Liz Argall

Roller Derby is such a satisfying thing to play. I was sad when the scrimmage ended, I wasn’t nearly exhausted enough. It felt really good to be out there and my team mates are wonderful. It’s great when it feels like both teams are working hard, throwing themselves in with gusto, but no one is being nasty. Great vibe and a close game. PFM is a really nice learning environment and the last few practices I’ve felt new skills click into place.

As a writer it can be hard to tell when I’m improving and sometimes it’s hard to tell what to focus on. The world of the mind is a nebulous place and even if you set concrete goals it can be hard to tell if you’ve achieved the goal, or if it was a worthwhile goal to chase.

Not so with Roller Derby. I have specific physical skills to work on and specific mental skills to work on. I can frequently succeed and achieve short term and long term goals. It’s so nice to have so much specific, chewy stuff to work on (even if there is a monumental amount of stuff to work on). I fall down a lot. I fall down, I try to fall small and safe, then I get up again. Nothing like falling and failing to help maintain a beginner’s mind and sense of play.

My goals for today’s scrimmage were to be more aggressive, especially as a jammer, and to not close my eyes when I try to block someone or am about to be hit.

The scrimmage was so much fun and I achieved both my goals. It’s scary trying to push your way through or step through a hole in a wall, but it’s so thrilling when you succeed.

The one time I jammed (was the point scoring person with a star on their head) I got lead jammer, but I thought the other jammer got lead. I thought it was very strange that she didn’t call it off. I’m ok communicating with my pack, but I’m not good at listening to or looking for my bench coaches.

My goals for next scrimmage are:

• Look for my bench coaches. Get into the habit of looking for them when I’m blocking, so that it’s ingrained by the time I start jamming. When I’m jamming it’s too mad to try to learn new habits. Plus, more effective communication is good communication.
• Remember who my jam ref is! Sounds obvious, but nothing like fighting your way through a group of bodacious women to empty your brain.
• Call off a jam. I’ve never called off a jam and I’d love to tap my hips sometime. Given I only jam once or twice a scrimmage it might take me a while to achieve this goal, but I want it.

Roller skating practice goals – these aren’t scrimmage dependent and a tiny smidge of what I need to learn and do.

• Improve my plough stops. I just don’t like t-stopping, but if I want to avoid doing t-stops my plough stops need to be a lot better.
• Learn how to transition and do turn around toe stops.
• Get better at skating backwards, so transitions aren’t as scary.

Now I get to virtuously relax for a little while… then I should get back to my novel.

Horrific Miscue are a writing critique group I’ve been part of for a few years now. Where has the time gone?  Tonight Mike and I had the pleasure of hosting the Christmas Party and present battle.

It was delicious and fun – so nice to see people having a good time. I like to be of service.

The stealing presents game was unusually civilized. I think we all wanted to open presents rather than grab from the known. I stole a watch that I’m going to wear as a choker. Mike scored Star Wars Lego, and no one took it from him!

People brought so much food! It all tasted good and we hardly made a dent in most things!

I made:

orzo pasta salad with tomato, artichoke, olives and fetta

three kinds of dukkah

black bean dip

And Mike made red lentil daal with rice and plied our guests with cocktails.

I’m glad we started early, for now I must to bed. Tomorrow morning I need to be out of the house early to be in PFM’s Roller Derby Scrimmage.

Mike and I were picking up last minutes supplies at Wholefoods last night when I realized I was ravenously hungry. I remembered that Wholefoods will cook almost anything from their seafood and meat section for a $2 fee and so we decided to try their cooking. I wandered up and down the counters, but nothing really called to me – until I saw the whole rainbow trout.

15 minutes later we were sharing whole trout stuffed with lemon, butter and herbs with a side of grilled asparagus. Their grill is better than anything we have, so the skin charred in a way we just couldn’t do at home.

There’s something delightful about buying a whole fish and having it cooked in front of you immediately. And something quite remarkable about having this experience at a national supermarket chain.

When I wear my non skating official roller derby hat it isn’t new wheels or skates or socks that make me go squee. It’s stopwatches.

My Oslos arrived today. One is in Lightning Fist of Science purple. The other is in dark pink. Oh sure it looks like red, but pink is the color of WFTDA NSOs and I’m sure it’s just a very dark pink.

Now I can stop lusting after the ones Wizard of Laws uses.

 

My throat is tired from reading my novel out loud all day. The novel is better for it, even if I am not. When I ran out of puff reading my novel I wrote a postcard to a friend and that revived me.

Last night’s roller derby practice was a lot of fun. I’m not a very good hitter, but at least I’m getting better and making contact.

At one point the person I was trying to push off the track came to a standstill and so did I. People were yelling push her out, but it felt so much like a direction of gameplay penalty that I froze. I was stationary, she was stationary, and while our bodies were engaged it felt like I’d be initiating new block. It felt so wrong!

They were yelling, “Push her out, push her out”

I was yelling “I can’t!”and making a C signals that probably looked like flailing.

I don’t know how much of my inability to push her out was mental and how much was physical. I tried to try, but I just couldn’t make it happen. All the other times I failed to push Ms Rottentail out it was certainly my body that failed me. She is small and mighty.

It was a great practice and I look forward to scrimmaging on Sunday.

Today I worked on query letters and my synopsis. I started reading my novel out loud, but I only got up to page 25 and had to stop.

I encountered an inconsistency in my use of the alien number systems (they have three). I needed to think through my use of base 5 and 6 through the whole novel and where my usage had changed and why. I’ve made it consistent now, and it should be more intuitive for human readers.

I was hoping to get through reading it out loud faster than this and now I have to eat food and get ready for Roller Derby practice. My alter ego, Betsy Nails, needs to get out on the track, no matter how much I would like to slug about on the couch.

When I wasn’t writing I was trying to restore my den to some semblance of sanity – vacuuming up sawdust from my latest modification of my standing desk, tidying up and trying to fix things as a prelude to throwing them out. I now have so much super glue on my fingers that my touchpad struggles to recognize me. Next time I get a cut I am tempted to glue it shut, gorilla glue is powerful stuff!