Liz Argall

I make my own war paint.

Last night on my way to crit group I joked that I wished I’d brought a flashlight and pocket knife. West Seattle doesn’t do much in the way of streetlights. I have a flashlight app on my phone that works rather well and I used it extensively last night.

It may have got me into more trouble. The flashlight on an iPhone (ie the camera’s flash turned on the whole time) doesn’t have a lot of range. That means you can be tricked by the landscape and think things are going to get better, when really they are going to get worse.

Anyway, to cut a long story short

1. I am fine, but itchy and I’m pleased that I have strong ankles these days.
2. Googlemaps lies like a lying thing and presumes that any line on a map is walkable.
3. Some lines on maps are walkable right up until the point when they take you down icy gullies surrounded by blackberries where climbing back up would be more dangerous than continuing on down – and from what you can make out from the meters of visibility it’s about to get better and as long as there’s any kind of path I’ll be ok.
4. I have excellent hiking boots with a great tread.
5. When my path turned into a creek of unknown depth but making loud sounds of rushing water and the path behind me lost to a tangle of ice and blackberries I thought climbing the opposite hill with blackberries was my best option. It was not and I have blackberry lacerations on my arms, face and from ankle to hip.
6. It is unpleasant, feeling trapped in a dark gully with only an iPhone for illumination and a little bit ridiculous. Thinking “well this makes great material” helps to keep panic at bay. So does thinking of other difficult bushwalks I’ve got through. I tried three different ways of getting out of the gully, none of them worked.
7. Shoelaces freeze with surprising speed.
8. I have called someone and actually said, “I’m fine, but if you don’t hear from me and I don’t answer my phone in 20 minutes I am in trouble.”
9. Wading along the middle of the creek followed the path googlemaps suggested precisely (walking along the bank was impossible and occasionally just dangerous). The water was loud, had scary blind corners and small drops that felt enormous in the dark, but it was not too fast and the water never got more than half way up my shins. I am glad I have wading in creek experience. I was pleased by how well I could read the landscape when I had minute visibility.
10. My hiking boots remain remarkably comfortable and warm when full of water. They do not leak. They did not chafe afterwards.
11. I’m tempted to pretend that the blackberry scratches on my face came from my critique group, ’cause we’re all Beyond Thunderdome about our use of adjectives, raaaar.

All in all, it’s good to have adventures, but I think my keychain needs a flashlight…. and perhaps a machete.

Rat City’s Roller Derby season is about to start, so we kicked off the season in style at Belltown Pub. The season kickoff party raised funds for the Georgia Peaches Puppy Rescue, so there were many dogs at the bar and much in the way of squeeee. So many well behaved beautiful animals hanging out.

Thanks to Arkham Allie, Mike and I took part in the trivia competition. I think my greatest contribution was suggesting that Budweiser Superbowl beer in 2012 was Frito flavored and turning old choir jokes about sopranos into jokes about jammers. My favorite choir joke is about altos (I am full of altosterone after all), but I couldn’t figure out how to make it a good derby joke.

The Weeping Angels, Arkham Allie, Jill, Mr Jill, Mike Hammer and Betsy Nails (me) were riotous, but hopefully in a good way. I was hoping we’d make the top 5, maybe the top 3, coming first place was exciting – the musical/movie knowledge of our team was legion.

It was nice to spend time with bodacious skaters. The season is starting, so there’s an amount of reserve that needs to be in place for bouts and scrimmages. Our interactions will just be color, number, instruction. Sometimes it gets a bit disorienting, now that I skate AND officiate at the rats nest, and sometimes I screw up the gear change. I think I might wear my pinks/labcoat at practice, just as refs wear their stripes at practice. It’s a definite costume change that will help me bring the awesome.

I wish I’d remembered to take photos at the pub. Cuuuute puppies and lots of smiling faces. Mr Arkham, I mean Justin McConnell, was taking photos and I’m sure whatever he shares will be better than my happy snaps with an iPhone.

