author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I've come to the last night of what has been an exceedingly active visit to the New Orleans area. It has not in any way been a working vacation, which, OK, I shouldn't have expected. But it has been an active one. Darn near athletic.

I've spent a lot of time with Dad, mostly to do with cooking, sometimes to do with housecleaning, often just watching TV and chatting. We went to the Tremé Fall Festival, then out for a beer at Dad's favorite bar. (Between beers while out and mixed drinks while home, I accuse Dad of trying to get me drunk. Which isn't to say he should stop, mind you.) We went grocery shopping several times. I've visited a couple times with my brother, once at the bar and once here at the house. Visited also with various people who dropped by. I've been up early every morning and asleep early every night, because that's what Mom and Dad do and I have an easily influenced sleep schedule.

But I've also been dropping off early every night because I am exhausted. And this is probably because I've been skating. And by skating, I mean a lot. I came here with the intention to skate all the trails, and by all the Gods, I have skated on the trails. Not all of them, but a healthy selection thereof. And every single full day of my stay.

It goes like this:

Saturday, October 2: Home to Bonnabel Boat Launch via streets and Lakefront Trail (0.8 miles)

Mom goes to mass every morning. Her routine these days has contracted to a small handful of set rituals, and that's one of them. She can't drive anymore (at least, not and reliably get where she's going), so Dad and their network of friends have arranged for a transport rota.

On Saturday AM, a friend of the family drove her there, and with that particular friend there is also a ritual: After mass, they drive over to the Bonnabel Boat Lanch to look at the waves and the sea gulls. Dad and I met them there, him by car and me by skates.

The Bonnabel Canal is a big landmark of my childhood. It flows right behind my neighborhood and into the lake; the Bonnabel Pumping Station sits where the one meets the other. If you cross the canal on any of the little bridges and head north on Bonnabel Boulevard you wind up at the boat launch. Since my childhood, and since Hurricane Katrina, there has been a lot of development on all of the above-named structures. The pumping station has a concrete storm shelter on concrete pillar stilts, three stories above the ground, so that never again will the pumping station lie inactive during a storm because of the engineers having been evacuated out of reach. The boat launch is cleaned up and green and built out, with lots of parking spaces for vehicles and a park with a children's playground and a fenced dog yard and a pier that's strong and new and surfaced with concrete. The bike path crosses the canal on a flat bridge behind the pumping station, so there's no need for pedestrians, bicyclists or skaters to detour through the neighborhoods as I used to have to do.

And the little cross street that I take from my house to the bike path access spur has been repaved since last time I was in town. That was a nice surprise. It was smooth and pleasant on my way up to the levee, and safe to descend to from the levee at speed. So I got to the boat launch about the same time as Dad's car arrived and only just a few minutes behind Mom and the family friend who was driving her, and got home before any of them did.

It was a nice easy start, sort of an appetizer. Other trips would be longer. Not heroic, not epic marathons, but certainly longer.

Sunday, October 3: Home to Lakeshore Drive, Picnic Shelter No. 1 via streets and Lakefront Trail (5.6 miles)

That bike path I was on Saturday, labeled by Google Maps as "Lakefront Trail" but referred to on other websites as "Linear Park," traces the entire length of Jefferson Parish along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, never leaving sight of the water. As of 2014, its 10-mile length is entirely uninterrupted, to say nothing of the much shorter distance between the Bonnabel Canal and Old Hammond Highway. So it was without much difficulty that I rolled in at the door of Captain Sid's Seafood at 9:50 AM and asked for a dozen boiled blue crabs.

"They won't be ready until about 10:45," I was told. "Can you take another few laps around?"

So I continued on into Orleans Parish and over down Lakeshore Drive to watch the sailboats for a while. This was somewhat bumpier, as the streets aren't uniformly in as good condition as the trail, and the sidewalks along Lakeshore Drive are paved with red brick, but it was pleasant. Things smoothed out like a skating rink when I reached the park along the water. I remember being taken out to this park, which the grown-ups simply called "The Lakefront," to sit on the sea steps and drop crab nets in the water. Skating alongside those steps now, I reflected that, in case of a fall, roller derby gear will protect one from impact but not necessarily from a wetting (nor the undertow, which a friend's parents informed me would, should I fall in, promptly suck me under the stone steps to drown--that's hot spicy nightmare fuel if ever an 8-year-old heard some), and proceeded with caution in the area.

At 10:45 the crabs were ready for pick-up. The folks at Captain Sid's put them in a brown paper bag, I put that in a plastic kitchen garbage sack, and the whole thing went carefully upright in my Riedell gear pack. Dad and I ate the whole dozen practically in a single sitting. They were that good.

Monday, October 4: Covington to Abita Springs via the Tammany Trace (6.92 miles)

Plans could not have been more perfect, I thought. Lunch with a high school friend in Covington, skating the Trace into Abita Springs, then a beer at the Abita Brew Pub. The weather was good and the trailheads were each pretty much on the doorstep of what I wanted to do in their respective towns.

Only problem: A fair number of restaurants are closed on Monday. Including the ones I had planned my day around. I thought I'd done my homework, but apparently I missed some little details.

