka, “turn, turn, turn”).
Facing the direction in which you can continue the walking meditation, ensure your gaze is fixed and one last time say to yourself 3 times: “stop” (aka, “stop, stop, stop”).
Continue with Steps 1 through 3, focusing on saying the steps as you perform them. If any other thoughts enter your mind during the meditation, pause, acknowledge them, and dismiss them.

For this and any other type of meditation it’s a useful idea to set a timer that has an audible alarm before you start. This way you won’t be distracted by wondering how much time has passed or by checking your watch or cell phone. Set a timer and allow yourself to be immersed in the meditation until that alarm goes off. When it does, bring your focus back to your body and the environment around you. Conclude by taking several more deep breaths, and feel the breath enter your nostrils, the back of your throat, your lungs, and your belly, and feel it release from those areas as well. Ta-da! You’ve done a walking meditation. I’m interested to see what you think if you try this, so let me know J

As you progress, the three Steps: lift, move, place, can become four Steps: lift, move, lower, place, and these four Steps can become five Steps: raise (foot), left, move, lower, place, etc.

Feeding the People & Helping Them ID Fruit

2010-08-26T12:28:00.000-04:00

If you follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook then you probably heard about an incident I had at the grocery store several weeks ago in which the cashier could not identify ginger, avocado, or cantaloupe. My first reaction was one of frustration (you work at a grocery store and you can’t identify a cantaloupe?!), but after I posted my initial tweet I actually started to feel really bad, because I realized that for many people in America the identification of fruit outside of the can really is too much to ask. Why? Lower-middle and lower-class Americans simply cannot afford to purchase or eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Let me say that again: There’s a HUGE segment of the American population that cannot afford to purchase or eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Wow, that’s a big fucking problem.

On average my grocery bill can easily get well over $100 a handful of times in a month, but it’s not like I come home with bags upon bags of groceries. I usually have 3 to 4 bags, two of which are nothing but fresh produce – fruits and vegetables – that’s the bulk of my bill. Lucky for me I have a good job that affords me the luxury of being able to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but if I were to come on hard times I can surmise that this is one area in which I would have to cut back to save money. And I own a house and drive a car and have another income flowing in without any kids. Imagine I’m a single mother who rents and I have no car – there is little to cut back on “first” other than food. It’s no wonder the incidence of obesity continues to rise as well as the incidence of Type 2 diabetes.

For a relative outside like me, I hear statistics pertaining to the persistent degenerative public health crisis on evening news programs daily. I know the incidence of preventative illness relating to the American diet is out of control, and I get angered and frustrated when I actually take a moment or two to think about why we’re in this position. We make people choose between clothing themselves or killing themselves because we’ve been trained to value greed and short-term returns instead of communal wellbeing or even foresight into our own futures. We let ourselves off the hook and justify it as “not our problem”, because it ultimately is an individual’s choice as to what he or she eats and how he or she feeds her family. It’s a choice unless buying fresh vegetables means you can’t afford your bus pass, which you need to get to the two jobs that only pay you minimum wage because not only was college not an option but neither was finishing high school because you had to drop out to help pay for your mother’s medication that wasn’t fully covered by Medicaid, but you weren’t learning much anyhow except how to deal drugs out your locker because this country’s public education system is in the middle of a full-blown crisis, and we’d rather fund a war that helps the rich get richer than buy some fucking books for kids who cannot identify fruits or vegetables, but I digress… I’m an outsider. I’ve never been in any of these situations. If I were, I may think shopping in the Plus-size section is just natural, like when I moved out of children’s sizes and into adults, or I may think getting high blood pressure is just like getting your period for the first time or an erection – all these things are natural, right? They’ve happened to everyone around me or will happen to them when they get older.

Deciding, as a society, to let ourselves off the hook for the obesity epidemic and Type 2 diabetes health crisis is ridiculous, irresponsible, ignorant, and idiotic, but making this decision and then not providing the proper education to help empower lower-income families to make different or marginally better choices makes us all downright responsible for every negative repercussion that comes from the creation of one more obese child or another person who becomes a Type 2 diabetic. And I don’t give a shit what the law says about responsibility here, because enforcement of the law is funded by the guy who padded his wallet by voting against better social services in the first place, and fuck him in his ear. Luckily, despite all the elements that have seemingly conspired against the individuals who will be the next to be told they now have diabetes, there are resources that exist within communities that help educate and empower the people who are at the greatest risk for losing the most because they cannot identify a cantaloupe.

On September 11 I’ll be a celebrity judge in attendance at the Goddess Gala, a fundraiser for Feeding the People, a non-profit organization whose mission is “to develop and implement a research-based model of nutrition-related in-home care for under-served, low-income diabetics in order to reduce the incidence of diabetes and diabetes related illnesses in Maryland.” Feeding the People, the organization putting on the gala, provides home-delivered meals, nutrition education, and intensive, ongoing support for low-income diabetics in the Baltimore area. This first-annual Goddess Gala is a costume ball in which by attending attendees will be helping to empower low-income diabetics with meals, education, and ongoing support. While ticket proceeds go toward this effort, there will also be a silent auction of goods that have been donated by local Gala sponsors (like acupuncture sessions from About Chi Acupuncture - where I go to get stuck!). Tickets are $55 each, and in what you’d have likely spent on an evening out, you’ll have a wonderful evening out dressed as a god or goddess, sprite, nymph, or fairy, enjoying dancing, “delectable delights”, and you might even win the costume contest that will be judged in part by me!

Yes, this is a plug for you to help support Feeding the People, but it’s also a plug for you to wake up. Look at what’s going on around you. Vote in elections accordingly if things upset you. Start or participate in something unifying and beneficial instead of something divisive and greedy. Compassion is an accessory that makes everyone look better, and as an added benefit it may help you feel better too.

Tickets are available here until 9/10, the day before the Gala. I realize there’s a CCRG bout that night, so feel free to send any donations my way if you cannot make it, or make one online here. I’ll be making an appearance at the CCRG afterparty dressed like the goddess that I am, and if you don’t already have plans to attend the bout, come support a good cause with me.

How to Meditate

2010-08-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been sick with a fever and unable to attend last Saturday’s bout, but I’ve been dreaming about derby a lot lately. Up until now if you had asked me “Do you miss it?” I would have said “No.” And it’s been true; I don’t miss the attendance requirements, and I don’t miss feeling like a stranger in my own home. I do miss the camaraderie, I do miss having something to push myself for, and I really do fucking miss having an outlet that lets me full-body slam into a bitch in a controlled and acceptable manner.

Since retirement I’ve joined a recreational kickball team (aka, beer league, as far as I can tell). This past weekend we had our first meet-n-greet/practice, and I found myself both overeager and somewhat annoyed. I was annoyed that the “girls” bunting line is like 2/3 closer to home plate than the “dudes” bunting line, and I was annoyed that there’s two first bases, so you don’t accidentally collide with the person trying to get you out. I was overeager to participate, because, well, I don’t know why, but I wound up continually offering to pitch so I would stay active and so I was forced to stay accountable to my team. Since retirement I’ve also joined a nicer gym, going to classes and running, and I’ve been going to yoga outside of that, but still something seems to be missing.

I left derby to focus on writing, but in all honesty I’ve written less since I retired than when I was skating. Instead, I’ve taken up sewing. That is, I’ve bought a shitload of fabric and started 10 million different sewing projects (999,999 of which I haven’t followed through on). I’ve also started compulsively buying Pyrex in an effort to set up a vintage housewares store on Etsy, but you can probably guess where that stands as well ($500 in with no more than a storefront to show for it!).

I’ve been spending a lot of time at my house, which is a stark contrast from where I was this time a year ago. I love my house – I really do – but now it seems it takes an act of congress to get me out of it, which is probably as equally unhealthy as never spending any time in it.

My big accomplishment since retirement has been my garden, which in all honesty has been a booming success. The woman who mows our lawn tells me that it’s the best garden she’s seen all year – that she’s amazed it was my first time vegetable gardening, and my garden could be featured in a garden magazine. Now, however, fall is near, and the vegetable production is slowing and so is my interest in watering and weeding and fertilizing. Le sigh.

Right about now you’re probably thinking that I intended to write about meditation and instead decided to whine about roller derby retirement – that you caught me fucking up. You’re wrong! (Haha!) Hold onto your trousers, folks, and I’ll explain the super long-winded intro…

Since I was 19 and practiced meditation for the first time I knew it was a powerful thing – a beneficial thing and something that would benefit me if I were to do it regularly. That hasn’t stopped me from not doing it, especially during times where I desperately need it – like now. For me, meditation is like a light cutting through the fog – the more regularly I meditate the more able I am to see things for how they really are. Without meditation I get easily confused, and my all-or-nothing personality darts full-speed ahead in many different directions, hoping I’ll hit and land on something that makes me happy, and I’ve been doing a lot of darting lately. Without clarity it’s hard to tell one way or the other what’s right and what’s wrong – what makes me happy and what makes me miserable – so I’ve decided to challenge myself to meditate regularly for one month to bring myself back to a coherent state of mind (a state that’s desperately needed right now).

So, this blog is for Biroller Disorder (my friend Rob), who both nagged me to blog more and asked me to teach his ADD brain to meditate. I couldn’t find anything online that I felt both explained meditation the way I do it and offered some candor about meditation that I’ve learned over the years.

Simply put, meditation is the act of not thinking. We all go around occasionally explaining stupid behavior with the phrase “I wasn’t thinking”, but that’s an incorrect excuse if you ask me, for if you hadn’t been thinking for about 30 minutes on a daily basis leading up to now (aka, meditating), you probably wouldn’t have done that stupid thing to begin with (and yes, I’m ending this sentence with a preposition). Contrary to popular belief, not thinking is actually really hard. REALLY HARD. So, if you’ve attempted to meditate before and failed, congratulations, you’ve started your meditation practice in the same place as every successful meditater – it’s all downhill from here!

How to Meditate:

First, eliminate distractions and set a time goal. For the time you’ve allotted to attempt to meditate (30 minutes should be good), turn off the phone, lock up the dog, and if you’re like me, make sure the housework is out of the way and the bills have been paid as well. It’s hard enough to focus on not thinking that you want to do your best to nip any nagging thoughts or distractions in the bud. It’s for this reason that I actually find it way easier to meditate anywhere but my house, because there’s always something else I think I should be doing when I’m there, and these thoughts can consume me. Many cities have group meditation sessions. If you’re entirely too distracted at home, try a group session. Regardless, it’s best to approach your time goal with the mentality that this amount of time has been dedicated to meditation, and regardless of your perceived success you won’t do anything else but try to meditate during this time. We allocate time each day to shower (ok, some of us) or eat – don’t feel selfish or guilty taking this meditation time for you. For many of us it really can be an important element of daily self care.

Second, find a comfortable position. When I first began to learn to meditate, I was instructed to always sit – for the love of Buddha, don’t lay down!!! I then felt guilty several years into my practice that my primary meditation locale was horizontal. That’s right, I was a meditation bad-ass! Well, that is until I recently attended a group session and the instructor taught a lying down meditation. Finally, vindication! In all honestly, I can see why noob meditaters are encouraged NOT to lie down: you can easily fall asleep, especially if you’re attempting to meditate right before bed. Do yourself a solid and try sitting upright for a week. After that, consider your dues paid and lie down if you want. Personally, I find it more comfortable, but I do still occasionally meditate sitting up with my legs crossed. When I do, I sit on a thick pillow, which makes things more comfortable. The goal here is comfort. Choose a position you can sit in without pain for the duration of your practice. This actually goes back to distraction – you don’t want to be distracted by pain or discomfort that will make you need to switch positions. Sitting in a chair is acceptable too. Shit, any position is acceptable – just find a comfortable one!

Third, close your eyes. There’s many different types of meditation, and some have you keeping your eyes open, but this ain’t one of them. Again, this relates to eliminating distractions. If your eyes are closed there’s less stimuli to distract you.

Fourth, attempt to meditate – attempt to clear your mind of all thoughts for your specified period of time. If you take nothing else from this “how to”, take this: meditation isn’t a flawless accomplishment – it’s an attempt to hush the mind. An ATTEMPT. Because thoughts enter your mind doesn’t mean you have failed at meditating – in fact, this is a part of every meditation practice! Listen, thoughts are going to enter your mind, and your focus may drift away to hearing a garbage truck outside or a barking dog or the phone, but that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. There is no fail in a meditation practice. If you find yourself in the middle of thought, acknowledge that you’re thinking that thought without being hard on yourself and let it go. Go immediately back to attempting not to think, and continue to do this as many times as you need to during the timeframe you’ve allotted yourself to meditate. Everyone has good days and bad days – even seasoned meditaters (mmm, why am I craving homefries now?!). In every type of meditation practice I’ve been privy to, there is no good or bad – there just is. No judgment. No accomplishment. No failure. Meditation just is, so find comfort in the fact that you really can’t do this wrong as long as you’re trying to do it.

But how will you know when you ARE doing it??? Well, there is no ethereal state that you’ll enter that will let you know you are successfully meditating. A really good session for me is losing track of time – having 30 minutes (or an hour or so) pass that have felt like 5. Meditation isn’t meant to be done once, so over time you’ll be able to judge what a really good session feels like to you, and over time you’ll also begin to notice the benefits of a regular practice. For me, I’m not as quick to anger or stress, and my mind is clearer, which means I’m generally more happy when I do meditate regularly.

For those of you who maybe have meditated in the past but haven’t lately (although you’ve been meaning to get back into it) and for those new to meditation, I’d like to encourage you to be a positive influence on me and join me in a 30-day meditation challenge. Starting today, set aside time each day – be it 10 minutes or an hour and a half – to meditate. Let me know how you’re doing with it, and I’ll share here as well. Feel free to send questions my way. I’m certainly no meditation guru, but I have been doing it for (gulp!) nearly 13 years, so I’d be happy to share my experiences with you. It’s easiest to reach me on Twitter (@cindylop-her), but I’ll post any Q&A on here as well – you know, to also encourage my writing J Good luck!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings!

2010-08-12T11:40:00.000-04:00

I've always craved more freedom than I’ve had, and perhaps I craved more than usual the summer before I got my license. I was 15, and I was spending my 3^rd summer in a row living and working on a 300-some acre ranch that was also a summer camp. I only made $40 a week under the table, but being away from the rules of my parents for 3 months was well worth the shitty pay – not that my parents’ rules were all that difficult for me to follow, but they were rules nonetheless, and I’ve never really liked following rules. Late that summer my parents came up to visit me for the day. I remember it being a fun day, but the only specific I can remember is something my father said that took me by surprise then and still does to this day. My father was concerned and wanted to have a serious discussion with me about my weight. He said that I had appeared to have gained a significant portion of weight since being at the ranch that summer, and if I didn’t work to get it off now my friends might notice when I went back to school. Not to mention, if I perpetually ignored weight gain, I wouldn’t get a boyfriend and no man would ever want to marry me, because every man knows that a woman is always her thinnest when she gets married. Every cell that comprised my 150-pound body went into shock, and this was the moment that I developed a new level shame and self-consciousness regarding my body. I went on to gain 15 more pounds before I graduated high school, and during that time I was ashamed. I learned to lie about my weight, deny it, and obsess over it all at the same time, and through it all I kept silent. After all, if a higher number was something to be ashamed of, why would I ever want to share it with someone – anyone?!

Sometimes the things that hold us back the most are the ones we’re taught to keep silent. Last week I organized a Biggest Loser-style competition between my friends and coworkers, with the idea being that I’ve gained 15 pounds since I retired from derby, and quite frankly I need the aspect of competition to motivate me to figure out how to live and move after derby, which is something I’ve been struggling with (“what do you mean I can’t eat 4,000 calories a day and still accidentally lose 5 lbs?! Oh, yeah, cause I’m not skating 12 hours a week…”). The competition will last 60 days, it’s a $10 buy-in, and the person at the end who loses the highest percentage of weight wins the pot. In my emails with the participants I’ve been persuading them to use these 60 days wisely and create good, healthy habits that will extend beyond the end of the competition (aka, don’t use these 60 days to starve yourself for $100). I’ve explained how weights will be collected weekly and percentage lost will be shared with everyone (not the actual numbers on the scale), and I even tried to make everyone feel more comfortable about sharing their weight with me, the person recording things, by sharing my weight with them, which at the time was 187 pounds. Still, I’ve received numerous emails from people who want to participate but who have expressed resistance and panic at sharing their weekly weight with just me – the most nonjudgmental 187-pound woman there is. The first such email I got was from a very close friend who doesn’t want me or anyone else to judge her, to which I replied “I judge you more for feeling that way than I do for however much you may weight.” Harsh? Maybe, but it angers and frustrates me that so many people are slaves to the number on the scale – hell, almost everyone I know is a slave to that number! The most disturbing thing is that this idea that weight is something to be ashamed of and never talked about spans all sorts of different people – big, small, short, and tall. One of my coworkers who put up the biggest fight is literally one of the tiniest people participating. This got me thinking – just how many things that restrict our freedom do we impose on ourselves?

There’s seriously too much other bullshit we’re surrounded with and inundated by daily that we only make ourselves more miserable by enslaving ourselves to a number. And in the case of weight, one of the main reasons I think people allow the number on the scale to have so much control over them is because we continually reinforce each other to keep it a secret, which breeds denial, guilt, and a host of other negative emotions that have an affect on a person’s ability to overcome their situation, so I say don’t keep it a secret! For the past few years I’ve been really open about my weight, which has not only allowed me to feel better about myself but it’s also helped those I’ve shared with realize they aren’t alone and, hey, maybe this number isn’t such a big deal.

If you feel guilty or ashamed of your weight, I’d encourage you to do two things. First, tell someone how much you weigh. Say it matter-of-factly, say it proudly, just don’t say it sadly, negatively, or ashamedly. By doing this you’re proving to everyone who hears you that there is another option – that they don’t always have to stress over that number themselves. Second, watch what you say regarding weight to other people – even directing negative comments toward yourself perpetuates the stereotypes that do nothing more than fuck with people’s heads and make it harder for them to be their best selves. Contribute toward the creation of healthy attitudes – attitudes that make living life more pleasant for all of us.

I’m certainly not perfect, and I will admit that I did panic for a fleeting moment or two when I got married this past April, as my father’s words got stuck in a loop in my head: “a woman is always her thinnest when she gets married”. Those words that were once uttered over 15 years ago in less than 2 minutes time have had a huge impact on my life – a huge NEGATIVE impact. That’s the thing: there are people in life, some of whom you love and trust and respect dearly, who will knowingly or unknowingly encourage you to enslave your mind under the guise of wanting the best for you, but in the end only you know what’s truly best for you. Luckily for me, I knew well enough 15 years ago that I would never marry a man who didn’t want to marry me because I was fat. In my book, being fat’s way more acceptable than being a conceited judgmental douche bag, and I’d sooner fuck a fatty myself than a traditionally handsome fellow who’s rotting from the inside out. And if you don’t feel the same way about me, then you can take a hike and the cage you’re trying to put me in with you, because I refuse to place myself there. You may think I’m caged by looking at my size 16 pants or XL workout tops, but you’d be wrong. I’m more free than most girls who could slink between the bars, and my wish is that everyone could be this free!

That Time of the Month

2010-08-03T19:26:00.000-04:00

Anxious to leave work today, I could hardly wait to get to my car so I could listen to a new-to-me Twilight Singers album I just downloaded, and before I had the chance to exit the garage I found myself wondering for the millionth time just what exactly “it” is that makes me so drawn to Dulli as a lyricist. On the surface, it’s the relentless exhibit of desperation he’s willing to endure in exchange for a mere glimpse of love or lust or redemption. Over and over he manages to capture that brief and all too quickly forgotten moment where we leave ourselves completely and utterly exposed – a moment of frightening exhilaration in which (against all better judgment) we put ourselves out there, usually only to be rejected. And unlike me he’s able to convey all that through a single lyric. He’s truly an amazing storyteller, I thought. Then I remembered I was ovulating, and the $9.99 I spent earlier in the day at the iTunes store started to make a hell of a lot more sense.

I’ve read that men are more attracted to a woman who is ovulating, and I don’t doubt that fact – survival of the fittest and all – but I can’t help but wonder if it’s not ovulation itself that makes a woman more attractive but instead the way ovulation makes a woman feel and how she presents herself based on that feeling that makes her more attractive. I tend to suspect it’s the latter, which made me wonder if there isn’t a better time of the month to write erotic narrative. I think I’m onto something…

I’ve always wanted to respond to Bust’s open call for one-handed reads, because I think it would be fun to write one, but much like an old married couple – me and writing – I’m usually not in the mood. Still, it remains something I think I’d like to try one day, and I think that today my overly analytical mind has stumbled on which days I should attempt such writing. Good for me. And good thing I have an app for that too: AppBox Lite (it includes a cycle tracker, and it’s dead on). Now all I need are ideas...

First Steps

2010-07-07T15:37:00.000-04:00

Last night I finally went to a yoga class that my friend, Sunny, has been trying to drag me to for weeks. It’s not that I didn’t want to go before, but we just couldn’t get our schedules coordinated, or the class was cancelled. Not to mention, in all honestly, that I’ve been a bit stingy with my during-the-week after-work time, since I’m now retired from derby and no longer HAVE to be anywhere after work. I’ve been getting kind of squirrely when I do make plans to do something after work, and I find myself feeling rebellious and pissy when I have to follow a set time schedule. It’s childish and selfish, and worst of all it’s not like I’m doing anything else with my time. I retired because I want to write, but I just can’t seem to make writing happen either organically (“Oooh, it’s nice outside – I should sit on the porch and write!”) or when I schedule it (it’s in my calendar to dedicate 2 hours to writing each Sunday, and I’ve yet to do it). It’s pathetic. So because I wasn’t doing anything else last night, I had no excuse not to go to yoga.

When I picked up Sunny and asked her where we were going, I was intrigued: a warehouse where soap is made. I couldn’t help but laugh and ask, “So, it’s like Fight Club, but with yoga instead of fighting?” “Kinda,” she said, although not seeming convinced by her own answer. After a short walk through a confusing maze of plywood hallways we arrived at the class, which was being held in a small free space inside a warehouse that two sisters use to make soap. I was instantly hit with the intense smell of bergamot. As my all-time favorite yoga instructor (my lucky day!) guided us through the night’s poses, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in this perfect place that I just didn’t want to leave. The place itself was an unexpected yoga studio, with the loud booming industrial fans making it hard at times to hear the instructions we were being given, but it was a completely functional space, nonetheless. It was better than a yoga studio.

I left the class happy, calm, and relaxed, and as an added bonus, instead of smelling like a dirty gym sock I smelled glorious – the strong clean smell of bergamot had been infused into my clothes and hair. The whole evening was wonderful, yet I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for myself. Here I was, loving that I had been surrounded by creative people who work for themselves and simultaneously hating the fact that my ass is so lazy and I cannot seem to get my shit together.

In recent years I’ve found myself rather jealous of people who have jobs unlike mine and especially jealous of people who do what they want and work for themselves. Sometimes I look around at my nine-to-five environment and think to myself "How the fuck did I get here? And how do I get out?!" Don't get me wrong, I'm "living the dream" in that I've successfully climbed the corporate ladder, and I'm getting to do awesome things, but they're for someone else, and that doesn’t motivate me. I feel like a caged bird, and the only song I’m singing is the “get me the fuck out of here” song. I need to be doing awesome things for myself. And why shouldn’t I? Look at the sisters whose warehouse we used last night, look at our yoga instructor, and look at my friend Sunny who’s about to start working full time with her sister’s new enterprise (@Curbside_Cafe) – a burrito truck that’s already well known around town and isn’t even 6-months old. Luckily, I find it difficult to be jealous of my friends and people I know – I’m happy for them, actually, and I want to be just like them, so what’s stopping me?

