Someone had questions about roller derby and now I don't remember who it was:
If you are interested in skating with us, either to be a referee or to skate on a team, come to one of our practices. They are from 8:30-10:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and 8:30-10:30 Sunday mornings. It is best, if you have any protective gear, to wear it-we have some we can loan out, but it may or may not fit you or be any good.
To skate with us in drills, we do ask that you wear kneepads, elbow pads, wrist guards, and a helmet. Some drills also require a mouthguard but you probably will want to just observe those for your first couple of practices.
"But I'm a good skater," you may say-"I don't need kneepads."
Yes you do-a lot of our drills involve falling deliberately, and our style of skating is predicated on frequent falls, deliberate or otherwise. Even our refs wear kneepads at least. You'll just be happier in protective gear.

Also we wear quad skates, not inlines; quads are required, and you can rent them, though you could probably use your own inlines for the first few practices to get a feel for whether you're interested in joining us more permanently.

Do people get hurt doing roller derby?
Bruises are frequent, usually arm bruises from blocking, and leg bruises from falling not-quite-properly. Collisions happen, though they're fairly rare and usually minor. Falls are frequent, but we practice falling to ensure that these are rarely painful.
More rarely we do have muscle pulls and sprains. In a year we have had probably 5 relatively serious knee injuries-two girls had pre-existing knee conditions that worsened from skating, and three girls tore their meniscus or ACL in falls while skating- of these three, one required surgery to fix it, because she KEPT SKATING after she was injured, and fell twice more. One girl fractured her leg very badly in a freak incident during practice last year. We also had several other somewhat-serious injuries-concussions, sprains, twists, cracked tailbones-but nothing that incapacitated anyone permanently. One girl broke a rib, but not so badly that she could not skate later that month. (In fact she didn't stop skating that night, and skated another bout the week after heavily bandaged, though that was largely because she's a total badass.)
My point? For the most part, it is reasonable to assume that you will be sore the morning after many practices. There is a risk of something worse, but it's uncommon. People get hurt worse playing hockey, more often-collisions in hockey are often head-on, while in roller derby everyone's moving the same direction.
So we do require that you have primary health insurance in order to join the league.

We have open recruitment until December. November 11th is our draft-we may not have another draft this year, so to get onto a team you'd have to have joined the league by then and pass your skills assessment. But we will have places for skaters who are not on a team, so it's not that we're turning anyone away.

And most importantly: ROLLER DERBY IS FUN. It is the most fun it is legal to have. Also it's an entirely volunteer-run organization, involved in the community, by and for women. It's a great networking opportunity and also is way cool. At my tenth high school reunion no one cared about my crappy job and unimpressive life-they just all thought it was so cool that I skated on a roller derby league.

Oh-(e:Vincent) was asking about my wristguards:

I'll blog about the party later, I just wanted to write that up while I was still thinking of it. My obligatory roller derby pitch!!

One last plug: Tonight from 9 pm to midnight is the Goth N Ghouls open skate prom at Rainbow Rink in North Tonawanda. It's $7 to get in which includes skate rental. Come in a crazy costume, buy merch and bake sale items, skate around, ogle some rollergirls' tits, and then go to the (e:strip) Halloween bash-- it's a great way to get additional mileage (literally!) out of one costume, and also you can support Crisis Services, to whom we're donating part of the proceeds for the evening.
And now to your regularly-scheduled post:

