Craft it forward

Yay craftiness!  I’m not sure that the things that I craft are considered, ahem, “good,” but they are things that I enjoy making and that bring me a lot of peace, and get my mind to slow down.  Part of my problem is finding the motivation to make something, and then to stick with it even if it doesn’t come out just right the first time around.

But Ellie from Wedding for Two is helping me out with the inspiration piece of this!  A couple of weeks ago, she posted about crafting it forward. The idea is that you get something that someone else has handmade, and then you make something for five other people.  Ellie got picked by someone else, and then offered to craft for the first five commenters, and I got picked, so she’s going to make me something.

And now I’ll make something for five people who comment on this post!  So get commenting!  If there are only five of you, you’ll totally get something, but if there are more than five I’ll just pick people at random (using a fancy randomizer or something).  If you do comment, tell me your favorite color or animal or something interesting… yay!

In the meantime, I’m going to try to run with this inspiration thing while it’s here and go make brownies. Yum.

Happy pretty things

To make up for my Sad Post of Poordom and the fact that I don’t have the time/patience to commit to a real art project, I bring you Pretty Collage of Wedding Inspiration!

1. Photo by Jose Villa; 2. Photo by Janae Shields; 3. Photo by Wentzu Chang; 4. Photo by MacheteNSons; 5. Photo by Amanda Bevington; 6. Photo by Allison Bank; 7. Photo by Jose Villa; 8. Photo by Amanda Bevington; 9. Photo provided by Kaleva Lodge; 10. Photo by Janae Shields; 11. Photo by HensinDaisies; 12. Photo by The Back Porch Shoppe; 13. Photo by Rachel Zahumensky; 14. photo by Unruly Things; 15. Photo provided by Kaleva Lodge; 16. Photo by Allison Bank

I have abandoned you

Dear Blogland,

I have abandoned you for two days because I have been panicking.

It’s not your fault, I just want to fill you with goodness and good moods and “Yay my nose isn’t broken!” and “haha I let big hard issues roll off my back, no problem.”

And, okay, for real my nose is not broken, and that is definitely good.  And for real there is a lot of stuff that I can let slide, like the mean people at work and the crazy people at work and the not making much money but it’s okay because I love my job.  But sometimes after a yelling client and a demanding client and a just plain crazy client, someone comes in with an accent and I can’t understand what they’re saying, and it’s not their fault, but they’re the fourth really difficult person to deal with and I just can’t do it anymore.

And that is sort of how these past couple of days have been going.  The rain and the wind don’t help, and having to walk a dog in the rain and wind don’t help.

The big issue that we’re facing, and that a lot of people are facing, is finances.  This is not something I know how to talk about well somewhere like a blog.  Turtle and I are struggling to learn how to talk about it well just between the two of us, and I think that this is also something a lot of people deal with.  When Turtle left her job, we knew that it would put us in a very tight place financially, and we were awesome at budgeting for the first month.  Well, today we got some bills in the mail and it turns out that while we stressed about it more this past month than we did the first month, we did not budget nearly as well.  And after that realization we went and met with a caterer and had to talk about money some more. I’m sure you’ve heard that weddings are not cheap.

This is another one of the times where I stop and say, “Is this what we want?”  Do we want to be married somewhere other than the church we go to, or my parents’ backyard?  Do we need all these people there, or could we do with just our immediate families and very close friends?  Do people really need to eat food?

And the answer I keep coming back to is that, yes, these things are important.  We love the location of our ceremony and reception, and it is so affordable that cutting it out wouldn’t save us much at all.  We do need all of the people we want there to be there.  They are our community, our family, the people we want to affirm our relationship and promise to support our marriage as a community.  We need them there.  And rumor has it that people like to eat.  I like to eat, and Turtle likes to eat.  And if we’re going to have food, we should just go ahead and have good food, right?

It’s a struggle to do what we want with our wedding and to keep our head above the “OMG it’s a wedding you have to have everything you are a princess for one day it’s your only chance everything must have diamonds on it omg!” chaos.  It’s a struggle to accept that feeding our guests might mean that we can’t hire movers for our move next month.

Blech, sorry for the “woe is me” post; hopefully it’s out of my system and we’ll return to regular happy blogging tomorrow…. that said, I know I can’t be the only person going through this.  How are other people dealing with making the decisions about some big life things versus others, whether it’s a wedding or something else?  This morning I took the Beast and we went for a 2 mile run in the cold wind and rain.  This made me feel better, if a little wet.  Please, share your vices/solutions/tell me I’m not crazy.  Thanks, blogland.

