A · Life

I placed an order on 30 January with Fashion Fabrics Club.
On 5 February I emailed them to ask if there was any shipping info. They replied the next day by saying it would be 3-5 days for processing the order before it was shipped, and I'd get a tracking number. It having already been five days already apparently didn't mean anything, so I shrugged.
It just shipped today. So it takes, apparently, 11 days overall to get an order shipped from them. I'll update when it arrives too.

Last time I got one item I'd removed from my shopping cart before checkout, which had not been in the final confirmation email; the invoice I got included it, and I was charged for it (and charged shipping for it). I didn't realize this until I'd already prewashed the fabric, since I'd forgotten I'd removed it from my cart. I wound up using it, and happily, but did go back and check that indeed I had removed it, and indeed it had not been in my final purchase, but it had been on the invoice and I had in fact paid for it after all.

The policy on their website states, "Our goal is to have merchandise shipped out within 2-4 business days of order receipt.
Shipping time will vary depending on where you live. Our most recent records show that shipping time will normally be 2 to 7 business days.
Please allow 2-3 days extra for home décor, bridal fabrics, and runway silks as these come from different warehouses."

I ordered none of those last three items, so I'm a little puzzled. I mean, it's not like I'm some high-powered business person or whatever, but I had planned on having those fabrics for the next project I was going to work on, and I just don't know when I'll even get them. Now I'm wondering what I'll actually receive.

Sigh. I hate JoAnn's, anyplace local that isn't JoAnn's is for quilters only and I only need so much cleverly-printed cotton for twelve dollars a yard, I love Dharma but they're only good for silks. I will definitely place an order at fabrics-store for linen. But where to get wool?? For $7.95/yd?
I guess I can suck it up; they haven't lost my business yet. Two strikes, and I'm flexible on it. I just am not much cheered by the fact that between the day I placed my order, and the day they sent it, they sent out a "Huge Sale Lowest Prices Of The Season" email. I don't think any of the things I actually ordered are affected, but of course, I'm a bit disgruntled.

Oh well. I'm up early putting together split pea soup in the crockpot with a leftover post-Christmas hambone, so I'm at least cheerful about dinner, for once. Last night I squeaked out of work almost an hour early, and spent it grocery-shopping on the way to pick Z up.

I wore one sweater too few to work today, and spent the day freezing. I was more sympathetic to the perpetually-underdressed New Girl. She and I huddled around the print machine's hot dryer vent for warmth. It was brutal.
I haven't suffered from the cold that much this winter, but I was unwarily underclothed. last weekend I wore leggings under jeans, and undershirts and overshirts and an extra sweatshirt, but for some reason this weekend i was caught off-guard. Newsflash: it's still winter! I dunno.
I spent probably two hours working on those pictures I already uploaded to Flickr. Who knew: real Photoshop can do quite a bit with them, underexposed and weirdly-color-unbalanced as they were. But I've already posted them, so, you know. Oh well. I've got better versions now, and I might print those.
I didn't even start Photoshopping the roller derby photos. I have PS on this machine, my Macbook, it's just that it's an Intel processor Macbook, and I only have CS, which doesn't run Intel-native, so it's slower than dirt on an already not too fast machine.
Also I have better things to do on my *own* time. ;)

Looking at the sideless surcote, it's probably a smart idea to finish the garment completely, and then apply the fur trim with basting stitches, so that I can wash the garment in the washing machine. (Whenever I buy fabric the very first thing I do is wash it on hot and tumble dry it on medium. I always wash garments on cold and often hang them to dry, but if something is going to react poorly to machine-washing of any kind, I want it out of the way before I've ironed and cut and sewed it into something that doesn't need to be felted out of shape.) The wool is as felted as it's going to get (which is to say, not), and the old bedsheet it's lined with certainly isn't going to do anything unexpected in the washer. But fur? Hm. No.

So it's going to have the armholes bound with straight-grain tape cut from some black cotton canvas I have, and I may even make a slip of embroidered trim to go at the neckline. Then, and only then, will I deal with the fur-- I may sew it onto some more strips of canvas, and then baste that onto the canvas at the armholes, so that I can attach/detach it without putting undue stress on my lovely wool.

This is about as scientific as I get, folks.
It is looking increasingly likely that there's going to be a whole lot of fun surrounding the SCA event on March 27th, which is the same day as my KOs vs. the Dollies, so I'll be skating too. I hope hope hope so. I want to make a huge party weekend out of it. Or I'll never make it to Pennsic.

At this point the whole concept of going outside without a coat, hat, gloves, mittens, scarf-- it's so foreign to me I can't remember what it's like in a world like that...

It's been a SCAdian sort of week/month. For some reason, probably guilt over not having completed Christmas presents YET, and not even having STARTED the birth sampler for my nephew born in OCTOBER OMG, etc., whenever I'm in the Sewing Lair lately, my thoughts are of Pennsic. I am touching fabrics and thinking of garb for this year and imagining what I should do and what would work and so on. To compound it, a Pennsic household mate updated her status on Facebook with something about Pennsic prep, and a neighbor from there sent me a message about it. January/February is the time for Pennsic planning; it's the only way to get it done for July.
Then the household Yahoo! group sprang to life with chatter about construction projects and funding of major household expenses. (Our bar and bridge got termite-infested last year, so we dragged both over to Kindred to be burned, instead of risking a spread of the infestation in our storage locker this year. Yes, the household rents a storage locker year-round in Slippery Rock, PA. We're far, far, far from the only ones who do so.)
So I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, of course.
I decided that this (past) week, I'd finally drag my ass to a fighting/fencing practice. I encountered members of the local Barony quite by accident (in fact, the Baron himself; he was wearing a Pennsic XXIV t-shirt, I believe, and I promptly spilled a Cherry Coke on it) and joined their Yahoo! group, and have been repeatedly urged to attend the fight practices. They're on Wednesday nights. That's my one night off per week, unless I have a supplemental practice or a meeting or, you know, have to work.
But I want to meet the local folks, at least.
Tuesday, one of the local people stopped by the camera store. I had just been in the back room pondering the logistics of getting there on Wednesday. I think he thought I was lying. I wasn't.

So I went to fight practice. I brought Z. And I also brought a borrowed, fairly awesome lens from work.
Here are the results.


