Packning up the past

I have owned my apartment for 12 years - it's half a lifetime for some... I haven't really lived here for all of that time - but big chunks have happened here... And now my friends it's sold and I'm packing my things to leave... It's sad... But exciting... Life is like an unwritten sheet... A story I love to write and pages I fill with adventures.. But memories are also great - remembering that once you were someone else... And I found photos to prove it...

once upon a time

And I have moved

It's strange - I probably will have a strange breakdown soon, but all my things are out from the apartment that has been my one stable spot in life the past 12 years. Laying on the bed in my new apartment and just listening to Trish working away on her computer. Yeah, Internet is for sure installed. I'm exhausted! I have an exam tonight in my Leadership and Organization class, it's been a really interesting class, I've really been able to use lots of things I've learned in derby, but it has also made me realise how I can become a better leader and coach.

My passion is more on the project managerial part, let me have a good ol' project, and I will make it tick... Things are going well, and on Saturday I will finally be in Portland, ready to fling my jetlagged body into waiting arms. I'm super excited! I am of course also VERY excited about the Salem playoffs and lots of other things... 

Busy weekend - sleep is for the wicked

We bouted Royal Windsor this Saturday, and it was superfun, we did win, even if we were off to a rocky start - sometime around halftime we really got it togheter and played a tight and togethersome game. It was fun, and my leg only bothered me in the beginning, and then when it got all warmed up (and possible a little hopped up on adrenaline) it didn't really bother me much.

My old teammate from Seattle, Ima Handful was visiting for the weekend, so that was really cool, she's currently living in Munchen loving her livingroom. Whatever that entails... but she seemed to enjoy both the bout and the afterparty... And I was immensly happy to have her in Stockholm, maybe she should move here...

Trish is still around making life pleasuarble, she probably is the best roomate ever! She did bring her HUGE computer with her, that she sits and works all day - and then we cook and make fun of each others, having close friends that you can laught with is so important!  

And tomorrow we bout Royal Windsor here in Stockholm!

So it is - we bout tomorrow, against Royal Windsor, we have played them twice before, both bouts have been very significant for me in two very different ways.

First time was my first bout with Stockholm Rollerderby, and I also benched our B-team. I remember that was when Emma Ryssfemma was still jamming with the the B-team. I remember that the floor was superslick and when we went out that night we were all shocked by the skimpy outfits and heels the Brittish girls were wearing (not the Royal Windsor girls, but just the women in general). Windsor was a really pretty town, and we went on a long walk and I think there was a real fairytale fog over the castle. It was a crazy trip, and so many things happened and it was great and we won.

Second time we bouted Royal Windsor was in Gent during the WFTDA tournament that was held there in May of this year, and it was during that bout I got the injury that I'm still struggeling with. Me and my Physio still have not really figured out what it is, and why, but I'm scedualing an ultrasound, to really figure it out. Doctors have said I am fine, but I'm NOT! Well, well... life goes on! BUT back to the Windsor game, it was fun until I got injured, and I had a little ontrack butch-off with Trashbag. Stockholm did not have a great tournament, for many reasons, but this game we did win, and that felt good, even if I spent the last part of it in an ambulance to an ER room in Belgium.

So this is our first homebout against them, and it is going to be superfun! I am REALLY excited, and so is my team! Also my old teammate and friend Ima Handfull from Rat City is coming for the weekend, and that makes me even more happy! Like superduper happy! 

Wash your damn gear!

Like SEERIOUSLY what make some people think its adorable to be known to have the stinkiest gear? Well, news flash! It's not cool, cute, awesome or any other superlative, it's just stinky!

It's not bad that your pads smell a little, and I'm not bothered by that. BUT when your pads start to smell like death or puke, it has gone to far! There is NOTHING charming or cool about that, just unpleasant for the rest of us that have to stand around you.

And honestly, I do no wash my pads all the time, I am not super-sensitive to smell, I think we all forget about the washing our pads from time to time! My elbow pads are always gross, why is it always the elbow pads? Sometimes I even throw them into the washing maschine, but usually I just hand wash. And when hand washing you can really see HOW dirty they are and that completely grosses me out and make me think that I should do it more often. The hand wash is easy, I just do it in my shower, usually do my scrimmageshirt and other pads at the same time. 

Just hang it up to dry... Mmmmmmmmm smells sooo much better for a week or so! This is not hard - YOU can do it too!