Halloween is a very special holiday to me. As a possessor of a ginormous rack, and an appreciator of the human form in its many complexities especially the more rounded (or smooth, for that matter) ones, I love the fact that people, mostly women but also certain demographics of usually-pleasingly-shaped men, tend to use Halloween as an excuse to Release Their Inner Ho-Bag.
Last night we had a party at the Knockouts' team captain's house wherein we drank beer, swapped iron-on letters, and cleaned our skate bearings. (The bearings are the little thingies that make our wheels turn, and most of us have no more idea of how to maintain the things than we know how to fly a plane. One of our OCD teammates, who can be relied upon to know how to clean anything [and also is a teacher and thus can be relied upon to explain things clearly], gave a little seminar on cleaning them.)
At this party one particular teammate was talking about how she'd helped her friend with her costume. This other girl was going as Amy Winehouse, and my teammate was in charge of Sharpieing the tattoos on. My teammate took it upon herself to take over design of the costume. The wifebeater was too conservative, so she cut it. The bra was white-- no, that could not be, so she ransacked the girl's closet and chose another one. "That bra is really hoochie," said the costume-wearer. "And it shows now that the shirt is ripped."
"You have to commit to your character!" my teammate said. "What would Amy Winehouse do?"
"You're right," the girl said. "You're right! I have to commit to my character!"
Apparently the tattoos were spot-on by the end-- even smudged a little to mimic how awful Winehouse's real tattoos are. ("Why are you licking me?" the girl asked as my teammate used her dampened thumb to smudge the ink. "Commit to your character!" my teammate snapped back.)
She stood back and admired your handiwork. "Girl," said my teammate, "you are going to make out with somebody tonight."

I think this is the spirit of Halloween. You dress up as somebody else, expose parts of your body you normally wouldn't (but, hopefully, should), commit to a character and do your freaky thing.
I do sympathize with (e:hodown)'s weariness with girls whose idea of "costuming" is to put "slutty" in front of any other word and run with it-- most of the girls who do this have no fucking imagination, so the end result winds up being alarmingly tedious. (I say alarming because it seems terrible to contemplate a situation in which a chick revealing most of her body is tedious, but then you remember that in essence, most humans are idiots, and idiots are tedious no matter what they're wearing.)

So I'm looking forward to tonight-- most of my roller derby leaguemates are anything but tedious, and all are more than moderately hot. Many of them have promised either boobs or ass tonight in their costumes. Given that my impression of the hotness of most of these people was formed during long sweaty baggy-shirt-wearing interludes of getting my ass handed to me, I am anticipating a great deal of awesome.
I'm not saying that this event is a gross ogle-fest, I'm just saying, I appreciate me some scenery and also I look forward to having my boobs ogled over. It will be fun. Also there will be roller skating.
And then I will come to the (e:strip) party and maybe I'll still be on roller skates! I cleaned my outdoor wheels' bearings so I can skate fast in them. :D

And now for something completely different:

This is Chita's favorite hang-out spot. This may become my new userpic. I love the Tits-N-Pussy theme.

I know this is the same night as the (e:strip) Halloween party, but this is a really good way to get two uses out of one costume.
October 27th, the Queen City Rollergirls are hosting an open skate, Halloween-themed: Goths and Ghouls!
Come in costume, we'll have a bake sale and a merch sale, and we'll have a DJ and we'll be here in costume as well, on skates. This is your only chance to skate with the rollergirls!
And we'll go easy on you, because we won't be in our protective gear either and we may be hardcore, but we're not crazy-- we're just there to party. Open skate, bust a move if you got any, otherwise totter around in a circle and we promise we won't hit you.
(If anyone wants to borrow kneepads or wristguards I have extra, by the way.)
Skate rental is included with admission, I believe.

Please come support us and also if you come I'll feel less silly showing up late to the (e:strip) party in an undead-rollergirl costume.

We got Chita spayed on Friday. I had been nervous about it basically since we got her, though friends had reassured me-- most said oh you Do Not Want to Deal with a female cat in heat, but I still felt guilty about life-threatening surgery that is, in essence, entirely elective. Until another friend pointed out that she'd felt like me and had just kept her female cats indoors and not spayed them, and hadn't had much trouble dealing with them going into heat-- but then the 12-year-old one nearly died of pyrometria. Apparently female cats don't have self-cleaning uteruses the way humans do! So if they don't have the occasional pregnancy to clean things out, their uteruses can become infected! Years and years of accumulated infection nearly killed the older cat, and the 7-year-old also had an infection brewing.
So I felt much better.