I didn't fight, no, but I had a great time. Here's the thing, though. Men in armor are super hot. The fencers, eh, they were cool and all, but my time as an Olympic-style fencer means that they look slow and sloppy to me, and their posture looks lazy. I know it's actually just a different aesthetic, but I am used to Mike Marx's epée girls, and the whole aesthetic just doesn't strike me at all. But heavy fighting-- I have never seen anything like that, because it doesn't exist outside the SCA.
So men (and some women!) in armor, thwacking one another impressively with rattan sticks-- wow! It was spectacle, it was sport, it was sexy. All different kinds of armor, fancy helmets, brute force, etc. Wow. Cool. Neat.
Then they took of their helmets. Sweaty mans, eh, whatever.
Then they took the armor off and I was like oh my goodness you are really uninteresting-looking people and I cannot believe I was checking you out a minute ago. LOL. Nothing against them, I just was way way way way less aesthetically smitten once they were out of armor. You may remember my unseemly drooling last Pennsic-- similar phenomenon. In armor, my brain short-circuits. Out of armor, I'm more or less interested depending on the moment. It's just funny, I think, because I'm usually very much not appearance-based like that.

Anyway. Fun pictures. Fun time.

So today I decided that this beautiful dark red/purple wool I bought at my first Pennsic was going to get made into something. No more "saving" it. It's not *that* nice. It was only eight or nine bucks a yard. It's not irreplaceable. And it does me absolutely no good in a square in the drawer. So I made myself just do it. I cut up an old twin bedsheet that mice had chewed, made a mockup of a sideless surcote, threw it away because it was cut too small, made another, and then used that second mockup as the lining, and bickety-bam, I cut that wool up and used every last scrap. Sewed it together, and I have a sideless surcote now. (Gates-of-Hell-type, because I am wicked and sinful.)
I am then going to cut into the beautiful rabbit skins Liesl bought me at Pennsic, and use them. Because I am saving them as well, and if I keep saving them, I will never use them and they will get eaten by a mouse or peed on by a cat or lost somewhere and ruined, and I will never have a nice thing made from them. They need to be made into something. If I screw it up, they were rabbit skins; I can replace them at next Pennsic for $5 each-- maybe $10 each, since I know Liesl probably went to a lot of trouble to get nice ones that matched. And they are gorgeous and I will have a terrible time cutting into them because I don't want to ruin them. But I have to use them, or they will be wasted.

If I do this relatively promptly, then I will finish it by Feb 27th and wear it to the College of Three Ravens, in Thescorre, where I will see Liesl. If I do not, I will finish it by March 27th, and wear it to the Ice Dragon in Rhydderich Hael. Either way, I will purchase a membership to the SCA, and use it. And I will be better-clothed than many, and worse-clothed than some, and nobody will judge me for not doing justice to those beautiful rabbit-skins and that lovely wool.

As it turns out there was barely enough wool-- I may go back and add narrow gores of black fabric toward the back of the sides, to make the skirt a little fuller. It's on the skimpy side. I don't have to feel bad that I didn't make a kirtle from it, because I couldn't have. I could have made a chirka or a caftan, but I will probably wear the surcote more. Especially since it's only going to be pretend-lined in fur, and will actually be lined in cotton; it will serve at Pennsic in the evenings. I will have to give it a short hem for outdoor events, but I am going to initially finish it with a long hem since C3R and the Ice Dragon are both indoors.

So that was today. (The cote is assembled, but not finished-- all long seams sewn, shoulder seams shaped by hand, but neckline raw and sleeve openings totally unfinished, and skirt not hemmed. I am going to try the machine blind hem.)

I have tomorrow AND the day after off. It's going to be so rad.

I woke up this morning nearly 40 minutes before my alarm. Well, 40 minutes before I usually get up; the alarm goes off and Z gets up to take a shower so I lie in bed until he's done, and usually get some really quality relaxing done. I do best when I don't have to get right out of bed.
It was annoying, but Z woke up too, and we lay there blinking and sighing for a while, and then both got up and I made coffee for us to drink at home. For various reasons, but I thought for a change it would be nice to have home-brewed coffee instead of work coffee. (I have to adjust my cream-buying habits now since we're so rarely home to drink coffee...)

Chita got hyper and began to tear around the house, and I have been laughing and laughing and laughing at her. It's worked better than the coffee. She leapt up onto the arm of the love seat, overshot her mark, fell off, and landed on Z's laptop bag, then tore madly around the living room; she vanished down into the basement, was quiet for a moment, and then came crashing up the stairs and through the kitchen.
I sometimes wish she'd mellow out, but am glad she's stayed silly and kittenish, somewhat, because it's much more entertaining than the alternative.

Now I'm out of steam, though. I need to go get dressed for work and I just don't wanna move. I'm not sore, I'm just still heavy-limbed and tired.

I used to write interesting things here, I swear.
I've been having amusing Facebook status updates lately instead-- that's where I put all my concise wit, I think. Tragic and sad, but all these RL people know me there. Lots of RL people who don't really know me well follow me there and so know a whole lot about my business, which is almost creepy, but not really. Today an SCA type stopped by the store since he was in the area-- which is funny because I had JUST had the thought cross my mind that since I had Wednesday nights off now I should try to get me to a fighter practice, though the thought had been followed with a "yeah that'd fit into my schedule just perfectly"-- Wednesdays are about the only night I get to see Z, eat dinner while sitting down, and the like.
But I am going to go out to dinner with Z tomorrow after work, to celebrate his first paycheck and my nameday (both of which were yesterday), and then we'll go to fight practice afterward, and it will be lovely. That's the plan anyway. I can't take up fighting-- no time, no money for equipment, no room to risk injury that might impede skating during bout season-- but I do want to get to know the members of my local Barony better, besides just the one or two who've made an extraordinary effort to draw me in. And the fighters seem like a good place to start.
I want to bring Z along not because i think he'll have the slightest interest in taking up fighting-- he has no interest whatsoever in hitting anyone, and less still in getting hit by anyone for any purpose-- but after the teasing I got from my coworkers for a friend visiting at work, I should probably tactfully make it plain to that whole group that I have a boyfriend. Which seems like a very jr. high thing-- but also, i don't like the feeling that this SCA stuff is "my" thing that I'm just dragging Z along to. If he at least knows some of the people, it'll sort of be a bit less like that. I hope.
Anyway. If we make it a Date Night I think it'll be more fun. Also, also also, I am hoping I can talk work into letting me borrow a sweet-ass camera rig to take with me, so I can play. I haven't played with cameras in a few weeks and I'm bored.

I am so tired, and sort of run-down-- three nights in a row of rather strenuous derby practicing shouldn't be enough to make me this tired on its own, but thinking back, I haven't eaten a meal that involved sitting down and relaxing and digesting-- and consuming vegetables, to think further on it-- in probably, mm... well, I think I ate well on Saturday. That's it. Since then it's peanut butter sandwiches, leftover pasta in Tupperware eaten at the printer, some rice and beans with chicken at midnight after practice, a Mighty Taco snarfed hastily while instructing the next shift on what wasn't done yet, etc. It's not a good way to maintain muscle growth, we'll say gently. it might be making me lose weight, but if I lose weight at the expense of strength and an immune system, that's not something I'm remotely interested in.