I did take a few photos before we left. I wanted to dress up and I think the I09 article on RococoPunk made me want to do different things with my hair (not that I managed Rococo, but messy with absurd flair is a style I like to explore). I may have to purchase hairspray, keeping hair up with just bobby pins is tricky business. On the plus side I’ve discovered that I have enough hair that if I pile it up it will keep my head warm and I won’t miss wearing a hat. I see a future with more hairspray and lodging random ornaments – I do own a small disco ball, I think that would go with my purple sequin dress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1) Crows throw lumps of dirt on your verandah, but you have to wait for the soil to thaw before you can scrape it up.
2) Someone posts on Facebook that she can see the sun. You look over your shoulder, say ‘woah!’ and excitedly run outside to photograph the sky because it is blue.

Home from practice. We worked on crossovers, juking and other fun jammer skills. My skills are finally getting to a point where I can use more of my height to my advantage. I have a long stride and I can get a lot of power, can being the operative word. I used to put down a bit of power and go faster than I could manage, but my control and agility are slowly getting better.

I haven’t been T-stopping much, I’ve wanted to focus on developing my plough stops. But my stopping inability was getting ridiculous so I decided to do more T-stops this practice. I must have grown more muscles and balance, because my T-stops feel more natural now. I love the squeaky sound they make as I come to a stop and I’m feeling a little bit more in control (harder wheels probably help too).

I use my hands a bit too much when I’m going through the pack. It’s hard to resist, especially if you’re going fast and someone moves to close a gap. I’d rather use my hands than cause a terrible pileup (and on the plus side I am falling less and tripping less), but it’s still not a good habit to develop… even though the land of no minors makes the use of forearms less punishable. It’ll be interesting to see how no minors influences new skater habits. In the meantime I’ll try to use my hands less and continue avoiding ramming into people’s backs.

I was exhausted before practice, editing a hundred pages by reading out loud does that to me. But practice perked me up. I even did half an hour of foam rolling, stretches and balancing when I got home. My hamstrings are so weak, but I can feel them improving fast. I like what increased blood flow and a little adrenal chasing folks is doing for my brain. Sharing the derby endeavor with a bunch of kick arse women helps too :-)

Yesterday I managed to get up to page 302 out of 567 pages (don’t worry in book formatting the page count is lower). Slow going, but worthwhile. Most of the changes in this editing pass are tightening up language, correcting tenses and deleting the occasional paragraph.

I almost wimped out on my workout last night, but I crammed it in from 11:30pm to 12:30am. My body really is being re-trained and strengthened. I’ve noticed a difference in the wear patterns in my shoes! I don’t scuff the insides of my shoes anymore.

Now I shall charge into the day and read many words to myself.

What are you doing over here? There’s guest art by Erik Owomoyela over on the Things Without Arms and Without Legs website!

In other news I’m at page 254 of 574 of my novel. Reading it out loud is slow going, but I’m removing words that don’t pull their weight. Sometimes I even add words. I hope to be done by week’s end.

I must confess I’ve been a little bit distracted by the heatwave and fires in Australia. Back when I had more normal jobs I wrote the ACT Community Sector’s Emergency Preparedness Plan and spent a lot of time researching every kind of disaster in the context of the most marginalized and vulnerable people. I like NSW’s latest bushfire preparedness website, a lot of good information for anyone who might be near fires (which includes many suburbs).

It’s certainly been odd looking at bushfire/heatwave information while editing a novel that involves a major disaster. When I wrote the first draft a disaster happened while I was in the middle of writing the disaster section. It’s a little bit troubling.

Life is busy, but rewarding. I just got home from practice (Rat City scrimmage, I practiced being penalty box manager and scoreboard operator). Now I must scramble through my exercises (foam rolling, balancing and stretching) before I turn in for the night.

I was also going to write about soup, but I shall leave that for another time.

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.