We got Chita back yesterday. She was yowling and kicking up a racket in the back when we got there-- "Yes, that's her," the vet tech said, "she's the only cat here," but apparently she was just upset at being left alone, because the tech had been petting her and talking to her all morning. So we felt better.
Kenmore Animal Hospital, on Kenmore Ave nearish to Colvin-- they're really sweet people, and not real busy so you can usually get an appointment without waiting too long, and the vet himself, Dr. Malo, is a Zen-like, mellow dude, kinda looks like Steve Wozniak but hotter and younger-- just this big bear of a guy who talks quietly and says nice things. He's thrice-diagnosed Chita as being among the cutest of kittens ever.
And her stitches look good-- well, they're ugly, but you know what I mean.
And she's running around like an idiot. She was a little subdued yesterday, but not as much as I would be after an ovo-hysterectomy. Hell, she was less subdued than I was, and all I had was a bad case of menstrual cramps.

Anyway-- obligatory cat update. And here is a photo of the two of us sharing our Female Troubles in our new bed, which I don't know if Z has blogged, but we have a new Big Grown Up bed and Chita takes up most of it.

So I found the original post, I guess, about Blogtoberfest.


Oh really?
Yeah really?

If you're not there, we will talk trash about you.

Oh?
And what if we are there?

Eh well, whatever, I guess I'm done feeling ill-at-ease about that.

I think we should invite all these people to the Halloween party, though.

I tried to leave this as a comment on allthingsjennifer but I guess she doesn't want to hear it, as when I clicked "post" it just disappeared. (e:zobar) said his got moderated, but I didn't even get that notification. So I guess she doesn't think we're funny, or whatever.
::::::::::

I would've thought the old stereotype about bloggers/computer geeks being pathologically averse to real-life human contact was outdated, but either no other Buffalo Bloggers besides (e:strip) and Punaro could actually be pried away from their computers long enough to leave the house, or the prospect of speaking to strangers overwhelmed all the other Buffalo Bloggers.

I know the (e:strip)pers can be kind of a close-knit cliquey group, but we don't bite and we'd've been happy to talk to other people... But I was so uncomfortable there, the way all the middle-aged surburbanite ladies were staring disapprovingly at me, that I really couldn't tell whether any of them were trying to socially network or not, and it did a real number on my propensity to happily meet new people. I mean, I'm not shy, but who'd've thought a Ye Olde Busty Beer Wench costume would get so many disapproving glares? At OKTOBERFEST! My skirt was longer than that old dude's lederhosen! Come on. I've never been so disapproved of in my <i>life</i>.

I really won't be terribly eager to show up to any more Buffalo Blogging events in the future-- there's nothing quite so uncomfortable as being told there's a party and then having the person who told you about it not show up. It's an unpleasant timewarp back to junior high. At least when (e:paul) hosts a party at his house, you know he'll be there.
:::::::::::::


I mean, whatever-- we had some fun, I enjoyed the pierogis and beer, it wasn't so bad. But Jesus. I didn't go as a stripper-- i decided, somewhat last-minute, that I should go in the spirit of the thing, as a beer wench.
I don't know how many of you have seen me in costume before. Roller derby has cured me of the last tiny vestiges of body shame I had; now I really don't mind if the whole city sees most of my ass, because it's all in the spirit of things. Now, I didn't dress skimpily-- I decided I would opt for 'tasteful', as you never know who'll be at these things. But my 'tasteful' simply involves showing less than three inches of cleavage* and no ass-cheek whatsoever.

So I wore a sprung-steel-boned corset, a three-quarter-sleeved white (opaque!) chemise, and a miniskirt with a frilly corset. I also wore opaque tights with black lace thigh-highs over them. Out of habit, I wore short bike shorts under the skirt, ensuring that no ass cheek would show even if the skirt flipped up. All in all, it was slightly racy, but obviously a costume as opposed to clubbin' gear, and no underwear was exposed.