When I played derby, if I was having a problem or struggling with something as a player, I had a handful of coaches I could go to and ask for help, and I had 50-some women (and a handful of men) encouraging me and pushing me to be better. Now it’s hard to find the motivation. Sure all the rewards will be mine if I can start and actually do something, but I can’t seem to get past myself as my own worst enemy. I have no one to turn to and ask for help, and worse yet I have no one to answer to but myself, and unfortunately I’m rather lenient… I know what you’re thinking: If she really wants this as bad as she says she does, then why isn’t she doing anything? I’ve been thinking the same thing, so today on my way in I decided that I would do one thing that would bring me closer to my goal today. And tomorrow I’ll do something else that brings me one step closer.

It sure took me long enough to attend that amazing yoga class last night, but I’m glad I finally made it. And having attended already really makes me want to go back next week, which I might not have done if I hadn’t gone this week. Funny how that works.

As for writing again and getting more material published, I’m not quite sure what I’m so afraid of. Maybe I’m afraid writing full time will be different than I envision it to be – equally as unfulfilling as what I’m doing now. Then again, maybe it will be different, but maybe it will be better than I expected – like yoga on the floor of a soap factory. Time to take that step.

Mindful Consumption

2010-06-04T11:23:00.000-04:00

Since my husband’s at-work injury in March and the subsequent hit our personal finances have taken due to his claim having been initially denied (and still making its way through the legal system), I’ve been hypersensitive about scrutinizing our consumption of everything from entertainment to food and necessities. That is, I’m counting every fucking penny. It’s been stressful, however having been forced to examine our habits has been eye opening, and at times I’ve found myself lured into a moral conundrum as to whether or not I should compromise my beliefs and shop at places like Wal-Mart, all in the name of saving a dime.

I’m ashamed to say I have turned a blind eye to my moral compass several times over the last few months, and I’m disgusted that I’ve done so. Wal-Mart was the first company I placed on my list of entities I refuse to support, and they’ve been on the list since I worked there as a teenager. It was the first time I saw some really fucked up shit come from an employer; randomly cutting employees’ hours at the end of a term so they couldn’t qualify as a “full-time employee” and receive healthcare benefits and gross discrimination against women (for which I’m actually part of a class-action lawsuit), just to name a few. At first I didn’t know I had a list – I thought I just hated Wal-Mart, a former employer – but over the years as I learned more disturbing facts about more businesses my list eventually grew. Then, I suppose I developed another unwritten mental list – this time a list of places I should support because I like what they do or because they’re a local alternative to otherwise big business, so they support my local economy. I think I’ve taken for granted my list-making skills, because not everyone seems to have these lists.

Earlier this week I noticed a fellow patron at Dunkin Donuts. His gross obesity combined with the selection of his “regular” – a black coffee and 2 old fashioned – is what initially got my attention. Was he trying to kill himself, I thought. As I watched him struggle to fit back into his car, I wondered if I should have said something, but decided I’d look like an asshole no matter how compassionate my intent. As I pulled up to the 4-way intersection outside the Dunkin Donuts, I noticed a BP station, and I wondered who still gets gas from them after their big fuckup?! Low and behold, Mr. 2 Old Fashioned is at the BP station pumping gas while simultaneously choking himself on a donut. Had the light not turned green as I noticed him, I envisioned myself yelling out the window, “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!” Then I realized he wasn’t. Surely, no one at the BP station was thinking – especially not when 2 of the other 3 corners of the intersection are populated by other gas stations that could just as easily be patronized (and who actually had lower-priced gas!).

No one thinks. It’s an epidemic! Yet, I’m not surprised. We’re conditioned from a young age to not think, to not question, and to not rock the boat. Honor your father and mother. Mind your elders. Regurgitate what’s been said to you by teachers in order to keep moving forward in your education. Do what your boss tells you to do. Follow the rules. Well, you know what? Sometimes the rules are ridiculous. Sometimes what others tell you to do is harmful. Sometimes your apathy indirectly supports measures you’re against, like higher taxes or the abuse of our financial system by big banking institutions (do you shop… do you bank at a national bank or a local one?).

If there’s one thing I could impart to you today is to start living your life with true integrity. Wake up and realize the potential consequences of your actions. Think before you act. Remove the veil of selfishness and greed and see how the world really works. It’s disturbing – frightening even – but if you turn a blind eye to your participation in that which you hate, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Although this examination of the impact you have on people and things is useful in all areas of your life, it’s particularly useful with regards to consumption, which is why I recommend you start your practice of mindfulness there. Unfortunately in our society – in our world – money is power. If we can control the revenue stream to divert money from those entities who have a negative impact to other entities who have a positive impact we actually can control our futures. But, we have to do this on a massive scale, which is why it’s important to teach others to think and question the motivation behind that which they’ve been told to do.

But what about those people who don’t have the best interest of others in mind and who use mindfulness for selfish reasons? I can’t help but think about BP and Halliburton and the shortcuts and poor planning they implemented just to get those oil rigs up and running, so the cash flow could start sooner. Their greed-driven satisfaction that this could “never happen” and their not having an actual disaster plan in place is commonplace in many areas of business. I imagine someone at BP having been told by their boss when the rigs were being built that they must meet the build deadline to meet the quarter’s sales projections. That person’s individual willingness to turn a blind eye and accept the contractor’s notion that an explosion could never happen is absurd, but even more absurd is that BP allowed that person to make that decision. Looking back, I wonder if the money they made by speeding up the timeline to pump that first gallon of oil and make that first buck quicker makes up for the costs they will incur by the cleanup. They might have still actually made money off their decision to be reckless even after the cleanup is said and done, but their stock has plummeted and hopefully people will stop choking their thoughts with donuts, wake up, and stop patronizing BP all together.

The oil has been gushing relentlessly since April 20, but the greed has been gushing relentlessly for a long while before then. Next time you go to pay for anything, think about the implications of what you’re supporting through making that purchase. Not every company kills puppies or destroys wildlife, but everyone has an agenda. If you don’t know what it is, research it, and next time you go to make a purchase consciously decide if you’re willing to support that agenda. You owe it to yourself to consider what you’re funding, because like it or not there are very real implications for your actions, and sometimes they even affect you.

Fessing Up: The “R” Word

2010-05-13T12:25:00.000-04:00

It came as a surprise to me this morning that news of my retirement mentioned via Twitter came as a surprise to a fellow league mate and friend. I suppose I expected her to make the connection after I just haven’t been to practice in a month or so, but then I realized this evasive retirement technique is indeed confusing, and there’s no real reason for it other than my initial motivation: leaving skating is hard.

A large part of me hasn’t wanted to bring up the “R” word in any formal setting, because then I knew I’d have to mention it on here, and I’d really like to continue to live in the bubble where I assume that you readers out there read this blog because you like my writing or what I have to say regardless of my participation in derby (or focus on derby in the blog), but I’m not so sure that’s the case, and that scares me. Why? Well, the reason I’ve decided to retire is so that I have the time to make the transition to write as a full-time job, and I simply can’t make this transition while skating. We all know how much time derby requires, and I refuse to disrespect the sport and women I love by only participating half-ass, which I have been doing since the very beginning of this season. In a perfect world I would skate until I blow out every body part twice, but this world isn’t perfect, and I feel like I’m losing time to do the other things in life that I’ve wanted to do.

Over the years I’ve watched hundreds of women retire. Some stick around for a while, but most drop off the face of the earth. I never got that until now. There are a lot of conflicting feelings associated with leaving derby, mainly a loss of identity. The reason why we drop off the face of the earth is because the initial separation is confusing and scary. How does one start over outside the derby world? For five years I’ve answered more to “Lop-her” than I have my legal name. Who am I now? Am I no longer Cindy Lop-her because I don’t wear skates several times a week? But I like Cindy Lop-her more than I do the person on my driver’s license – I don’t want to go back to being that insecure, self-conscious person! It took a non-derby friend to tell me that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. That over the last five years I have become Cindy Lop-her full time, whether that’s how I’m formally addressed or not. I own who I am regardless of my status participating in a sport. Still, it’s difficult, and I have to remind myself not to revert to a lesser form almost daily. My mindset in the gym is a good example of that. When skating, I felt empowered that I was this 5’2” 175-lb “big girl” running like a champ on the treadmill. I held my head high and pushed myself far. When I ran I thought about the positive influence I might have on people, showing other big girls they can do whatever they want and challenging everyone else to think differently about a person’s ability based on their outside appearance. Last week I caught myself on the treadmill, 10-pounds heavier, without focus, and for the first time in a long time I felt insecure and unconfident. I felt like the people behind me were laughing instead of being impressed. And then I realized that they don’t know me from Adam. They didn’t know I had retired. Hell, they didn’t ever know I skated in the first place! Why was I allowing my perception of their judgment of my retirement affect my running?! I adjusted my attitude, and when I did that I resumed running like I used to.

Derby’s at times a conundrum: you learn all these valuable lessons within the sport that directly translate to life – give it your all, you can do anything you put your mind to, and practice like you play – but when it comes time to put these lessons into practice outside of derby, it can be a struggle like it was for me at the gym. Stepping back into the real world can be like entering a room that’s pitch black – just the thought of being there can cause panic – but let’s be real, we’re the same people on the track or in the dark, even though it may not feel like it. The only difference is that the track is well lit and we can see. But just like the room where the track’s located, even the room that’s pitch black has a light switch – we just have to find it. In this case, the switch is something within ourselves – it’s something we already have access to. For many of us, we learned how to turn it on because we joined derby. We learned how to work toward something that’s difficult to attain, we learned how to empower ourselves and others, and we learned how to deal with adversity. We have all the resources we need to turn on any switch in any room we enter, and that’s something we all need to remember, retired or not. Not only do we have the ability to replicate these things outside of derby, but we also have the ability (and the responsibility) to share how to do these things with people who don’t even know what derby is (and, yes, they must live under rocks). This is what I feel I must do with my writing.

Losing my very readership because I want to pursue being able to write more is something I’ve been struggling with, and although I feel like y’all don’t need me to pass you a flashlight on the track anymore, I would love it if you’d join me off the track and help pass out flashlights to non-derby people alike. That isn’t to say I want everyone to quit along with me, I’m just hoping that you’ll take what you’ve learned from derby and share it a bit with people who aren’t involved, while occasionally checking in here and reading my thoughts as I share them with a larger audience (same mission, larger venue). I’m in the process of specing out a new website that will merge this blog with my cooking blog and also provide a place where I can talk about a third cool thing if I want and post links to other things I’m writing. Eventually this address will direct you to the new site, where I will have an entire archive of Big Derby Girls Don’t Cry posts, as they exist here. It’s been a long, fun run. Through this site I’ve met many amazing people who inspire me to continue to push to elicit positive change, and I’m being 100% honest when I say that I couldn’t have skated like I skated or written like I’ve wrote if it wasn’t for you. As much as this blog seems like it’s intended to help and empower others, it’s gone leaps and bounds to help and empower me too. Thank you.

As for derby, I’m not 100% severed yet. I’m still an LLC owner for my league, but I will be taking a year off admin duties to get the writing up and running. And you can bet your ass that I’ll be at all our bouts (and maybe even some of yours) either in a non-skating capacity or as a spectator. I’m not completely giving up derby. I don’t think I could ever do that! After all, it IS the most awesome and amazing sport on the planet, and I’m committed to helping it reach a larger audience through whatever means in which I may be involved in the future. Derby’s in my blood.

Until next time…

Real Leaves

2010-04-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

It’s been slightly over a month since I sowed my first seeds indoors and slightly less than a month since my lettuce, beets, and onions were either sown or transplanted directly into the ground, and I have to say that for a first-time gardener I’m amazed nearly every day by something green. Somehow I’ve managed to make it to 31 without ever having been taught or shown anything relating to gardening. Like many children I spent a lot of time with my mother when I was a young child, and ever since I can remember she has hated dirt and yard work, so I was never exposed to growing anything as a child. When I got older my father at times had a small garden, but he wasn’t the best gardener. Even still, like many people I’ve been talking to over the last month who are self-proclaimed gardeners, he was fairly successful at bringing the vegetables he did grow to harvest by just winging it. And whatever it was that he did wing, he didn’t share with me, which was likely due to my lack of interest at the time. My history with plants is that I kill them, but it isn’t for a lack of trying. I’ve always wanted to know how to keep them alive.

Everything I’ve read about gardening and everything I’ve done over the past month with the little green things is completely new to me, as this is my first real attempt at keeping something alive that isn’t a houseplant that’s been gifted to me (“Oh, great, another present that’s going to die in a few months – thank you so much!”). It’s my first time seeing how something grows from a seed and progresses through its various stages of planthood (I just made that up), encountering adversity nearly every single step of the way.

I suppose the first thing that can go wrong with a plant is that the seed it would otherwise emanate from never actually germinates. This only happened to one type of seed I planted – spearmint. I hear this is ironic, because mint is invasive and typically spreads into places you don’t want it to grow, but I’ve tried germinating seeds twice now with absolutely no success. As if I wasn’t as careful as could be the first time – sowing my seeds on a table littered with my taped-together 6-page spreadsheet and Vegetable Gardening for Dummies book amongst other hand-written notes about each plant – I was even more careful the second time, assuming that I accidentally planted deeper than a quarter inch previously. Still, no dice.

The other seeds that did germinate have also had a varied success rate. All the other seeds germinated, but many never got to develop their real leaves. I started worrying about my plants as soon as the seeds were covered in soil. Would little green plants really grow from the seeds? Was I prepared to deal with the new seedlings when they did come up? Would I be able to cultivate them appropriately and actually be able to plant some in my garden? I read all I could on how to care for the new seedlings – mainly the amounts of water and light they should receive, but I also read about petting the tops of them so that the energy of each plant would be concentrated in their core and they would grow to become short and sturdy with a thicker stalk instead of tall and spindly with a thinner stalk. I did get a little pleasure when I read about this method and that its successful outcome is to be short, sturdy, and thick, like me, but mainly I was amazed at how intuitive this method actually is – finally, I could seemingly understand SOMETHING about plants! Not wanting sickly spindly seedlings, I pet my seedlings every day. I can’t really tell if it’s working, since I don’t know what they would look like if I didn’t pet them, but I do it on the assumption that it’s helping.

The other day I was looking at my seedlings and I felt as if they have been the same size for a really long time. Shouldn’t the leaves get bigger and the stalks taller and thicker? Then several days later I noticed something weird: something appeared to be growing straight out the top of some of my seedlings. At first it looked like it was maybe the bud of a new stalk, but after several days I realized that what I had seen growing are what are called real leaves. Until then, I thought the other leaves WERE the real leaves. I had heard the term “real leaves” before, but I assumed that fake leaves wouldn’t look like leaves at all. It was then that I realized the plants I had decided to grow didn’t all just coincidentally start out having only two leaves and that this was going to happen with ALL my seedlings (hopefully). For some reason this process amazes me. Since I learned about real leaves, I’m noticing seedlings everywhere that don’t yet have their real leaves or are just beginning to get them, and as silly as it sounds I feel like I can relate to them. They aren’t just weeds, they’re plants, and the fact that this is happening to plants everywhere (without human intervention) seems like (for lack of a better word) a miracle. How is it that I can fret so much over my little seedlings and still have 40% of them die, while neglected wild seedlings are successfully growing outside between well-worn sidewalk cracks?! But that’s exactly it: they aren’t neglected. They exist and continue to exist solely because they’re getting exactly what they need from their environment – I guess this is how someone coined the term Mother Earth, which I never got before right now. It’s my desire to control nature itself that introduces some of the problems, so as a gardener my goal should not be to “grow plants” but to try to recreate the natural environment in which the plants I hope to cultivate would naturally grow. I should stop focusing on methods and actions to grow plants; I should instead focus on understanding how the forces of nature work and go with the flow of my plants with that in mind.

I may sound like a nut (J calls it “releasing my inner hippie”), but since my plants got their real leaves and I had this realization, I’m looking at the world around me through brand new eyes. I’m amazed by the idea that the thing that keeps the green things green and thriving is the same thing that keeps me alive and thriving, and I’m even more amazed that for my entire life I’ve been so ignorant of this link between all living things and that for better or worse I’ve been taught over time to think of myself as somehow separate from the natural process of life. I think I got my first glimpse of my connection to the life I see in these real leaves when my dad passed away. It was shocking, but I couldn’t in any way rationalize why it shouldn’t have happened given the contributing factors. It’s just how things work. There didn’t seem to ever be any point in denial. Then, when my grandmother passed away several months ago, I saw her die a very different death. She essentially died of old age and natural causes. The process of death was so slowed down that for once I got to see an extended snapshot of the middle of the process that’s usually very quick or hidden, because we don’t like to see it. We usually think of life in two ways – alive or dead – but I got to see the transition with my grandmother, and I was comforted by it. It made sense to me. I could understand how and why it was happening, and I really think more people would have a greater respect for life if they got to see that transition. I’ve never seen a baby born, but I hear it’s “a miracle”, and I expect that it’s the opposite transition into life that makes people feel that way about it. The deceleration of energy or the acceleration of energy, the transitions remind us that there’s something there we can’t see that we otherwise take for granted in daily life.

I guess in the end we can’t really expect our lives or life in general to be as enjoyable or respected as it could be if we were all able to see and understand the nature of life itself. I may be late to the party, but sadly I think that some people will go their whole lives without seeing this side of life, and I’m glad I’m finally seeing it. Some people will remain satisfied with artificial flower arrangements and fake foliage their whole lives because it’s easy, while others at different points in their lives may choose real leaves, which are undoubtedly more work, but also undoubtedly more rewarding. Within the work of the observation of life lies the realization that the things that come out of the leaves aren’t just for decoration – one more thing we can classify and enjoy for a bit before putting in a box and forgetting. They’re more than that. Within them lie a method of understanding life from a more connected and actually quite practical point of view, which can not only improve the quality of our own lives but also improve the quality of life as we know it in general. And to think that all this is free for the taking; everywhere we go seedlings defy the odds and peak through the cracks of sidewalks and otherwise completely paved road surfaces. Instead of seeing them as a disruption in the artificial order we’ve tried to assign, next time you see a seedling poking out of a crack think of what it had to go through to get there. In the landscape of the lives we’ve created for ourselves, it may at times be the only real thing that persists to exist. It’s that will of life to keep on living, of energy to keep on flowing that makes us who we are, even if we don’t know the difference between real leaves and fake ones quite yet.

The Many Plants of Chateaus de Lop-her

2010-04-16T16:05:00.000-04:00

A while back I mentioned that one of my goals this year was to turn my black thumb into a green one. Since then, I've cultivated a 10'x20' section of my yard into a raised-bed vegetable garden, I've started some seedlings, and perhaps most pertinent to this post, for the first time in the 6+ years I've lived in my house I'm finally appreciating the vast array of plants and flowers that a previous owner so dedicatedly planted years and years ago.

I've always said my house sits on fertile soil - we almost can't keep up with the removal of tree seedlings from our flowerbeds. I pulled 9 Japanese Maple seedlings out two weeks ago, and last night I found 4 more. We also get seedlings of cypress fir, maple, and holly, to name the others I recognize. My yard is off the hook. The land my house sits on used to be an orchard. Our neighbors tell us that our house was the first on the block, and it was built for the eldest daughter of the man who owned the farm. Consequently, we have both a pear tree and a cherry tree (both of which still bear fruit) in our back yard, which is not big by any stretch of the imagination. The entire lot is 50'x150'.

For years I complained that I wish we had bought a condo in a high-rise instead, but luckily I had enough foresight (laziness) to leave well enough alone, because this spring I'm in heaven tending to my yard and flowerbeds. I'm currently trying to cultivate the old plants and flowers so that they replace the weeds in the flowerbeds. The main problem now is that I don't know what half the shit growing on our property actually IS, so I thought I'd post some pics of the foliage and see if y'all can help me identify some of it:

The North Lawn:

Bush with red berries in early spring.

Unknown climbing vine #1.

Unknown climbing vine #2 (it's not weed).

Close-up of unknown young climbing vine #2.

Plant or weed? Some kind of clover maybe?

I don't think this flowers. It's cool looking, but I don't know what it is.

Purple flowers on tall stems come out of this thing in the summer.

Some kind of clover ground cover that us underneath a ginormous pine tree?

Tiny purple flowering semi-ground cover that's on one edge of what I think might be clover?

The last of the teeny tiny white flower brigade that are up and down sinewy stalks of what might be a bush, also under the pine tree - near the tiny purple flowering semi ground cover (confused yet?)

The West Lawn:

This crimson flowering bush is new - it was growing in the bushes lining our yard. Cool flowers!

Close-up of a crimson flower from the new unknown bush.

Finally, one I know! This was a Japanese Maple seedling that took root and I deemed the "proper" size to try and cultivate into a bush. I hope it works.

A small azalea (don't know exact kind) amongst a plethora of tallish (8") unknown ground cover.

Close-up of the tallish (8") unknown ground cover.

Unknown climbing vine #1 or a 3rd unknown climbing vine?

The East Lawn:

This looks exactly like the plant on the N that the purple flowers grow out of, but I don't think purple flowers (or any flowers) grow out of this. It's a mystery...

I call these the Cabbage Patch Kids, because they remind me of them for some reason. They stay low like this and don't flower.

Classic case of "plant or weed?" - I have no idea what this is. At all.

Larger "plant or weed?" (in the back, I know the ones in the very front and to the left are weeds...)

Elderly tulip growing amongst unknown plant or weed - possibly some kind of clover (bottom center)?

The South Lawn:

The cherry tree! Someone asked me the other day what kind it was. I don't know. It has white flowers and bears fruit (and could use a pruning - it's kind of like a mangy dog).

This is the pear tree (another mangy dog). I don't know what type of pears it bears, but they're about the size of a tennis ball, mature, and they're all green.

Cool close-up of the pear tree. What's that? You want to be pruned? I know, hang in there, buddy...

Climbing vine #1 or #3 on a stump!

Some sort of moss??? This area is damp and dark - no real sunlight during the day.

Crazy-ass ground covering. There's like three different things going on here that are more visible in the next photo, which is a close up. I like the little purple flowered bits that are very visible here...

Perhaps vine #1 or #3, some sort of clover, and the purple flowering lovelies - all ground covering.

The Woman-Made:

I couldn't let you go without seeing my veggie garden! It will be fully populated by the end of May. Right now you can see collards and lettuce in the bed to the left (beets are also there, but you can't see them), tomatoes that were an impulse purchase and planted too early in the center, and onions in the back. There's also a prematurely-planted eggplant planted to the far right. The red round thing is a spice planter.

The spice planter has (starting clockwise at the top) lavender, rosemary, Italian parsley, and dill. I have a second planter I want to grow mint in, but my mint seeds are the only seeds that didn't germinate. I don't know what's wrong. I'm thinking of just planting some right in the planter and seeing if they take that way...

The babies!!! Don't leave us with the babies!!! Just kidding. these are my seedlings - they're a month old. The tall one in the back is a black-eyed pea bush that I swear to you popped out of the soil and grew to that size in three days - it was one of the last to germinate! I'm hoping I can keep some of these alive, so I can plant them in my garden. I've been watering them and petting them and keeping them at the right temperature, so we'll see...

I'll post updates!

Please comment if you know what any of these little buggers are - I'd love to know what I have growing so I can research it and give it the care it needs :)

Is the Age of Experience Awakening Our Innate Predisposition toward Compassion?

2010-04-15T16:51:00.000-04:00

As a person who’s battled with depression there are two types of circumstances that can send me down a dark path. Surprisingly, personal problems aren’t as devastating to me as their counterpart: global problems. For better or worse, I’m an eternal optimist. I’ve certainly had my fair share of personal heartache and seemingly insurmountable challenges, but in the end things always get at least somewhat better, and they get better because ultimately I’m in control. I’m in control of my actions and my decisions, including the decision to be optimistic. If there’s one thing I do well, it’s persevere. My tenacity is almost equivalent to my stubbornness, and if you know me then you know just how stubborn I can be. Recently, however, I feel as if I’m miles down a dark path riddled with tricks and traps as I contemplate the state of humanity.