Weekend lessons, or Weddings Are CRAZY

Lesson number 1 of the weekend: if your dog has especially athletic skills, such as the ability to leap six feet in the air from a dead stand-still, it’s probably a good idea to be careful when you ask her to go somewhere near you.  For example, do not try to teach her that a certain space is her bed by leaning over it and saying “bed” while you are standing right next to your actual bed.  Possible outcomes of this scenario include her leaping over the bed you indicated and onto the bed that is yours, connecting the hard part of her head directly with your nose and resulting in blood pretty much everywhere.  Additional possible results include a crooked nose and a debate about whether it’s worth it to go to the doctor.  Next time you see me, see if you can tell which direction my new nose curves in. Or, as Turtle corrects, see if you can tell me in which direction my new nose curves. This is why I love her, people.

my nose totally curves to the left now. stupid nose.

Lesson number two: wedding related stuff is crazy. CUH RAZE E.  This is not necessarily news.  Anyway, we looked at some wedding rings last week – you may have heard – and were talking to my family about it when we learned that this weekend was Wedding Ring Weekend at a store that just so happens to be on the way back home from my parents’ house (where we spent the weekend).  And who doesn’t want to go to a Wedding Ring Weekend?  Okay, don’t answer that.  In all honesty, I try not to attend events with “Wedding” in the title, because it seems that most of these events are far more about the one day and the showiness of it all than they are about a marriage or relationship or the big life changes you are making.  But hey, we need wedding rings, it was on the way home, it seemed worth it to check it out.

The store was FULL of people, and it was hard to even see all the cases at first; there was a lot of waiting around to look in a particular case or to find someone to show us something.  Once we did, we found that some people were super helpful, willing to be flexible with what we wanted (none of that, “What do you mean, no diamonds? You deserve diamonds, hon,” from the salespeople, thank goodness.), and tried to find us things that were similar to what we were expressing interest in.  Side lesson here, another possible-not-surprise: just because an event is not gay-unfriendly, and some of the staff are perfectly nice to us, a clearly lesbian couple, that does not make an event gay-friendly.  One guy was very short with us and would not make eye contact once it was clear that we were looking for matching rings.  Um, no thank you, sir.

At points it just felt like a feeding frenzy.  A very shiny feeding frenzy.  We left empty handed but full of delicious free cake samples, and ready to go back to the cozy little jewelry shop we saw last week.

Lesson number three: getting married is fun.  Or this process of getting married is fun.  It’s fun to work out the kinks and talk through the steps.  It’s fun to look at readings and talk to our families and be excited about this event to celebrate how much we love each other and that we found each other. We had our first session today with the minister who is officiating our wedding, and it was really great.  Everyone should do some sort of counseling like this.  We took a test a couple of months ago that looked at our compatibility around several different issues.  We took the test individually and were not allowed to discuss it until today.  Today, we talked about the things that we matched on, and the things that we answered completely differently.  It was very educational.  One highlight: our minister saying, “You should get married!”

So besides my possibly broken nose and feeling overwhelmed by the swarming weddingclone swarms, this weekend was warm and cozy and lovely. How was yours?

The Six-Month Disease

I admit that, in my family, I am known to be a hypochondriac. I’m not sure that my ailments are as imagined as my family members seem to believe they are, but fine, most of the time that I think I am dying, I am not in fact dying. That said, I have been suspecting for awhile that I have what is referred to as “The Six Month Disease,” and evidence continues to point to its existence, this illness raging in my body.

Symptoms of the Six Month Disease flare up every, say, 6 months – hence the name.  Very complex, as you can see.  Some such symptoms include:

• Wanting big life changes
• Creating big life changes
• Whining about what changes one could make in one’s big life
• Begging for cute things

It should be noted that much of this occurs within the context of one’s intimate relationship.  I may have been infected long before my current relationship existed, but it is only in the past couple of years that it has been pointed out to me that I have this disease.

Let’s review:

November 2007: I joined roller derby.

Six months later brings us to April 2008: I fall hard for a lovely lady, one Ms. Turtle McTurtleson.

Aaaand six months minus just one day takes us to one Sterling Animal Shelter, where I ogle lots of puppies and fall in love with “Luna” (see Case A).  We celebrate our six month-iversary, and I pick “Luna” up from the shelter the next day.

Yes, that is a smiley-face made out of dog kibble, and we are making her practice "wait." Look at her cute forehead wrinkles!