And let's not talk about how I treat my mouth guard - I am honestly horrorfied myself... Once when I was really tired I fell asleep with it still in my sports bra, another time it ended up in the washer, since it was causally put in my shorts pocket... 

I am just so damn me

Head is spinning...

Next 10 days entail:

Practice tonight
Membersmeeting on Thursday (missing my stepmoms B-day party)
Run practice on Friday
Bout on Saturday
Running bootcamp on Sunday
Clean out and pack up my apartment that I have had for 11 years on Monday and Tuesday
Exam in Organization and Leadership on Wednesday
Move into new apartment on Wednesday
Make sure that our company party runs smothly with food, presentations and everything on Friday
Pack for Portland (don't know when this is supposed to happen)
Go to Portland EARLY Saturday morning
CHILL, hold hands and ENJOY myself for six days... until I land in Helsinki and have two bouts...

Did I mention that I am fulltime at work? And that I am also part-time in school... AND I have two dear friends visiting this weekend... Yikes! Good thing is that I just will not have time to daydream. Oh, I probably will... it's sort of what I do really well! Plan things in my head to execute later...

And for dear all of you... this is NOT complaining, this is rather a statement... I can do this, because I want to. I love keeping busy, and I need to be leaping from thing to thing and then into a pair of strong arms and a loving kiss... and it's good! All good and amazing! I love skatng and bouting! I love roller derby! 

Last scrimmage and then BOUT!

This Saturday we will be bouting Royal Windsor.. and yesterday was the last scrimmage before the weekend, and it went really well, even if it seems like the fall has brought a nice littel cold to us, everyone of the Allstars seem a little coughy... and on our way out to practice yesterday we were jsut crossing our fingers that the rain hadn't gotten to our track. The place we skate is quite rainproof, but a few times last year when we got our there, the floor was wet from the rain - and we had to figure out alternatives to skating on a track. Rolelrderby has made us all very creative.

I am really looking forward to playing Royal Windsor, last tiem the bout was not the greatest, since that was in Gent and that is when I got injured :-/. So this time I will not get injured and Loony has promised not to get ejected. It's going to be nice to play in front of our home audience and have people cheer for us, it has been a while!

OH OH OHOHHH and our B-team BSTRDs played Oslo last weekend, and did really well, they were just a hot min from winning, so they shold be proud of themselves! 

My little project - my body

So I guess I decided my body is my little project... It has sucked to be injured, like REALLY, the leg not responding like I am used too, and being in pain. I honestly got over the pain part quite a while ago, to the point where I just feel pain, but it's just there, and I can live with it.
Watching Play-Offs did inspired me, I realized I needed to get better, because I love to skate, and I love to play rollerderby!
I am not about making my body look amazing for some silly bikini, I wanna make it more functional, it's not about some stupid diet that will leave me wanting to eat everythign and nothing. It's about making my body just great for rollerderby, to make me a better player both mentally and physically!

Project ONE: Healing hamstring
I tried to find a Physical Therapist this summer, and I met one guy who sort of blew me off byt saying: do those three exersices and the you will be well in the future, maybe 3 weeks - that did not happen at all, even if I did the exercises that he had given me...So my first step towards REALLY recover was to get my hands on a Physical Therapist that acctually listened to me, and could help. I did manage to do this, I have already been to visit her two times this week, and she seem to find and target my poor damaged muscle. Paticence is not really my vice, but I try... She did tell me I probably should not do contact drills, I still do, but if I get pain I pull away. So I guess I am being as good as I can be... She also told me that with my injury, it might take about six months to heal up.
So this project is for sure on it's way!

Project TWO: Food
I live food, and I really belive that you should not deny yourself waht you like, it will make for an unhappy mind. BUT that does not mean you should gorge on everything, I belive in moderation, and strongly! If I want to have ice-cream after food, I should have ice-cream after food. I just shouldn't eat an entire box by myself, I will just share it with someone... you want some?
I have struggled for so many years to come to terms with food, and we are finally friends, me and food. Food you do not scare me, I like you! I am also obsessed with apples, I do not object to proteinshakes or anything. I just think that the word MODERATION is key! It's not about becomming skinny, it's about becomming healthy, and I think that the best way to do it, is to do waht makes you happy, indulge when you need it, but not ALL the time, eat balanced. You need carbs, you need protein, you need som fat... and we all need more apples (pink ladies are my favorites)

Project THREE: Jamming
Ok, I am putting it out there, right now! I am gonna start jamming more, maybe just in practice, but it's good for me, it freaking scares me, and it's supersilly to say, I have jammed a whole bunch! I have been a main jammer even! Now I can't even remember when I lined up as a jammer (well, I do think last time was against LRR a year ago) and I know I'm not needed on that position in Stockholm Rollerderby, but I wanna overcome my own fears. So I will! I have to! This is the part of my mental training.