It think the beginning of this path was forged with good intentions by people who pioneered into the unknown – people who undoubtedly were also optimists at one time. The story of the people who wore down the earth to forge this path is one we’re familiar with. It parallels the iconic migration of some of the first Americans to the west. Lured by hopefulness and opportunity, people who would otherwise never have a chance to better their lot in life seized this once in a lifetime chance make their lives better and to better the lives of their family. But you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My decent down this well-worn path started when my husband-to-be injured his knee at work one night. The next morning he woke up to a knee, calf, and ankle that were all about twice the size as they should be – the fluid from his knee had spread and descended down his leg. We were to be married in two days, and all he wanted was to be able to make it through the wedding. The morning after, still with no improvement, we went to emergency care. When the woman at the desk asked him “marital status”, we looked at each other and chuckled. “Married, I guess,” he said. “We just got married last night!” And we had. Poor guy spent most of the night in a chair with his leg propped up, standing only for the vows and the cutting of cake. Long story short, he couldn’t return to work without having been cleared by an orthopedist, so the next day he contacted his company’s insurance company and filed the workers comp claim needed for the orthopedist appointment. The claim was immediately denied – as soon as he could get anyone who answered the phone at the insurance company to not hang up on him, which took several days. Now he can’t go see the orthopedist under his personal insurance, because he already made the claim that the injury happened at work, and if he tries to use his personal insurance he can get sued by his insurance company for insurance fraud. Worse still, because he was denied and because he didn’t show up to work, he can now be “fired” for being a no-show, rendering it impossible for him to collect unemployment. With no workers comp, no unemployment, and the inability to see an orthopedist, this never-miss-a-day-of-work perfect work ethic ironworker is now left in need of medical help he cannot get, and he’s lost wages, to boot, because it’s standard practice for workers comp insurance to deny all initial claims, and it’s probably also “procedure” for his company to fire him instead of lay him off for not showing up.

According to the Buddhists, the three poisons – or the three reasons behind the root of all suffering in the world – are greed, hatred, and ignorance. Now, I want you to understand that my mention of Buddhist teachings isn’t intended to convince you that Buddhism should be your religion. Religion is an odd word, and I personally think we as a society assign more meaning to it that was ever intended. In fact, the principles taught in Buddhism for how to live one’s life are the same principles that exist at the core of Christianity and Islam – just by different names. I choose Buddhism to illustrate, because it’s somehow managed to not be bastardized or disguised over time as a defense for any one man’s power struggle (hello, greed). Regardless, as an eternal optimist I find the teachings in Buddhism to be utterly practical. When I get angry, I’m able to ask myself why and the real root of my anger can always be attributed to greed, hatred, or ignorance. Fear is tied in here as well, since these three reasons are underlying reasons for fear. I begin to wonder, however, in times like this if anyone else ever thinks about what they’re doing – the foremen, the claim managers, the people at the top who make the rules that X decision is always made when Y happens so I can keep my job, so I have a job, or so that I’m able to increase our annual profits. Greed.

The further I allow my mind to travel down this dark path, the more frustrated I get with humanity. The path is dark, but people are there – they’ve just encapsulated themselves within tall, thick walls. At one point in time this concrete jungle may have been an open-air market, but over time the desire for money forced these very entities that were instituted to help others to ignore them. When this happened enough, the entities who were successfully greedy cannibalized the entities who weren’t as greedy, and individuals lost their jobs. Needing to provide for their families, these individuals made the choice to ignore other people just like them, and wanting their piece of the pie, they assumed functions in the greed machine. Luckily, over time, ignoring your fellow man gets easier, and you become complacent in the monotony of helping to build the walls taller and thicker. You may claim you want things to be different – hell, sometime you even participate in protests, which makes you feel better about choosing to continue to allow that very hand you protest against to feed you and your children. But do you really do anything to support the cause of your fellow man? If you’re one of these people functioning in the greed machine, your existence is neither rich nor secure, even if your very participation in the machine makes you rich and secure. We’ve turned into a reactionary, selfish society that willingly makes the decision to be ignorant just so we can hit the snooze button for 5 more minutes, over and over, knowing full well that our happiness is merely a dream, when what we really need to do is collectively wake up and contribute to creating true happiness by exhibiting compassion toward others. THIS is what I’m consumed by on a daily basis.

We’re each responsible for ourselves, which is part of the reason I become more upset when I actually think about how we operate collectively in the world than I do when I’m faced with personal adversity. I can make choices that directly correlate and contribute to my overcoming something I perceive as needing to be fixed in my own life, but I feel overwhelmed and out of control when I consider the miniscule part I can play in righting humanity’s wrongs. Why does it get to me? I guess I’ve already woken up and had my coffee. Even if I lied back down and tried to fall back asleep, I don’t know that I could ever return to the dream and have it not be a nightmare. I suppose that’s why so many people refuse to wake up in the first place.

Doing the right thing isn’t easy, especially if it’s contrary to everything we’re taught, directly or indirectly. We’re taught to follow the rules because they’re the rules and not question them. As children we ask “why” and are fed responses like “because I’m your parent and I said so” or “don’t question authority”. In an effort to make things momentarily easier on ourselves we condition our children to unconditionally follow man-made rules instead of to employ logic or to explore a gut feeling. The gut feeling becomes so suppressed so early on that it becomes harder and harder to recall and employ. And meanwhile, when faced with personal adversity, we sometimes become confused and overwhelmed. We’re not used to doing what’s right – the hard and often painful work of self exploration that leads to personal growth and betterment, so we turn to artificial methods of escape. Within our concrete jungle and brick walls we put cardboard boxes over our heads through the overuse of drugs, alcohol, sex, and food. For some of us, the trigger to put the boxes over our heads may have actually been a glimpse reality and a twinge in our gut.

But I said that I was an optimist, and I am. I hold onto the belief that deep down every single person knows the difference between right and wrong, even if they don’t know they do and can’t verbally articulate it. If we didn’t, I think there’s a damn good chance that we’d quite literally no longer be here right now. The thread that holds us together is that shred of wanting to do the right thing that no matter how buried has the strength to present itself to us, giving us the option: use it as a tool to do right or don’t. Choose to express compassion or give in to greed. If you’ve never made a decision or performed an act out of true compassion before, then you won’t believe me when I say that personal rewards you will get for having made that choice are inexplicably and inconceivably more joyous than the result of anything you will ever obtain from greed. Your head may know it should increase excitement as numerical values increase, but the happiness you reap from compassion is more intense and not felt in your head but in your chest – at your very core. Greed may be addictive, but luckily compassion is too.

The mechanism for unleashing compassion is mindfulness – an awareness of your surroundings, your choices, and their implications. Mindfulness employs the use of logic and welcomes questioning. And if you ask enough questions to find the motivation behind your would-be actions, the only conclusion you can arrive at is the compassionate one. Whether you choose to follow the conclusion or not is entirely up to you, but by practicing this over and over it will become harder to ignore choosing compassion.

It may sound crazy, but I think we’re more ready to wake up than we realize. In the mid-20^th century our country and culture were in the midst of the mechanical age – we were focused on producing physical goods and finding new and better ways for machines to work. The 1980s brought with them the age of information, where we were introduced to the computer chip and fiber optics and when a college education became a universal requirement to obtain a white-collar job. Now, we’re in the age of experience, with our smart phones and our iPads literally changing how we interact with and experience information, which in turn impact our other experiences and our expectations for their outcome. Who do you know that has had an iPhone and has decided to abandon it at the end of their contract because they don’t like the functionality? The reason Apple has done so well (and why Jonathan Ive is a fucking genious) is because they’ve cornered the market on the experience. After using a device like an iPhone we expect things to be presented to us simply and logically, just like they are on the iPhone. I’m fully convinced that Ive and the developers at Apple have somehow tapped into the very method by which we all employ logic and have translated that into hardware and applications that mimic something that is innate to us. By using these tools and applications that to some are nothing more than an aid for modern convenience, that logical sequence of questioning and decision making that we have strayed so far from is being reintroduced to our brains. We repeat the actions that mimic our own innate logical thought processes hundreds of times a day, and by doing this we’re preparing ourselves for a personal and global revolution.

I’m also heartened that there’s hope for humanity when I sit back and look at the communities people have created on Twitter. Twitter?! Yes, Twitter. No one is stopping you as a Twitter user from simply copying and pasting tweets others have posted – there are no rules – but as a community Twitter users don’t do it; they retweet, giving credit where credit is due. And if you don’t retweet and claim a tweet as your own instead, you’re more than likely going to get called out on it by your followers or the person from whom you ripped the tweet in the first place. As a community, tweeters have collectively and organically embraced doing the right thing.

Even more heartening than the previous example, however, is the very product of the Twitter community and the impact it has had on consumerism. To use a really dated metaphor, I no longer have to rely on Rolling Stone or Spin magazine to find new music I might be interested in. With Twitter I simply throw a question out and receive dozens if not more replies suggesting new music I might be interested in, and better yet the recommendations are coming from people I know or people I can get to know by reviewing their profile and tweets, and I don’t know about you, but I trust their opinions a hell of a lot more than I do the opinion of a guy I don’t know from Adam sitting behind a desk in the Rolling Stone newsroom. We have created a community that enables us to rid ourselves of our own reliance on companies to tell us what we want. And by breaking that link, we’re again learning and practicing thinking for ourselves!

It’s funny too when you think about what companies are actively participating as respected members of the Twitter community. I feel like I know the CEO of Zappos.com, Tony, just as well as I do some fellow rollergirls from across the country who I also follow on Twitter. I’ve also seen Zappos come up in the media quite a bit – they’re featured on a website about National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day (which is tomorrow, BTW), and I also recall seeing video of their renaissance-themed company picnic recently too. I’ve shopped at Zappos a fair bit, and I’ve had to return things on occasion or sometimes things take a little long to arrive – their staff and policies have actually shocked me by how helpful they have been at times, as they go above and beyond for their customers.

Now think about AIG Insurance company. After doing a really quick search, the only profiles I found that I thought might be verified as real are spoof profiles: @AIGExecutive and @AIGexec (if the 1^st one’s real, I feel really bad for the guy). These are the people who deny claims so that they can make even more money. Oh, I should clarify that AIG as a brand no longer exists. Their current automated phone message introduces them as something else, “formerly AIG”. Funny it’s so hard to find someone who represents them on Twitter (sarcasm, people). Their lack of a presence says one of two things to me. Either they don’t care what their customers or potential customers think of them as a brand, or they know full well that walking into such a forum could only further harm their reputation. They’re bad – they know it. The really awesome thing about them not being respected members of the Twitter community is that they’re really missing the boat and probably haven’t the slightest clue that there’s a revolution brewing, or they just don’t care, which I’m also perfectly fine with. There’s a little thing about business that you can’t succeed without, and it’s called innovation. If these morally corrupt companies continue to chase a golden age that’s already passed, they’re contributing to their own demise. The innate want to do the right thing and be compassionate is reverberating in so many unexpected places due to the present age of experience. The very things that have been created out of greed to generate revenue are the things that are being used to wake us up, and to me that’s exciting!

The more we interact with this technology the more mindful we will hopefully become, but don’t wait for the bug to enter your brain – be mindful now. Mindfulness is referred to by many different names and concepts. If you’re involved in roller derby, you’ve undoubtedly heard of The Douche Bag Rule, as coined by Trish the Dish: don’t be a douche bag. Just don’t. Think before you act. We’re all here to have a good time, so don’t be a douche bag and ruin it for everyone else. If you do, your community might just turn on you. I’ve seen it happen in derby – acting like an asshole isn’t tolerated, and I’m excited to see the day where it isn’t tolerated out in the rest of the world as well, but that’s up to you and me. If we choose not to tolerate it, things will eventually change. Please do your part, and I’ll continue to do mine.

Would the Real Lop-her Please Stand Up (& Tap Out)

2010-03-22T10:25:00.002-04:00

This morning I tweeted, partially in jest and partially in all honesty: "Another Monday, another identity crisis. Who will I be this week? Cindy Lop-her? Publishing Professional? Homebody? Future psych patient?"

I was pretty bummed last Wednesday when I realized my 2-week conference stint in NYC and the time needed to make up massive amounts of work because of the NYC conferences had just barely precluded me from making my roller derby attendance for this month, resulting in my being benched from next Saturday’s game per our attendance policy. That was a mouthful. It was a head full too. The implications of this were my letting my team down for what feels like the millionth time so far this season and my having to explain to my captains that I’d be missing attendance and unable to skate – a conversation I hate having to have. It wasn’t until this morning on my way into work that I realized what part of my problem is: I’m too fucking responsible for my own good.

Somehow, everywhere, I wind up leading the charge. I do it at my job, I do it at derby, I do it at home, and I even do it with friends. I think it all begins with the identification of a problem or a want that I take upon myself to put into action because I can’t stand NOT acting. By doing this, I now “own” whatever it is that I started, and I feel personally responsible for the follow through and maintenance of the project. This is why I became an LLC member of our roller derby league, and it’s why I’m one of only two remaining. This is why I’m in this massively time-consuming job that I wanted and that I helped develop the job description for, even though it’s at times overwhelming. This is also why I start massive projects at home, like the 4-day vegetable gardening project I nearly broke my back completing this weekend even though my house was and still is filthy and I have no clean clothes or groceries. I am, in every sense of the terms, a project manager at heart. Problem is, I spend so much time managing things outside my basic wants and needs that I have no time left to really tend to all these things like I should, and I have no time for me.

Each week, sometime each day, I feel like a different person, and I suppose I decide what main role I will play by identifying where the most immediate emergency lies. In the middle of last week I was the publishing professional, because I was behind on my work. This weekend, however, I was Farmer Dell, because if I wanted to accomplish having a vegetable garden this year, I knew this weekend was the absolute last deadline to prepare my previously ungardened lot. Tonight I plan on being Donna Reed, going grocery shopping and then cleaning my house and doing laundry, because, well, no food or clothes inside a house covered in dog-hair tumbleweeds and tiny clumps of dry soil is the emergency. I feel like I’m all these different people, but really I’m just a harrowed mess of a person who’s constantly trying to race against the clock. I have too many ideas, too many ideals, and not enough time, yet I don’t ever give up anything and I even add complications at times (hello, garden), which are sure to stress me out even more in the days to come when my lists are longer and my days are shorter. So all this leads to one question: how do I regain control? Does the answer lie in giving up responsibility or in giving up entire projects all together? A good friend of mine said to me the other day, “I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m so beaten up, lying in the center of the ring, and I know someone else needs to get in there and I need to get out, but I’m so bloodied and exhausted that I just don’t even have the energy to pull myself to the side and tap out.” Yep. That about sums it up. For me, however, there’s possibly one other reason I lay bloodied in that ring: because the lights are shining, the spectators are watching, and well, I’m already there.

There’s a certain reward I get for being every woman imaginable – friends tell me I’m “amazing” and the public really likes to see me fight, even if it’s against myself. In a way, I keep doing it because I know other people like to see me do it. Am I a people pleaser? Afraid of being unpopular? Afraid of no longer being “amazing”? Um, yeah, I’ll take all of the above and probably some others I haven’t even begun to think about.

Like many of my recent blog entries, there is no answer to be found at the end of this page – it’s more of a starting point for my thoughts and considerations. I think I need to find out what’s really important to me and identify where I want to be next year and five years later. Besides chasing my tail, what are my goals? What do I want? How do I envision the perfect life? Only then can I start to create it. The hard part is now – the time when I let various people down because I really can’t do it all. Oh, well, I project managed myself into this mess and I suppose I can project manage my way back out. Next on the agenda, a to-do list and some spreadsheets for how I can get back on track. One thing’s for sure, no matter who I am or what I’m doing, I take comfort in my methodology and my anal retentiveness. And, shit, if a girl can’t cling to perfection and procedures, what can she cling to?

Making Music on the Track

2010-03-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

Just because you know how to play a note or a chord, doesn’t mean you know how to put them together to make an actual song. This is my story (click here right now! & then come back...):

In the third grade I tried out for my elementary school’s elite chorus, The Singing Saints, not necessarily because I wanted to be in a choral group but because my friend Amy was trying out. I still remember finding out the results of my try out via our new high-tech 80s-model answering machine – it was probably the first message I ever received. It was Amy, giggling, who revealed that we both made the cut. Chorus turned out to be something I did enjoy (except for that one terrifying Christmas concert at the local nursing home), and I actually did learn a lot about singing by participating in the choral group at a young age.

When I was 14 I decided that I was going to teach myself to play guitar. I can’t even remember why I decided to do this – probably because I thought boys would dig it. Looking back on it, I lived a large portion of my adolescent years with the mindset of a pubescent boy, but I digress as usual. I got my dad’s old acoustic guitar out from the hall closet, bought new strings for it, learned to tune it, learned some chords, and learned to play some popular music for which I could find sheet music in my small country town (which at that time was REM). I eventually graduated to electric guitar, which I received for Christmas about a year later. On that, I learned to play REM AND Cracker. Impressive, I know.

Then, in my third year of college, my girlfriends and I had a drug-induced revelation that we should start a band, and The X-Girlfriends were formed: Anna on drums, Dana on bass, Jaclyn on keyboard, and me on the mic and guitar. We called our brand of music “pop punk”, and our influences were The Donnas and The Rondelles. We practiced every week, sometimes twice a week, and in our two-year tenure we scored some gigs and played out ($100 goes to the person who hands over the video from Café Tattoo so I can destroy it!). Regardless of all these things that sound really awesome and make it seem like we knew what we were doing, we so didn’t. In retrospect, we were just a step above horrible. But why? Independently we all knew how to play our instruments. I knew how to sing. But when it all came together, we were a fucking mess – kind of like my individual contribution to the All Star try-out scrimmage last weekend.

In derby we start by teaching new skaters the basics: stops, sprints, cuts, and blocks. As they progress we start to incorporate these individual skills into drills that mimic potential bout situations – how to block someone out of bounds, how to break up two opposing players, how to get in front of someone. We really do try to build on skills and groups of skills to ease skaters into game play, yet there’s always a few skaters who remain great at drills but are surprisingly bad at actually playing roller derby. The good news to them is that with time and practice they can improve and become wonderful skaters. The key word here is PRACTICE, and not just skills practice, but practical practicing of, in their case, actual game play.

I wasn’t too thrilled about trying out for the All Stars after having attended less than 10 practices since my return from injuries in September and then again in late October (god, I’m a klutz), but I really wanted to play against Oly in April, so I figured I’d give it a whirl and see where my skills actually were. Individually, my skills are still strong, and even after a 15-lb weight gain my endurance is nowhere as shot as I would have expected it to be, but as I tried to put everything I knew together, it just wasn’t meshing, and trust me, I could tell I was off as the scrimmage portion of the tryout was taking place. On paper, I could have told you what I should have done in each situation that arose, but in practice, I became confused, indecisive, and unable to execute any string of truly effective moves. Ick. I’m out of practice – not with the skills, but with my team. There’s something about practicing together that can’t be replicated in any other way. I now know that I need to attend as many scrimmage practices as humanly possible to get my mojo back as a productive and working part of the whole.

As for The X-Girlfriends, we hung out a lot, but we never really practiced enough. Had we done so, who knows? I’m still amused by many of our old songs, especially Sugar Bobby, about a wealthy middle-aged guy I knew through my job as a Camel Girl, and Meter Maid, a song about my disdain for ticket-happy meter maids in Baltimore who would ticket my car as I was loading it up outside of work with cases of Camel cigarettes. Being a Camel Girl was both a fun and annoying job at times. If you ever happen to catch me or any of my old band-mates out, buy us a beer and we’ll sing you some songs. And hopefully soon you’ll be able to see me make some music on the track again as well.

Dream

2010-03-09T01:44:00.000-05:00

Awoke from a dream I was looking for answers, when I suddenly found myself in the pit of an unearthed tree. Underneath the roots was a pile of trash - plastic cups, red and blue. Lifting myself up like I was exiting a pool without a ladder in the deep end, I crawled out. I was the only one who had noticed the roots were no longer stable. Worse yet, I was the only one who cared, and no one else was around. I skipped to another tree on the landscape and found my feet sinking in a semi-solid gelatinous purple-grey goo. I retreated and went the other way. This time the ground was covered in the same goo, but it was mostly solid - only a tiny slip. Still, the goo was there. I went on to search in the abyss for something. A tree with good roots? I don't remember finding it, but I do remember eventually finding other people. They were among the concrete highrises, chasing and being chased - those who broke the law were being pursued by others breaking the law to find them. I was sad and didn't want to be there, so I woke up. Weird.

Discontent is the First Step in the Progress of a Woman or a Nation

2010-03-01T11:22:00.000-05:00

Just minutes after I found out I hadn’t made the All Stars this go round, I received a distressing call from my mom in which she relayed that the lawyers handling my dad’s wrongful death case need to see us immediately for an urgent matter. It was after this that I found myself pondering the following rhetorical question:

If we knew the end result of all our actions and attempts, would we still attempt them or act on them?

Now and again I’ve read stories about people who have the ability to memorize and recall everything they’ve ever experienced on every single day of their lives. You can give a person like this a date – June 20, 1982 – and he or she will be able to tell you exactly how that day played out. Sounds pretty cool, initially, but the horrific truth behind this “gift” is that just like these people can remember every detail of every day, they can also vividly remember every emotion as if the scenario relating to that emotion is playing out before them for the first time. Luckily for the rest of us, as time fades and memories become fuzzier, so do the emotions we had relating to those memories. The emotions tied to memories are dulled, and we never again experience the same emotions with as much gusto just by remembering them. This may be why we repeat our mistakes – we don’t remember the magnitude of the bad consequences. If did remember them, however, and we knew that those feelings were a possibility when we were about to make an attempt or act in some way, would we follow through? Or would the possible negative emotion keep us from acting?

In the case of the wrongful death suits, I can’t help but think that all the work and all the pain it brings up just isn’t worth it. Well, let me qualify that by saying it isn’t worth it for ME. The only benefit of successful outcome I’ll ever see is my mom being awarded some cash-money that will help support her through her senior years. That is indeed a benefit. I guess I’m just sick of reexamining what is possibly the most painful incident in my life over and over and over again for years on end. I don’t want to think about any part of it in detail anymore! It’s horrific, and in the grand scheme of things it was a teeny-tiny part of how I remember my dad, and I’m pissed that I’m being asked to spend so much time recalling the details. The whole thing, however, is beyond my control. As long as my mom still wants to go forward, I’m tied to still participating. It sucks, but short of faking my death there’s nothing I can really do.

In the case of not making the All Stars, I’m not surprised, but I’m still disappointed. I dislike the feeling of disappointment and rejection, and I am a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t bounce back immediately and make the team like I’ve seen some people do. In a way, I am almost luckier to know I’m blow that 20-person roster than to have made the roster at the 20^th spot, because I don’t think I’d have been honest with myself about where I stood, and I might not work as hard as I will now.

If we knew the end result of all our actions and attempts or if we knew the real possibility for a bad outcome with negative emotions attached to it, we might never do anything, and to me, that’s not really living. Living life to the fullest incorporates risk, and to a certain extent it’s risk that gives us a thrill like no other. It’s a good thing we don’t have accurate foresight or the ability to recall emotions with accuracy, because if we did we’d never take risks, we’d never experience the thrill you get when you do take a risk, we’d never get the chance to surprise ourselves with a favorable outcome, and probably most importantly, we’d never fail, which means we’d never grow. If discontent is the first step in the progress of a woman or a nation, then failure is the first step in trying harder (not the last step in trying at all). Everyone fails at some point – it’s what we choose to do after we fail that matters. For me, I’m going to suck it up and take a day off work this week to go see the lawyer, because there’s no use fighting the inevitable. As far as improving on my derby skills, I have a good list of feedback from the try out to start from. I’m going to push myself harder to correct those things that led to the captains’ decision, I’m going to commit to attending more practices more regularly to help my skills improve, and I’m going to try again. As long as I’m trying, I’m moving forward, and that’s all I can do.