About six months after that, I convince Turtle that we need a kitten.  I guess the true-r version of the story is that I go to therapy, talk about how miserable my job at a rape crisis center is making me, and tell her that the only thing that makes me feel happy is thinking about kittens.  She tells me to go ahead and get a kitten! Why not?  They’re wonderful like chocolate bars, except you don’t eat them so they last forever!  Or some such gem.  I tell Turtle that I have been prescribed a kitten.  We adopt the Finnster.

Aaaaand six months after that little fluffball enters our lives, we decide, all officially and stuff, to get married.  That was last October.

This morning, Turtle asked me how long it’s been since we got engaged.  As of today, it’s been five months and 10  days.  “Nearly six months,” she pointed out.

And omg I want a puppy.

So really: we’re getting this new apartment, and we’re going to have twice as much space as we do now.  Literally.  And we’re going to have a fenced in yard. AND we will be living right next to a dog park!  AAAAND this week we petsat for a young dog and she and Daphne had so much fun together!

All of this points to I will probably die if I don’t get a puppy.

Right?  I mean, I guess other options are just wait it out… maybe something else big and exciting will happen at this 6-month mark.  And I know we don’t want a puppy before we get married.  And I know our new landlord will probably freak out if I say, “We have a dog, two cats, and can we get a puppy in ten minutes?”  And Turtle said we can get a puppy in five years, which is down from the previous 8, which was down from the 10 she was saying before that.

Searching Petfinder is a dangerous thing to do.

Does anyone else get restless like this?  I’m not sure it’s restlessness, maybe it’s a desire for a new adventure.  A new thing?  Well, I’m starting a printmaking class next Monday so maybe this will postpone my puppy dreams.  Some people get baby cravings… I get puppy cravings.  I probably always will.

In Praise of the Process

Today Turtle and I spent two hours looking at wedding ring options.  It was a beautiful day and we had an entire afternoon to play, so we went to several stores to look at what they had.  In the very first store, a very stuffy – ahem, traditional – jewelry shop, one ring caught the eye of both of us.

“Psst, what about that top one on the left?”

“I was just looking at that!”

Just as the stuffy, I mean, kindly gentleman came over to assist us, we both realized that the amazing ring with the simple band and the interesting texture was not, in fact, a ring, but a nickel stuffed into the tray to fill the space of a previously purchased ring. Okay, so at least we have similar taste, right?  We both like the idea of using a nickel for our wedding bands?

On what may seem like a side note but is in fact completely related, I was talking to a friend of mine tonight who said, “If I were getting married, I would take my fiance and both of our sets of parents and we would go to the courthouse and that would be that.”

I admit that this has crossed my mind.  There are lots of very sweet courthouse weddings!  There are aspects of it that appeal to me: the simplicity, the intimacy, the importance of the marriage rather than the flowers (or tablecloths or food or whatever).

But the celebration feels important to me, and to us.  The ritual of it is important.  And what I keep understanding as we continue the planning process is that it’s not just the celebration and the support of our community of family and friends that is important, but it is also important for us to get through this planning process *together*, and to have a wedding that is *ours* and no one elses.

Back to the rings: We found this lovely little shop in a nearby town and found two styles of rings that we loved.  We spent a long time trying them on and looking at similar rings in different materials and styles and widths, and then we left and came back and spent even more time talking to the jeweler about what we could and couldn’t change about each one and how much they would cost in different materials, etc.

Having this conversation with a complete stranger meant that first we had to have this conversation with each other.  We had to say, “Here’s what I’m thinking about spending, and here’s why that seems reasonable.  Here’s what the ring means to me.  What do you think?”  And it turns out that we both had different budgets, we had different aspects of the wedding bands that are important to us, and the rings have different meaning for both of us.  Something as simple as buying a piece of jewelry (or as complicated as buying a wedding band, depending on how you look at it) turned into a few really intense, interesting conversations about money and marriage and celebration.  And this is just one step in the process of putting together our wedding.

Planning a wedding together means checking in with each other a lot.  It means trying to find something that represents *both* of us, and that means sometimes letting go of something that represents just one of us if the other one doesn’t feel that it fits.  It means trying to be ourselves in the most honest way possible while making space for the other person, and I think that this is one of the parts of getting married that is often overlooked, and it is something that I am currently so, so grateful for.

I feel like planning this wedding is not just about one day, but about the life we are creating together.  We are learning how to talk about money more and more, and we are practicing doing it.  We are talking about our beliefs and the writing that we like and the decorations we think are pretty.  We are shopping for shoes.  We are discussing food and drink and music.  It’s really quite wonderful.

