I want to bottle the feeling I have when I am on my way to practice and make it into perfume. FYI - It wouldn't smell like my gear bag. It would be the smell equivalent of glitter, so it would be like baking brownies with your mother while
Love, Actually is playing in the background right before it rains. While riding a Liger. I would probably spritz myself with this before things like, my annual review at work. Or... when I need inspiration for the "sweet baby Jesus, give me the strength to sprint on roller skates to back to the pack" moments in life. It happens more often than I'd like to admit.
Being in the car, on the way to practice is the best part of my day. The worst part of my day is the 20 minutes before that when I was on the couch snuggling with a fat kitty and I realized that I have to get off the couch, out of warm clothes, into ones that are tiny and cold. During this time, I drag my feet like a petulant child. Sometimes I stomp around the house starting fights with my man about dirty dishes and the cat hair tumbleweed that passed through the hallway because of all my stomping. Not all days are like this. Sometimes I dance with the aforementioned fat kitty and make up songs for him as if I were a lounge singer in a very bad Las Vegas dive bar. Both of these things are totally transparent in that I am pretending that somehow, time has stood still and minutes are not flying away from me. Like when I am hitting the snooze alarm for too long, this makes me late. Unlike hitting the highway to the daily grind, when my big ole booty hits the cold leather of my driver's seat on derby nights, it shocks me into elation. Suddenly, I am BEYOND excited to be there with muh ladies of FoCo. Once I am there, a few moments pass and the sepia edged memories of my regular life to fade out. After this, I belong wholly to myself again. In two hour blocks, two times a week, I belong to me.
After practice, I gear down slowly as I start thinking about my "action items" for the next day's work (for the Clark Kent version of me). Those postcard memories of that
other boring girl start coming back in full-on technicolor. I think about quippy blog post titles and what song is stuck in my head from a random 80's movie and that animated gif I saw earlier today of otters chasing a butterfly. Concurrently. And then I Pinterest about my astrological sign until I can't keep my eyes open anymore because that is the only time that my brain slows down. And sometimes, Pinterest doesn't event work. On those nights, I realize that I should have taken a sleep aid the moment I walked in the door and fallen into bed covered in slimy sweat. If I were a cartoon I would have green, wavy stink lines rising off me as I slept peacefully. That isn't what happens on those derby nights though. I look at the interwebs for a while, then I am so cold (because of slimy sweat on every bit of my skin) that I have to take a hot shower at 1AM.When I finally crawl back into bed, I am warm, exhausted, and finally ready to sleep.
This is what derby nights look like in my house. It's defined by the distinct flow of anxiety, anticipation, and excitement. If that is what I do on practice days, let's just imagine what bout day looks like... *shudder. OK, let's not.
Derby Love,
Mollytov Maguire
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