Trying Out & Trying to Relax and Have Fun

2010-02-28T20:13:00.001-05:00

It’s been a strange few weeks that led up to my definitive decision to try out for the All Stars this morning. I destroyed the inside of my right foot by trying to break in my new skates, my grandmother died, and the day of my grandmother’s funeral I still didn’t know if I’d be able to skate in that night’s bout – I had made attendance (barely), but my foot was still open and raw and in pain. I didn’t have much hope that I’d be able to skate that night, which was yet another blow to my already deflated ego. After all that’s gone on since September, I really needed a notch in the “win” column – not necessarily having to win that night’s bout, but merely being able to skate in it. I had been missing skating so very bad – so very, very bad.

To my surprise, after taping the shit out of my foot and breaking out the old skates (which rub in a DIFFERENT location than my open wound), I lasted the entire game! Not only that, but I played a great game, I had so much fun with my team, and we won by a landslide. It was an amazingly fun night that gave me a bit more confidence heading into tryouts this morning.

I’m not going to lie, the 24-hours prior to this morning’s try out had my head spinning, my thoughts racing, and my stomach in knots. “I’m not ready,” the little voice in my head would say. “I’m up 10lbs from the end of last season. I’ve been using the practices I’ve been able to go to in order to break in my new skates, not improve my skating. I’m slow. I’m out of shape. I’m going to make a fool out of myself. What happens if I don’t make it? I’ll be mortified.” To make matters worse, competition for the roster spots has been more difficult lately – we have a lot of transfers from other leagues, and the transfers are good. We also have some brand new prodigy skaters who blow away the skaters I thought were prodigies last year. And then I realized why I made myself absolutely miserable at times last season. It’s the same reason I was stressed about the tryouts: instead of wanting the best for my league or my team, I was fighting against the current and only wanting what I thought would be the best for ME. And I’m never going to be happy or satisfied if I’m constantly trying to find a way to put an “I” in “team”. So, I figured, I’ll go, I’ll remain calm, and I’ll do my best to show the captains and coaches what I got. It’s up to them to determine if I have the potential to be a valuable contribution to the team. And if I don’t have what the team needs right now, that’s cool. I get it. It will be sad, but I get it, and I know what I’ll need to do try again: work harder. Spend the time I haven’t been able to spend getting my game back (and then some).

How did it go? It went. I’m really not a good judge of my own abilities, and I certainly AM my own worst critic. That said, I was surprised by the endurance I still had, but I felt like I had an “off” scrimmage day. I kept getting my wheels locked up in other people’s wheels, and I kept going down. I got back up, but I’m not usually on the floor that much, and when you’re on the floor, you’re not being effective, so essentially, I didn’t feel all that effective. I did have a really rad flying-leap block when I was jamming (which I never do for TT) that was probably completely illegal, but we didn’t have refs there to call me on my foul, so the action itself was just spectacular. I was coming round turn 1 and had 2 people to beat. The inside blocker was about 8” off the inside line, so I got a running start and jumped the turn boundary, about to land on one skate just inside the line and just ahead of the inside blocker, when as I was coming down I threw a hip and punted the inside blocker who shot off the track via the opposite boundary like bullet. Before I could turn my head to see where she went, I heard the collective “oohh!” from onlookers. I definitely hit her before I had a foot on the floor, and when I came down I landed one foot on the right-side of the inside line, but I managed to put the other down over the line. She was already on the floor when the second foot went down, so if I had not been mid-air when I made contact, it would have been a minor penalty and not a major. Had refs been there, I’m fairly certain I would have been sent straight to the box. But it was still awesome! I digress… I left the rink a happy lady, thinking “Well, if I don’t make it, I’m definitely going to have a garden this year.” Regardless of the outcome, I feel good just to be back on the track working hard and coming home fatigued.

No word yet. I’m hoping it comes soon, but I have to figure that there’s no use worrying about it now. The decision has been made, I’m sure, I just don’t know what it is yet. And you know? I’m not as anxious about finding out as I typically would be. I’ve been saying that this year is “the year of fun” in derby, meaning “I want to be less stressed out about being on the team then I was last season.” So far, I’m making good on accomplishing that goal, which is both amazing to me and a really good sign of things to come. After all, if it’s not fun, why do it? Okay, okay, I know the answer to that, just like you know that even if it wasn’t fun I’d do it anyway. The bonus here, I suppose, is that I AM having fun and I AM more relaxed. Regardless of the outcome, I want to keep doing what it takes to feel both those things more often in all areas of my life.

**UPDATE** You know, I was initially hesitant to say anything about TT try outs on here, because I didn't want to have to do THIS, but I promised you guys I'd be honest with you, so here it is - failures and all. I did NOT make the team. It stings, but I am completely out of shape, and I have only been back on skates for a month. Was partially hoping I'd make it if for nothing more than the added motivation to get my ass back in gear. Although more difficult, I can motivate myself. And spring is coming. Spring ALWAYS helps me with motivation. There it is! Must remember the "have fun" part, especially, this week.

Cracked.com Topic: Roller Derby

2010-02-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

Last night I completed writing the topic "Roller Derby" for Cracked, a comedic website. Click HERE to read it!

I wanted to ensure I discussed our sport with both humor and respect - hopefully I succeeded. Let me know what you think.

Also, I'd LOVE some pics of y'all in your booty shorts with writing on them to post to the topic page - email me your photos (and include the photo credit), and I'll pick a few of the best to post to Cracked.

Thanks!

Lop

Conscious & Paralyzed

2010-02-13T00:55:00.000-05:00

For a very long time before now I’ve been excellent at denial.

What’s the root of denial? For me, it’s always started with a glimpse of the truth or the inevitable, but whatever it was that I saw was something I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to deal with, I didn’t want to believe or accept, and so I enforced the 5-second-rule with my thoughts and either excused them away or flat-out ignored them, refusing to consider the thoughts any longer. It sounds silly, I know, but there’s a reward in everything we do. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it. For me, the rewards have always been peace and time.

Some things are things that have the potential to get better if you hunker down and form a plan, while other things are immune to effort and planning – these things are the things in life that are beyond your control.

Thinking back to my earliest recollection of denial brings about a sheepish feeling of embarrassment. When I was 11 I came home from school one day only to unexpectedly find half the contents of my house packed up in boxes. My initial thought was that we were moving again, but I didn’t have any other indication that we would be moving (like my parents telling me), so I asked my mom and to my relief she said no, we weren’t moving. It was as if I had just asked someone if the sky was blue and they told me no. Although I was looking right at it and I knew I was being lied to, I made the conscious decision to ignore what I knew to be true, and I went about daily life as if I had never seen the boxes at all. The reward, although short-lived, was my not having to deal with the stress of moving yet again to a new state, a new school, a place where I again knew no one and would have to start over from scratch. A week later my mom looked me in the eye, just as she had a week prior, and broke the news that we’d be moving in a day. And she wonders to this day why I don’t trust her.

I know now that denying what was in plain sight, even for an 11-year-old, was nothing more than a coping mechanism. I suppose I could have fought to find out the truth a week earlier, but if I had done that my day-to-day would have been so disrupted that I wouldn’t have gotten anything done – I’d have to learn to cope in other ways, which I guess is where I’m at now. Coping with the inevitable is sadly something I’ve never learned to do.

A months or two ago I stopped posting as regularly. I finally mentioned that I had made the tough decision to not try out for the All Stars in Q1 because of some other things that were going on outside of derby, namely the failing health of my grandmother and my dog. A month or so went by, and during that time nothing really changed – neither had yet taken a turn for the worse, yet I was paralyzed, unable to function in a normal way in my day-to-day life. If I were of a typical mental state, I’d say I was depressed, but I’ve been being treated for depression for the past four years, so what does that make me now? Super depressed?! Uber depressed? How about “really fucking depressed”? After a while I began to think I was just really lazy, and then I surpassed lazy and lost interest in the hobby that I’ve dedicated the last 5 years of my life to. Unable to understand what was going on and unable to “fix” anything, I tried on various answers or solutions, because I couldn’t stand that I couldn’t fix the real problems that were causing me stress: the failing health of my grandmother and dog. The one answer I have clung to the most is my desire to accomplish several other goals in my life – goals that in a carefree world I probably could accomplish over time without pulling back from derby – yet I have pulled back from derby and I haven’t done a god damned thing toward accomplishing those other goals. This is how I know they aren’t the answer. So what is?

The answer is that there is no answer. There’s no answer, no fix, no solution to death. It’s a part of life. And as much as I know this to be true, and for as expected as it is, I’m apparently still incredibly affected by the stress it’s placed on my day-to-day life. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m the type of person who thrives on working toward a goal, or in my case, multiple goals. When I don’t like something, I fix it. And now I have no idea what to do with myself since I can’t do anything, and I’m paralyzed by this – completely and utterly paralyzed. As I sit and wait for it to be over, I simultaneously hope for no swift resolution. The time I lose is the time they gain and the time I gain with them, yet while I should be happy and in the moment when I’m with them, I’m distant instead. I’ve somehow isolated myself from everything and everyone I love. I’m not in denial, but I’ve lost peace, and I’m wasting time.

I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that I’m not in denial, and I’m finally learning to face the music. But any comfort is lost to the fact that I don’t know what the fuck to do now, and that stresses me out. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you shit, make a shit sandwich? I think not.

Today we got the call that my grandmother may not last the night. My mom picked me up, and we went to go see her – maybe for the last time. As I sit on the sofa typing this, my dog is curled up next to me. Although I worry a lot about what I should be doing, when I’m curled up with my dog there’s no other place I want to be. Maybe life hasn’t given me shit. Maybe it’s actually given me time – not time to stress, but time to enjoy things as they are while they last. I’m still not entirely sure I’m doing the right thing, but only time will tell. In the meanwhile, I suppose I’ll practice patience and try to let go of paralysis.

A Very Merry (Derby) Blizzard: Snowmageddon

2010-02-10T13:43:00.000-05:00

Baltimore typically doesn’t get all that much snow during the winter; we usually have a few 3-to-5 inch snowfalls, with several of those causing school and government closings, but this year has been different. After four snowfalls, including one that caused us to cancel our inaugural bout of 2010, Baltimore has clocked 63 inches so far this winter – more than Chicago, Buffalo, and Carribou, Maine. Nearly EVERYTHING is closed.

You’d think this would have us Baltimorons depressed, but not so! If there’s one thing I love about this city (there’s actually many things), it’s that snow = party. During the first blizzard this week the news stations were showing people in every neighborhood partying in the streets: sitting in lawn chairs drinking frozen rum drinks, buzzing around on 4-wheelers, and participating in massive, MASSIVE community-organized snowball fights (that they were announcing on the news, no less).

I’m lucky enough to live several houses away from my teammates, Allie B. Back and Deathany, and about 2 miles from one of our good friends and Indian food bout vendor, John of Dharma Foods, so the four of us and my boyfriend, J, have been participating in the snow fun here in Baltimore together. During the first blizzard we had this week we decided we’d do what we did the previous weekend when the bout was cancelled and head to mens derby-owned bar, Bad Decisions, for hot drinks followed by sledding at Patterson Park. Although practice has been cancelled all this week, we’ve been getting our exercise walking up steep hills after sledding down them. I even have derby sympathy bruises from the saucer sled cutting into my thighs after having traveled downhill on my stomach.

I love sledding at night. The previous week we were the only people at Patterson Park, but this time there were already other neighborhood folks there. Positioning ourselves next to the illuminated pagoda, people stood beer in hand, watching their friends take turns sliding downhill on sleds and beer boxes, dogs galloping through the snow with ears flapping to chase them down. If you had a good run, you could go pretty far downhill, carving a new path for the next person. Thigh-deep in fresh, untouched snow, it was hard to ignore the silence at the bottom of the hill, as you looked upward to see people and pets laughing and having fun against the warm lights of the pagoda. It took several minutes to walk uphill, but that didn’t stop us – it was totally worth the effort to jump on the sled and head downhill again, snow spray blinding you temporarily and numbing your face as you go.

The next day J, Allie, and I headed to Herring Run Park with our dog, Calvin. Avoiding trees and the river, we sledded alongside neighbors and their children, taking helmet-cam footage of several runs that you can see here (including one where I damn near hit a tree head-on).

The day after that I spent all day with my neighbors shoveling the still unplowed street, preparing for the next storm. What started as a joined effort in snow removal quickly became cocktail hour, as bottles of liquor and beer started appearing and piling up in the snow bank next to my car, plastic lawn chairs surrounding the “bar”. One thing I love about snow is the time you get to spend with your neighbors that you otherwise don’t get to see! It took eight of us all day to shovel the street in front of my house (with a break to push a car out of our street), and even though we accomplished a lot, it really felt like more party than work (until I needed an Epsom salt bath later that night to soothe my sore and torn muscles).

Last night marked the beginning of blizzard number two, which is still going strong now. Having a shitload of food left over that he had made for the bout that got cancelled, John suggested we have a dinner party – a wonderful idea! We dined on cheese and crackers, veggies and hummus, samosas, falafel, and rice-and-cheese filled phyllo triangles, ending the night after watching two movies with a coconut key-lime pie I threw together. Mmmm…

At this point, it looks like we’re not getting out until Saturday or Sunday. I foresee more sledding, more shoveling, more eating and drinking, and more time spent with neighbors and friends. As much of a disruption as these storms have been to daily life in Baltimore, I’m really glad we got this collective opportunity to slow down, break the monotony of the rat race, spend some quality time with others, and entertain ourselves without the usual avid consumerism. I think it’s just what Baltimore needs.

195s: First Impressions

2010-02-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

There’s just something about getting new things that replace the old and worn out things, especially when those things are things we use on a near daily basis. Last night I popped the cherry on my new 195s, and by the end of practice I didn’t want to take them off.

When I was younger the purchasing of new basketball shoes or a new softball glove or a new tennis racket was synonymous with the beginning of that year’s sport season. Like back-to-school shopping for clothes and shoes, back-to-sport shopping is just what we did. However, although I spent four years playing varsity tennis, I never got quite as into tennis rackets as I have roller skates. Chalk it up to being older and wiser or maybe just caring more about derby than I ever did tennis. Getting new skates isn’t something I’m able to afford on an annual basis, so when I do I’m appreciative. Believe me when I tell you that getting new skates RULES.

Several months ago when I was in PT for my severely sprained ankle, I had many conversations about my feet and their position in shoes and skates. I explained the cramping on the top of my feet to my therapist, and she in turn asked me about my skate boots. Turns out, she thought, the “high top” or high rise of my skate boot paired with the ankle strap limits my full range of motion. Muscles compensate, and I get foot cramps. It was then that I began contemplating the 195s.

Having shared my contemplations with my teammate and co-owner of Black Eyed Susan Skate Shop, Mibbs, she contacted me when the 195 floor models went on sale (the ones people try on when getting fitted). They had my size, and you know what comes next – I had to buy them. After months of discussion about plates and how they impact balance and support weight, I decided not to fuck with a good thing and bought another pair of Power Dyne DynaPros to have mounted on the 195s. I know many people don’t like the DynaPros, but opinions are like assholes, ya know? They work for me and that’s what matters.

In case you’re not familiar with 195s, they are low-cut boots (like a shoe) without a heel. They’re leather inside and out, and the inside of the tongue is lined with sheepskin (it’s furry).

Low Cut
I’ve heard a lot of strong opinions about the cut of these boots. The naysayers reject them because they claim the low-top provides no ankle support. In my opinion, high-top boots don’t actually provide ankle support either. I’ve seen plenty of girls roll their ankles in high-top boots. I’ve rolled my ankles in high-top boots. The low-cut of the boot is, however, something to get used to.

Stride: On my first few laps around the rink I was hyper aware of my inside ankle, and I noticed my stride was awkward, to say the least – I wasn’t making a full stride with my inside leg. However, once I was aware of this, I easily corrected it and continued skating with full strides for the rest of the practice.

Cutting: I think the low cut of the boot does enable a greater range of motion, because cutting seemed quicker and easier on these skates. **It bears mention that I was NOT skating on the Heartless wheels – I put on my old Witchdoctors, because I wanted to eliminate too many different variables until I feel like I’m getting the hang of the new boot.**

Stopping: Stopping’s a bit weird. The first few times I plow stopped quickly, I thought my feet were going to come right out of my laced-up skates – a very weird feeling. I never noticed how much I rely on my skate boot to help me do all different types of stops until last night. I apparently would use the friction of the high-top to help me slow down. Muscle control becomes a lot more important now.

Running: Duck walking to a sprint felt no different on these boots than it did in my old boots. If anything, it was easier.

Dropped Heel
One thing I hadn’t considered much prior to buying the 195s (and one thing I underestimated even after I considered it) is their lack of a heel. Going from heeled skates, even ones that are a mere 1/8 inch, to skates with no heel is, indeed, a bit tricky. Dropping your heel any amount shifts your center of gravity and how you hold yourself on skates, so for the 1st hour last night I felt as if it was the first time I had put on roller skates in years – a quite unsettling feeling for someone who hasn’t felt off-balance for 4+ years. By the end of the night, however, I had gotten used to the heel drop, and I must say that I think I’m really going to like skating like this. I feel as if my center of gravity is lowered and some pressure has been released in my lower back. What I’m going to have to pay close attention to is adequately stretching my calves prior to putting on the skates. Otherwise, I can see my legs being tight and shaky until I’m warmed up.

Skate Materials
After several years of being unable to pull clean socks from my drawer that don’t have remnants of the latex bullshit from the underside of the tongue on the 125s, I’m looking forward to the sheepskin lining that the tongue on the 195s have. I’ve only skated in them once, but the tongues never slipped. The sheepskin seems to do an excellent job gripping, so the tongue stays in place.

The boots themselves are made from double-lined leather, with nice soft leather on the interior of the boot, a stiff and effective arch support appropriately placed in between the leather, and a foot bed with the best insole I’ve seen yet on any skate boot. The 195s are more narrow than other styles, which is great for me, because I have a very narrow heel that shifts back and forth in most shoes I own and in every pair of skates I’ve owned up until now.

I was proactive in breaking in the boots at the heel – a location known for causing nasty blisters. At the advice of Mibbs, I rubbed a tiny amount of Vaseline into the inside of the heel and then rubbed the leather back and forth with a butter knife until the leather was no longer stiff but instead pliable. Last night I found several other spots in the boot I need to do this – the arch of my right foot and the pinky toe area of my right foot.

Socks
I typically wear both blister socks and the calf-high athletic socks from American Apparel. That combo worked well to fend off blisters in my 125s, but proves to be way too much bulk for the new skates. After a few laps I ripped off my ankle brace and the American Apparel socks, leaving the blister socks on, and changed into my super low, super thin athletic socks I wear for running, which seemed to work well.

Overall
In conclusion (hello?! Am I in the 4th grade here?), I think I’m really going to like these boots. It’s going to take me a while to see exactly how I want them laced (where they should be tight, loose, etc), but that’s the case for any pair of skates. Once I’m used to these babies, I’m going to throw the Heartless Creepers on them, and then so help me dog, I’m going to be cutting across the track like a bat out of hell!

Addiction, Muscle Atrophy & Fat Bulges (on top of the fat bulges I was already OK with)

2010-01-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

The other day I was just asking myself why I have been feeling content running only once a week, when just several months ago I was driven to run every day. And then after my 1st scrimmage practice back it hit me: I was driven to run out of sheer shame for how slow I naturally am on skates. Fuck.

Okay, okay, that’s not really the truth. I know I feel better when I exercise regularly and it’s THAT feeling that drives me to run every day, but shit, right now I’m just beginning to transition back into an active lifestyle, and I have to tell you: it’s hard. I’ve gained 15 pounds since September, my muscle mass has been replaced by an extra layer of laziness (aka, my fat rolls have fat rolls), and when scrimmaging the other day I felt as if I was skating through mud. I couldn’t physically make my body move laterally the way I expected it to – the way I’m used to my body following my brain. I was like, “OK, I need to be there”, and by the time I was mid-movement, the small window of opportunity for my being there to do something was already over. And, I was sucking wind.

I suppose the good news is that I know it can get better. I look back over my participation in sports as a kid and I really think that I never broke through either level where you get a second wind, because I just never pushed hard enough. For one, I would bitch and complain until my coach let me stop whatever was tiring me, so I never got that single athletic session second wind. At least in part because of that, I was never able to get the type of second wind you get over time either – the one where you actually kick your own athleticism up a notch. Then came derby and I broke my own barriers. And now I’ve let myself fall to shit. At least a little bit.

The problem right now is that I’m stuck in this transition from one drug to another. “Drug?” you say. Yes, drug. I firmly believe I have addiction issues – pussy ones – but issues nonetheless. When I injured myself and stopped skating and then got depressed about my dog and my not skating, I substituted food for exercise. Both cause a similar chemical reaction with serotonin in my brain. Both give me an immediate reward. Both drive me to keep using them to get that serotonin surge. And because my dog is ill and I feel guilty for leaving my house, it has been WAY easier to choose food than exercise for the last 4 months. The bad news is that excess food consumption that drives my serotonin habit also supplies fat rolls to my fat rolls, while excess exercise that drives my serotonin habit makes food a lot less attractive to me, because I already have my fix. Problem is, I’ve made a habit now of getting my fix from food, and it’s really hard to pull myself away from that. Regardless, I know it can be done. It just sucks royal donkey dick. Make that two royal donkey dicks.

Getting back to practice is a motivator for me to exercise more, and I’m doing both (going to practice and exercising more), but it feels like a long, slow journey, when I really want it to happen like I want everything else to happen: now. Well, fuck me, the world doesn’t work that way? Sorry, sometimes I forget iPads aren’t available to stop all my hemorrhaging wants in life. I need some zen in a big bad way, people. Some motherfucking zen.

At this point, I need to just shut my mouth and take some old advice I’ve given many times on here: just do it. Less talk, more action. I can do it. I will do it. Stay tuned.

In other news, the city of Baltimore has officially named tomorrow Charm City Roller Girls Day! This is in no small part due to an avid derby fan (and CCRG superfan) who just so happens to work for the mayor. Thanks to him, we’ll be receiving an official citation from the city at tomorrow night’s bout. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a “day” named after me before. It makes me want to break all sorts of rules and then stick my tongue out at the rule enforcers and taunt “But it’s Charm City Roller Girls Day, so I can do whatever I want!!!”. Although I envision myself jumping off the hood of a car with cans of spray paint in my hands and a road of mass destruction behind me as I say that, I’ll probably wake up and have a pretty normal day tomorrow. Something like this does put things in perspective though. Don’t sweat the small shit (which I do all too much). Enjoy the victories.

Happy Charm City Roller Girls Day!!!

Does Wheel Hardness Matter for Big Girls?

2010-01-18T11:28:00.002-05:00

I occasionally receive questions from y’all via email or comment, and I usually respond the same way, however I felt I could expand on this question and post it here! I am certainly not a skate “expert”, but I have been rolling for 5 years now, and if you know me, you know I’m always more than happy to give you my opinion about pretty much anything. So, if y’all got any more questions, keep ‘em coming and I’ll address them to the best of my ability every now and then!

Q: Wanted to ask you...one of the girls on my team said something about some type of wheel that is better to use if you're heavier. Something about how the material is harder. Do you know what she was talking about? Since I can't play right now, I'm gonna get my derby fix by ordering gear I can't use. (Sinead O'Clobber)

A: Wheel hardness is a personal preference and only one of several variables that work together to enhance how you perform on a pair of skates (the skate surface share equal weight with wheels, IMO, and plates and bearings play supporting roles too).

Let’s start with a little overview of wheels in general:

Most indoor derby wheels are a standard circumference (62mm)
Wheels are rated and listed by firmness, and this is usually denoted by a number followed by the letter “a” (e.g., 90a) – the higher the number, the firmer the wheel
A general range of firmness for derby wheels is 86a to 98.5a, softer to firmer
In general, firmer wheels are faster wheels (this is why jammers often wear firmer wheels)
The firmer a wheel, the less “grip” it has on the skating surface
Wider wheels provide better grip and more stability (e.g., Hyper), while narrower wheels (e.g., Heartless) allow a skater to be more agile

While wheels are an important component to this equation, you can’t decide on a wheel without first considering your skate surface. Doing so would be like packing a suitcase of clothing without knowing if you’re headed to the North Pole or the Caribbean. The type of wheels you use depend on the surface on which you’ll be skating, which also has its own grip-factor. Polished concrete is generally the slickest surface, and sport court generally provides the most grip, while wood lies somewhere in between depending on its condition.