A ring to wed them all… er, them two!

The engagement ring adventure was a big one, and a mostly fun one. At times it was stressful, as we emailed each other pictures back and forth and debated how much money to spend and whether to buy online or in person.  At one point we just said, “Okay, no more talking about rings until we are holding them in our hands,” and that was the point at which we decided to only go shopping in person, which ended up being a really good decision for us.

The search for wedding rings feels similarly stressful, but somehow more difficult.

What is difficult, I think, is trying to figure out what is important in the wedding rings.  I know that, because I plan to be working with a lot of different animals in my life, I want something that can withstand getting banged around and won’t get pieces of poop wedged in little corners of it.  Sorry if that’s gross, but these are the hazards of the industry, people.  I suspect that I will not wear my engagement ring all the time once we’re married, or at least not on the same hand as my wedding ring, so it’s not important to me that the band match my engagement ring.

But beyond these little things, which rule out a lot of rings, I don’t know what I do want.  With our engagement rings, it seemed most important that I like mine and Turtle liked hers, and it didn’t matter whether they looked good together or to the other one of us.  With our wedding rings, it feels important that they match, in some way.  They are a symbol of our union, of our unity, and this is why it feels important that they resemble each other, or are made from the same metal, or at the very least have the same thing engraved within them.  I want, when people see us together, for people to see our rings and know that we are married to each other.

Today we went to an antique store that I happened across a couple of weeks ago to look at some options.  I was surprised to find myself drawn to yellow and rose gold, and I was not surprised to see Turtle drawn to the white gold and platinum.  For me: simple bands with a little bit of detail or character, like little ridges you don’t notice at first or milgrain on the edges.  For her: diamonds all the way around.  Very different.

And THEN she found a ring for me that is just gorgeous.  Again, it made my heart flutter a little.  I didn’t have a camera and can’t find a picture of it anywhere, but it is a delicate vine with leaves wrapped around and around, and made out of teeny tiny diamonds and white gold. This is so not a good explanation of the ring.  It is beautiful, and simple while intricate, and delicate while sturdy, and costs a little more than 5 times as much as I originally wanted to spend.  And it will definitely not match Turtle’s ring, whatever she finds.

If you are married, what is your ring situation?  Do you have an engagement ring AND a wedding band, and how did you agree on/pick your band(s)? Do they match?  And whether or not you’re married, what are your thoughts/understandings of what a wedding ring “should be”?  I don’t know that I care what one “should do,” but I am curious about the thoughts around these rings, as opposed to engagement rings, and where my attitudes are coming from. Give me your insight, dear readers, and tell me whether I should spend way more than I really want to on a ring that makes me flutter.

Veterinary angst

I think I started asking my parents for a dog when I was around two years old.  Maybe three.  I found an old letter from my aunt and apparently I was very specific in this desire: I wanted a black dog.  Finally my parents caved in and let me get a puppy for my fifth birthday.  My dad picked the breed.  I got a german shepherd puppy for my fifth birthday.  And yes, within a year the dog weighed more than I did.

Sally was more my dad’s dog than mine, but was a fantastic dog any way you look at it.  She died at age 9, because German shepherds seem inherently physically defective, and at that point we got another dog, Thumper.  Thumper is a lab-chow mix and is more cat than dog – he’s like a cat trapped in a dog’s body.  He’s about 12 now.  And as all you faithful Roughit readers know, we now have Daphne Matilda, the dog of uncertain origins (part basenji? Part Ibizan hound? Part rare Australian Flying Dingo?).

Thumper and Daphne at the beach

The point of all of this is that, between these dogs and the cats and my life goals, I have spent a lot of time at many different veterinary clinics.  I am definitely a shopper of veterinarians – if I don’t have a good experience, I’ll go somewhere else, and once I do have a good experience, I will highly recommend that veterinary clinic to anyone who cares to listen.

I currently work at a veterinary clinic that is one of a team of hospitals in the country.  Because where I work at is a feline-only hospital, I have to take my dog to be seen at a different area hospital, one that sees dogs as well, in order to use my employee discount.