Anyway. Waiting for the dishwasher to be done, but I'm on the verge of saying fuckit and leaving the faucet on all night. (It barely drips, it'll be fine.) I'm so sleepy and tired but of course there's always a derby buzz. Bzzzz.
I have a meeting Thurs. night before practice, so I won't skip Thurs practice... I probably should've stayed in and had some nice food and sleep tonight instead. but I had fun so I'm not sorry. Four practices in five days! Go me. My thighs are like bricks.

I started saying this a couple years back, at derby practice: "I smell awesome." It started out as sarcasm, but grew into defiance; you don't smell that awesome by not doing awesome; i.e., if you're just coasting, you're not going to stink as bad as I do by the time I'm done being awesome.

But just now I leaned my head in my hand and OH wow, do my hands ever stink like wristguards. If you don't know what wristguards smell like (and I suppose there are a lot of people in this world for whom that's not a part of their daily existence-- weird!)... You know how feet smell different from any of the rest of your body? Wrists do too. They don't smell like feet. They don't smell like armpit. They don't smell like knees or elbows (which also sweat something awful and have their own unique stench). They are to the rest of your body like your feet are, only somehow, incalculably, worse. It's a truly astonishingly horrible odor, sharp and musty and tangy and horrible to an indescribably alarming degree.

Ew.
OK I just had to take a break to go shower. Now I smell like peaches or something. Rock on.

I did awesome tonight, though, at least as far as my own personal goals are concerned. ( I look so pretty in stars. )

Oh Chita is skeevy-kneading the afghan beside me. She is the cutest.

Also Z had made dinner so there was food when I got home. And a beer. I'd be in bed now but I have to finish this beer because it's so good. Mmm. Beer.

Oh sleep. I would like to do you for a year. I cannot. I have seven hours. Go!

Just placed an order with fashionfabricsclub.com. Gots to get moving briskly on Pennsic prep, I've just realized. And if I'm to be doing this 18th c thing by the 4th of July... I still don't know anything about it, so i'll have to focus on multi-purpose garments for now.

But am I crazy, or are Denver Fabrics and Fashion Fabrics Club the same website? Same layout, slightly different colors, same text, same prices, same sale... They're the same website. Same inventory. Weird! Eerie! Why do they bother being different? I'm sort of weirded out. (I *just* noticed that this very moment.)

I need to collaborate with someone on a 20-yard bolt of linen soon, because I need it for a lot of things. I will need about 10 yards, I think. I should just buy the bolt myself and hoard it, but Z hasn't quite gotten his first paycheck and also, oh yeah, needs to pay his taxes for '09. (The IRS sent him his quarterly tax estimate forms for 2009... this week. Not so much with the paying ahead but thanks?)


It is so cold outside. I know, it's winter in upstate NY, but actually Buffalo very rarely approaches temperatures this cold. About one week a year, actually. And this is it. Thank heavens for this electric blanket. It's really the best thing ever. I crank it up before I go to sleep, and turn it down as I get really drowsy, but what's funny is that when it's on 1 (the lowest setting) it is cool to the touch, and when it's on 2 it feels like my body heat. It's not until it's on 5 or higher that I'm even aware of there being external heat of any kind. And on H (which is 10, the highest setting) it's pleasantly warm. I suppose that's how it ought to be- it should never be hot to the touch, or it wouldn't be safe-- but it's funny how not-warm it feels, and yet what a difference it makes, especially when it is this bitter cold out.
I will almost be sorry when the weather warms up. OK, feel free to smack me. But it really is so delightfully wonderfully pleasant to be cold, then warmed up.

I have a cat scratch, a fairly deep one, on the back of my arm/shoulder right where my bra strap rubs. I constantly automatically assume that it is the adjustable slider on my bra strap having its wicked way with me. I had not ever noticed how much pain I am routinely and constantly in from bras until I was absentmindedly cursing this pain, and realized that I wasn't wearing a bra. I had never noticed it, but I realize now that the sliders on bra straps often chafe me. I also expect the underwires to poke my ribs, and the bands to hurt my sides.
And these are the hundred-dollar bras I pay handsomely to import because they fit better.

The entirely wrong response would be to say that I am tired of my boobs. The right response is to resolve to make myself something that fits better. It's just difficult. Really difficult.

I suppose it's a humorous bit of irony that my breasts are intrinsically so difficult when their appearance leads so many to believe that I'm easy. Hah!

I am playing hooky tonight, and not going to practice. I am so tired and drained-- I haven't really had a day off since well before the bout on Saturday, so while I really ought to go tonight to prepare for our imminent scrimmage on Monday vs. the travel team, I am so exhausted that I have to miss something, so tonight gets it. Mostly because I nearly died on snowy-blowy roads in poor visibility too many times today to be able to face more of same after dark. My vision is still not good (I promise I will get new glasses next month and stop whining, finally, after what, three years of this?) and I am just so extremely tired.
I have tomorrow off, but then I have a weekend alone with a brand-new coworker and no help, so I'm hoping to go into that reaaaalllly well-rested. Ohcrap I have a party Sat. night I haven't RSVP'd to... Oh well. Soon.
Tomorrow I have to take the car in to get its routine maintenance, as well. It's like, uh, a lot of miles overdue. And it's been making funny noises. i'm a bad car-mommy. :/

So tonight I'm wearing fleece pyjamas, drinking beer, and hand-hemming one of Z's Pennsic tunics. I ahve been so scatterbrained and flustered for the last several months that starting a new sewing project, or even doing anything complicated on in-progress ones, just keeps not happening-- I go down to the Sewing Lair, and putter, and ponder, and hem and haw, and finally come back upstairs and do something else-- so I am, instead, finishing something that's been on my to-do list for nearly a year. Good. I'm also finishing the hoods I made for last Pennsic. Then I'm maybe going to knock myself out a few more cholis, which I began for last Pennsic. Last year I put my last-ditch efforts into preparing for a cold/rainy Pennsic, and was right; this year, I'd better prepare for a hot muggy one, to cover my bases. I should also do some more core training to prepare myself to wear these cholis... not that Pennsic is in any way about being bikini-ready... But I am wishing I could fit an intro bellydance class into my schedule, because it would be nice to know how. Eh.