Project FOUR: Up with my Arms (watch out Suzy)
Jupp SUCKAZ! When I moved to NYC I challanged Suzys arms... I lost... and I will do it again (challange Suzy not loose)...  It's time... you and me arms... we are gonna go to the gym.. this acctually applies to my entire upperbody, plus my neck. I do get lots of neckpain from fullcontact practices, and I am quite sure because my neck muscles aren't strong enough and my poor little blond head just slingshots allover the place... To make this happen I really need to make time to go to the gym, I am considering lunch-breaks to be it? Maybe? This is one of my hardest challanges, I just don't like going to the gym by myself. I try to at least do 20 push-ups a day at my house, I figure it's better than nothing...

...with more to come.... 

Backing up London Rollergirls - because they have taken it so far!

How to make 14 days pass faster

So I am really bad at waiting, I have no patience at all... well, that is not true, but it's limited... And I now need to make the upcomming 14 days to feel like a breeze. It is of course awesome that i have a great friend visiting from NYC.

There is of course also the rollerderby practice that I love, and I am always ridiclously busy, still not busy enough to get my mind not to wanter.

Well, well... I guess that's life! Some things you just gotta deal with, weather you like it or not!

Working out is very high on my list, and I am thinking about that maybe I will make poor Trish run, but considering my hamstring still is not in runnign condiong, I am not sure how that plan witll get executed... .

Sad and happy - all at once

So once again it happens - it's fall, and I acctually don't really mind the fall that much, it's cosy, sitting at home and watching the rain pour down over a grayish landscape of Stockholm. Worse thing can happen... It does mean ONE thing - that we don't have a place to practice!
Well we do, we get three hours on Friday nights at 7.30 pm until 10.30 pm - and in this time we should be trying to fit our Fresh Meat, our BSTRDs and Allstars... three hours...

During the summer we can practice at an ice-rink, and this year we counted on them not putting ice on until mid-October, like last year... but NO - aperently this year they decided that ice has to go on the 28th of September. So Stockholm Rollerderby will go from four on-skate practices to one in just two weeks. And it makes me sad, like REALLY sad. and it is not like we have not tried to find places to practice, we make do with whatever we have, but it's this stress, the constant stress of not being able to get as good as you want, to be able to push as hard as you could, to never really be able to plan for the future. Stockholm City promises us more times and they are always really excited about us, but they never really put the money were the mouth is!

BUT I am happy because I just did book a ticket going to Portland, I am gonna be there for just a few days, but it makes me superduperhappy, and it's gonna be amazingly fun and an adventure... adn I just can't wait for it to happen! Gotta hang with the coolest person and go to playoffs, see some friends and refersh old memories! Wohooo!

Watching rollerderby

I spent the past two days/nights watching WFTDA playoffs - it's awesome. The hard work that's behind every stride, every hit and every single person inspires me! Oh, and Scald scored a 45 point jam - that happened. And London almost beat Denver... Crossing my fingers for tomorrow - for them to go to the Championships be the coolest thing ever!

Taking notes, thinking about what Stockholm can improve, what can we do better? I know we can always be better, but a little more specific.

I enjoy watching rollerderby - but I enjoy playing it even more! I want us all to work hard, to sweat, to know that every exhausting practice will earn us five more points at the next bout. I want to that feeling that my body is almost at the limit, but I can still push it one more centimetre... And then doing it... Just one more push, and one more... GO!

So tonight have not been so much about pushing ourselves, more about overloading on candy, caffeine and playing dress-up between bouts and in halftimes. Good friends and team-mates makes me way to creative... Whoops, the silliness!