So I tried one nearby a couple of months ago, when Daphne was vomiting every night over night (she my still do this… gross), because I wanted to get her checked out for the vomiting and because she needed a nail trim.  The reception staff was fine; not really noteworthy.  I had sort of expected a “Welcome!  Do you want a tour of the hospital?” since I work at a sister hospital, but I wasn’t disappointed or anything to not get that kind of reception.  The doctor was good with my very shy, very nervous dog, and did the exam without any problems.  They took her in back to weigh her and trim her nails… and came back without having done her nails.  So I pointed that out, and they came into the room with a muzzle and proceeded to try to trim her tails.  She was in a panic, frothing at the mouth, head whipping, scrambling to get away.  They quicked her once, which isn’t a problem, except that it added to her panic and it seemed that they had no control over the situation.  Then she emptied her anal sacs all over the place.  She shat and bled all over that room, and they only took off the tips of the nails.  Totally not worth the experience.  And then they tried to charge me full price on my way out.  It was not a positive veterinary experience.

So this time I went to a different hospital, one where I knew the doctor I was going to see and I knew and trusted the technician I was going to see.  The vet visit itself was fantastic.  Both the doctor and technician worked really, really well with Daphne, letting her go at her own pace, offering a ton of treats to keep her distracted from the exam and vaccines.  They gave three vaccines and took her blood in such a low key way that she did not even notice it was happening!  That is quality veterinary service, my friends.

The issue, though, was the reception experience.  In case you, dear reader, are not aware of this, I am a receptionist (one of two) at my cat hospital.  I am the first person you see when you walk in, I am the person you usually talk to when you call, and I am the person you can get frustrated at when things are taking longer than expected.  And I think that I am pretty good at dealing with these situations, letting you the customer know what is going on, and offering apologies and coffee when things are running behind.

When we arrived (early, I should add, so that they could copy our old records), I stood at the desk for almost five minutes, less than a foot away from the receptionist, who did not smile, make eye contact, or even acknowledge my presence.  Finally she gave me some papers to fill out.  Once that was done, we waited twenty five minutes to start our appointment; during that time, no one said, “Thanks for waiting,” or “We’ll be starting soon,” or “Sorry it’s taking so long.”  I should add that VCA appointments are scheduled for 20-minute intervals, so we had waited long past our appointment before our appointment even started!

On the way out, we stood at the desk again for a solid five minutes without anyone acknowledging our presence.  Finally she said, “That’ll be $97 for Daphne,” to which my response was, “Okay, what is that for?”  Because I am not going to just hand you a hundred dollars without knowing why!  And I suspected that they had forgotten to put our flea/tick stuff on the bill… and they had.

Blech, I know this post is long and not interesting to many of you, so I apologize for that (if you even read this far).  I did need to vent about this, and if you are still reading, I would love to hear about your veterinary experiences.  The clinic I work at now is the only place I’ve been that I can honestly say is close to the perfect veterinary clinic – if only they saw dogs (for the record, I held this opinion before I worked there).  The reception staff anywhere, I think, is very important, as it is the first impression you get – and my first impression of this place was not good.

And so I continue on the search for a good clinic for my dog, though my cats and I will happily stay where we are.

 

Sad Daphne

My fiancee is a woman

So it turns out that when I am the one throwing up everywhere and I am the one incapable of walking across a room without stopping for multiple breaks, I can still write in my blog.  But when the love of my life is under the weather, it is far more important for me to clean the house, make the meals, buy orange juice and tissues and medicine, and be available.  And I think that this is the right way for things to be.  So, I’m sorry I disappeared briefly from blogland, but I think it was for the right reasons.

One thing I’ve been meaning to write about for awhile is the way being engaged has changed my ability to/ the necessity of coming out to people on a regular basis.  I don’t mean “coming out” in a big huge way, like, “Wow I finally came out to my family and it was big and huge.”  I mean coming out in the little ways that happen almost in passing, with people who don’t really matter, like conversations I used to have at work: “Oh, you and your boyfriend are moving in together, and he’s bringing a dog and you’re bringing a cat?  Yeah, my girlfriend and I did that, and they get along fine now.”  You can substitute “girlfriend” for “partner”, but it still leaves (I think) a pretty distinct impression of who my person is, gender-wise.

Once we became “officially” engaged, Turtle was no longer my girlfriend, but my fiancèe. Interestingly, when spoken, fiancèe (for a woman) sounds exactly like fiancè (for a man).  It’s a fun little temporary game where I know I’m not coming out every time I mention Turtle, as long as I avoid pronouns… or just mutter them. In fact, sometimes I’ll just skip over them.

“Oh yeah, my fiancèe is currently unemployed.”
“Oh, what does he do for work?”
“Used to work in nonprofit development, but now *mumble* is looking for ….” etc.