Hand-sewing is so soothing. Machine-sewing is all right, but hand-sewing is yet more rewarding. I have too many projects I Have To Do, though, that I feel guilty for just doing something else. :( I need to get those Have To Do's put together so they get into the fun stage.
Maybe tomorrow I'll do an 18th-c petticoat. I have the day off. I need to bring something to sew while I wait for the car to be done... That's a good project for tonight...

Z's mother gave him an electric blanket for a belated birthday present. It's the most awesomest thing ever. The end. I'm having trouble not spending all my time in bed. Oh my word. it's like an all-over heating pad for my whole body: i never get sore muscles anymore, from anything, because it just radiates warmth into all my deep tissues and makes it all go away. Oh man. I don't want to see our next electric bill...

Speaking of which my big boss is so adorably cute. He has two little daughters, and his wife stays home with them most of the time. (I think she works just a few hours a week. She couldn't really work more; he works at least 60 hours a week, often more.) Their last electric bill was significantly higher than normal, and higher than average for a family/house their size. So he gave them a motivational pep-talk about their goal numbers, and brainstormed some strategies to get their consumption down, and of course has been leading by example. I asked if he'd done any yelling and he said no, that was for next month, if they didn't at least progress toward their goal figures.
I should mention his daughters are three and seven.

I am pooped. Straight-up pooped. Worked M-F, skated Sat., worked Sun., and had a long-anticipated day off today. Only they called me at about 10:15 asking why I wasn't at work. I had today off!!! But the schedule apparently had been changed-- the store manager had left a semi-incoherent message on Thursday or so saying I'd been put back onto the schedule for Sunday, or so I understood from the message, since the new girl couldn't start until next Sunday, but that was fine because I'd expected to have to work Sunday, so I deleted the message and thought nothing of it. Only apparently she meant Monday too, and she'd put me on for six days instead of five? I don't know; I haven't yet found out. I told work that I could come in, sure, but I'd have to call them back to let them know when I'd be there, since I don't know the bus schedule offhand and of course, since I had the day off, I'd already let Z take the car to work. If they'd called a tiny bit earlier-- about five minutes, in fact-- they could have caught me in time for me to hitch a ride with my parents as they left town. But it was too late by then.
They told me never mind, they'd manage without me. But I was left feeling very put-out-- I have a stellar attendance record and missing a shift isn't something I like to do. Also, six days means I'd be paid overtime, which would be a nice boost.
But that insanity lasted about four seconds, until I put the phone down and walked into the hallway and saw Mt. Killyounow of Laundry, holy crap. So I've spent today doing umpty-zillion loads of laundry.
It's already 3:00. It's safe to say I won't get any of the sewing or cooking or napping done that I'd so desperately needed to do today. I've got two more loads of laundry to do, and then I have to put away the last week's loads of laundry that I cleaned and abandoned since I didn't have time.
I don't know where I'll put them. I hate sorting laundry so much, I really do, but I'm to the point where I'm washing and re-wearing like two outfits to work because I just can't find the rest, and that's really not a healthy way to live.

I'm just so tired, though. I'd been planning all November and December to take some time off in January or early February and go meet my new nephew, and now I've no idea when or how I'd even do that. I can't catch up, let alone get ahead. And yeah, I don't have another roller derby bout for over a month, but then I have two in three weeks, so, uh, yeah. No time off for me.
And then I'm in a wedding in July that I still know nothing about except that I'm expected to make my own outfit, and then it's Pennsic already. Oh, there's another wedding in there, somewhere in June, in Long Island somewhere or other. How on earth did I get such a busy lifestyle? Where did all that come from? I've no idea...

Well, enough whining. At least I imminently have health insurance that covers... anything at all. I just don't yet. And so I suppose I'm grateful that while my team didn't win on Saturday, none of us broke anything, including me, because I'd been dwelling unpleasantly on how not-well that would go if it happened, since about, mm, well, as soon as this season's schedule came out. I had a blast Saturday, don't get me wrong, I just was sort of gritting my teeth against the paranoia.

I wish I had that health insurance now, though. I guess I gotta get my nerve up even though I'm truant today to be a jerk to the manager until he actually puts the paperwork through. I've kind of spent several years of my life getting jerked around and I've got to actually do something at some point...

At work I was presented with a shoebox full of rolls of old film. It looks like someone loaded his own black and white cartridges, and developed them at home in the sink, and then dried them and rolled them up and never printed them. The customer has a Russian last name; there are no labels or dates except for a few scribbled pieces of paper that say 1968 and something indecipherable. The manager looked at them and said they were probably too tightly-curled to be read by our film scanning machine, but I was welcome to try. So I have been working steadily at it. I've had to roll it the other way, and trim off ragged edges, and cut rolls that have torn sprocket holes to scan in two pieces around the damage. There's a lot I still can't digitize, but there's a whole lot I can.
I am fairly convinced that it's 1960s Russia. There is a whole roll that is men in fur hats like the movies, and in uniforms that look like WWII history books, clowning around and drinking and posing for the camera. There are a lot of rolls of architecture with traditional Orthodox onion-dome detailing. There are statues and murals that look like Soviet art. I may be being led by my desire for it to be something cool, but it's undeniably old: most of the shots are of women and tiny children, and the women are wearing floral sheath dresses, knee socks, and headscarves. There are several rolls taken at the beach, interestingly, and the women are invariably wearing two-piece swimsuits with their midriffs-- but not bellybuttons-- exposed.
Anyway it's been fascinating to work with them. I'm totally going to undercharge the guy but he won't know or care, as it's still going to work out to two or three hundred dollars' worth of work. (As it should; I've spent hours on it so far and will spend more, and that kind of thing isn't free.)

Anyway. Z started at his new job today. He's crammed into a small dark room with five other programmers. He had trouble absorbing all the info he's going to need to-- it turns out, waking up at 7am was really really too early for him to handle. He needs so much sleep. I'd thought maybe his overwhelming and constant need for sleep might wane in his late 20s/early 30s, but he's holding steady at totally non-functional without at least nine, preferably ten hours a night.
But anyway, he's glad to be getting out of the house and remains pleased and interested by what he's being asked to do there, so that's good.

Last night a friend had a horrible health crisis and nearly bled to death, which was distressing to hear about. She is expected to be fine, but I am very sad to hear of her trouble. Of course, I can never think of things to say that aren't trite and stupid, so I am contenting myself with understated yet sincere concern.

