Yesterday was my second roller derby practice. I am in LOVE. After warm ups, we skated around in “perfect” form with a shoe on our back. Low squat, flat back chest at close to your quads as you can get it. For every time your shoe fell of, five push ups. I felt pretty solid and the shoe only fell off once. Then we practiced whips and pushes. Whipping is (mostly) when blockers assist the jammer by pushing or pulling (”whipping”) in an attempt to advance them through the pack. If you don’t know the basic strategy of roller derby, this is a really simple, clear video to explain it:

Rules of Roller Derby

Practice ended up with a “ladder” relay. Five teams of five girls skating a relay race starting with one lap having each girl take their turn and going all the way up to five laps. At five laps, the relay goes back down to one lap with each girl on the team doing progressively fewer laps until the team is cycled through. We ended up running out of time to finish. Practice even went over about fifteen minutes.

After practice we went to another girl’s apartment close to the practice space and had a hot tub/wine and food party in the middle of a snowstorm on an open roof looking over Coors Field. Although the food was on a table thirty feet away from the hot tub and it no one was really excited about jumping out of the hundred and four degree water to walk through the snow in their bare feet to grab the Doritos. Although, the more wine that was consumed, the more food seemed to make it’s way over.

I got a new batch of kittens today. Right now they’re staying in the laundry room. There’s been a breakout of ringworm at the shelters and before I can put them in their room, I have to take out the carpet remnants and replace them with other remnants or something else, bleach all their toys and bedding and then bleach down the walls and all surfaces.

Normally this would be mildly irritating. But today after P90X (new workout program Andy and I are in the second week of) and over two hours of pouring out every ounce of energy I had in Derby Practice yesterday, just lifting the weight of my own arms is seeming to take effort. Not painful, but my body really wants to stay in one place.

Even though I’m really tired, I don’t want to leave them in the laundry room for too long. They like to stay hidden behind the washer and dryer, out of reach. They’re at the age that the more you play with them, the more socialized to humans they become and will be more adoptable. Letting them cower back there is a dereliction of my duty and, lets be honest here, I really want to play with my new little guys.

I just moved the dryer at an angle as a compromise to psyching myself up into breaking out the gloves and bleach, and for one horrifying second though I crushed a kitten under it’s weight.

I think that’s enough for tonight.