ghosts are good company

wow, monday was a place for a bunch of new things.

my mother bought a car on sunday - traded hers in, actually -  so i spent some time in the new car, getting to know it and its quirks.  it’s pretty lovely, a 2007 civic hybrid, and seems to like me as well.  it’s cars.com “best car for first-time drivers” (here) which is an interesting category to even exist - and which i’m not, a first-time driver, but…  hmm.

one of the places from which i drove was derby bootcamp.  i finally made it there, and on the right day so that i wasn’t the only brand new kid!  the derby dolls have it set up so that there’s this bootcamp, and there’s also training camp - once you’ve mastered your skating and stopping skills, you then get to move up to training camp and work on your contact and falling.  i think it’s an awesome setup, and i’m super excited to be in a city that has such a through program.

bootcamp wiped me out.  i could only skate for part of the hour - because i am completely out of shape, which we already knew, and being careful to not spin into anxiety-mode.  i’m coming early next time, so that i can skate for longer, but with breaks more regularly.  so much sweat!  i haven’t participated in team sports in ten years, and i remember how much i hated it - but also those pockets of enjoyment.

after bootcamp i decided that it would be an awesome idea to go to the gym?  but the pool, truthfully.  there i had the dreadful surprise that i couldn’t swim a whole lap without feeling like i was going to sink.   a large part of this, of course, is just exhaustion from derby, but it’s unsettling.  still, i got to sit in the bubbly spa and then the sauna for a while, and talked to some folks there.

there was a crazy amount of womanness in the day - first “the girls” and “sisterhood” at derby, and then the women’s locker room.  i feel like such a foreigner in these kinds of places, but at the same time i know that i need to take advantage of how i do fit in, and not isolate myself when i don’t need to.

all through roller derby, i had a few bits in my head of a song that i don’t know.  on the way home i was playing with the radio controller on the steering wheel (this new car thing is crazy, guys) and kt tunstall’s “hold on” came on - the song that was in my head, of course.  what timing.

[[speaking of songs, i added the tracklist to my seattle mix-cd post, since the person it was a surprise for has now received it.]]