Wearing an 86a wheel on sport court (especially tile) would make you go the slowest (and keep the most contact with the floor), while wearing a 98.5a on polished concrete would allow you to go the fastest (if you could keep a grip on the floor and not wipe out at sharp turns). What many skaters do is adjust for the floor by changing their wheels. For instance, if a person used to skating on wood with a 90a may want to switch to an 88a if skating on polished concrete or 92a if skating on tiled sport court.

When I first started skating, we all wore really grippy skates because our muscles weren’t conditioned to keep us firmly planted to the floor, and we’d easily lose control around the turns. As time went on, I feel like the jammers started experimenting with the firmer wheels first, the full-time blockers second, and the bigger girls third. This is completely contrary to what your teammate said, which is why I was so intrigued by this question. In my experience, I think I stayed with a more grippy wheel longer than most people, because I wanted the stability. I now know I like a wheel with more grip because it allows me to dig into the floor better to make a really hard hit. And please realize these trends I mention of jammers versus blockers and small girls versus big girls are very broad generalizations. I know plenty of tiny, svelte jammers (Flo Shizzle) who refuse to skate on anything other than Witch Doctors (a soft wheel). It all comes down to personal preference!

Another thing skaters do is mix and match wheels of different firmness. I’ve never been a big fan of this, but many, many skaters swear by the combo, so try it and see what you think. While this is a popular thing to do, I often see people doing it wrong. The idea here is to wear the wheels with the most grip on the left-hand side of each skate (if you have them on and are looking down at your feet). Why there? Because those wheels make the most contact with the floor for the longest period of time while you’re skating. Think about it. Prior to crossing over with your right leg, which wheels on your right foot touch the floor last? The ones on your instep – the ones to the left. When your left leg is passing behind you to form the second motion of a cross over, which wheels on that skate are the last to leave the ground? The ones on the outside of your left foot – the ones to the left. By putting the grippier wheels here, you’ll make the most contact with the floor, thus elongating your stride and causing you to use less energy to skate at the same speed.

Like anything else, picking a type and firmness of wheel is a personal preference. If you have the chance, try out your friends’ wheels. By trying out as many different types of wheels as possible, you’ll get to know what you like by how it feels. Bottom line: there is no hard and fast rule for wheel firmness as it correlates to body weight. As you gain more experience as a skater, you’ll get to know what you like more. Be patient and listen to your body instead of the trends, because the only thing that’s going to make you a better skater is you, and you’re going to have to be comfortable in your skates in order to do so. No harm in trying a trend, but pay attention to how YOU feel.

I’m actually really excited, because I just purchased a pair of Heartless Creepers yesterday, and tonight will be my first time skating on them. After having skated for 5 years, I feel confident enough to try a skinny wheel that’s slightly more firm than I’m used to wearing. I’ll keep you posted on how I like them. Best of luck in finding a wheel combo that’s good for you!

You Put Your Left Foot in, You Put Your Left Foot Out

2010-01-12T12:03:00.003-05:00

Shoes: what girl doesn’t love them? I am, of course, no different, however my taste has seemed to change wildly over the years: from sneakers to vintage platforms to heels to platform heels to flats. Yet, there’s one pair of shoes that I’ve always come back to for the past 16 years: a pair of red and black wingtip mary-jane Docs.

There are so many reasons I like these shoes, but until now I haven’t consciously attempted to articulate them. I guess I like them because they just feel right. I wear them pretty much every day to work, and I’ve also been known to wear them with jeans on my day off or with a skirt and tights. No matter what I’m doing or what is going on in my life, these shoes fit, and I love that about them.

Sometimes I don’t take care of them as well as I should. For instance, right now they could really use a polish. I’ve known this for a while, and I’ve meant to do it, but I just haven’t gotten to it.

Sometimes the elastic attaching the buckles wears and breaks, and I’ve gone the remainder of the cool months not ever taking the shoes to get fixed. Sometimes more than a year goes by. Sometimes it’s only several weeks. Over the years, I’ve put $80 of repairs into this pair of $85 shoes. I obviously love them, yet every few years I feel like I should abandon them and find something new – more modern and more like what I think I should be wearing today – but I always come back. Who am I kidding?

Ah, how shoes and derby are so much alike!

This winter I did the same thing with derby as I do to these shoes: I put derby on a shelf and told myself that it was time to get something new – to do something else – but every day was torture.

I didn’t realize until I came back to work from an 11-day vacation (which was preceded by a 14-day vacation three weeks earlier) that derby was my love. Over the past five years I’ve made it through the daily grind by telling myself that it doesn’t matter if I don’t love my job, because I love derby. Then I came back and realized I no longer was doing anything I loved. I made the mistake of mentally trying to put a greater emphasis on my job, but that only made me feel worse. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great job that really uses my talents well, but I don’t love it like I do derby.

The past few months have been torture. I’ve been thinking a lot about other things I want to do in my life (write for $, garden), and it’s hard because I’ve made derby my entire life for close to five years now. I left no room for anything else, and part of me feels like I backed myself into a corner. In a perfect world, I’d win the lottery and not work, but unfortunately life doesn’t work like that. So what else do I have to barter for time? Derby.

I made the decision early this winter to not try out for the All Stars this year. The impetus for this was a winter and spring full of publishing conferences that would have me already traveling once a month and taking up my time on weekends. There’s just no way I can work this, and part of me thought “If I can’t play with the All Stars, then I don’t want to play with anyone”. Luckily, when I tried to quit my home team for the second time last Friday, my captains said “Too bad – we’re keeping you on the roster”. I think it was their second refusal that made me think this was a sign that I need derby in my life. I gave in and decided at that point that I would commit to the 2010 home season. And I’ve been happy about it ever since.

I’m spoiled and I know it. I want everything, and I don’t like being told no, but I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson that I don’t have to view life (or derby) as all or nothing. It’s easy for me to go balls out or retreat completely. My main goal for 2010 is to live a more balanced life, and although I fought against myself for the past few months, I think I’m finally on the right road.

While I spend derby focusing on our home season with Speed Regime, I’m also going to be focusing on doing some other things I’ve wanted to do. This year I want to plant a small garden, and I want to bring several articles and story ideas I’ve started writing, but never really dedicated enough time on, to fruition. And although this is the hardest part, I’m going to try and not feel bad about doing what I ultimately want to do instead of what I think I should do.

Looking at my shoes this morning reminded me that it’s okay to love something that doesn’t always make sense and it’s also okay to put something on the shelf for a while and come back to it after you try something new.

It’s going to be difficult to view a community I’m so used to being a part of from the outside (the All Stars), but I’ve got to know that compromise hurts less than regret. And at least I’ve found a way to work that thing I love back into my life while I continue to grow and find other things I love too.

New Charm City All Star Tattoo Glamor Shots

2009-12-23T09:16:00.007-05:00

Several of us from the 2009 All Stars are getting this tattoo - designed by fellow All Star, Duchess of Torque, and tattooed by Dave Sobel of Baltimore Tattoo Museum:

Lull in the Life of Luxury

2009-12-17T09:47:00.001-05:00

Howdy, folks. Long time, no write – I know. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while then you probably already know that I find it difficult to write in the midst of depressed periods in my life. It’s not that I have writers block or can’t write – it’s more that anything I do write is completely and utterly negative and pessimistic; I can’t seem to find the good in things, and I really don’t want to subject you to that sort of pessimism, since this blog is all about the polar opposite – finding the good in things, finding the strength to push on, and finding that thing inside yourself that allows you to do anything you want to do.

The truth is, I’m tired. Really tired. This past year I led a project at work atypical to my regular job duties, because it had to be done. This meant long days (and sometimes nights), two postponed vacations, and several extra bottles of Ibuprofen for the headaches in addition to the usual derby aches and pains. Speaking of derby aches and pains, as you know, I injured myself idiotically twice in a row at the end of last season. The first injury, a herniated disc in my neck, caused me to have to pull myself off the roster for Regionals two days before the tournament, and the second injury, a severely sprained ankle, immediately followed, as it occurred the very first time I was able to run after I injured my neck. Needless to say, I kept one physical therapist in high demand for over 3 months – good for her.

Looking back on it, I think missing Regionals started this downward spiral. My time off for injuries faded into our short offseason, and for the past 4 months I’ve felt like a failure. After all the pain, all the hard work, all the struggle to get rostered and stay rostered, I watched my end goal for the season slip through my fingers, and there was nothing I could do about it. Then, just when I needed some inspiration, I found it at Nationals, which I decided to attend last-minute. I had a wonderful and inspiring time with my teammates, even though we weren’t skating in the tournament (and it was also nice to be told by some that we should have been), and it was great as always to see my friends from around the country. I was finally on an upswing. Around Thanksgiving, with a stiff but stable ankle, I resumed skating and was thrilled to be doing so. Then came another blow – an indirect blow, but a blow nonetheless. The severity of several family members’ conditions became better known and seemingly more urgent, and from out of nowhere and with no warning, my dog – my best friend and Zen-inspiring running buddy – lost use of his back legs. Although the news about the family members upset me, watching my usually spry and playful dog appear terrified and confused as to why he couldn’t stand broke me into pieces. To make matters worse, in the middle of all this chaos was the due date for making our 2010 intentions known to our captains. Not knowing in what direction I was (am) going to be needed, I had to make the difficult decision to start 2010 as an unrostered skater for both the All Stars and my home team, Speed Regime. I take being on a team seriously, and I don’t want to put my teammates in a position where I’m not completely there physically or mentally. It was like pulling myself off the roster for Regionals all over again.

For the past month I’ve been consumed with panic, worry, anxiety, depression, and guilt. I tried to write about Christmas several nights ago and changed the course of the blog entry three different times, because every road I took pointed to despair; from not being able to get into the Christmas spirit to a cynical view of suburban Christmas celebrations to compromising the trust and beliefs of children and how I think being lied to about Santa may have contributed to my becoming an atheist. I did feel a tiny bit better when J told me there has been a pattern of me becoming depressed and then freaking out just before the holidays each year since my dad passed away. On one hand, I was somewhat relieved. On the other hand I thought, “Great, I’m still suppressing something.”

Yesterday they announced the Q1 All Star charter tryout date, which I couldn’t attend even if I wanted to, because I’m not finished meeting the requirements of my “return from injury” plan. That pretty much sealed the deal – stripped away the last thread of hope that all would soon return to normal. Enter fear and panic that my not being on the Q1 charter will impact my placement on the Q2 charter and future rosters. The funny thing is, I speak about this as if I’m ready to return to derby now, and I’m not. On one hand, I feel like a little extra time off – a derby nap, if you will – would do me some good. On the other hand, I’m motivated by fear to possibly abandon my family sooner than I should just to make that list of 14 – that all-consuming number 14, the BANE OF MY EXISTANCE.

Sometimes I feel guilty for being so torn up about the things going on in my life right now, when I know many, many people have things much, much worse than I do, but this is MY life and these are the people and pets I care about. I deserve to be upset when shit happens to them. Last week I was all but ready to consider taking a year off or retirement. Don’t get me wrong, I was sad at the prospect of either decision, but I was also comforted knowing I wouldn’t be in month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter limbo, which is all I need to improve the anxiety I already have normally. Then I got an email from my home team captain, Terror Izher (a former women’s football player and great skater with natural athletic ability), and she said she and our co-captain had decided to keep me on the roster anyhow, and I was welcome back whenever I was ready. They gave up a top draft pick to keep me on the team, even if I couldn’t skate with them at the beginning (or middle) of the season. I realized then that I wasn’t done for a year or for good. Hearing that very unexpected news lifted my spirits. I had gotten so used to the fierce (and often-times cold) competition for a roster spot on the All Stars that I was surprised at this. It was the first time in a long time that I feel like someone actually stopped and extended a hand.

Where does this leave me now? I’m struggling to remain calm with “I’m not sure”. Over the past week I’ve been dealing with recognizing a need for balance in my life. When shit hit the fan around Thanksgiving my first inclination was to immediately drop everything and throw myself into caretaking. Now, almost a month later, family members’ conditions, while inevitable, have stabilized, and my dog can gingerly walk on all four legs again (for now, at least). He quickly grew used to my coming home from work and immediately staying by his side until I left for work the next morning, so beginning to detach a bit and resume even a semi-normal life has been difficult. A small victory: I did go out and get groceries for the first time since Thanksgiving two nights ago.

My hope is that I can get my shit together – my thoughts, my responsibilities, my routine, and my time – by mid-January so that I can resume strapping on eight wheels and spandex booty shorts and doing that thing that I’m driven to do and that I love so much: skate. (I did wonder what the fuck I was going to do will all my booty shorts and gold lame if I did retire…) My other hope is that I will remain flexible in case I find out more of my time is needed with my family. I want to be happy at home and on the rink. My goal for 2010 is to have fun. I just wanna have fun.

The barrage of obstacles is something I can overcome, but it’s going to take me a bit. Blog posts may be fewer and farther between, but the frequency with which I write will hopefully return to normal as well. Thanks to those of you who sent me notes or chastised me for not updating my blog on Facebook. In the gloomier times I can feel like writing here doesn’t really matter at all, but it’s nice to hear that I’m wrong and that the posts are missed. I had all these notes and plans to write a rollergirl gift guide entry, and then life happened. Is it too late to post something like that? Fuck it even if it is. Look for that entry soon! I love you guys.

Mid-derby Identity Crisis

2009-11-18T14:55:00.001-05:00

Hearing a lot of buzz about the Oly Rollers this past season, I was looking forward to seeing them skate this past weekend at Nationals, but nothing prepared me for the actual outcome of Nationals and how that would affect our community of skaters and leagues after the last bout on Sunday.

Two jams into the Oly/Gotham game, I turned to my teammate Holly Gohardley and said, “Should we just get up and head to the Marriott gym now? Cause I don’t know if we have enough time to prepare to play Oly in April.” Like everyone else in Philly or watching from home, we were stunned and astounded by Oly’s sheer athleticism.

I don’t claim to know much about the Oly Rollers as a league, but I’ve gathered from their website and from other people in the derby community who claim to know what’s what that they are a small league comprised of two traveling teams – an A team and a B team – whose home base is a roller rink in Olympia, Washington. It makes me think back to CCRG’s days at Skateland. The disconnect that arises in my thought process next is that I, for one, had always made the assumption that we would not rise to become a national contender until we had a larger/better venue. It sounds silly now having just typed that out. Why would the size, location, or facilities of the venue where we held bouts even matter when it comes to game play? Along those same lines, what does a high-quality website, sponsors, a professionally-designed program, or a vast media outreach have to do with becoming better skaters? Maybe it doesn’t – but is that still derby?

Like many leagues out there, Charm City faced a crossroads of sorts several years ago when we decided to align ourselves and our goals with becoming a more athletically-minded league – a more competitive league. The decision angered and greatly discouraged some of our skaters who were more in love with the idea of being a group of rollergirls (with the names, the uniforms, and the WWF-mentality) than our league’s idea of being a group of athletes who just-so-happened to be rollergirls. We spent years reconditioning the media in and around Baltimore to stop writing so many “Librarian by day” stories and write more stories about derby as a sport. We focused more on building our Charm City All Stars. We completely redesigned our skater training program. So you might see from this description of our metamorphosis to become athletes that I was rather taken back when a league mate of mine who claimed to know the bare-bones, nothing fancy, just-there-for-the skating mentality of Oly told me that “that’s not roller derby.”

All the while we were growing our skaters back in Charm City, we were also improving our league’s operations as a whole. We moved to a new amazing venue, we landed strategic sponsors, we crafted better merch, and we developed the now exceptionally-high standard we have set for anything artistic that represents our league (website, posters, programs). We’re all really proud of this, like many other leagues who have also worked hard to grow these elements in their leagues that have absolutely nothing to do with athleticism. Or do they?

Modern-day roller derby remains an institution that although we are committed to the idea of “by the skaters, for the skaters”, we are also committed to using the structure that we’ve built to keep the sport going, to grow the sport, and to hopefully finally leave a respectable legacy of derby for generations to come. The structure I’m referring to is all that other stuff that “has nothing to do with athleticism” but that puts butts in seats. By keeping fans coming back, we can finance our dream – a dream that if you had asked any of us would have included and still includes athleticism and love of the sport at the top of the list. Yet there seems to be an undefined definition or an unseen line that marks and explains how the majority of us envision roller derby and how we don’t envision roller derby.

What should roller derby be? We say we want athleticism, but we chose to dedicate at least a portion of our time spent on “derby” to the derby admin that enables all those other things to happen that frame the sport for our audience. If we REALLY wanted this to be about pure athleticism, wouldn’t we say “screw it” to the production and instead spend that extra time practicing?

It’s odd that as a community I have no knowledge of us ever having really considered NOT being as “big” as we are. Several years ago while still growing WFTDA, we were somewhat consumed by not allowing outsiders to step in and make our sport “so commercial”. We live and breathe by this value of being our own owners, yet we’ve never really considered making things easier on ourselves by reducing the fanfare associated with derby. Why?

Now, I know I seem to be going down this road that implies we all say “fuck it” and stop trying so hard to make our leagues and our sport successful in the minds of the public and “shut up and skate,” but you’re wrong. My answer to this is that like everything else in life balance is needed. I don’t think we have to choose between either pure athleticism or derby as most of us know it.

After this weekend there seems to be a slight panic in our community that there’s no way we’ll be able to both keep the spectacle going AND excel in our athleticism, yet without improving upon both at the same time, our sport’s popularity and growth could plateau and our dream could be shattered. I think that by going “big” and not resigning ourselves to flag-football-esque derby, we’re keeping the dream alive and we’re not compromising our values or desires, which may be a longer road to “having it all” – a place where retired-skater admins perpetuate the bigness of our sport and active skaters CAN spend more time focusing on being athletes – but that long road is worth it (in fact, I think it’s the only way we can fulfill our dream), and I think we’re close.

Let’s face it, most of us wouldn’t be playing this sport if it were another attempt at pure spectacle, just like most of us wouldn’t be playing this sport if bouts between really great skaters took place on Wednesday evenings in a church gym. Where derby’s concerned, sport and spectacle are not mutually exclusive – one simply cannot exist without the other, and modern-day roller derby wouldn’t exist without both.

I think we should use the panic as motivation to taking the next step in modern-day roller derby, just like I think I should use the panic to get my ass to the gym more and kick it up a notch, so I don’t have my ass handed to me by someone twice my size in April. This sport’s growing faster than we can keep up with it, and some of us are growing faster than we even realize. I dare say our dream has already come true, but like any athlete, I also know there’s always room for improvement. Who’s ready to do this?

Declaration of Derby: GO!

2009-11-10T18:22:00.001-05:00

In case you need a formal justification to go hang out with your friends and drink beer while watching really good derby this weekend at the WFTDA National Championship in Philly, I’m here to give it to you: watching really good roller derby will make you a better roller derby player. Consider it part of your training program – just like practicing and going to the gym.

According to a November 10th article in the Scientific American, people imitate that which they see (and hear), and if a person watches someone else doing something similar to what he or she already does, his or her network of “mirror” neurons show significantly greater activity than if the person were to watch, say, hockey instead of roller derby – there are strategic similarities, but we play derby, not hockey. So what does this mean, you ask? It means super scientists are really freaking close to being able to tell us for sure that if you want to excel at something, viewing others who already excel will help you imitate the actions that contribute to excelling. And after all, that IS what you want to do, isn’t it?!

When I was a young derby player I could give a rat’s ass about watching other people play roller derby. While my teammates were traveling every-other weekend to go see bouts held by other leagues up and down the East coast, I was doing derby admin and god-knows-what. As time went on, my teammates seemed to get better at playing derby, while I was completely and utterly stagnant. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of factors that played into my stagnacity (yeah, I made that up!), but certainly on that list was my almost refusal to watch other people play. After all, I already spent a huge chunk of my life practicing and playing and another huge chunk building our league and derby in general around the country. I thought I already knew derby, therefore I should be becoming a better player. Wrong. I knew derby the business, not derby the sport.

In a way, suffering sequential shoulder injuries last year was almost a blessing. It caused me to slow down and gave me the opportunity to accidentally see a lot of really good derby that ignited my desire to not only NOT fall behind the skill set of my peers, but also to consciously challenge myself to excel as a derby player – to BECOME a derby player, not just a “rollergirl”.

Watching other people do what you want to do better is fucking exciting, especially if you can personally relate to someone who has those qualities you so desperately want. Many times we make excuses for why we can’t do something, because it’s easier than actually trying. During the time I was frustrated that all my teammates were getting better and I wasn’t, I decided that I was merely too fat to compete – that I would need to lose weight to play derby.

Buddha bless those girls who somehow get past their insecurities faster than the rest of us do, because they serve as our role models in derby and in turn help the rest of us get over ourselves. This weekend I guarantee that you will see someone you can relate to. Maybe she’s way taller than all her teammates, maybe she’s way shorter. Maybe she’s a slight blocker, maybe she’s a bulky jammer. Maybe she’s only 19, or maybe she’s in her 40s. Watching someone else who shares your perceived “flaw” do something amazing is sure to help you shake your excuse and go for the gold.

For the more advanced skaters who aren’t skating this weekend, or who maybe get knocked out early, watching really good derby will give you ideas about how you can improve your game play. Let’s face it, you watch your own team and league skate ALL THE TIME. Because of this, you have limited examples of alternative ways to do things. If you’re lucky, you get to play against or watch your travel team play against other leagues’ teams who are more than likely in your same geographical area. Nationals, however, brings together teams and styles from all over the country. By attending Nationals, you get to see a variety of other proven ways to do things. Some will reinforce why you shouldn’t do something a certain way, while others may give you ideas about new things to try when you get back home.

“Well, I’m not going,” you say, “but I will be watching the bouts over the internet.” Watching bout footage is great, but just like there’s no substitute for watching your favorite band perform in person, there’s also no substitute for watching really amazing derby in person. For one, you’re likely to see your new derby crush in the stands several hours after she’s just played “the best game you’ve ever saw,” and if you have the guts you just might be able to ask her something about her game play. Can you do that from home? No. No, you can’t. Secondly, if you’re viewing from home you’re totally missing out on the vibe from the crowd, and that’s just a bummer. Third, well, I’ll be there. C’mon, it’s Philly – you know I wouldn’t miss this being only 2 hours away! Seriously, if you’re there and you see me, say “hi” and give me some feedback on the direction you’d like to see me take this blog. I’ve got a couple of ideas for 2010, but they require audience participation. And, if you buy me a beer (or four), I might just turn into my evil, touchy twin: Cindy Grope-her. Not everyone likes Cindy Grope-her, but most people do. Just know that by purchasing me a beer you are agreeing to not hold me liable for any touching or fondling that may ensue. Beer purchase is not a guarantee of touching; if you are creepy, you will not be touched.

On that note, I’m off to do some laundry for this weekend – I can’t wait to see all of you in Philly!

Cats aren’t the Only Ones with 9 Lives

2009-11-05T08:57:00.000-05:00

In everyday life, most of us learn from our mistakes. We do something resulting in an unfavorable outcome, and we learn quickly to not do that thing again – unless, of course, that thing is an injury resulting from derby.

I have family and friends who look at me with awe and amazement when they hear of yet another derby or athletic-related injury. What they say is usually something to the effect of, “Wow, you really are dedicated,” but I know what they’re really thinking is more along the lines of, “Wow, you really are fucking crazy.”