Poor Chita realized immediately this morning that something was up. I got up, and that was fairly typical, but then Z got up too, and she was confused and followed him around. So he fed her. Which was a huge red flag for her: we NEVER feed her first thing in the morning, unless we're going to-- oh no! We're leaving the house! We're going to abandon her! She figured it out and followed us around alternately, yowling and being cute by turns. (She was VERY distressed when I made coffee, which I rarely do, and packed lunches, which I NEVER do.)
We do this when we get ready for road trips. Which we go on and leave her, sometimes, for three or four days alone. Which she's not harmed by, being a cat. But she doesn't like it, of course.
When we came home at 5:30 she was ecstatic.
I'm currently working quite hard to keep her distracted and entertained while Z naps. She's developed an unpleasant habit of going into the bedroom where someone is napping, and sitting in the corner mumbling to herself until that person wakes up. She'll keep it up for an hour or more-- I know, I've tried outlasting her. God forbid Z and I both want to nap at the same time. (We do this sometimes because an early morning schedule combined with roller derby routinely (thrice weekly) going until 11pm means you've got to nap sometime. And when you factor in that Z needs his 10 hours, there's really not time for me to nap too.)

We've gone through all her toys, though, and I'm out of ideas. It may be time for duct tape.

I had so much fun skating tonight. I have to say this has been a fantastic season so far because I keep coasting myself out on the straightaway after the fourth whistle blows and ends the jam, looking around, and wanting to high-five myself for getting involved in a hobby that is so much fucking fun. I love rollerskating. I love rollerskating. And I love rollerskating even more with these people, who are just so much fun. Good galoshes, as my former team captain once memorably said in a text message. Good galoshes, what a time we're having!

So that was good. But I had a small victory beforehand, too. I annoyedly typed "Right Fit Lane Bryant Jeans" or somesuch into Google, to see what came up-- surely somebody's reselling them in a dodgy fashion on eBay, or something? And what should come up but a result for $7.99 on Lanebryant.com itself? Why, it's their end of season clearance! And I could get the Right Fit Red Size 1s for $17, or the Yellow Size 2 (Tall) for $7.99, if I bought it in the medium wash that I wanted in the first place and they didn't have in the store. Why, yes please, and thanks! I jumped right on that. And the bras, which were buy one, get one half-off in the store, were buy two get two free on the website. So bang, bang, I threw four bras in a size I knew would fit well enough into the cart. (This means I can experiment on the three I bought before, which need their bands taken in but I have been wearing anyway because I'm scared that if I alter them and screw them up, I won't have anything at all to wear-- because I wouldn't. But not now! I have new ones! Tra-la, get out the seam-ripper and we'll have us a hot time tonight!)
And then I discovered that I had a coupon in my inbox, for $25 off $75, or $75 off $150. Well shit mother, I am adding more stuff to my shopping cart and going for the big one!! (The bras were $40 each. To get 2 free I had to spend $80. Four bras for $80, when the ones that really fit [32JJ from Freya, ordered from overseas] are like $100 with the exchange rate and shipping, EACH? Hell to the yes, my friends.)
So I bought a leopard-print skirt on clearance because why the hell not, I need more skirts and have a shameful lack of leopard print in my repertoire. And I bought a hideous yellow t-shirt for $2 because again, why the hell not. (It was elbow-length, with a V neck. I can attempt to dye it and see what happens, if the color is that nasty. I have dye and a sense of adventure. And a spare stove, whereupon I can make a mess. I've done it before.) And then I splurged and bought myself a full-price set of lace-ruffled rhumba panties, in red, because I NEED THOSE FOR ROLLER DERBY. I wouldn't spend $18 for underwear but those are gonna be outerwear, my friends. Oh yes they are.
GOD I LOVE THIS SPORT. Any venue where a 200+-pound woman is perfectly at home in a pair of ruffled underpants in public-- is even praised for her fashion sense-- is where I was born to be, my friends.

And then I put in my coupon code and felt smug. If the Yellow 2s don't fit, I don't care, because I need a pair of sturdy schlubbing jeans and FIVE DOLLARS with all my discounts is perfectly acceptable for schlubbing jeans. (The 1s were like a goddamn sausage casing in yellow, so I am positive the 2s will be an improvement, at least.)

So I wrested victory from the jaws of defeat, and I had my hot fudge sundae today, which I've been wanting for WEEKS, and I am going to shower and go to bed and KICK THE ASS of a Monday that the civilized world has off and hopefully will spend shopping for cameras. That's my plan. BUY CAMERAS FROM ME. I KNOW HOW TO USE CAPS LOCK. AND I WIN THE INTERNET.
Also I smell awesome and need to shower. Later.

And in addition to my locked (for TMI) post's adventures first thing this morning, I have since then managed to
1) get my period, and attendant awful cramps, and
2) completely strike out whilst jeans shopping.
I am full of frustration and fail today.
Why is all women's clothing coded? The sizes are all different and there are code words for everything. Land's End sells women's jeans with inseam measurements, which is awesome, but think about it-- men's jeans are waist in inches x leg in inches, while women's are arbitrary number meaning size x leg in inches. So for instance, a man would wear 30x31, and a woman? 12x31. No fucking lie, I actually saw a tag that said 12x31. "Twelve whats?" Z asked.
Then we went to Old Navy, who sells jeans by rise-- "modern" vs "classic" vs "mid"-- and other details of cut like "boot", "flare", "skinny", "sassy", and I don't even know what. Then there's Lane Bryant, who resets the sizes to even more meaningless numbers, and have color codes.
I do not fit in Old Navy jeans-- on the one hand, I have apparently lost weight and now fit into a straight size 14 again, instead of plus 14/straight 16. But the straight 14 is not roomy enough in the thigh; it fits on my body, but their highest rise cuts in just under the fullest part of my gut and hips. It doesn't give me a muffin-top look, but that combined with the thighs-pulling-pants-down effect leads me to know that I will spend every moment I wear these jeans pulling them up. No thanks. I asked if they had a higher rise; if I could wear them with a belt above my chunkiest belly/hip parts, they'd stay. But they don't have a higher rise than 'classic', and they don't have a roomier thigh/seat than 'sweetheart'. (There's the "dreamer", but I am about 99% sure that one has elastic tummy control panels and I am not going to even dignify that with an attempt.)
So I went to Lane Bryant instead. It's for older, fatter ladies, and I obviously am of the matronly persuasion if I do not want my jeans to expose my buttcrack. So I tried on their Right Fit jeans. The saleslady eyeballed me into Size 1 Yellow or Red. I cleverly looked at the tags: blue is a circle, yellow a rectangle, red a triangle. So blue is for the booty-endowed, yellow is for the straight-up-and-down, and red is for the thigh-heavy. Perfect: I don't have to explain that I have no ass.
The Yellow fit me like a sausage casing. I had trouble getting it over my thighs. I had trouble fastening it. It gave me awful camel toe and a muffin top. So I peeled it back off, and dubiously tried on the Reds.
Which fit perfectly. A tiny bit loosely, in fact, in the lower-gut area.
But they were thin denim. I could tell I'd rub through the thighs in, eh, maybe six months. For fifty dollars. I might prefer the Old Navy muffin-top factory for $25 instead; I could get two of them and have a year's worth of cheap denim coverage. If I didn't mind hiking them up every time I took a breath.
You breathe a lot, in a day.
Lane Bryant had some other jeans too, in conventional sizes (14, 16 not 1,2), but it was too late. I had lost steam. And the Seven7s were $70. I could not bring myself to even try them on.
The saleslady said something sympathetic about how if the fashion designers had their way we'd all look like Z. No, he said: Nobody makes jeans my size. She wasn't sympathetic. I didn't appreciate the thin idealization in a plus-size store, but wasn't trying to be political.

