Practice tonight

Tonight, I had decided not to go to practice. I wasn't on the fence -- I had jumped off into the cow pasture. (To take the metaphor farther, it would be fair to say I was hip-deep in bullshit. :-)

Charlie went all disapproving bunny on me (if you don't know what a disapproving bunny is, you obviously don't read Cute Overload, and that's your own damn fault). And he was right. My reasons for not going were just a lot of whiny bullshit. So I went.

Last Monday I had a fairly crummy night at practice. I was sure no one liked me (I'm not really like that; I'm having some trouble with my medication and that, combined with some emotional stuff, was making life difficult), my legs hurt, whine, whine, whine.

Tonight was pretty much the opposite. One thing that immediately put a smile on my face is that we have a new girl in STDD, Jenna. Jenna is very nice, and she's catching on to skating really well -- I saw improvement just from the start of the open skate tonight to the end of it. But she's definitely a beginner. Which means I'm not the only one!! (I guess I'm not really a beginner, actually. Several of the derby girls were telling me that tonight, that I'm better than I think, and that they have seen a lot of improvement in me. Which is awesome, and made me really happy to hear!! But I still think the chance to do the Derby 101 stuff with Jenna will be really good for me. Those aren't mutually exclusive things -- I've gotten a lot better at skating, and now will be a great time for me to buckle down and really get good at stopping, falling, hitting, footwork, and all the other stuff I need to know.)

I had a great time tonight. I felt much more like part of the group, probably because I didn't sit off to the side with a frown on my face. (Funny how that works!) I skated *way* more than I sat out. I skated the entire song on the reverse skate (that's when you skate around the rink clockwise instead of the usual counterclockwise; it's not skating backwards, which I can't do yet). I even started doing crossovers on the curves on the reverse skate!!

I had requested the song "Hey Ya" by Outkast, which funny enough was a huge hit in 2003 but which I had not heard until 2009 because I am pathetically unhip. Anyway, it's a great song. So obviously when it came on, I had to skate to it. At the end of the song when I got off the floor, I was a bit surprised to realize that I had skated my *ass* off during that one. I could still feel the adrenaline. It was really cool, to find that I had skated hard without even realizing it.

I still can't really keep up with the derby girls, but I try to. And if I keep trying, one of these days I will be able to. As I told HotBoxx tonight, I don't care if it takes me until I am 45 to pass minimum skills (it shouldn't take nearly that long) ... I want to stick with this. I just ... I really love roller derby. And I'll tell ya, for a bunch of bitches who want to knock you over, the girls are super nice. :-)