I’ve always been accident prone, and I’ve never quite done the smartest of things. When I was about 8 I had a series of foot injuries due to wearing jelly shoes while riding my bike. When I panicked, I wouldn’t use the bike brakes for some reason – I would use my feet like Fred Flintstone – and I panicked quite often going by the house of my friend whose hot brother made me, well, panic. Slamming my feet to the ground, I would tear right through a pair of jelly shoes as if they were big pink erasers disintegrating on mistake-ridden spelling homework. I would come home with the nastiest foot wounds and repeatedly tear open the thin skin on the inside of the ball of my foot – just below my big toe. I played soccer then too, and I remember my dad trying everything to keep the scabs from turning to a layer of yellow puss that would rip off during each practice or game, making me start from scratch with the healing process. I don’t know how I played like that, and I have no recollection of it hurting or keeping me from playing, but I digress (as usual).

Speaking of feet, two months is an appropriate amount of time for a rollergirl to lose all her carefully crafted calluses. Last night was my first night back in skates since September 6, and my candy-coated exterior was nowhere to be found (boo!). But that’s not the point here. The point is that I GOT BACK ON SKATES!

My physical therapist has been telling me for the past week that I may be ready to try out skating again, but I’ve been understandably doubtful that I really am ready. I know she’s seen derby before, but I don’t think she knows just how much the ankle is involved in cutting and other quick moves. Regardless, I’ve been bored as hell at home, so I decided that I’d show up and just noodle around. Then, at least, I’d have a good idea about where I am with regards to being able to skate again. I made it through an hour and a half of skating (and about 20 minutes of warm-up time on my own before the actual practice started). I didn’t jump, and I didn’t do any contact (coming off injury, I have to do 2 practices no contact, 2 contact, and then I can scrimmage again), but as time went on, I could actually feel my ankle joint loosen up, which was a good feeling. Then, I did something stupid on the carpet, trying to show a fresh meat skater an exercise she could do at home to mimic the intensity of sprawls and falls, and it was all over for the night, which was actually fine because I didn’t really know what the outcome would be anyway.

I cannot tell you how good it felt just to be out there on the hardwood with two of my teammates, Holly and Terror, warming up and bullshitting before practice started. THAT is a big part of what I have missed: telling Holly she’s an asshole and listening to Terror bitch that she hasn’t been on skates in a week (I’m only talking about Holly being an asshole here out of pure love, because I know she reads this. Hi, Holly!). Being there felt good – really good. At one point, I stopped and thought about what I’ve been doing during this time while healing at home. My goal was to use practice time to write several large articles I’ve been planning and submit them to some magazines, but instead I sit on the sofa with the dog and watch crappy network television by myself. “I could be here instead,” I thought, “There’s really no other place I’d like to be.”

I guess I really have found my thing. I joke with Lady Quebeaum that we’re “lifers” – no matter what we do or how burnt out we get, we can’t stay away from derby. I’m beginning to think there’s some real truth in my jest. I’ve been injured significantly enough (albeit not all from derby) that I’ve been off-skates now 5 times during my 5-year derby career: PCL tear, right AC joint, left AC joint, herniated disk in my neck, and sprained ankle. And this list doesn’t include the other minor injuries that haven’t kept me off skates, like a tailbone break, rib fracture, cartilage tear between my ribs, pulled hamstring, pulled groin, various foot and back pains and cramps, and that insane knot on my lower leg that still hasn’t gone away and that the doc said after viewing my ankle X ray looks like a now-healed hairline fracture that I skated on all last season.

Even the most seasoned skaters might ask me, “Isn’t that enough?” I guess not. I’ve come to terms with my inability to plan any sort of “retirement” from derby. Each year I think it could be my last, but then I’m just not ready to leave, so I don’t. Bottom line: I’m going to continue to skate as long as I want to skate, and I’m not done yet.

This morning I woke up, expecting to be greeted by a swollen, sore ankle, but instead the usual morning stiffness I experience was nowhere to be found – neither was the swelling. I’ve been having problems getting the fluid cleared from the joint, and I’m wondering if skating last night didn’t actually help it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no position right now to jump back in head first – I can’t make quick maneuvers and I’m scared to lock wheels with anyone because my ligaments are still in pain – but I think I’m on the road to recovery.

There’s a white board at my office on which someone wrote “Interesting facts”. One of the facts was: cats have nine lives. Standing a little taller and walking with a somewhat larger stride this morning, I grabbed a marker and added my own fact: Rollergirls ALSO have 9 lives. By my count, I’m on my 6th, and I have a feeling number 6 is going to be a good one!

Great Expectations

2009-11-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

We all experience times if life where we’re met with the unexpected.

I grow anxious relying on other people, because there’s just no guarantee that things are going to happen the way I’d like them to happen, yet over this past year I’ve been trying to make amends with my intense need to control everything around me. I’ve been relying more on others to carry the load and make decisions that once consumed my time, knowing that things might not always get done the way I would do them, but they will get done nonetheless. The results of this in my professional life have been pretty good. My time has been largely freed up so that I can manage the big picture, while leaving the details and the mechanism with which we arrive at attaining our overall goals to people with whom I work (I’m a Project Manager). Derby? That’s another story entirely.

Sometimes (okay, many, many times) I get frustrated that my natural abilities lie more with things like building budgets than with being an excellent derby player. I mention budgeting only because it’s something I just finished doing that I did incredibly fast and well. When my boss complimented my mad budgeting skills, I was thrilled, but then my thoughts immediately turned to longing for that same type of praise with my performance as a skater. It just doesn’t come natural to me.

Much like I take being able to build a budget for granted, I’m sure many skaters out there who have natural skating and athletic ability take their position on a roster for granted. Not me. It’s an anxiety-ridden nightmare in the weeks leading up to roster selection for an All Star bout. I get sick to my stomach each month, hoping and praying that I’m playing well enough to stay at the bottom of the roster. It seems no matter how hard I try, I’m just mediocre, so I follow the rules of being rostered prior to each game, hoping the skill I’ve shown at practice and my attendance and attitude will win me a spot on the roster. The days leading up to our captains’ selection are filled with my constant comparison of myself to other skaters in a similar position as me. Did they make attendance? How are they playing? What could they have over me that would make them rostered and me not? Then, once the roster comes out or the plane tickets are purchased, I breathe a sigh of relief and can then just focus on playing derby instead of competing for a spot to play derby.

But the “rules” of being rostered, as I know them and as I alluded to above, are not always followed. After really good performance at home against Philly, I was totally amped to travel to Chicago and play Windy City – a team I’ve wanted a piece of for a while. I had been feeling good about my ability and comfortable in my position for the first time all season. Now, with one game left I could get out on the track and just do my thing with my ladies. Or maybe not. Completely blindsided, I was told 15 minutes before we left for the venue that I wouldn’t be playing in the game. Confused as hell, because I thought I was just starting to excel, I was told that with this being our last game before regionals, our captains needed to be able to see if several other skaters were prepared for the level of game play we would face at regionals. It wasn’t because I was sucking – it was because they were confident that I could play at that level after watching me play against Philly. After a period of disbelief in this reasoning, I got really upset. I followed the rules, I worked hard, and the reward for that is being rostered – getting to play. Only this time it wasn’t. I felt completely jipped! And if I wasn’t going to play, why the hell did they bring me to Chicago?! What was a really great trip instantly turned to shit, and if I could have afforded to buy another plane ticket fly home right then, you better believe that I would have.

Then there’s the perception of others… I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t care what other people think about me in derby. I do. And everyone else knows the unwritten rules of being rostered just as well as I do, which means assumptions would be made, and I’m sure they were made.

Back to natural talent. If I had natural skating ability like many women I know, I wouldn’t have ever been placed in this situation. The same can’t be said for budgeting. If you’re not a natural at budgeting, there is no horrible consequence that evokes a strong emotional reaction. Sure, maybe you have to spend more time redoing the budget, but it’s not like there’s a chance you don’t get paid because someone else in another department can budget better than you. And work doesn’t make me emotional. Derby, on the other hand, makes me incredibly emotional. Why? I actually think I’d enjoy derby a hell of a lot more if I cared a whole lot less about it, but therein lies the catch 22: I’m simply not naturally talented enough to care about it less and still be able to play well. My emotional health could be good, but I’d never get rostered.

I train out of fear. I try out of fear. Sure, I want to get better, but my biggest derby motivator is fear, and I don’t know how to change that. Thing is, I’m so freaking tired of living in fear of not being rostered each month – SO TIRED. What do I do to change this? How do I find some sort of balance that makes me less crazy in the head yet still in the running for a roster spot? If anyone out there knows, this girl would love to be hit over the head with a hint.

I’ve evolved a lot over the last three seasons. I went from the really fucked up mindset of “I’ve been here since the beginning, so I deserve a spot on the roster” and completely not giving derby my all to knowing it’s not about who you are or how long you’ve played – it’s about how good you are, and if you want to compete, you have to be good enough to compete, so now I do give it my all. I suppose I can’t be all that upset – I did accomplish many of my personal goals I set for last season: I made the All Stars and played in bouts against top-ranked teams. I still just want to be better so I can get out from under the stress associated with being at the bottom of the roster.

It’s difficult not to go into anything without expectations, and it’s especially difficult not to have expectations for something you’ve been involved with for so long, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned this past season, it’s that it’s foolish to have expectations that allow you to be set up for misery. Loving derby in the long term is like loving a long-term partner who always keeps you on your toes. After a while you grow to expect things to be a certain way, but they aren’t always like that. Turns out you need your partner more than your partner needs you. At times it can be a shitty relationship to be in, but you keep going back to derby because the allure is like nothing you’ve ever experienced, and although you often get hurt by it, you still can’t imagine you life without it. At least that’s how I feel.

Pussy(cat) Calling

2009-10-21T20:46:00.008-04:00

I get cat called all the time. Am I special? There are certainly some people in this world who have that certain something about them – I’ve always thought Buzz Kill was one of these people. Me? I’m fairly certain I’m not, yet I still get cat-called and hit on more than a major league baseball. Sure, it’s flattering, but over time I’ve come to believe it’s just another charming characteristic of Charm City. My boyfriend has a theory that the men in this town hit on every attractive woman they see, because it’s merely a game of numbers. If you hit on 10 women a day, 7 days a week, out of those 70 women at least one or two should be willing to take the bait, right? I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a good strategy for getting laid, because you waste a lot of time and effort, but it is a strategy nonetheless and one countless men in Baltimore subscribe to.

Yesterday on my lunch break I tweeted: “Shamelessness hath no boundaries; I just got cat-called by some guy in his car as I was walking down the street in Towson.”

I kind of caught some shit for using the word “shame” and then decided I couldn’t say enough on this topic in a 140-character tweet or a Facebook comment reply, so I’d write a blog about it – a novel idea and something I haven’t done in far too long (I have Facebook set to automatically publish my tweets as status updates – a glorious invention for people like me who have diarrhea of the keyboard but not the time to update 47 different social networking statuses).

Here’s the deal: I’m not being hit on in bars or at social events. In fact, I never get hit on where you’d think I get hit on. Instead, I get hit on by people in places and situations that seem destined for failure. Yesterday, it was by a man in his car, driving through the business district of a suburban yuppie Mecca, stopped briefly by a red light. What’s the best case scenario here? I drop what I’m doing and get in? How often does that happen?

(No fucking joke, as I was typing that last sentence while sitting here in the car-dealership waiting area for my oil change to be complete, I was hit on: “I wish I could type like that, baby. Damn, you type good.” Seriously? Well, at least I know he has a car…)

Not too long ago while running at the Lake I had a man ask me if he could tell me “how good I look in those sweatpants.” One time I had to change grocery stores because the fish guy would follow me around, and then when he finally stopped working there another employee approached me in the candy aisle, asking if I’d “get him something sweet if he asked real nice.” A cop followed me home from work one afternoon, only to stop in front of my house once I got out of my car to ask me a question that’s popular around these parts: “are you married?” My all-time favorite incident, however, occurred at a mini mart. It was a nice summer day, and while we were both inside, this guy started with the “hey baby you look good” and proceeded to try to convince me to come hang out with him. When I got in the car, I noticed him parked beside me – on a mini-bike the size of a large house cat! How the fuck did he expect me to fit on there with him?! I can appreciate the effort, but part of me also wants to scold some of these gentlemen for writing a check with their mouth that their ass can’t cash.

I usually respond to these cat calls and drive-by hittings on one of two ways: I ignore them all together or I say “thank you” and leave it at that. However, over the past day I’ve really been pondering fun and unexpected responses I can pull out of my ass the next time someone wants to tell me just how good I look in my sweatpants. On one hand, I might as well come up with some witty replies, because I’m engaged by strangers like this on the regular. On the other hand, I am taken, and I don’t want to lead anyone on or get into an awkward conversation about why I’m refusing to give out my phone number. What I’ve come up with could both be fun and a sociological experiment: a business card with a link to a brief survey designed to find out the motivation behind the solicitation.

Stranger: “Damn, girl, you really know how to wait in line at the grocery store for your prescription. I like your hair. You married?”

Me: “Check out my website.”

Naturally, they assume I’m buck naked on it – hey, whatever gets them to the survey. I only need one survey respondent for every ten people I hand the card to in order to be statistically relevant (damn, girl, you’re smart and shit too). But am I really going to have enough people to whom I can distribute the cards? People, whatever you’ve heard about Alaska is wrong – they may have five men to every one woman up there, but your ass will get hit on more in Baltimore than anywhere else in the world. I’ve since left the car dealership, and on my 2-mile drive home I was hit on in traffic while at a light. It’s not called Charm City for nothing.

Survey results or no survey results, cards or no cards, I really do appreciate the feedback of strangers, because their methods keep me in a constant state of surprise and amusement; each cat call like a really fucked up greeting card, each line like a different amateur song lyric. Some days I may be caught by surprise more than others, but I’m not aggravated. It’s actually quite fun.

Moving Forward

2009-10-08T13:49:00.000-04:00

After a month of sulking, eating candy at night like it’s my second job, and reading a handful of articles about unconscious self-sabotage, I’ve come to the revelation that there may be no resolution as to why I fucked myself up so much in the month of September, rendering myself unable to attend Regionals, finish my home season, or just exercise like a normal person. As of late, several things have become apparent to me: I’ll never know why this happened, so I should stop fixating on it, and this self-deprecating environment I’ve vacationed in for the last month is about as useful as keying one’s own car (which, coincidentally I did back in college one drunken night to “see how it would feel to have your car keyed”). It’s time to move on.

Derby has been my outlet for nearly 5 years, and when it hasn’t been my outlet, running has. Rendering myself unable to do either has been extremely difficult, but I have learned a thing or two from being in this situation.

First, although it does about 80% of the time, derby should not define me. I’ve let this happen, and I live a very unbalanced life because of it. Just like you shouldn’t let your job define who you are, you shouldn’t let your hobby do that either. If you let your job define you and then you get laid off, you lose yourself; if you let derby define you and then you cannot skate, you lose yourself also. Although derby’s a big part of my life, I need to pull back and make sure I’m not using it as a crutch for not doing other things. For instance, over the past few weeks I’ve been panicking at the idea of no longer skating (even though I plan on skating next year). When I was finally able to get to the bottom of “why”, it was because I’m afraid that I won’t be as successful at anything else as I have been in derby, which, when I really thought about it was really disturbing, because I’m not even a “great” skater. I work my ass off to be mediocre on my travel team. I do derby because I love it, but I don’t not do derby because I’m scared not to. I need to evaluate what other things I want to accomplish in life, and if next season is the last for me, then I need to be prepared to use the same fierce attitude I have with derby with whatever else I choose to pursue.

Second, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Being mildly non-ambulatory is no excuse to give up the things that I say I love, like exercise. After weeks of whining to myself that I couldn’t skate or run, so I couldn’t do anything to stay in shape, a friend of mine popped into my mind as I was strapping on my air cast one morning. This friend has had chronic medical problems since birth, wasn’t expected to live past childhood, and has even landed himself in critical condition in the hospital several times since we met over ten years ago. He, too, uses something like an air cast (a leg brace), only he uses a brace on both legs every single day of his life. He’s also one of the buffest motherfuckers I know. He technically can’t run or skate either, and he has the further disadvantage of having a brace on both legs, so why the hell can’t I think outside of the box and employ strategies other than skating or running to keep my physical fitness in check? There’s no reason I couldn’t have done pushups and crunches and all sorts of upper-body exercises while I was on crutches. I’m currently at the point where I can use the stationary bicycle at PT, which means I could use one at the gym too. I need to start incorporating movement I can do back into my life, so I’m no longer a prime-time zombie with a part-time candy-eating job.

Third, it’s easy to stay in a slump, but there’s no good reason to do so. I could continue to beat myself up about being a couch-surfing laffy-taffy hog, but what does that do aside from encourage me to perfect my ass-groove and hate myself even more than I did the day before? For some reason I lingered in this state way longer than I typically have, and I don’t know why, but it’s time to put those ways aside and resume enjoying life and respecting myself.

Fourth, I need to learn to adapt to the unexpected inconveniences in life. This past month proved to me that I need to be more flexible in how I do things and how I feel about doing things that may be different than I’m used to. Just because I can’t do 100% what I want doesn’t mean I should do nothing at all. I’m a pretty selfish person. I have no kids, I have a good job, and I pretty much do what I want when I want and how I want, so you can see how having to adapt how I do things could throw a monkey wrench in my mental expectations of how things should be. This need for flexibility without emotional turmoil is actually something I learned from my mom. The day I sprained my ankle, we planned to go out for my birthday and I was so upset that our plans were ruined. My mom’s casual response of “that’s life – just deal with it and move on” seemed very out of character to me at the time, but I eventually realized that she has probably learned the hardest way there is that life doesn’t always go as planned, so you’ve just got to roll with the punches – no use in letting things out of our control upset us.

So, it’s time to move forward. Skating’s still out of the question for 6 weeks or so, and by then we’ll be in the middle of our off-season break anyhow, so I’m just going to plan on coming back in January like everyone else taking a break. I’ll run when I can, and I’ll try not to push it (risking re-injury, which would be a royal bitch). In the meanwhile, I’ll walk and maybe do the bike at the gym. I’ll try and stick to my original goal of using time I would have spent at practices during the off-season to write. And perhaps most importantly, I won’t obsess over or dwell on why things happen or what if other things happen in the future (like immediate re-injury of my neck or ankle once I’m back on skates). And as for that part-time candy-eating job, I’m resigning just as soon as I get home this evening – wish me luck, because you know how hard it is for me to give up responsibility.

Yours Truly Reviews Whip It

2009-10-02T09:58:00.000-04:00

Check out my movie review in Gutter Magazine.

Shit Happens... Sometimes Sequentially

2009-10-01T22:40:00.001-04:00

To say I’ve had writer’s block lately would be an understatement. In fact, not only have I been unable to put pen to paper in any logical manner, but I’ve also been unable to form much of a cohesive thought that didn’t involve my pure frustration or anger for this end-of-season plagues of injuries. That’s right, I said injuries – as in plural, multiple injuries.

After 3 weeks of being unable to do much of anything because of the herniated neck disk, I was finally feeling good enough on Saturday to ignore my physical therapist’s orders and go for a run. Running clears my head, and after no more than a quarter mile, I was finally thinking straight and could articulate in my mind why I had been in such a panic about not being able to skate or run for an indefinite amount of time. Then it hit me – not another profound thought, the ground. I was so engrossed in thought, almost at a dead sprint, when I rolled my foot in the pothole I never saw coming. Fuck, not again. Just as soon as I was again beginning to feel alive – head cleared, lungs burning – POOF! Right back where I was: condemned to my fucking sofa and horrible Wednesday-night fucking television. Fuck.

Unable to put weight on it as I got up from the ground, I sat on the curb and looked down at my incredibly-inflating ankle, trying to assess the practicality of the situation. The lake is 1.3 miles around, and I was approximately .75 miles from my car in either direction. I couldn’t put weight on it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to crawl back with dog in tow. “This can’t be happening,” I thought. I scrambled to call J to come get me.

I thought I broke it, because it looked a lot like the lower-leg breaks I’ve seen first hand in derby. It was instantly profoundly swollen – nearly twice the size of my other ankle. I had visions of an overnight stay in the hospital, surgery, and hardware – the trifecta that so many of my teammates have had to face over the years. There was no chance of denying the severity of whatever had just happened because it looked fucking scary. The instant physical deformity made any hope of a quick recovery seem as foolish as hoping Santa would come the year after you found out he didn’t exist. After the neck injury and the whole missing Regionals, I was grasping at straws though, wanting nothing more than to “get back to normal”, which apparently is just not in the cards for me right now.

Before I bit it in the pothole I realized that I was angry and depressed not because my active lifestyle was briefly interrupted, but because I’m terrified that with each passing day that I cannot skate or run I will be one step closer to reverting back to that person I was five years ago – the rollergirl who wanted to be called a rollergirl, but who didn’t really want to have to do anything too difficult or athletic in order to look cool, the person who was so out of shape and in poor health that she was on medication to lower her blood pressure, the girl with the pretty face who had such poor self-esteem that she couldn’t even see that, well, at least she had a pretty face even if she didn’t have the body to match. Yes, I’m terrified that like an ex-junkie I’ll relapse into a junk-food filled sedentary lifestyle, and by the time I am able to resume the active lifestyle I’ve grown to love, I’ll no longer have the desire to do so.

With previous injuries, I’ve used my time off-skates to be sure I’m extra cautious about eating right, so my body is as prepared as it can be when I have clearance to resume derby. Not this time. September 8th marked the beginning of the binging that has not stopped. I’m so terrified about what I’m going to do to myself that it’s even crossed my mind to retire from derby now, in order to save face in 2 months when I’m so out of shape that I can’t keep up with my teams. I realize this thought is a ridiculous one, and I also realize that by having it, I’m giving myself permission to fail, and that scares the shit out of me.

The good news is that I now know what I’m afraid of, which means I can take steps to keep my fears from becoming a reality. Exactly how remains to be seen, but I’ll figure it out.

The ankle is sprained, not broken, and I’ve already gotten off the crutches, into an air cast, and started some very painful physical therapy to help it heal faster and more completely (apparently after you sprain an ankle it’s very easy to do it again). I’m quickly becoming good friends with everyone at the Sports Medicine clinic, since I’m now there nearly every day for either my neck or my ankle. Booking new appointments, however, is like reciting “Who’s on First” with the person behind the desk who can’t get that although I was just there for my neck, I need to make more appointments for my ankle. But I’m patient. Let’s face it, I have the time and there’s no reason to be an asshole.

“Everything happens for a reason,” is something I’ve heard more times than I can shake a stick at. Does it really? Cause right now I’m feeling more of a “Shit Happens” vibe. I’m not ready for the nice-and-tidy happy blog wrap-up quite yet, so you’re gonna have to wait for that just a little bit longer. Perhaps we can learn together that patience is a virtue.

Derby Body Image Survey

2009-09-22T09:15:00.003-04:00

Hey, ladies of derby!

Kiddo from Arch Rival Roller Girls is collecting skater-imput regarding body image for an essay. You can help her out by filling out the survey here.

Here's an excerpt from my final answer to the survey:

"Secretly, I think people want to believe that fat can still be fit and they want a hero that's "imperfect" (like them), but it's rare to see normal people excelling at something in the spotlight, and derby does provide the venue for anyone to shine."

2009: Going out with a... Slow Hiss?

2009-09-21T12:32:00.002-04:00

Well, it’s been a good long while since I’ve written last, and I’ve honestly been dreading coming back on here. Four days before Eastern Regionals I woke up in a shit-ton of pain, completely unable to move my head. I quickly found out it was a herniated disk and pinched nerve that would cause me to miss the trip to Carolina with my team. Oh yeah, and it was also my birthday. Happy birthday to me – injured again.

The neck injury didn’t necessarily come from derby. The docs say it could have been a long-time coming and virtually anything could have triggered it. I had been sailing the day before when a storm unexpectedly popped up. I’m a rather inexperienced sailor and was at the helm at the time. We went from 5 knots to 12 in two seconds, and everyone on the deck was thrown to one side of the boat, including me.