If I made jeans they would come in three styles: Mother, Maiden, and Crone.

Had today off. Grocery-shopped. Feel like I got nothing else done. I was busy most of the day. But I did take a nap of nearly an hour in the bed in the office, with darling Chita, who snuggled under the blankets and was RIDICULOUSLY CUTE.

I made an f-locked post yesterday, which I seldom do, because I was unable to figure out how to edit the thing to be coherent and not reveal too much about other people's lives. I was hoping I'd have time to sum up today in a more reasonable way, but so far it's sort of not coming. I skived off of practice tonight, feeling tired and un-motivated, when I saw it wasn't a scrimmage-- it's not that I get more benefit from scrimmaging, per se, but that if I am not there, my team is less cohesive, and so I make more of an effort to be there if there is a scrimmage, for completeness's sake. I saw this opportunity and decided to stay home and collect my frazzled thoughts a little bit more.

Tragic things are all around. I am helpless in the face of disasters like Haiti, where aid can't even get in to the damaged port or half-crippled airport; other disasters are beyond my help. A friend's dog is in mysterious liver failure and she has exhausted her meager savings to save the dear sweet creature; I am broke and can't help, but my heart breaks. And to continue that theme, my store manager's dog was hit by a car yesterday, and very badly injured. In her pain, she bit my coworker so badly that she had to get stitches too. Molly, the dog, may yet live but has to spend two weeks in the hospital. I feel awful for both of them.

But there are good things on the horizon for me and mine, so I am trying not to feel guilty. Z starts his new job... well, the holiday party is tomorrow, and then they have Monday off, so he's starting Tuesday. He's looking forward to it immensely.

And meanwhile, I have tentatively been offered a full-time position with the company I've been working 27-39 hours a week for for the last 7 months. The difference is that I'd get health insurance. Free. Instead of the $215-a-month "insurance" I have now that doesn't cover doctor visits, prescriptions, mental health services, ambulance rides, gyn visits, dental care, or the first $5,000 in medical bills of any kind per year. I put it in quotes because if it doesn't cover any of those things I don't see how it's "medical insurance", but it fits the criteria I'm required to have for roller derby, so I've been coughing up. The small but relatively substantial raise that goes along with the change in status is actually much less significant to me than the insurance. There's even dental. I can't explain how much this means to me. It's not even the money, it's the knowledge that I am allowed to actually see a doctor if I want to, and that if I do wind up one of those statistical minority of people who play my sport and get seriously injured, if I do get a tooth knocked out or something, I can actually afford to get it fixed, instead of getting the minimum of medical care (i.e. a diagnosis of whether it's an organ, a joint, a muscle, a bone, or a tendon, so I know what not to do) and then treating it at home with ibuprofen, a heat pad, bits of felt, duct tape, and an ice pack, like I've been doing for the last... is it two years now? It's got to be over two calendar years.
I won't lie, this has affected my game play. It has made me afraid to get hurt. I have not jammed, even in practice, in two seasons because I know it's riskier and what if I get a shoulder to the face and lose an incisor or a canine? I could not afford to get it fixed and would spend the rest of my life with a gap-toothed smile, one of the clearest indicators of poverty or lower-class status in modern America. I could conceivably, invisibly be denied jobs or a slot in a graduate program because of an interviewer's prejudice; people everywhere from policemen to potential romantic partners or friends would make assumptions about my background and character based on my appearance. I know the kinds of privilege I have, but I also know how fragile they can be.
I really think about things like this.
It's not enough to make me stop skating because skating is the only thing in my life keeping me sane and healthy. It's the only therapy I can afford. Though if you figure I'm only paying for health insurance in order to continue... well, I can't really afford it. But I have trouble classifying health insurance as a luxury... except what I've had, which, as I said, isn't really "health insurance" so much as it is "paying ransom to an idea"... Anyway, paying out-of-pocket for a psychiatrist and a gym membership and a nutritionist would probably add up to about the same, and the operative limiting factor is that I would never buy myself those things, so I'd be dangerously out of shape and suicidally miserable and that's that.

So it's really a huge deal, and whether it's finalized or not, I still feel I should mention it. I am in that gap in our society, where I make too much for the government to offer me any help in navigating the murky waters of "health insurance", but have not had any hope of help from an employer, and make too little to strike out on my own. $210 a month is usually more than I make in a week; up to this point, my paychecks after taxes have been approximately $180-215 per week. If I did not live with someone who didn't care if I contributed equally to the rent (which is ridiculously low and we know how lucky we are), if I did not have a car I share that has been paid off for two years, if I did not dislike shopping (I'm wearing work pants from college), if I did not live with someone who makes enough not to mind if I pay precisely half of the grocery bill, or use his Internet-- well, you figure out what you would do if you made that amount of money and had to devote a quarter of it to these payments that don't let you see a doctor or have medicine.
(If I reliably made less than $205 a week I could qualify for Medicare, but a single paycheck over that amount in a month disqualifies me. Sweet!)


Anyway. That's the deal with me. Still not the most coherent, but it's better than it was. In theory.

