Hitting a Car was the Highlight of My Week

Last Monday, I floated the Comal River like a rookie. Maybe it was because it was The Kitten's first time to float the river, and I was a little nervous, hoping she would love tubing as much as I do. Maybe it was a bit of showing off in front of my cousins on my dad's side who all are younger than me. Maybe it was way too much cider. But anyway, I fried my legs for the first time in twenty years. And not just fried all over...burned in a candy-cane pattern. Yes, I have red and white diagonal stripes up and down the fronts of my legs. Lovely!

Still, my candy-cane legs can't top the marks I received from skating the Pride Parade Saturday night. Before the parade even started, I hit a car. Poor car! It was just minding its own business, and I came along and tripped into it. It was too dark to see how bad my Catazonianess damaged it, but the bruise on my upper arm says there might have been a dent in the passenger door. The bruise is even bigger than the one when I fell in the clothes hamper, which you can actually see in the picture on my Blogger profile. Nice!

By the way, I'm waiting to see pictures from that night, so if you have any of the roller derby girls rolling down Westheimer, either on wheels or on the ground wrastling, put 'em out there! And thanks, Rushin' Cleavage, for such an enjoyable evening. ;)

I didn't think the week could get any better than once again getting the crap beat out of me by stationary objects, but then I went to a Roger Creager concert yesterday evening, right smack-dab in the middle of what I like to think of as my old 'hood (Oak Forest), and I know it's hard to believe that only about 75-100 people would brave the heat wave from hell to see him at such a great venue (a little league ballfield), but the few, the brave, the crazy were rewarded with a free beer from Roger himself. Awesome.

Careful? What's That?

Today I did something that would royally embarrass any normal person. I sent out an email to ALL employees that didn't work the way it was supposed to. Oops. I just laughed. Thank God my boss laughed with me. I swear I tested it, but with me testing, good luck! BTW, I love my job...

Then I came over here to post about what a mess I am, noticed I had about 70 spam messages, and started deleting. So CVD and Chrissy, I didn't intentionally delete your comments. I'm just having a typical Catazon day. Sorry!

Hope this spurt of carelessness doesn't spill over onto the derby track anytime soon. If you want to take bets, HaRD Knocks is skating at 12:45 on Friday, trying to upset a team seeded higher than we are. Skip work and come see what happens.

Only I...

would have a car that astounds the Hyundai dealership with its mechanical issues. Only I could break a car so much that the service department admits to never having seen anything like it. Only I would pay almost as much to get it fixed as I owe on the car. Only I could still love that dinged-up, broken-down car.

Be Careful What You Wish...

or if you are me, be careful what you talk about. Before the bout Saturday night, I talked about how I am prone to having accidents at home and how I wanted one of our pets to die. Both of those things happened on Sunday. I broke my right pinkie toe again, and I found the psycho hamster dead in her cage. Spooky.

I don't remember talking about winning the bout, but we did anyway. Yay! Come watch HaRD Knocks win again this Saturday...same Cat time, same Cat channel.

Free Lessons in Destructive Criticism

I was waiting for a picture of me, with glowing eyes, actually jumping on the back of a poor, innocent opposing skater, but Death By Chocolate commented me with this lolcat gem that just hit the spot:



I was ejected from the Brawlers' amazing victory over ACRD's Bombshell Brigade for fighting. I decided to take matters into my own hands when one of their skaters decided to block me with an elbow from out of bounds completely around the rink. Maybe constructive feedback would have stopped at jumping on her back, but I guess the stressful week of derby I had just lived through convinced me to take a few jabs at her face after ripping her helmet off. I crossed the line into destructive. At least my team didn't self-destruct.

Sunday night was a crowd-pleaser, and boy, did HRD need one. The home team worked on a slight blowout (Brawlers 123, Brigade 100), and the underdog won the second bout by one point (Betties 77, Sirens 76). The fans raved over the showmanship and the suspense. My ego loves it when the fans rave.

Then Monday morning comes bright and early as it always does after bout nights, and Sharon Stone couldn't have asked for a better example of karma. When your shower caddy falls and leaves a six-inch contusion on your calf muscle after your fist put a knot the size of a quarter on a derby girl's forehead...now that's karma. You should have seen what I did to that caddy. Beware of the Catazon, inanimate objects and sloppy skaters!