Set to be leaving for Carolina on Thursday, I didn’t tell my team about my neck until Tuesday night. Part of me had managed to hold out hope that my neck would miraculously correct itself and I’d wake up one day soon just fine, but after several days of being unable to look left and right before I crossed the street I realized that if I couldn’t turn my head, there was no way in hell I could play derby. Driving home from work, I called LQ crying. I begged her not to say anything to anyone else on the team, because in the teeny-tiny chance I woke up fine tomorrow, I didn’t want to be benched because my captains had heard about it. After several more hours of internal debate about what I could do and what I should do, and after about an hour hiding under the covers, I got up and emailed my team the news – I wouldn’t be joining them at Regionals. It may have been the single most difficult self-regulatory decision I’ve ever had to make as an adult.

Everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish this year was just building up to this. My goal was to play in Regionals with my team, yet somehow knowing I would have played had I not been injured is not the same as actually playing. I took a tiny bit of comfort in my teammates’ well wishes and encouragements to “get better so you can play with us at Nationals!” Then on Sunday all of our dreams were smashed, as we lost to Boston and were rejected a trip to Nationals. Fuck.

It’s true that I’m heartbroken that we won’t be making it to Nationals – and not just for selfish reasons – but what’s worst of all is that I have this overwhelming feeling of having unfinished business. I’m not ready for our season to be over. I want more. I want to play more! I’m not the only one, I know.

This past Saturday was the 1st bout my mom has attended since my dad died, and it killed me not to skate. On Friday night I had 2 glasses of wine, and convinced I was invincible, I sent a text to both my captains and our bench coach telling them that I would be playing tomorrow. I had to rescind that offer early Saturday morning when reality again set in. They all want me to rest up for our championship bout, but I realized this morning after traction as I was laying in a dark room with a heating pad that smelled like a foot around my neck that the championship bout is 4 weeks away, and I can’t so much as think about getting back on skates for another 3 weeks. Double fuck. I haven’t told my team yet…

So, that’s it. Without fanfare, without a trip to Regionals or Nationals, and without being able to even finish out my home season, my 2009 season has ended. Done.

I know what I need to do is take inventory of how much actual progress I have made since January, but I just can’t right now. I think I need to have my little depressed fit, I need to cry, and I may even need to throw things (without twisting or making any motions that would compress my spine, of course). God, I hate being injured.

I’ll get over this soon, and then I’ll really be able to reflect on the progress I made this season. Stay tuned.

Going Away to Windy City

2009-08-28T19:13:00.000-04:00

Going Away for Windy City

The woman on my left has a bad case of the tofu farts - you know, the brand of vegetarian fart that smells the way I envision hot rubber would smell. Not tire rubber, but the kind of rubber that condoms are made out of - latex, I suppose.

The man on my rght is worse than the woman on my left, only because the frequency with whch I smell the stench eminating from his filthy mouth is mere seconds apart with each exhale. I can only describe the smell of this man as 'dirty teeth'. You know how if you haven't flossed in a while and you dislodge something you somehow missed there's a smell of rotting food mixed with the worst case of halitosis ever? That's what I smell with every exhale of my travel mate - every 5 seconds.

What's worse, these smells are makng me have to concentrate very hard to not throw up right here. And here's the kicker, if I puke, I think United Airlines is gonna call the police to pick me up at the gate. Before takeoff, Rosie the Rioter was inquiring about the empty row ahead of me. She and I are both riding bitch on this flimsy piece of shit plane, yet we are not allowed to sit in the empty seats because they are 'premium economy' seats that, if they had been sold, people sitting there would have paid extra for. After noticing Rosie arguing across the aisle with the flight attendant, I take off my head phones to join in with the fun.

"You mean no one can EVER sit there during this flight," I ask. "What if someone were to get sick and puke all overhimself or his neighbor - the person wouldn't even be moved then, to get the other passengers away from the puke?"

"No," the attendant said. "We'd get something for you to help clean yourself up where you're sitting."

"Really," I ask. "Even if you puke???"

"Are you feeling sick?"

"Not particularly, but I might."

Time passes and the attendant is packing up the cabin by me agian, when Rosie starts back with him. I can't hear what she's saying, but I then feel a tap on my head from behind me. It's Minnie Piledriver and someone else passing me their barf bags. I can hear Dolly yelling up from several rows back, "You can have mine too if you need it!"

I pull out my earbuds and notice the attendant looking at me with a face full of "am I gonna have to clean up puke in Chicago or are these bitches fucking with me?".

"Are you feeling all right," he asks me.

"Im fine," I reply. I give him a look I would have given my mother or a teacher had I been 3 instead of 30 and having done something wrong.

My teammates bust out laughing all around me. I hear someone in the back of the plane ask what's going on and a response regarding them passing me barf bags because I'm not allowed to sit in the 'premium' row in front of me that's empty. The attendant is not amused, but luckily the woman sitting beside Rosie is. He leaves, annoyed with our adolescent antics - my two travel buddies making the bread of the lop-her sandwich look scared - real scared. I don't say anythng to put them at ease, because I can already smell the garbage can mouth stench and I can't yet tell who it's coming from. I now know - the one on my right.

Sweet Jesus this plane ride cannot end soon enough! My only comfort is knowing this thing should land pretty soon, and if I do puke, stank-ass to my right appears to be wearing the Dockers pants that are stain resistant, so I probably won't bother him as much as he's been bothering me, even if I do puke on him.

I've finished my can of gingerale - holy crap, he just yawned!!! Almost lost it there... I've finished my can of gingerale, and I think the plane is descending. Jesus, I promise I'll never intentionally fuck with another flight attendant again if you get me through this. I'll be good, Ill go to church. Well, I won't fuck with another flight attendant again - isn't that good enough?!

The condoms are again warm and saturating my breathing area. Does anyone know how to make one of those masks come down?

Thank You, Mr. Photog!

2009-08-25T11:25:00.006-04:00

photo by dennis_l&t's_dad (Flickr)

Before this season started, I stated somewhere that one of my goals was to come away with at least one good action shot of myself. Since then, there's actually been a couple good actions shots taken of me, but the series above from Saturday's bout against Philly's Liberty Belles is FREAKING AWESOME!!!

Now, before you chastise me for that elbow (which I got sent to the penalty box for on a major), let me explain how I think this series validates my execution of a near perfect block.

The block I was landing here is a lean block, where my ass is supposed to be behind the other skater, my shoulder is supposed to be in front of the other skater, my foot is supposed to be in front of the other skater's foot and in front of her, and I'm supposed to be pushing with my right leg while my thigh, hip, and ribs are making contact to push the other skater out of bounds. I had perfect form! Except for that elbow, which I'll come back to later...

I have STRUGGLED with form ever since I knew I had played 3 years with bad form. It is so much harder to unlearn bad habits than it is to create new good habits, so this past year has been frustrating and difficult for me. That being said, I am so happy to see a photo of myself where I have good form!!!

Now, for the elbow. I'll tell you now that I'm an idiot. I knew while I was executing that block that it was my shoulder and core that were moving her, not my elbow, but my arm is bent, and I can see how it looks like I'm elbowing the jammer. However, if you look at the progression, my elbow is the same in all four shots. I wasn't chicken-winging, I wasn't jabbing, it was just bent. And I always had contact with another part of my body. That said, I've also learned a lesson here to straighten my arm and perhaps move it out of the way, so I don't get sent to the box again for having my arm bent.

I know some of you will disagree with the elbow, and that's cool. You have to admit, though, these are some pretty bad-ass shots!

This Saturday: Windy City...

Azaleas & Fishing Poles

2009-08-23T20:19:00.002-04:00

The first time I recall ever seeing an Azalea bush and learning what it was, I was sitting in the center-seat of a Ryder moving truck, about to pull away from our house in Mississippi, when just as my dad released the emergency break, our landlord’s car squealed into the driveway and blocked us in. As I tried to ignore the argument in front of the truck, I looked to my left – a line of Azalea bushes that I had never noticed before. “What type of flowers are those,” I asked my mom. “Azaleas,” she said. The next thing I remember, I was waking up in Maryland as we pulled into the driveway of the house of my paternal grandparents, whom I had never met. Three months later, with nowhere to go, they kicked us out of their house.

Last week was a typical week. I worked, I skated, I worked a whole lot more, and then I skated some more. In between all the work and skating, I was especially disturbed each time I read the news or turned on the television. The top story here in Baltimore last week was the assault of a local black fisherman by a self-proclaimed white supremacist and two juveniles while his wife looked on. After work and before practice or after practice and before work the next morning, my boyfriend and I had the same discussion each time we heard about the incident again on the local news: if we had been there, what would we have done? Would we have said something? Stepped in? We knew we hoped that if we’d been there we’d have done something to stop the horror of what happened.

On Thursday I was talking with my coworker about her need for more regular exercise. I offered to take her to my gym the following morning, and (gasp!) my ass actually made it up and there by 6am, a feat I haven’t accomplished in quite some time. As I was running on the treadmill, listening to my new workout mix and reading the captioning on the array of televisions ahead of me, I again saw the news story and I again became utterly disgusted. “I wish I could do something for that family,” I thought. Only this time that thought was followed by an idea: “I think I CAN do something for that family!”

As soon as I showered and got to the office I typed up an email to our league and posted a poll: Do you approve of donating 5% beer sales from tomorrow’s bout and giving a $150 gift card to the victims of the recent hate crime? Do you approve of collecting donations at the bout? And it began.

Emails flooded back replying to my post. In a matter of minutes we were preparing radio copy and emailing the Baltimore Sun reporter who broke the story. Within two hours we were writing a press release, designing a PayPal donation button to place on our website, and making plans to make DIY spray-painted ERACISM tees to give away at the bout. Three hours later we got a call from the mayor’s office who wanted to present us with a community service recognition award, and they weren’t even on the press-release list. It was a good thing I had planned to take off work Friday at noon, because almost immediately there was a lot to do!

Facebook posts, emails, phone calls, and a shit-ton of art supplies consumed Friday night. I could hardly sleep. I was so nervous that we wouldn’t raise a respectable amount of money to donate to the family, and I really wanted us to be able to make a difference. That, and I was so overwhelmed by pride for my league and the amount of support and hard work that so many ladies put into making this fundraiser happen, and happen successfully. It still blows my mind, thinking about what we pulled off in only a matter of hours. The next day, the bout.

The next morning I almost forgot I would be skating against Philly’s Liberty Belles that night, because I was so worried about making the fundraiser “perfect”. When I realized this was happening, I asked myself why this fundraiser had become all consuming. We’ve done fundraisers for charitable organizations before, but somehow this was different. Maybe it’s because the need was tangible – because I’d seen the couple who was assaulted on the news twice a day for the last 3 days – I don’t know. I do know we all became incredibly driven like we’ve never been before, and it paid off.

Last night we raised $2,000 for the Privott family. We’ll be leaving the PayPal button up on our website through this coming Friday, and we’re hoping to raise another $1,000 by the time we close donations. Our goal? To show this family more love this week than they had seen hate. Love can’t be measured in dollars, but I hope the dollars will help.

There’s something else that’s been on my mind throughout this whole ordeal: I really hope Mr. Privott is able to continue fishing. On Friday when I proposed the fundraiser to our league, I posed the question: Can you imagine packing up your skates and pads after practice, only to be attacked with a sledgehammer because of what you looked like?

I believe sports are important – not just for children or rollergirls, but for everyone who has a passion for a sport – even a man in his 70s, and I really don’t want a fishing pole and tackle box to be Mr. Privott’s Azalea bush. I want him to be able to continue to do the thing that he loves, even though for a while I’m sure it will be a symbol of pain. I can only hope that negative association will fade with time.

When I was 11-years-old and briefly without a home, I was amazed that this community that we’d been a part of for only 3 short months would be so kind to provide small things that made all the difference in our day-to-day life, like toiletries and food. And most of the people who helped us out, I’ll never know. I hope my small contribution in response to this recent horrific event can make the Privott family feel the same love I also felt from this Baltimore community at a very low point in my young life.

I made a decision when I was 11: I would never be homeless again. Sixteen years later, I purchased an old house in Baltimore. Each day when I arrive back home, I look at my house, my front porch, and my Azalea bush, and I can’t help but fell full of love. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and with time horrible memories do fade. But the good memories – even those that we experience in dark times – they become clearer.

If you’d like to help offset Mr. Privott’s medical expenses, please click here to make an online donation. Thank you.

Like I Need a Hole in My Head

2009-08-11T16:05:00.001-04:00

Last time I wrote I was expressing a problem I was having about being motivated for the rest of the season. I really thought it was an internal motivation issue. I also had been thinking for the past two weeks that I really needed a new pillow because my neck hurt so damn bad. Then there was the mystery “peak of summer” pollen that was causing me to have a headache every day. It’s funny how we justify things to ourselves.

Early last week, after mentioning a growing bug-bite to my boyfriend and showing him the rash (both things I hadn’t given a second thought), he convinced me to show it to my doctor. Good thing I did, because it explains a hell of a lot: I have Lyme Disease.

Now, if you live outside Maryland, Pennsylvania, or New York, Lyme Disease may sound exotic to you. Actually, it sounded exotic to me until last week. Turns out, something like 90% of all Lyme Disease cases each year are in the three aforementioned states. It really is super-concentrated in this area, and on top of that mid-summer is peak tick season. If you’re like me, you learn something new every day.

I feel kind of validated knowing that my lack of energy is due to Lyme disease and not apathy, but is this not the WORST time for me to have gotten this sickness?!?! Regionals are in a month!!!

I’ve been super depressed over the last week, and Sunday marked my worst symptom day yet – I slept damn near 28 hours straight, and I was only awakened by my 24-hour headache that was completely non-responsive to 800mg ibuprofen. In the past 2 days, I’ve fallen asleep while driving twice. It’s only been a week, but I can stand my sofa no more.

After contemplating my life without derby during WFTDA finals, I’ve decided I must somehow figure out how to push through this and make it happen. I’ve worked too damn hard to be taken down by a fucking deer tick.

The good news is that it was caught early. What I can’t seem to figure out is how long I can expect to be feeling like shit. I plan on taking Co-Q10, B12, and superfood to try and increase my energy, so I can make it to practice and finish this thing that I’ve started.

If anyone out there has any useful resources, please send them my way! I’ll update more later. I’m off to acupuncture now…

Enjoying What Will Be the Time of My Life

2009-08-04T09:44:00.002-04:00

It’s funny to me how people often say that high school was the best time of their life. Really? Because I was a neurotic mess until I was 24 or 25, and some people I know will tell you I still am. In all seriousness, I remember my high school years as often being lonely, confusing, and full of anxiety. The best time of my life? I think when I have a chance to look back on it, I’ll tell you it’s right now. Yet even knowing this, on a daily basis I struggle to be mindful of my life. Right now it’s the same day-to-day, the daily grind, too much work, too little time, and nothing new, but I know that in 10 or 15 years I’ll remember the underlying joy I have for and the pleasure I take in skating. Knowing this, I fight daily to “not sweat the small stuff” and enjoy the things I have and am doing right now.

I didn’t learn about mindfulness until after my dad died and I was apathetically perusing the “grief” section at Barnes & Noble during my lunch break. Sometimes I get an idea in my head during the work day, and working within walking distance of an urban shopping Mecca proves all too easy to make a purchase or two on a whim. This was one of those whims. I had gone months without ever picking up a book on bereavement or death or chicken soup for this rash that won’t go away, but that day I decided I needed a book on grief.

If you’re ever already depressed, it’s probably not a good idea to go stand in the grief section of a major bookstore chain, because once you start reading the titles you’re bound to feel not only depressed but also hopeless now too. As I stood there I could imagine a salesperson saying “With such a wide selection, there’s a book on grief for everyone!” and me responding to the imaginary salesperson, “Book for everyone, my ass!” With rows of books titled things like Gay Nephews Remembering Their Uncles, How to Go on when Someone You Love Dies, and Jesus Suggests You Take up Underwater Basket Weaving to Deal, I almost walked out; I wasn’t a gay nephew, a hippie Christian, or suicidal – I just wanted something to help me sort through my intense and often inexplicable waves of emotion. Then, just when I had given up hope for finding anything normal, I saw a title called Grieving Mindfully.

The book was not only practical, offering real explanations for my rollercoaster ride of emotions, but it also introduced me to mindfulness – a concept I could kind of already relate to and that I would research even more over the following weeks. In a nutshell, mindfulness is the calm awareness of your body, feelings, emotions, and intent at any one moment. Although I never did finish the book, I liked their take on using mindfulness to acknowledge each feeling I had associated with the death of my dad.

Outside of using mindfulness to help deal with grief, I’ve also tried to use it in daily life. If you know me, then you know my outlook on life is simple: have as much fun in the small amount of time you have here; life is short, enjoy it. This does not mean I’m a proponent of doing whatever the fuck you want without any regard to rules or responsibility or respecting others. This does mean I try my hardest to appreciate what I have in the moment and make the best of it, but like I said earlier, it’s a struggle to keep up this train of thought, especially when you’re working 12-hour days and have little time to yourself.

When I tried out for the All Stars last February, I hoped and prayed and have been anxious to play with my team at Nationals. Recently, however, I’ve been ready for Nationals to be over already. And it’s not just me, too. Even some of the most die-hard derby players on my team often joke when discussing our impending “off season” that they don’t know if they’ll even last that long.

At a time when I should be kicking things up a notch, I feel as if I’ve been coasting in a lower gear – staying just within sight of the rest of my team and that destination ahead of us: Nationals. It’s not that I don’t want to go to Nationals or that I don’t want to skate, but I’m tired, and the rest of life has been demanding my attention even though I know and want to be spending that time on derby.

The other day I was talking to a teammate who was feeling similarly, only on this day she couldn’t even hide it at practice. As she wore her outlook on life and derby on her sleeve, I couldn’t help but preach what I’ve been recently unable to practice. “Look around you,” I said, “Things aren’t so bad here, today.” I went on to tell her that this is our year – we’ve worked hard, and we will go to Nationals – and when she looks back on this time, 20 years from now, she’ll remember this as the time of her life, so she should enjoy it now while she’s living it. I couldn’t have put it better if I was telling it to myself, and I wouldn’t have said it at all if it wasn’t for her.

I need to follow a bit of my own advice. Life is for having fun, and this will likely be the most fun I ever have, so I should be mindful and enjoy it, despite the nagging everyday stresses that don’t mean dick when everything’s said and done.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have… Yeah, I wrote it, The Facts of Life! Enjoy yourself today.

Real Email, Real Life (to my All Stars)

2009-07-29T18:27:00.002-04:00

Hey!

If you can read no further, this email is to let you know I must work tonight instead of coming to practice. If you can read further, the rest of this email is a look into my imperfect mind, and will possibly be repurposed for part of a blog (my words, not yours).

This week has taken a turn for the bizarre and busy. I had a pipe burst in our basement Monday evening, which is why I wasn't at practice. Home Depot occupied my night instead.

Today, I'm out of my mind busy at work. We have 12 business days left to finish testing code and writing support materials for this online management system that's going live on 8/17, and I'm the Project Manager :( I just had to do a total overhaul of a 1-page quick reference guide that I thought would take me 30 minutes but has instead taken me all damn day. And I have a 60-page tutorial to review and edit next... I won't be there tonight. I know I NEED to be there, but I can't be.

I won't have any problems making my attendance for Philly and Windy City, but I also want to play to the best of my ability and become a better player and teammate overall, so I torture myself for not having perfect attendance. Also, I hate to miss a Sunday (even though it was planned), a Monday, and a Wednesday all in a row (makes my guilt worse).

However, I had my therapy appointment today and this was the topic of discussion. I need to be less hard on myself for things that are out of my control or take priority over other things in my life (aka, work today). I feel like answering to you guys is more important than answering to anyone else, and it makes me the most anxious because in actuality work and home have to come before derby. I know we all struggle with this, and we choose different things: we may choose derby and feel the guilt for not choosing other areas or we may choose work or home and feel the guilt for not choosing derby. Either way, life is unpredictable and it's pretty much guaranteed things won't go as planned for any of us on any given day. Some days it's the practicality of not having enough time to do everything that needs to be done (or that you had planned to do or want to do), while other days you could cram everything in, even with a monkey wrench thrown in, but that would mean you would have no time at all for yourself, and let's face it, that doesn't work all the time either because everyone needs some time at least every once in a while for herself.

My therapist asked if there was anything I could give up or cut back on. I told her about the OSDA, but I also told her how I'm not yet ready to stop competing at the level at which our league competes, and although derby requires a great amount of my time, it also provides a great reward (many rewards, actually) that I still find totally worth the sacrifice.

It's especially hard to balance life outside derby with derby when you're trying so hard to improve and you're fighting each month for a spot on that game roster. The intent is there, but often the actions to back it up can't be. Scratch that, they CAN be, but you would totally sacrifice your health - mental and/or physical - and eventually that will catch up with you and force you slow down. I want to be an amazing and valuable player and teammate, but I know deep down that I can't truly do that if my life isn't balanced, so this is my way of saying that I'm going to try my hardest from now on not to be so hard on myself when it comes to life getting in the way of derby. When I am with you all, when I am at practice, I can guarantee that I will do everything I can to give it my all, to challenge myself, and to become that player and teammate I want so badly to be.

In other news, I do plan on attending practice tomorrow, and after nearly a week off skates I'm gonna be hurtin. Holly, please kick my ass, but also be nice to me if I cry from the pain.

Since I took a 30-minute detour to write this long-ass email, I'm just going to repost it in its entirety as today's blog entry. In case you couldn't tell, I really do love you guys, so thanks for reading my rant in the off chance you've made it this far (which you might actually have, since Reckless has been asleep all day and unable to send any equally-long but thoughtful emails).

XO,

Cindy

PS: I love you, Reckless!

That's Not Cellulite - That's Jammer Fuel!

2009-07-23T14:50:00.002-04:00

Going into my college days, I knew I wasn’t the sorority type, and when I actually got there my suspicions were confirmed – I am not a sorority girl. I did however joke that I was starting my own sorority: Pi Pi Pi, bake me a pie and you’re in! No one ever took me up on it, yet that didn’t stop me from packing on 65 pounds in 6 months…

There was a time in my derby career – a time that existed up until several months ago, quite frankly – that I knew I wasn’t a jammer. Often times at team meetings someone would get a count of all those available to jam. “Don’t look at me!” was always my answer. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, but those days are behind us (and I suppose I could give a shit about embarrassing myself now too!).

This past Saturday marked the 3rd bout in which I’ve jammed – all three times for my home team, Speed Regime (oddly enough, a team not know for its speed). The first time I jammed was in May, our inaugural home season bout. Scared as shit as I approached the line, I got lead jammer and my opponent got a major, sending her to the box and leaving me unopposed for a full minute.

It was both the longest minute of my life and the shortest. It was a blur. I thought I had scored a 20-point jam. My whole bench was screaming, the fans on the floor were on their feet, and loud bursts of cheers came from the stands each time I completed a pass. “FIVE MORE POINTS!” I remember hearing our announcer, Dirty Mary, yell above the cheers of the crowd. Jamming, I then determined, is highly addictive. Each burst of the screaming crowd made me want more, while all the anxiety associated with being a jammer no longer mattered – this was totally worth the risk. The audience wanted me keep giving them reasons to stand up and yell, and I wanted to keep giving it to them. I still do.

We didn’t win that game, but that jam created something that had never existed in Baltimore before – Cindy Lop-her fans. I always resented jammers, because in general they’re the only players in the ever-changing clusterfuck of a derby pack that stand out to novice fans, so it makes sense that they’re also the only players who really ever get personal recognition and fans at the local level. In actuality, good jammers are good because their blockers are good, but only experienced derby fans realize this.