Practice in the dark

If you have been following my blog for a while you know that one of Stockholm Rollerderbys largest challanges are to have a place to practice. (exaples of places where we have practiced are a go-cart hall, a circus hanger and varoous schoolyards around Stockholm) During the summer we are lucky enough to have an outdoor hockeyrink that we pretty much have free access to until it's ice-time. This works awesome in the middle of the summer when the sun never sets... but now when the fall is creeping in on us and the days get shorter, we have to have the really sweet janitor to turn on the lights for us. And he always do when we ask him, superawesome for us!
BUT yesterday he just sort of forgot, so I kept on running drills until we REALLY could not see anything.. so finally we had to send Ryssen off to remind him.
At this point in my derbycareer I just can't get upset if practice doesn't go exactly how I have planned, so we just continued and did some walking crossovers and strenght exercise, until our beloved janitor gave us light...

Life is unpredictable and getting upset about things that you can't do anyting about is just counterproductive. ANd trust me, we are looking EVERYWHERE to find a place to practice at. It really is the dream to have our own practice space, I'd love it. Our leauge has so much talent and so much potential, but without a place to skate, it's hard to be what we can be... but to be honest... everyone where just awesome and just kept on skating event thou we couldn't see anything... 

Coaching in Nottingham and meeting Robin Hood

I love coaching, it is superduperfun, but sometimes camps just get too long, everyone get too tired and your brain is melting togehter with all the poor skaters that you are trying to coach something, and they are just too tired to get anything out of it, because their bodies are collapsing.

Lat weekend I coached a camp together with Mater in Nottingham, and it was the best of times. It was just hte perfect time of coaching, 4 hours per day, the groups were just big enough that I felt like I could remember people and give feedback.

The light and the dark... gotta LOVE Mater! 

On Saturday was jammer clinic day and on Sunday was blocker clinic day, and it was super inspiering to see all those girls work so hard! I always get impressed when I go coach, and it warms my rollerderby heart that we have this passion for this sport! Yay for rollerderby! My hamstring is still acting up in different strange ways, so I couldn't join in on the scrimmage... but soon...  Me and Mater stayed with an amazing couple From the Hellfire Harlots (the leauge that was hosting the bootcamp) that fed us and gave us tea and coffee! And of course it was great to see my lovely banktrack wife Mater again. We don't get to see each other to often since she lives in the Seattle area and I am still ligering in Stockholm for most part.

Me and Robin Hood are getting cloooose... 

I also got to see the Robin Hood statue, and got excited, Robin Hood has always been one of my favorites. When I was a kid we would always watch hte Disney version of Robin Hood, we would make our own little bows and I would be Robin Hood, well a female version. I sort of wanted to be Marion too... It was hard trying to combine those two.. .I might still be struggeling with that ;-) 

Lunch in London with Mainey

It's all gonna be fantastic

I didn't plan things to be this way, and maybe that is why it all feels so good.
I got of the phone this morning, and I smiled, I just smiled.

When you stand in a middle of a wedding...

...you realize what you want, that you need to follow your heart - because otherwise nothign will ever be true! You can't live the life that everyone else told you that you should, only you can chose your own path, and your own sucess and your own lifepartner. Thanks Rotation and Shevil for getting marries so I could have a life-revelation...

I just recently have understood how hard it was for me to come out, not to my friends and family, but to myself. I am that person, that just had a hard time to accept myself, I always knew I was different, I just didn't want to be different, and the harder I fought aginst it the more obvious it became to the rest of the world.. It was just right there and then when two dear friends that got married, that I understood, that why do I doubt things so much, why do I question myself, when I know how I feel really deep down, why do I date when I feel nothing? I can't be with someone just not to feel alone, because that just isn't me. I realized how I had to buckle up and follow my heart, even if it was beyond complicated. You gotta live and love!

I want to be swept off my feet, I want to be told that I am adorable and amazing, I want to be inspired to climb mountains, to write fairytales, to sleep under starry skies. I want to share my anxiety and my joy, and I want my heart to sing everytime I hear her voice. I want our eyes to burn and tickle each others skin.  That is what i want to feel, so I went for it, right or wrong, only time can tell.

This post says absolutley nothing and everything - but for me it's all so clear now. Go, and go in peace with yourself, you can lie for the rest of the world, but don't lie to yourself just because it's easier. I am proud of being me! You can't take the easy way out, becase it will be the harder way in the longrun.

Oh and by the way me, Loony, Kix and Kim are representing Stockholm Rollerderby in the last issue of QX. QX is a free gay magazine here in Sweden... it's sort of really cool! I think it's cool at least...

Looking good in the neighbourhood...