I got stared at. Other women were wearing dirndls of varying degrees of authenticity. Other women even had short skirts. There were people in all kinds of clothing, including a girl in a black mini-dress and fuck-me boots. Yes, my breasts are unsubtle, particularly when elevated in a corset, but it wasn't a lingerie corset-- it was a reproduction 16th-century noblewoman's pair of bodies, which is generally tubular in shape and elevates but squashes the breasts. I really wasn't showing that much tit.

Anyway. It was a deeply uncomfortable experience, and maybe there were other bloggers who were too busy disapproving of my un-cool garb to speak to us? I don't know. The only other person who self-identified as a blogger there was the dude from Punaro.org, who wouldn't even sit with us, but sat with his family at a neighboring table. I assume they were his family, anyway.
Maybe there were other bloggers there, I don't know. Maybe I should've made more of an effort to find out. I don't know. But I was far too intimidated by the disapproving and faintly-hostile glares of the rest of the Oktoberfest attendees (men too! Since when has a man in his late 30s been so horrified by a woman's cotton-covered breasts that he can't even look at her? People were falling over to avoid looking at me, unless they were glaring at me.) to be able to nerve myself up to go talk to them. So I sat next to the Blogtoberfest sign from 6pm until 9pm, and was carefully Not Spoken To by anybody except the (e:strip)pers.

Awesome-- I feel so much a part of Buffalo's Blogging Community, I'm totally going to more events. I can't wait to be ignored or glared at by yet more people. It's so worth my time and effort. I love social networking.


_________________

• As Edith Wharton comments in The Age of Innocence, and I'm paraphrasing because I haven't read the book in a decade or so,

"Three inches of cleavage is fashionable, but four is just vulgar."

So this blogger thing on Saturday--
OBVIOUSLY we have to go to it dressed as strippers!!!
Duh!!!
E-strippers!!!

If I knew where to get pasties, I would put them on, though I admit I am a bit of a chicken and these G-cups don't go out without a bra, so I'd paste them over my bra.
I have a nice satin bra... maybe I'll wear a corset too... I have a lace miniskirt petticoat... and back-seam nylons... or patterned fishnets...

Except...
Except except. :( I have so many blogging accounts... and i think I may be obligated, much as I hate this, to go as a rollergirl from Myspace, because the rollergirls are starting up their new season and we need the publicity.

Augh! What a dilemma.
(I won't be going as Livejournal, i promise you that.)

And I don't want to associate my Myspace blog (which gets a lot of trolls, particularly as I alienated half the Canadian roller derby association when I pointed out that the Hamilton league was a bunch of asshats) with this blog, because, well, this blog is pretty much the only thing I have that doesn't get Roller Derby Drama on it. (Though if I really cared about that, I should be smart and get the damn brass knuckles out of my user picture. Duh.)

Ay. Part of what makes this community work is that it's just at a crucial size tipping-point, in that it's large enough for stuff to always be going on, but small enough that it's still kinda arguably private.

Not that I ever update here, but that's more down to me not updating anywhere lately. (Myspace was updated in July and then I think I wrote one thing last month. Maybe.)

Chita is fuzzy and cute, by the way, and Z's iPhone is non-fuzzy and cute. How funny. I'll upload pictures, I promise.

But what should I do?
If anyone will come with me as an (e:strip)per I'll totally do it. (I was thinking I'd attach one of the (e:strip) bumper stickers to my ass somehow. Or maybe my chest. More people look at my chest. Magnets in my bra! Magnetic pasties! That would be sheer brilliance. I need someone good with physics to do this for me.)

Agh, but I think I need to go as a rollergirl.
What to do....
what to do...

I have been remiss about blogging here, and i apologize. It seems (e:zobar) has been amusing enough for both of us, however.

Mostly, it's just struck me that i ought to link to the zillion photos of the kitten I've taken lately.
I'd upload some "exclusives" here but I don't have the photos on this computer.

I didn't even explain the kitty's name in detail!

She is Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero, more commonly known as Chita Rivera. Named, of course, for the famous Broadway dancer, who despite being apparently straight herself, is an icon in the gay community. Chita-the-cat has a tentative appointment to get her photo taken with Artvoice's theater/celebrity duo, who are Like Way So Into the real Chita.


