my brain hurts

So when you’re unemployed you have a ton of time to think and reflect about your life.  One area I have been focusing particularly heavily on is roller derby.  Sometimes in the moment of running around at practice and making sure you are fulfilling committee requirements you lose sight of what exactly it is we are a part of. 

We are a movement of strong, amazing women who are pushing back and saying its alright to be confident, aggressive, unique, athletic, and just simply…you, and celebrating all the facets of this new breed of person.   Roller derby has changed my life infinitely for the better, and I cant even imagine what path I would be down if I had not made the leap to derby in 2006.  I remember driving to some of the first few practices and being nervous and anxious because I didn’t do particularly well with strangers, and saying in my head…well I just want to do it for one season…Now I cant imagine a life without these people who have become my family, who have supported me not only through the amazingly fun great times, but through injury as well as those times when real life unfortunately gets in the way of roller derby.  Like many I noticed a change pretty quickly, derby had given me the confidence to be outspoken, aggressive, and way more self assured, all things i am grateful for. 

     One thing that has taken a bit of adjustment to wrap my head around is the fact that I am a role model…whether I want to be or not, and you know what, I am constantly in awe of this fact.  More than once I have had a chubby little girl come up to me with stars in her eyes and hope in her chest, asking for my autograph then gushing that when she gets older she wants to be like me.  Granted I have had people of all ages and sizes come up after a game to congratulate me or say nice things, and trust me, those are also very important to me, but ill always have a soft spot for that chubby kid who you can tell is just a little off, but shes got a good heart.  This affinity is there because I WAS..and well still AM that kid.  When youre a chubby weirdo youre always picked last because youre not fast enough or youre not paying attention or people think your lazy ect, ect.  however in roller derby I’m not picked last, I push myself to the point of exhaustion, have 19 teammates who beat the everloving shit out of me on a weekly basis and i get up the next day, bones and muscles sore with a smile on my face, because its exactly what i want to be doing.  I LOVE showing these girls that its OK to be a little weird, and you dont have to be some super athletically built beast to be able to be a beast on the track.  I love when people underestimate me…its especially gratifying when I sprint like some sort of monster to the front of the pack and lay someone on their ass and then am gone like no one was there. Its those moments that make me want to push myself harder, skate faster than anyone thinks i can, and continue to show the future me’s that its ok to be confident, athletic despite of your size, and a little weird because people will love you for it, and if someone thinks its not…say it to me on the track…

So its been a difficult time in derby land for the past week wrought with anger, frustration and many other emotions, i wont say much past that but i think things will slowly get better.  a funny thing has happened though, what could have ripped our league apart has somehow made us closer, more unified, kind of a “nobody messes with my family” kind of mentality. 

Saturday was business as usual as far as game days go, after some traffic…and an hour long power outage that had us biting our nails in regards to whether the game would go on or not.  Luckily 30 minutes before the door, the derby gods(or the power company..whichever you choose to believe) smiled upon us and resorted power to the grid around the romp and roll, allowing us to open our doors to the legions of fans anxiously awaiting what would be a great double header resulting in two big SCDD wins.  While warm-ups for the first game were going on, our friendly knitting fan. John gifted me with a GIANT bag of blue candy(as many already know…candy is my weakness, blue candy is even harder for me to resist!)…no lie…it took a lot of restraint for me to not house pretty much the whole bag immediately..however given that i had a game in a couple hours i showed restraint and only ate a few pieces(which were delicious!).  I also got yelled at for trying to push candy on all of my teammates…apparently not everyone has an iron stomach.

Saturday also marked the first time several of our rookies got to play in a real live game.  its always very cool to see people apply all the skills they’ve learned in the past several months kill it in their first game and land huge blocks, get lead jammer, and just generally look like they’ve been skating much longer then they actually have. 

Before our game we had our usual pep talk about what we wanted to accomplish in the game, what we needed to look for, and then someone chimed in and said….”this is the game to go out and have fun with…its end of the season, just go have a good time”…and did i ever. 

It was kind of weird but while we were skating our intro this really giddy and excited feeling washed over me…it was like a re-realization that holy shit..i play roller derby on a team with some incredibly talented and awesome ladies and there were a ton of fans there…to watch us kick some ass, and that no one could take that away from me…i came to the realization that the only person who can let something affect me negatively is myself. I can only allow something to bother me if I let it and so I shook off all the negativity and just went out and played the game for the love of the sport. 

The game was pretty fun, we ended up winning by 112 points and one of the girls came up to me at the after party and told me i ruined her night(and butt) by virtue of knocking her around as much as i could.  I have really been working on blocking multiple people at once through rote practice when scrimmaging and visualizations and i did it more than once in the game so obviously something is working.  Its kind of funny how different styles of play can be from one coast to another but it was good to get an entre into it.  Consistently i am fairly amazed at how our team boasts a variety of sizes and shapes but we can wear out a team by the second period, and personally it makes me smile inside when i can skate circles around a girl half my size by the second period.  It should be a good testament to other girls who are playing derby who doubt themselves because they’re not super skinny or super fit…its all about drive and desire…if you have it in you, you could be 6’4 and 260 or 5’2 and 100 lbs none of that matters if you have that fire. 

So what now…we have 1 more week of practice which will actually just act like tryouts for the steel hurtin hopefuls, I am both excited to be getting some new teammates for next season but also saddened that we will see some of our core lineup move on to greener pastures all part of the game i guess..then we have our yearly toys for tots scrimmage then derby is done for the year.  In my off season I plan on utilizing our personal trainer and doing as much off skates(well and probably on skates also) training as possible. I want to me in megabeast form by the start of next year.  Its kind of comical how I’m not even done for the year yet and I’m already planning next season.  I guess that’s the true sign of a derby addict.

I think i am done gushing about roller derby now…

So after last week i’m thankful that practice was close to normal(well as normal as us bunch of creeps can be).  Regionals was hard fought and i know many people were sad, angry, frustrated that we got 4th, i was one of those people until i looked at the bigger picture…we ARE FOURTH….out of close to 40 teams, and with the amazing group of people we have…we can only go up.  We may fly under the radar and not get much respect but you know what…who cares i skate for myself(and my team) and if you want to underestimate me go right ahead, ill love every minute of surprising you or proving you wrong.  Last week was a tough practice for many and you could just feel the tension in the air, we have recentered and are focusing on our game next week….October 15th against San Diego.  I really should be doing work right now….

and now your random fact of the day:  Most land snails are hermaphrodites, producing both  sperm and egg and others like apple snails, are either male or female. snails inseminate each other in pairs to internally fertilize(they have small slits on their necks where this occurs) and develop. Each may have around 100 eggs at a time and it could happen once a month.

So this is my second attempt in a year to have a blog i actually contribute to on the regular.  I lost the password to my first one…clearly i am an idiot. 

This will mostly be centered around Roller Derby, my pug, my party shenanigans, some funny stories from work and probably some bitching about my impending wedding(wedding planning makes me feel like i want to have a stroke)