I had planned on nerving myself up and going out for an unpleasant bureaucratic mission today, but upon sitting down to review the paperwork, I realize that no, I do not have everything I need, and must wait another week for another bit of paper. And so... I am... bereft of that sense of purpose, and filled simultaneously with a renewed sense of anxiety concerning said bureaucratic matter, as it has now dragged out much longer than I'd hoped.
But now I don't have to go out and do it.
( at a loss )
So I mostly squandered yesterday, but then, I did get some things done.
For my own records, here are the recipes I used on the boozey-things.
( A ginger-spice vodka cordial-like-thing and some, er, sort of mead )

Turns out yesterday that a lot of what Z has been taciturnly ignoring me to work on on his computer is a program to help him generate cross-stitch patterns, because when I got home from practice, he had a piece of 18-count Aida cloth in a hoop and was working on a new project. He is really really into this cross-stitching thing, and someday is probably going to actually sell the patterns in an Etsy store, so all of you who like geeky cross-stitch need to keep him in mind. The first one was a big hit at Christmas-- what's funny is that all his female kin are cross-stitchers, so basically the first thing they did was turn the thing over and look at the beautiful, immaculate back which had no knots or loose ends. The design was cute and all-- the happy Mac and "welcome" under it in the Mac font, I forget which one-- but the back was amazing, show-quality, etc. Z found this astonishing, that they'd be so interested in the back, but I assured him a lot of people don't have that engineer's impulse like he does. ("If the back is messy then it is more difficult to continue working on the front," he said, frowning severely and looking icy and Germanic. [He isn't, he's a Balt, but they're not numerous enough to have engineer-related stereotypes.])

The new one, I will say for the purposes of heightening anticipation, is Oregon Trail-related. And involves an ox.

Oh, this is bugging me-- how do you pronounce an ã?? I never studied Portuguese and my Spanish does me no good here!

So people keep linking to those Symphony of Science videos. The other day I sat and watched them all, and realized, as I re-watched two of them, that I wasn't really that interested in the music: I was watching them because I wanted to hear what the people were saying. So I looked through the site and found a link to the Carl Sagan miniseries Cosmos on Hulu, and clicked the link, and watched an episode. (I'm up to here by now.)
Oh my goodness! You can just... you can just watch TV shows on your computer!!
I mean, I knew in theory that you could do that, it had just never occurred to me to type www.hulu.com and see what happened. OMG! You just... you just click the thing! And it... and it plays! A whole episode!
I know, I know, you are all crying out a resounding utterance of DUH. But I don't ever think of these things. I haven't had a television in years and even when I did I wasn't much good at using it. (I'd sit in front of it while it was on, but it would basically never occur to me that Oh, hey, it's six o'clock, I should go turn on channel x and see my show! Mm not so much; I'd just turn it on when I was bored and be annoyed that nothing good was on. I'm not so good with scheduled programming.) And I had just sort of assumed that if I wanted to watch TV I'd have to deal with TV on its own terms. I thought you had to install something or subscribe to something or whatever to use Hulu-- I'd never looked into it because I don't care about television and am so thoroughly out of touch I wouldn't know where to start. So anyway, I was shocked to discover that you just... do it, without a registration or a login or an installation or a subscription or anything. I'd just not been interested enough to explore it before, assuming there was nothing I'd want to see on there.
Yeah, I know. Duh. Whatever.

So anyway, I started with the last episode, Who Speaks for Earth, but after that figured out how Hulu categorizes things, and started with #1 and have been working my way back. It's so absorbing. Carl Sagan is a muppet, though. I'm pretty sure he only has that one blazer. I finally looked him up on Wikipedia but they didn't explain why he apparently spent his entire adult life in a beige corduroy blazer. Which is fine, I mean-- if you're a genius, wear whatever the hell you want. But the muppet hair and the muppet voice combine to make him extremely appealing to me. I just want to snuggle him and have him tell me about the universe. Poor Carl.
I can't remember if I've seen any of this series before. Mostly, the music is great-- it's just Holst's The Planets, which I had an LP of as a kid and have on CD now and listen to sometimes because I rather like them (especially the Jupiter one, which was the theme song of some NPR/PBS radio show when I was a kid), and then assorted other things like Adagio on a Theme by Albinoni, which isn't by Albinoni at all-- but sometimes it's this hokey synth stuff that sounds just like every special I had to watch in school as a kid. It's oddly... soothing. Hokey, yes, but soothing. And deeply reminiscent. So I don't know if I've seen any of it before.

So that's how I've been spending my evenings-- huddled in my homemade Snuggie on the couch staring raptly at pictures of planets while Carl Sagan's Kermit-like dulcet tones lecture me on the basic principles of astrophysics. (Note: he never actually says "Billions and billions!" That was the Tonight Show parody, which I have not seen, as I haven't found it. My cultural knowledge is heavily Wikipedia-edited.) I suppose I should thank Symphony of Science. Or curse it, because I don't have all that much free time and didn't really need it sucked up into this.

I have today off, which is unprecedented for a Sunday. Unfortunately I have had to turn down the offer of a ham dinner, because I have practice tonight and if I sit down to eat at 6, I will vomit copiously when I get to practice an hour and a half later. I am going to make a big lunch today, though, because I HAVE TODAY OFF OMG. I never ever ever ever get a weekend day off, can never spend time with Z, can never be lazy, can never call my family or go on an outing with Z. I'll probably squander it sitting on the couch with my cosmic muppet show, but oh the possibility...

I got this recipe from my mom. Made it the other day in my new cast-iron Dutch oven. It was wonderful. Am just finishing the leftovers today. The red pepper in it is really important; green might suit, but none at all would leave it tasting bland, I think. When I mentioned the recipe Z was markedly unenthused, to the point that I held off on making it until there was nothing else in the house, but he loved it and it's getting put in the regular rotation now.

Technical question: What's the difference, technically, between a cream of whatever soup and a chowder??

Corn and Potato Chowder
1 Tbsp butter
1/4 lb bacon, diced
1 cup chopped onion
3/4 c chopped pepper
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp flour
4 C chicken stock
4 c diced potato
1 1/2 c shredded carrot
2 cups corn
1 c half and half
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
melt butter in soup kettle, cook bacon and drain. (Or just cook bacon in soup kettle and use instead of butter for total of 1/4 cup fat.) Cook pepper and onion with salt and pepper until soft. Add garlic, and cook 1 minute. Sprinkle on flour. Add broth and potatoes. Cover, boil 10 minutes. Add carrots and corn, simmer 5 minutes. Stir in half-and half, thyme, pepper, and sprinkle with bacon bits.
Optional-- add cayenne pepper, and parsley.

Anyway-- taking the last little leftovers to work today. Brrrrr. I'd love to stay home and watch the snow, but duty calls.

Got a big ol friction burn on the front of my shin from a rolling skate wheel. V. painful last night, didn't hurt this morning when I woke, but starts to sting if I stand for a while. Urgh. I knew when it happened that it was just a bruise, but it was so astonishingly painful I had to writhe around on the floor for a while. It's a darn good thing the jam was called just after I fell so I didn't have to pop right up and skate skate skate. I am continually working on my recovery time but when it hurts that bad all you can do is twitch and writhe to try and distract yourself. Ow ow ow ow owww!