Anyway.

Chita Rivera is the world's best kitten. She has been medically diagnosed as The Cutest Kitten Ever on two separate occasions by the vet. She grew from 2.5 pounds to 3.75 pounds in 3 weeks. She also, incidentally, tested negative for feline lukemia.

She has a Fabulous purple sparkly collar now as well. She has learned not to scratch skin with her claws, and now only draws blood when frightened or distracted.
She is no longer quite totally Fearless, but more because it amuses her to be scared than anything else.
She knows her name, or at least the Chita part of it if it's said loudly. She also knows "treat" and "kitty!"
She knows to look guilty if I catch her climbing the screen.

I want to teach her more tricks, and things-- she's more receptive to that sort of thing than the average cat, probably because she's a solo animal and therefore is more keyed-in to human behavior than most. She also is just plain smart, though. She does many sophisticated things, and is an absolute angel at the vet's office.
(When he was listening to her heartbeat, she was playing with the tube of the stethoscope. When he was bunching up the scruff of her neck to give her a shot, she was purring. She didn't even really notice the needle.)

She's still got a few more months until we've got to take her to get eviscerated. On the one hand, I don't want to put her through going into heat. But on the other hand, I don't want to get her guts ripped out. I'm terribly conflicted. But she's such an awesome kitty, I'm sure she'll deal with whatever happens.

I keep meaning to write more about her but life, as ever, is crazy. Still and all, craziness is easier to cope with when there's someone warm, fuzzy, and purring on your head.

So, all that said, photos, as promised:



That's the beginning of the Flickr photostream. If you just click to the next-and-next ones, there are like 30 of them. There are some previous ones, too, if I didn't link to those here-- I am sorry, I just always forget to link to them from here.

I have all these awesome photos of Chita Rivera the Obscenely Cute Kitten on my camera and the cord for it is... somewhere in the house... and so I haven't posted anything here in ages because I keep being like no no, I'll get the photos off the camera and then I'll post.
No, I'll post now, and then I'll post again later when I get the photos, and you'll see by the length of time between how long it's been since I last posted, and understand how friggin' slow I am at this crap.

I will update that my BFF Ursula flew in from London on Tues. night and left yesterday morning, and so while she was here to be of assistance, I took Chita to the vet for her first appointment. We went in on Friday morning, and while Chita had been utterly fearless in the car three weeks ago when we got her, she yowled most of the way there this time. (We went to the new vet on Kenmore Ave, so it only took two minutes to get there...)
Inside, there were two waiting rooms, and one had a large agitated giant poodle in it making a racket, and the other had a quiet sweet-looking small yellow lab, so we went in with the yellow lab. Chita insisted on getting down to explore, including going right over to the poor dog, whose owner had her under pretty good control. Greta was her name, and she sniffed Chita eagerly but was well-behaved and did not try to get closer-- we had to pick Chita up because she was trying to jump over to be nose-to-nose with the dog, and it just didn't seem fair to the poor dog.
Once Greta went in for her check-up, we let Chita loose and she roamed around the whole place. She asked to be let out into the hallway. She ate a kitty treat. She played with the mousie we brought her from home. Then she discovered the high counter with the receptionist on the far side, and wanted badly to be allowed to go into the receptionist's space, but we didn't let her because we are awful people. (The receptionist cooed over how cute she was, of course.)

When we went into the exam room, that dang giant poodle was in the hallway flipping out. So Chita arrived for her examination with her tail puffed out. The vet tech was impressed-- she looked like a squirrel. But she soon settled down and insisted on exploring the exam room, and stuck her head straight into the container they had of dog biscuits.

She weighed 2 and a half pounds, and the vet tech in consultation with the vet decided she was precisely twelve weeks old. Which means my sister Fiona wins-- from the photos <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/733998650/">I posted on Flickr two weeks ago</a>, she estimated that Chita was 10 weeks old.