Depending on who it is, I will correct them – “Oh, SHE used to work in nonprofit development…” – but more often then not, I just move along and sort of marvel at the assumptions people make.  It’s not that I don’t want people to know I’m dating a woman; it’s more that they don’t need to know, and it’s an interesting sort of social experiment to watch their reactions and my reactions in the whole conversation.  Plus, in slightly less than 6 months, this game will be over – “wife” is not a very gender-neutral term.

What would you do in this situation?  Have you dealt with this at all? I’m curious…

Speedy McSpeederson

Speed Metal is pretty much the coolest person in the whole world.  Well, besides Turtle, but I’ll forgive Metal for not cleaning up after me all day yesterday – it is not in the “Skater Sister” job description, which I think is probably appropriate.

Metal was one of my skater sisters during my several months trying out for derby, and she was pretty much amazing.

Reasons Metal is awesome:

1. Her dog is really cute.
2. She plays roller derby.
3. She’s a super supportive skater sister while still being completely honest and pushing you!
4. She has an awesome sling!

Ways you could also be awesome:

1. Get a cute puppy.
2. Play roller derby.
3. Get an awesome sling!

As many of you know, the process of trying out for roller derby is pretty intense, involving months of practicing and basically pretending you’ve already made it, because you need to dedicate so much time and energy to it.  Then after a couple of months of learning how to skate for derby and learning how to play, there is a final scrimmage with all the freshmeat, and the captains make their decisions that evening.

So imagine going through all those months and putting in all of that effort, only to have someone fall on you during the last scrimmage. The result of this:

my clavical is broken and may be disconnected from my sternum floating around. Vicatin tells me I want to go to ikea after xrays and barf on my phone.

But derby girls stick together!  Check out this sweet email to the lady who broke her:

Dear dread,

I’m glad you crushed me (and other BDD girls) because when ppl ask
(like millions of nurses and doctors) I can say a really rad girl
smashed me :D.

Barfffffffffffcvvvbbn.

Metal just opened her shop a couple of weeks ago; right now she only has slings but hopes to have accessories for unbroken folks in the future – including awesome fanny packs!  She also plans to have crutch pads soon – which I can tell you would be amazing.

Her slings are made for practicality and comfort: they are reversible! So that you can choose which fabric feels best on your skin day to day or which pattern suits you… there’s also additional fabric on the strap for extra comfort along the neck.

After Speed Metal broke her collar bone and had surgery, she had to wear a sling all the time, including while showering and sleeping.  She had only two slings from the hospital, and said, “about 2 weeks in the hospital issued slings I began to break out in a horrible itchy rash on my arm from the scratchiness and lack of ventilation from the material.”

Even though she couldn’t even go to the bathroom on her own, she felt the need to be productive – something I totally understand.  Since eating and watching TV made her sick, she started crafts!  Even on a crazy amount of drugs and with only one functional arm, she made the sling you see her wearing in the picture above! She also made the tutu she’s wearing *and* the one her adorable dog is wearing!

Getting injured skating and trying to stay a part of it while your teammates are surging ahead of you is a really tough process, probably even harder mentally than it is physically.  Here is what Metal had to say about her healing process:

February was the beginning of the derby season and I was being carted from event to event with my eyes glazed over. I was feeling better that I had a sling that was soft and cool and new bandages that were also more ventilated. As I started to regain my sanity and got over my intense withdrawal from opiates I continued to go to bouts all over New England to pass the time which was normally allotted for skating. It was pretty awesome to have strangers come out of the stands at bouts or stop me in the grocery store asking me where I bought my ‘fabulous’ sling. It was a relief to have conversations turn away from how I got hurt to how awesome my sling was.

This February was my anniversary of my injury and the month in that I am healed enough to remove my plate. I decided to turn that pile of fabric I have impulsively bought over the years into slings as part of a small healing process. Now that I’m ‘healthy’ I haven’t entirely gotten over the mental hurdle of the possibility of succumbing to another traumatic injury. That original sling is a small reminder that I got through the experience with the love and support of derby girls, family, lots of drugs and health insurance. These new slings are helping me through a new hurdle in life which is dealing with teetering on the edge of unemployment as an art teacher in this economy. Speed Slings has become my bridge between art, derby and work (or lack there of). I also have a new appreciation for morphine because its really hard to sew and I’m using two hands this time.

By the way my hospital suites (all 4 of them) were the most happenin’ place to have a derby party thanks to Killay, Quick Sandy, and Lil’ Paine

So if you skate or don’t skate or know someone with an aptitude for getting hurt, go check out Metal’s shop, and become a fan on facebook!