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.]]

my friend amy is not feeling super awesome today, so it is for her that i have uploaded this photo (hard work on this connection!) and set down this poem from it.

The Mirror Poem

No mirror’s big enough for Snuff
    to see all Snuff at once.
He could try doing it in bits,
    but that would take him months.
So I walk all around him
    and tell him what I see.
And then, because he is my friend,
    he does the same for me.

i’m not sure if this book is from when snuff was still an “imaginary friend” or not… that would make the meaning quite different. i think my favorite part of the image is snuffleupagus’ eyes in the bottom left of the right-hand page.