The vet tech said she was probably the cutest kitten ever, and left, to be replaced by the vet, a big soft-spoken bear of a man who picked Chita up and cradled her like an infant to listen to her heart and lungs for a good two or three minutes. At first Chita was content to lie there, paws in the air, but after a while she got bored and started playing with the tube of the stethoscope.

The vet pronounced her absolutely perfectly healthy except for a minor case of roundworms.

What gets me is that unlike many stray kittens, she was so obviously raised well. When we got her, she had obviously been well-socialized, and had never been malnourished or abused. She already was good with people and other cats, and even the worms and fleas were only mild-- I've seen so much worse, actually in every kitten we've ever had. So someone raised her lovingly to the perfect age for a kitten to be weaned and adopted, and then dumped her by the side of a road! It seems so backwards. Of course it's better than the usual, when they're left to die far too young to survive on their own, but still.

So she's perfect-- she even tests negative for feline Lukemia, which was an expensive test (it was like $30) but I just thought that it was best to be absolutely sure. You can give a cat a pretty good life for a while with various of those terminal cat diseases, if it's an indoor solo cat, but you have to know about it.

So we took our absolutely perfect kitten home, and didn't let Ursula put her into her suitcase and take her home. But I've promised to regularly post photos of her.
Starting now with the webcam ones already on the computer. ;)



Kisses!

a while ago


Taken just now over my shoulder.

Photos I took of her the day before yesterday, when it was 90 degrees and the only decent thing to do was pass the hell out.

This morning:


She likes the boob shelf. Usually the boob shelf is a little... er, higher, but I was wearing one of those built-in-shelf-bra camisoles and the shelf bra wasn't really doing much for the boob shelf. But that's really where she climbs up to sit.
She was also helping me use my computer.




I took some pictures of her sitting on the keyboard with my big camera, but I haven't downloaded them yet.

She is a marvelous cat, content to amuse herself when we are elsewhere or busy, but endearingly eager for attention when we're willing to provide it. She wanders around the house talking to herself, and purrs almost constantly. She's a shameless food-stealer, and at first people-mealtimes were an ordeal, but then I realized that her Dingle Mouse cat toy was distracting enough that she'd happily play with it through an entire supper and not bother us once, as long as someone jiggled the mouse once in a while.

She also has learned to sleep when we do, which is really important in this household. She no longer insists on arising with the sun, but happily lies on your face/neck/arm/chest until you feel like getting out of bed. She doesn't even claw you.

I haven't gotten an appointment with a vet yet because I'm lazy. But I will-- I'm going to try the one on Kenmore Ave because they're close. Z's mom takes her geriatric cat to the Small Animal Hospital on S. Elmwood, but says the Kenmore Ave one is affiliated with them and so is probably worth a shot. Can't beat the commute, at least.

Not that the little girl won't ride in the car-- she doesn't mind cars at all. She doesn't mind much. I don't think anything fazes her.

She's had one trauma so far. She was playing around the kitchen chairs while (e:zobar) was chopping veggies for dinner. Our kitchen chairs are folding chairs, I admit-- we're sort of still not very sophisticated in our furniture. She had been jumping up and down off one of the chairs in her mad scramble to thoroughly persecute Dingle Mouse. Suddenly there was a mad scrabbling. I assumed she had missed her footing while trying to jump up onto one of the chairs. So I turned, and saw her trying to scramble up. She squeaked in distress, so I put my hand under her backside to give her a boost. She squeaked louder, turning it into a shriek, and I realized that one of her front paws was under the chair seat.
I quickly realized it was stuck, so I stopped lifting her and she stopped shrieking. She struggled to get away but I clamped my hand around her and held her while I felt with my other hand to see where she was stuck. One of her toes, claw extended, was wedged between two parts of the folding chair.
I worked it free and she immediately began to purr.
I looked her toe all over and it seemed OK, so I put her down and she ran nimbly away. I guess it didn't hurt that much.

I just thought it was so funny how fast she started purring. She was like, "Ok! All better! Let me go get that mouse!"

Ahh well. In closure, I have to link to this:


It's so true. I'm a babbling idiot.