-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've bitten off all my fingernails!?

I've come across my first *real* conflict with training for roller derby. Fortunately the conflict is not with my own body or any of my (fabu) teammates; the conflict stems from my urge to play in MUD.

Yesterday, my corner of the Midwest offered up weather PERFECT for stirring the compost piles and doing some preliminary vegetable-patch preperations. I've seen pansies placed in the ground around town, and I'm itching to part wtih $20 to plunk some down by my mailbox and up by the front stoop so I can enjoy some color. If I didn't have a meeting to attend after lunch then practice into the evening, I would have stayed outside until my overalls were damp with dew, my hands were numb, my nose was running, and the light had faded to the point I was paranoid of chopping unsuspecting worms in half with my garden implements of doom.

One aspect of my evening was the same: I was very tired, very sore, and very very happy.

On the minus side, my garden is neglected. On the plus side, I shared smiles, body slams, accidental pile-ups, and laughs with an extrodinarly friendly group of people.

I'm telling myself that I can only get away with derby for a finite amount of time. I hope that my yard can wait on me, I hope the vagrant bunnies still stop by to eat clover and don't mind the (potential) absence of salad bar. I hope my kitty-corner backyard neighbors don't think they've "won" because I'm not busy cluttering their pristine Cheml@wn view with my scruffy-looking experiments.

And I wonder why I've recently taken up biting my fingernails, when I haven't done that for years . . . .

I'm *considering* coming up with extra money (that I want to spend on more skating gear) to hire out someone to help my yard along a bit. The criteria being
1) little to no chemical use
2) unless it's edible, it's a native species
3) I'm helping rather than harming native critters
4) tomatoes. Lots and lots of them.
5) tidy-looking enough that my neighbors don't get shitty
6)
7)

I could go on forever.
The point is, I want to do this myself and am afraid I'll end up being a ginormous hag to anyone foolish enough to work on my yard on my behalf.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

cruuuuuuuud . . .

um, someone explain to me how it's Thursday already?

I have _not_ been the devoted blogger I once was. I have a few excuses, but excuses are like assholes, everyone has one and all of them stink.

I suppose blogging has become "low priority" since I started training for roller derby, but I can't help but to think that I should keep blogging regardless of my schedule. I feel like I should continue to blah blah to the pseudo-anonymous void of the internet. As self-centered and vain as most of my entries are, blogging is a good way for me to hop out of my own head, out of my own little universe for a while and make a conscious effort to communicate with people in a passably normal way.

For instance, on Tuesday night, I attended a stretching class that was arranged specifically for my teammates and I. Since rollerderby is essentially controlled combat (yeah, I sell it as an endurance sport because I don't want people to form the opinion that I'm an angry person) we need to be able to recover from knocks and keep ourselves as limber as possible. All of us were learning to do rope-assisted leg stretches so there was alot of squirming and giggling going on with the occasional person sitting upright to watch what everyone else was doing. The instructor said something along the lines of "just wait until all of you can do these stretches in rhythm at the same time, it will be fantastic". Out of my mouth pops "yes, we'll be like starfish migrating across the ocean floor".

Bless the newbie laying next to me who started giggling at me! I wasn't trying to be funny, I didn't even intend to speak - that's just what was going through my head and it made (and makes) perfect sense to me.

I have been doing this since I was a little kid and only rarely have stumbled into an ugly situation because of it, but at the same time would really like to be better at engaging that between-brain-and-mouth filter that other people have or use more often than I do/can.

Not tragic, not really worth whining about, just trying to prevent foot-in-mouth-itis.

My question for you:
What was your most notable foot-in-mouth moment?
Did the the other person take it well, or were they ticked off?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next