Remind Me Why I Play Roller Derby Again?

I mean, really.

I can put bigger bruises on my body by falling into my dirty clothes hamper than the rest of the league can by trying to take me down. Yes, I tripped over my pants and fell into the dirty clothes hamper last night, and yes, my arm hurts.

Most people laugh with me when I make a joke, but my derby sisters take everything a bit too seriously. Can anyone imagine Catazon "walking it out" in front of 1500 people? Revisit the first paragraph if you need some inspiration. Not gonna happen.

A former student came into the library yesterday to tell me that when she sat through x-rays and CAT scans after being thrown from a horse last week and listened to everyone asking her if she would ever get back on a horse again, she thought of me. Yes, she will get back on a horse again. OK, I guess that's a good enough reason.

I'm Officially (in)Famous!

Jenny at Mama Drama, a big fan of Houston Roller Derby since we set her straight on whether or not roller derby was family-friendly, has featured Catazon in today's post as a plea to the producers of the Amazing Race to pick the roller derby twosome. Be nice and read the whole thing instead of scrolling down to the paragraph about me! Then come back and see what I have to say about the assumptions she has made about three of my possible future endeavors.

Although it is highly possible that I could be a Presidential candidate since I would run as a Libertarian and have considered becoming active in the local party, it would not be pretty once they start dragging the skeletons out of the closet. I'll skip that one to avoid embarrassing my family although it is nearly impossible to embarrass myself (as Jenny said, I did crawl on a pool table in lingerie).

Something as small and sprite as a leprechaun would surely give an Amazon a run for the money. If I was able to outsmart him and he started treating me like Darby O'Gill, I'd kick him to the curb in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, my legacy will be "The One that Broke Stuff", not "The One that Fixed Stuff." I accept the fact that I'm a bull in a china shop. It no longer frustrates me. So I can guarantee I won't be finding cures for anything, and I know not to even try.

Thank you, Jenny. Watch out, Hollywood!

No Place Like Home

If you are living under a rock and haven't heard that Catazon broke her ankle at Houston Roller Derby's Sixth Bout, then here's your news fix. Now that I finally got my PC moved to the living room and I can lounge in my recliner and type in my lap, I can personally share the whole story.

I am awaiting surgery to repair the compound fracture in my left ankle. In the ninth jam of the sixth bout of the season Sunday night, I got stuck on the rope lights while trying to cut inside to avoid a block. I would have avoided that block if I hadn't felt something funny and looked down to see my foot going one way and my ankle bones going the other. At the time, I thought well, hey, they can just pop that back in place like I did with my pinky finger when I was playing football and an errant pass dislocated it. We just popped it back in, taped it, and I kept on playing. Have I ever mentioned that I'm one of those people that doesn't even need alcohol to feel like I'm ten-foot-tall and bulletproof? Anyway, I figured out real quick that that wasn't what was going to happen when I looked to my right and saw the faces of the people sitting on the sidelines. So I just fell back, picked up my leg, and pointed at it so the paramedics could see what we were dealing with.

About twenty minutes later, I was about to take my first ambulance ride ever. On the way out on the stretcher, I have never heard so many cheers in my life. I commented that this was better than winning, because when I win, I get booed. Then it started to hurt, and it wasn't much fun after that. I stayed in the ER until 5:00 a.m., where they tried to set it four times and then told me I couldn't go home until I had surgery. I waited until Wednesday for surgery, when they told me that they couldn't operate because I had an oozing abrasion and they didn't want to risk infection. I told them to get me home somehow so they attached an external fixator to my leg on Thursday, and I escaped that night. My original surgeon told me on Friday that he didn't want to see me again until next Friday, so I called another surgeon. He'll see me on Monday and will hopefully operate soon after that. See, I'm trying to get to Austin on September 3rd to join the travel team that I was supposed to captain in my first inter-league bout. My determination is one of my greatest strengths, and a foot that flops around at the bottom of my leg does not abate it.

The one thing that everyone asks is whether or not I will skate on it again. I have no doubt that I will be able to skate again, but whether I want to or not is the question. I never planned to skate more than one year. A FULL YEAR, and travel at least once. Those goals were not achieved, and neither was the goal of not affecting my family in an adverse way. Do I ever want to put them through something like this again? This story is just beginning, so stay tuned over the next couple of months...