After the game I went upstairs to get a beer, which I sat off to the side and drank while taking off my gear (and no, I couldn’t wait for the beer). For some reason, no one saw me sitting there. What happened next was something I’ll never forget. A group of 20-something guys who had congratulated me on a good game as I was coming off the track were up at the beer counter talking to Joy Collision, who was standing behind it. “Do you know Cindy Lop-her?” they asked. That’s what caught my attention. When you talk to Joy, you talk to her about HER being a derby prodigy – you don’t talk to her about someone else. You don’t talk to her about me.

Their conversation continues with them telling Joy how awesome I am and asking her about me.

“Yeah,” she said, “She’s really big and really strong – well, she’s not really that big anymore – she’s really STURDY and can take a hit, but she can also skate really fast!”

Hanging on her every word, the guys retold the story of my first ever jam to Joy Collision. I looked around, I pinched myself – it was a very surreal moment in general but even more so because you don’t often get to hear what people really have to say about you – both strangers and people you know. It was an amazing gift that I’ll never forget.

At the after party I was a rock star, and some couple even had their picture taken with me. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a little weird, but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t completely and utterly love it.

That 20-point jam that night turned out to only be a 10-pointer. Oops. It may have only been 10 points on the scoreboard, but it felt like a fucking million.

Two months later, last Saturday, I “beat” my personal best – that 10-point jam – by scoring a 12-pointer against the Mobtown Mods. I don’t remember the crowd being nearly as loud, and I didn’t have any fans come up to me afterwards, but I did get some pretty heavy congratulations from several of the Mods while on the line in the next jam I was in.

Jamming’s okay. Although I may never do it for the All Stars, I’ll continue to do it for Speed Regime. The fans, the recognition, and the drug-induced haze I get from the screaming crowd are all nice, but the real reason I’m going to continue to do it is for me. Each time I jam I prove to myself that win or lose I have the power to stand up to my fears and take them head-on. I learn something each time I jam, and it doesn’t hurt that sometimes that something is that it’s okay to have a bit of a big ego every now and again. It’s fun.

July 8

2009-07-20T15:33:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to go back several weeks, single out a day like any other, recall where you were, what you did that day, and how you felt, especially when nothing particularly notable happened. This is completely unlike remembering the particularly notable days.

I always thought that I’d never be able to forget the day my dad passed away: July 8. I remember driving my mom and boyfriend to the hospital that morning to say our final goodbyes to the shell of a man who once was and who needed to be moved from the ICU to the morgue. Before we even made it into entrance of the hospital I remember thinking to myself: “July 8 – 7/8 – this date will forever be ingrained in my mind”. And I was right.

Fourth of Julys have never been the same. Memories of parties and fireworks are now superseded by recalling days on end in the ICU and the ICU waiting room. By the 4th of that year, I almost couldn’t take the waiting any longer, and I broke my streak of daylight hours spent inside the hospital on the 5th, opting instead for a toilet to vomit in and several doses of Ibuprofen. My mom was pissed.

This past July 4th was the same as the last few have been. Sure, we’ve gone to barbecues and celebrated with our friends, but that looming stale soberness is always there in every direction I turn. And on the 4th of this year I told myself, just like I have been telling myself for the past few years, that it will be the worst on the 8th but over on the 9th. Only I just realized here on the 20th that the 8th was a day like any other: I forgot to remember.

The 8th was a Wednesday, which means I went to scrimmage practice that night. It was 2 weeks ago that was the week we really meshed as a team – the 8th. We were relaxed, we worked well together, and we had fun. In an attempt to not overanalyze things, we bypassed our usual post-scrimmage team performance dissection, and instead sat around just chatting. I was so proud of what came of that chat – all the things we’d been saying and strategies we’d been explaining were being retold and reinforced by our newest team members to each other. “This is awesome,” I thought, “they got it.”

Mildly obsessed with our impending trip to Kansas City that weekend, I was briefly distracted earlier that day at work by a string of Chuck Norris joke emails sent to me by my boss who has a thing for jokes and who had just recently revisited the Chuck Norris kick after being reminded of it by someone I supervise. Coincidentally, my teammates were telling each other Chuck Norris jokes as we stood in the security line at the airport that Friday evening, and I didn’t even bring Chuck up. I did, however, share my best Chuck Norris joke that I had heard earlier in the week from a coworker: “When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he doesn’t push himself up – he pushes the earth down.”

Oh, god… Thinking back on it, I was late to work on the 8th. With the assistance of some “Chocolate Smooth Move” herbal tea I had drank in a last-ditch effort the night before, the stomach issues I had been experiencing since the 4th finally resolved themselves, which I suppose was both a blessing and a curse. It was a curse in that I had to tell my boss why I would be coming in late, but it was also a blessing, because as unpleasant as it was ridding my body of what I can only describe as layers of sediment dating back to the Mesolithic era, the shitting myself blind apparently kept me preoccupied enough to completely throw off my day, and I never noticed what day it was.

As much as things stay the same, they also change. My feelings of initial guilt over not having remembered my father’s death-day anniversary have now been replaced by a fond recollection of my dad as our basketball coach, his taking me to buy stupid joke books and allowing me to tell the same “orange you glad I didn’t say banana” joke over and over and over again on the ride home, and his persistent laughter at my singing what I can only describe as “the diarrhea song”. What can I say? We have the same sense of humor.

It’s funny – it’s the things we don’t find particularly notable at the time that creep into our minds and over time somehow magically transform themselves into really fond memories. I’ll probably always remember July 8, but in the grand scheme of things, the events of that day pale in comparison to the years of everyday events that shape my overall memory. July 8 may have been the first day no more memories were able to be made, but it was also the first day I began to remember and celebrate all those wonderful noneventful things that have made me who I am.

Person(a)

2009-07-10T09:51:00.001-04:00

You know those times when people make statements or maybe ask for your approval on things, and you don’t really agree with them, but you know you should choose your battles, so you lie through your teeth or agree even though you really don’t? Well, I can’t do that very well. I’ve never been good at hiding my emotions – I’ve been told my face shows it all. Now if that isn’t a reason to get Botox, I don’t know what is! I’d like to think this is one of many stellar components of my personality – my face can keep it real even when my mouth can’t. In all honesty though, I know I do this, so I try my hardest to just be me, while also being nice about it.

When I first started derby I was really into the entertainment aspect of it – the name, the character, the dress-up uniform. I painstakingly crafted the image that I wanted the world to see. When Cindy Lop-her was on television, you’d know it was her. How? For one, my season 1 helmet mohawk – green to match my home team and gold to match the travel team. It was prominently featured on a Blood & Thunder postcard, which still hangs on my refrigerator today. I thought the mohawk was bad-ass at the time. Looking back on it now, I wish I had put as much time and energy into my skating as I did that fucking mohawk.

Season 2, I removed the mohawk. After having seen numerous television spots and photos of myself in season 1, I realized I looked awkward, and I decided I wanted to draw less attention to myself. That, and I knew I could use all the help I could get on the track, so I removed the eyesore that was the mohawk, telling my teammates that I didn’t want to stand out in the pack and (gasp! Here comes something thoughtful…) I wanted to be recognized for my skills, not a piece of flair.

As time has gone on, the persona and the uniform have both become more practical – as I’m no longer trying to appear to be the shit, I’m exposing all my personal shit, for one! As far as the uniform goes, it’s just a uniform now. I don’t want to look cute or sexy or bad-ass – I want to be comfortable, cool, and able to move easily. I no longer wear fake eyelashes or even makeup sometimes. I spend the hours before a bout preparing mentally instead of preparing my hair, which is only covered by a helmet and then drenched in sweat in 10 minutes anyhow. Some fans or derby enthusiasts may think I no longer try. I think I’m trying harder than ever.

In the days that I sported the green and gold mowhaws, I was careful not to let my work know I played derby. I wasn’t Cindy Lop-her, I was a professional, and I was to be taken seriously. Editor by day, rollergirl by night. I remember getting nervous when everyone found out about my secret identity.

Today, I sit in my scrimmage jersey on casual Friday, because we wear them when we travel, and I’m headed to the airport almost immediately after work to go to Kansas City. My office door sports the upcoming home bout poster, and my office walls, filing cabinet, and bookshelf all sport the home bout posters of bouts past. I often receive emailed links to national derby stories from my coworkers, and some of their kids even wear tee shirts supporting one of my teams.

A teammate of mine recently relayed some concern over a new haircut, wondering if she would be letting too much of who she was in derby into her upscale job. “It’s not just who you are in derby,” I thought, “It’s who you are.” It was then that I realized I no longer have two lives – I am Cindy Lop-her and Cindy Lop-her is me.

And you know what? I fell a hell of a lot more comfortable this way than I ever did when I wore a mohawk or a business suit. I don't have to worry about controlling my facial expressions either.

PS: Tonight I’m headed to Kansas City in preparation for our bout tomorrow night (6pm EST, I think it will be boutcast on DNN). This is an important game for me. We’re down players for this trip, so I’ll have more playing time than usual, and the chance to prove that I’m a valuable member of the regular roster. I’m going to try not to let that freak me out and to just play aggressive and well and keep my head in the game. I’ll update you as to how it goes come Monday…

The Dress

2009-07-07T12:06:00.001-04:00

Like many of you out there, I curse the days of my youth that I thought I was “fat” and decided I needed to do something about it. At 17 I had already failed at Weight Watchers once, and I became so distraught that I made my mom take me to the doctor, who essentially laughed at us and told me to eat more salads and get more exercise. Despite my belief that I was horribly fat at that time, over the past 13 years I’ve often looked back and been nostalgic about not only my weight, but also who I was back then.

At 17 I was fearless, much like I am now, and even though I had a poor body image I was a pretty confident person, and I liked who I was. I lost my way a bit when I went to college and moved out on my own. Not only did I gain over 60 pounds, but I also suffered mental and emotional setbacks like a lack of confidence and intense self-loathing. At the time I associated these symptoms with my ever growing waistline – because I was fat, I was unhappy. And, so, I attempted to fix the problem through this diet or that. From shakes and 87 different vitamins a day to meat, meat, and more meat, I tried everything I had heard worked for anyone else, and although I may have seen momentary successes, I always stalled and put the weight back on.

For many years I had a gold standard of success that manifested itself in my favorite dress that I had last fit into when I was 17. My mom called it “that horrible housecoat”, but I loved it more than anything else I owned. Better yet, I picked it up from a thrift store for less than $5 – an incredible find for even the shrewdest of shoppers such as myself! The dress was sleeveless and white with a vibrant blue flower print. Around the high neckline was what I used to refer to as “a doily” – really it was white flower appliqué, which was then repeated down the sides of the dress. It came below my knees when I bought it, but I quickly shook the old lady out of the dress by having my mom hem it into a mini-dress (against her will to put any additional effort into the housecoat). When I was 17, I wore it all summer long with 5” platform sandals whose platforms mimicked tree bark. I certainly thought I was the shit. How couldn’t I, wearing that getup?!

After 13 years of going up and down in size and packing and moving multiple times, that blue and white dress was the one thing from my youth that I kept and never threw away. Each time I switched over my clothes from winter to summer, I’d smile when I saw it, but I’d leave it in the box, hoping that maybe one day I would again be able to wear it. God, I loved that dress!

For one reason or another I had taken a bunch of ill-fitting clothes and placed them in a laundry basket in our guestroom – the room that essentially doubles as my own personal walk-in closet, not because I’ve made it into my own personal walk in closet, but because my clothes are simply everywhere and I don’t bother doing anything more about the mess than shutting the door. The dress had somehow made it out of its box and into the basket, which caused me to attempt to squeeze it over my ass several months ago, only to become depressed and long for the days in which I was able to wear cute quirky things. On top of the basket it has stayed since that depressing day.

Then, this past Saturday when unhappy with my current wardrobe and trying to decide what to wear to a 4th of July cookout, I again thought of the dress and how wonderful it would be if I could wear it. I had time, so I figured I’d try and squeeze into it, knowing I wouldn’t be able to, but at least seeing if I could pull it up over my ass this time. It was shortly after that when I started screaming from my upstairs hallway, unsuccessfully trying to get my boyfriend’s attention. The dress fucking fit!

Not knowing what else to do, but like any other tech-savvy red-blooded American, I immediately changed my Facebook status to reflect the fact that I was now wearing this 13-year old dress that had been my favorite dress in high school. Because, you know, I could only stay off Facebook for 3 days before I had to re-download the application for my phone and get back on to share the most intimate details of my life with the world. FAIL. I know…

Walking on air and with my head in the clouds, we finally made it to the cookout, and I instantly got asked about the dress and my earlier post on Facebook. As much as I love and am addicted to Facebook, I feel really weird when people I know refer to something I posted on Facebook in person. It’s the shy part of me that can still only express herself through her fingertips, I guess. In any event, I received a lot of praise and congratulations from people I’ve often talked to about weight.

Later that night I was sitting with a friend discussing a recent doctor’s visit she had attended. She was telling me that her doctor told her she needed to lose 30 pounds and how she didn’t know how he came up with that number, because even at 30-pounds lighter she would still be in the morbidly obese range on the BMI chart.

“I’m in the morbidly obese range on the BMI chart,” I told her. And it’s true. For my height, the government has labeled me morbidly obese. I’ve been in that range for the better part of my life! Yet, this time I thought about it and said it, I didn’t give a shit. Here I was wearing my favorite dress that I had kept for 13 years. I’ll be damned if I’m letting the man get me down today!

“Are you serious?!” she said. “But you’re wearing that dress!”

“Does weight really matter?” I asked.

“See,” she said, “I keep thinking back to what you said to me at the gym that time, ‘when you stop trying to lose weight is when it will happen’ ”.

Although I remember those words coming out of my mouth, I began to wonder if it is actually not doing anything that causes one to lose weight or if doing something for one's mental health causes one to lose weight. All these years I thought lack of self confidence and depression were symptoms of being fat, but now I wonder if being fat was a symptom of my poor mental health. This isn’t to say this is true in all cases and that if a person is 100% right in the head, she will be thin, but I think there is an association that exists between mental health and weight – at least for me.

When I tried to fix what I perceived as the problem all those times, I was really just temporarily masking the symptoms of something bigger. But when I gave up my all-consuming struggle to lose weight and started doing things for myself that made the core of who I am happy, my weight – to a certain extent – fell into place. There’s also a little something to say for the additional exercise you get when training as a member of your All Star derby team. The reason I fit into that dress (even though I’m now 7 pounds heavier than when I last tried it on and couldn’t get it over my ass) is because of the added activity and the increase in muscle mass.

And to think that I wasn’t even trying… That’s the best part of being able to wear the dress. If I wasn’t trying, then I must be living right, and really, that’s what that dress stands for now – living right. Mentally and physically, it feels great to be in a place where I’m confident and I like who I am again. Sure, we all have our bad days (in celebration of the dress I ate my face off at the cookout and have been in severe physical intestinal pain since), but as long as we learn from them and get back to remaining true to ourselves, we’ll be just fine.

Panic in Detroit

2009-07-02T15:31:00.001-04:00

For a girl who named her blog Big Derby Girls don’t Cry, I sure do cry a lot. Although I don’t ever cry because I’m a big girl – I cry for other reasons. Christ, I cry over derby all the time. I guess I just love it that much though, which really isn't a bad thing.

My most recent crying episode took place where else but at ECE, the East Coast Derby Extravaganza hosted by the Philly Rollergirls in Feasterville last weekend (I hate the name of that town – it reminds me of a festering wound…).

Having completed our victory lap and spectator high-five hand slapping following our second game of the weekend versus Detroit, I made my way to the locker room as quickly as possible, not exactly busting out in tears, but more like unsuccessfully holding them in as soon as I entered the room. It's like when you have to pee really badly and you know you're close to a bathroom - you could have held it for well over an hour already, but once your bladder knows you're almost there it becomes so much harder to hold it in. Luckily my bag was in the corner so I could position myself so my teammates couldn't see the tears leaking out of my eyes.

Forty minutes into the game when I realized I probably wouldn’t be placed in another jam I gave myself permission to cry once I made it through the game and out of the locker room with my packed-up skate bag. It was all I could do several times in the last half in order to not burst into tears right there on the bench.

I was first into the locker room, but my teammates quickly filed in behind me – I had just several more items to gather when with a big booming post-victory voice I hear Lady Quebeaum say, “Cindy LOP-HERRRR!!! You have a fan outside who’s waiting to meet YOU!!!”

In one word: fuck.

A fan? What fan? I don’t have fans. For fucks sake, I thought, is this a joke? I only played in 2 jams today. Who the fuck wants to see ME???

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, still facing the corner of the room. I needed an exit plan and soon, because before long I wouldn’t be able to contain the emotions any longer and I didn’t want to experience the crying equivalent of pissing my pants right there in front of my team or whomever this so called fan was. Pretending to wipe away sweat, I dried my eyes and made a B-line for the door and from the door to the hallway behind the rink, looking straight ahead, not making eye contact with anyone. I swear I must have made it not 10 steps before I hear my name being called. Busted.

It was an old ref friend, Howie Swerve, who started reffing here in Baltimore but who had since moved out of state. I’ve run into him since he’s moved now and again, but I hadn’t seen him in a while. He wanted to introduce me to his friend. Trying not to sound like a douche, I started yammering about how I just had to run to my car. Howie said it would only take a second. I then had to take off my sunglasses and show him I was crying – the real reason I was avoiding meeting his friend. Embarrassed much?

At the time I couldn’t think clearly enough to pinpoint exactly why I was so upset, but I did know that it would look like I was being a spoiled impatient brat who expects to be handed whatever she wants, including vast amounts of play time, so I knew well enough to hide the tears from my team, because I didn’t want them to get the wrong impression. I love my team. And it was only several hours later that I realized what had hurt me most: I felt so close to my team going into this game, but after riding that bench so hard I should have gotten ass splinters I couldn’t have felt more further away, and it hurt.

When I was in grade school we seemed to move to a different state every 3 years. Just as soon as I finally seemed to be making headway by establishing friendships with the kids in my new school, it was time to go again. I remember the feelings of anxiety and utter isolation that consumed me in the initial days and weeks at my new schools. I felt those same feelings when I first made the team. I was unsure what the team dynamic would be, and I was afraid my teammates would be so fiercely competitive for those roster spots and game time that they might not be too accepting of my being there. Luckily, I was wrong.

My team is an amazing group of women who are so supportive of each other that even those girls who know they’re going up against each other for that last roster spot before alternate want to see each other succeed and help each other get better during practice. It’s truly amazing to be a part of this.

But what about the mere 2 jams, you ask. I was more surprised than anything, and I certainly wasn’t angry. I went into the game with expectations that I would play as much if not more than I played in the Carolina game, since Carolina is ranked higher than Detroit. Coming out of that game and my 2 jams, I was shocked and confused and sad. But like I said earlier, I was most upset that I felt like I was no longer part of the team – a feeling similar to that of my first day at a new school or my first practice as an All Star – a feeling that exists only in my mind and, sadly, is only of my own creation.

It was hard walking to my car after I talked to Howie. With my uniform tee still on, derby friends I know and don’t get to see all that often were walking by me saying “good game” and “nice win”. I felt like an imposter saying “thank you” with teary eyes behind my sunglasses, because at the time I felt that I didn’t really contribute – that I wasn’t part of the team that took that win.

I’ve since had time to think about things, gain perspective, and calm down. I’ve also had time to contact Howie, get his friend’s email addy, and send her a note apologizing for my lack of togetherness last weekend. Luckily, the feeling of being alienated from my team subsided in about a day, and I’ve been fine since.

I did learn several things from this whole experience. First, as much as anxiety creeps up on me before a game and makes me think that maybe I don’t really want to play derby, I now know without a doubt that I do indeed want to play. Second, my place on the team never went away or became less important than anyone else's place on our team – the feeling of alienation was something I created in my own mind. Third, communication is key. Like Dolly said to me yesterday, “It’s like a relationship, you’re never going to get what you want unless you ask for it.” I slipped through the cracks, so to speak – it wasn’t intentional that I was only placed in 2 jams. Bouts are chaotic and now I know to say something nicely and politely to the bench coach if it’s been a damn good while since I was last in the game. Lastly, tomorrow’s another day. Today may be good, today may be bad, but the potential to make tomorrow better than today exists with us all. Although I must continue to work on improving my personal skill as a player, I also need to learn to be less hard on myself. After all, I’ve got a fan. Holy crap, that’s cool.

Facebook Makes My Soul Weep

2009-06-22T11:58:00.001-04:00

Among the many reasons why Facebook is killing my soul is the fact that I rarely have time to post entries here anymore. I’ve become addicted to the instant gratification I get by posting a million 25-words-or-less “updates” per day via my phone. I’ve come to feel that by the time I sit down to write something, I’ve already said it all. Yet, I’ve in fact said nothing. Curse you, Facebook, and the false sense of socialization you provide for me! Today is the day I do what I should have done weeks ago – I’m removing the app from my phone, and I’m done with Facebook for the week.

There was just a slight twinge of panic when I deleted the app, similar to the panic I felt last year when I took my last Vicoden for the second shoulder injury. I shouldn’t have felt that way about prescription drugs, and I shouldn’t feel that way about living without Facebook either. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore.

I knew things were coming to this last week while toilet surfing – I almost posted exactly what I was doing, as if telling the world I was making Mr. Hankeys was somehow acceptable now. Thank dog, I held myself back. Then yesterday I got a glimpse of the derby attitude I had before the massive Facebook obsession took its hold on me. I was blogging more, so I was more focused on derby. I knew where I stood and where I wanted to go, and I felt good about it! Lately, though, the lack of blogging has made me sad and confused. I guess I need to “get it out” so I can understand whatever “it” is that’s bothering me. And, well, you know me – I’m extremely long winded, so it’s completely understandable that I cannot accomplish a similar discussion with myself via a fucking Facebook update… While on the toilet (?!). I’ve boiled down everything important in my life to 1 to 2 sentences. Well, here’s 1 to 2 sentences: “Cindy’s taking her life back. Fuck you, Facebook.”

So much has gone on since I last blogged. I’ve noticed in myself a deep dip into self-doubt – similar to the negative self talk I use to have with myself back when I would choke doing anything derby-playing related. I’m a mental player, and I need my mind to be clear when I go into a game. I need to relearn how to focus, and I need to practice getting myself out of that place while in the midst of a game. This was the sole focus of my therapy session last week.

This past weekend made me proud to be a Charm City All Star – I wasn’t one of the 14 rostered to skate against Texas, but I’m super proud of my girls for bringing it and creating a point spread of 8 measly points, even though they lost.

This weekend is ECE in Philly, and I’ll be playing in our game against Detroit on Saturday, which is unfortunately almost entirely overlapping with the headlining Philly/Rat City game. Two weeks later I’m headed to Kansas City to play against them, so I’m hoping to be able to catch some of their games this weekend at ECE.

This coming week leading to ECE is a busy one, with practice tonight and tomorrow night and a butt-crack-of-dawn flight on Wednesday to Miami for two days with my mom. I think the mini-vacation will be good for my state of mind – that, and not being on Facebook while I’m there. I look forward to running on the beach (or in the spa on a treadmill because I’m not sure how to get sand out of my good running shoes and I don’t want to ruin them). I also look forward to good food and relaxation. Ahhh, it feels good to be back on track with my life. Maybe I’ll even bring my laptop so I can write while I’m there.

The Hamley Cup

2009-06-19T09:29:00.003-04:00

More from me later, I promise. For now, please click here to vote for retired CCRG skater, Betty Beatdown's The Hamley Cup entry.

After derby, Beatdown has gotten really into hockey, and as many of us know, there's actually a lot of crossover between derby and hockey as far as strategy and blocking go. Anyhow, she entered a contest to replicate The Stanley Cup out of anything but foil. If you know Beatdown, you know her love of ham and bacon exceeds the desires of most "normal" people, so it's only fitting that she made a Stanley Cup out of ham and bacon. It's gorss, yes, but dear god is it amazing.

So, help this rollergirl win a prize for manipulating meat! GO HERE!

PS: 8 years ago Beatdown drank from the replica Stanley Cup. She was living in Toronto at the time, and the winning team just so happened to come celebrate in that bar, straight from the game.