As I said, it's better now, but definitely swollen and it stings, probably from blood going to it if I don't keep it elevated or at least level with the rest of me. Kinda puts a damper on today's day off plans, but I'm so wonderfully glad I don't have to go to work and stand on it for 8 hours now. That would get old so fast.

attack_laurel gets another solid base hit with yet another interesting essay, this time on the ridiculous gender bias inherent in all these survivalist TV programs. Survivalism for the rest of us, i.e., women. I started following her (oh, wait, on LJ it's called "friending"; how many different site-specific words do we have for "adding to reading list" nowadays? I seem to like "follow" best as a single-word thing, which is interesting since the rest of Twitter culture gives me the hives. They didn't come up with a twee little name for it!) for SCA-related stuff but mostly she's fun with the not too lengthy, somewhat thinky, rational, coincidentally perfectly in line with my own politics essays. So, well put again. And fun food for thought.
Think about it, though. I enjoy a good "What Will You Do When The World Ends?" TV program as much as anyone else, but yeah, they're 100% predicated on the assumption that you're a man. Are women not supposed to be interested in these things? Dude I grew up pretending to be the last person alive, in a wood-heated house with a cellar full of preserves and a cabinet full of guns. I'm unlikely to *not* be interested in this stuff!
Whatever.

Land registration opened up for Pennsic, and my land agent registered our household. I can't even fathom where I'll be or what I'll be doing by July/August, much less how to work out Pennsic. But it's awesome to know that the Three Swans are registering already. Sweet!

OK I have to get up from this couch and do something. You bet your ass I'll be back, though, because I've got to keep the swelling down in this leg so I can skate tonight.
Crazy? Me? Nah. It's only a bruise, right?

The thing about derby is that it's like a second job. I have practice four nights this week, and plan on an extra workout on a fifth night. (If I were on travel team, I'd have practice four nights *every* week, and five this week. Don't think I'm still not nurturing a tiny fantasy of trying out for TT.) I'm scheduled to work five days this week, after having been given a 2-day schedule last week as a penalty for complaining (well, it was 3, but one of them was a day I'd previously stated I couldn't work, so I managed to get it covered, by dint of considerable petitioning and angst). But I think I still might spend more hours on roller derby this week than at a paid job.

I had deep thoughts last night on my way home, about how I have two different attitudes toward derby, and a big sign of my maturing as a player and a person is that I'm learning to differentiate the two. One is my opinions and personal feelings as a player, which are necessarily very subjective and somewhat territorial-- I sort of have to get mad to stay in the game, and I have to let my passions run to their limit in order to achieve the necessary adrenaline. The other is my feelings as a fan of the sport, which are still somewhat subjective, but are more based in overall impressions and some measure of analysis. And I've been struggling to articulate that difference for four years now, and had never realized it was that simple. But I can't remember the gist of the point I came up with last night, as I was really quite tired. My coach from last year was in town-- his sister is coaching us now-- and it was wonderful to hear his voice on the sidelines again. We've had such a different style of coaching and different style of leadership this year that last year seems very dim and far away, but I did remember how happy we were sometimes. We had a rough year last year, no lie-- actually, as with anything difficult, i.e. worth doing, it's going to be pretty rough most of the time, so I'd have to say every one of my years of derby has been rough-- but we also had some really great times, and while I regret some of the outcomes, I can't really say I was unhappy on the whole. It was just really hard.
This year has seemed easier, but I'm not sure if it's that I'm in better shape, or if cumulative knowledge has finally collected enough for me to mostly know what's going on. Shocks are more dreadful when unexpected, after all. But I have had more time to devote to enjoying myself. Which is nice.

Someone asked our new coach (well, she's not new, but she's new to the Head Coach position, such as it is, I suppose; she and I have been skating together since 2006, which is at this point a considerable time) how our team was doing. He might have been trying to start a (presumably friendly) trash-talking session. Our coach replied simply, "We're happy!" and he laughed. She relayed this story in an incredulous tone. "What's so funny about that? It's the truth!"
It is. I love our coach, I love how passionate she is, I love how we've all learned to understand Canadian for her, and I love our captain and co-captain, and I love our rookies, and I love our veterans, and I love most of what happens. I just wish I missed fewer blocks. But my goal this season is to banish regret. Don't be sad afterward about an outcome. All I can control is how hard I prepared for it, and how hard I tried at the time, and as long as I do everything I can in both of those departments, I have no reason to be sorry for what happens. I can always wish for more, and keep trying for more, but there's no reason for regret if you did your best.

As a side benefit, though, my "best" is pretty damn good. While I'm being humble.
*
I Facebooked an observation on New Year's Resolutions. "Who has time for New Year's Resolutions? I'm just being thankful for what went right and resigned about what went wrong and working, as ever, on gaining enough strength to change the things I need to."
It makes me sound like one of those feel-good sports movies, right? Like the guy who was mentally handicapped and not a very good football player but went on to play football for Notre Dame anyway, right? (What was that even about? Let's teach our youth to strive for unattainable goals, since failure is not an option! Jeez. Actually I just read a rather good essay on failure.)
Oy.
But I also read an entry recently about blogging, somewhat related-- "And it’s hard to explain but I don’t understand that so many people are reading. To me it’s still just a small handful of friends. Even though, logically, I know that’s not the case, that’s still how I feel. So that’s how I write – as if a dozen people who love me and support me are reading and that’s it."
That's absolutely how I feel. I replied to that and said that I have to write that way. If I don't have an audience, I don't feel obligated to keep this up, and so I can't privacy-lock it. (Side note on doing things for others-- having the more detached perspective on derby is something I can only really muster for the benefit of other people, and it's why I tend to improve my skating and playing by leaps and bounds every time we get rookies, because I have to in order to explain to them since they ask for help.) And if I don't keep up the journal, I don't get my thoughts organized. Really-- on days I don't write here, I can't collect myself and wind up more scattered than usual. So I have to write as though only a few friends read this, in order to explain the world to myself so that I can move through it more purposefully.

And sometimes I feel like nobody reads this. But then I forget, and write something from that first perspective, that very subjective opinionated personal perspective (which, don't forget, I am entitled to, as a human), and I get verbally assaulted by anonymous strangers, and then I remember that I do have a readership. It's unsettling every time.

Anyway, I changed subject, I guess. I think my point was that if I want to sound like a cheesy inspirational movie about sports, I can if I want, because in my head, only a few people who love me anyway read this. Prove me wrong if you like, but there's not much room for logic here; I've little use for it.