It wasn't a day-wrecker. It was just a disappointment. Dad had been talking up DiCristina's and I really wanted to try it. And not only have I wanted to visit the Abita Brew Pub since I first realized it existed, but I was holding that visit out to myself as a reward for all that good exercise on the trail. "I did it! I got here! Yay! ...Oh." I'll have to do it again next trip, and not on a Monday. Meanwhile, lunch wound up being at a deli that was even closer to the Covington trailhead, and the beers I enjoyed at Rosie's Tavern across the street from Abita were in fact Abita seasonals I'd never tried before. So that was fine.

The trail was just gorgeous. Skating it was its own reward. Just the portion that crosses Bogue Falaya I would happily skate back and forth on for hours. And the whole way the trail traveled on land, it was bordered by those same lush ribbons of varied plant life, narrow strips of something like swamp forest, that I've always loved staring at out the window of my parents' car on the way to visit northshore family. Dragonflies everywhere. Birds and bugs and things. And shade. Shade is important. Also there was a snoball stand where the Trace continues on after crossing Highway 190. There is nothing like skating along a scenic trail with a purple king cake flavored snoball in my hand. Unless it's skating along with a snoball of a different flavor, of course. (Purple is my least favorite color of king cake. It tastes like numerical red food dye. Should have had the wedding cake flavor, or the coffee-and-cream.)

I had my only real fall of my whole 5-day stay. It was on my way back to Covington, after--ironically--the bartender at Rosie's had said having my wheels on in the house was fine as long as I didn't fall. Well. I didn't fall there. Anyway, during much of the ride there and back I'd been practicing my transitions at speed, which is to say turning around to skate backwards then turning around to skate forwards without affecting my rate or vector of travel. That had been fine. But for some reason when I transitioned just one more time to get a better look at some asphalt splotches that seemed to form letters across the track, I went down backwards on my ass. Thankfully, nothing took damage, neither the laptop in my gearpack (snug against my back and cushioned away from the point of impact by my hoodie stuffed into the large compartment where my protective gear usually goes) nor the camera hanging off my wrist nor my phone tucked into the strap of my left elbow pad. I did not even rip my brand new Saints leggings. (I have brand new Saints leggings! I got them here.).

And then I drove back across the lake to the southshore, listening to podcasts the whole way.

Tuesday, October 5: Audubon Park to Oschner Hospital via the Mississippi River Trail (5.6 miles)

The Mississippi River Trail aspires to continue along the river all the way from Louisiana to Minnesota. This has not yet been accomplished, but some hefty segments are done and ready for travel. Among them is the 60-mile stretch along the east bank from New Orleans to Reserve, Louisiana. I skated the first half hour of that today--which is to say, a half hour out and a half hour back. That amount of time took me from my car in the Audubon Zoo parking lot (Google tells me I was where Aquarium Drive meets West Drive, where the River Drive one-way begins) onto the trail and back the way I'd come as far as Oschner Hospital on River Road.

For the first ten minutes, I seriously considered giving up, turning around, and just skating a lap around the golf course in the park. That trail has been recently paved and is said to be smooth as silk as it circles under the shade of the old oak trees. By contrast, the Mississippi River Trail is in full sun and starts out punishingly rough with no view whatsoever to speak of. But then it finally ascends to the top of the levee on smoother pavement. The view of the river is fantastic. Looking over the city, you get the feeling of being at the top of the world.

Unfortunately, the sun is very much a factor. Despite the trip being shorter than the day's before, and despite the two bottles of water consumed over the hour of travel, I was starting to get slighlty short of breath in that particularly asthmatic way that I associate with impending sunstroke by the time I returned to the car.

If I do that trail again, I'll skip the zoo parking lot and come in by way of one of the access spurs I spotted in Jefferson Parish, one at The River Center and one at Oschner. Just skip that awful bit of trail that's sandwiched between a chain link fence and a parade of what appeared to be industrial government facilities. And I won't forget my sunscreen next time.

So that leaves Wednesday. Wednesday I get on the train to start the two-day trip back to Colorado. I have my usual volunteer reading to do and parents who'll want to maximize our visiting time before I go, so I doubt I'm going to get a chance to skate more tomorrow. Besides, four days of trail skating in a row is plenty; I think my body needs a slight break. But I won't swear not to do any skating in Chicago on Thursday.

The Friday Fictionette nominally for September 23, 2016 but functionally for September 30 has gone up. I put it up last night, but then I pretty much collapsed, so you get the blog post today. It's "Living It Up," and, as mentioned before, it's mostly a shameless hate-fic in reaction to one of my least favorite stories of recent years. (Because of the Puppying of the Hugos, I feel I should specify that nothing makes it onto my "least favorite stories" list if it didn't stand a chance of not being on that list in the first place. Otherwise the list would be unmanageably long.) But as I wrote it and had to give examples of the main character's boyfriend being a jerk, I wound up coloring him in with the broad brush I obtained as a small child being bullied by my older cousins and one particular uncle. The rest of the family had various enabling spins on the bullying; one of them was that I clearly had no sense of humor or else I'd find the bullying funny. So... that kind of informed the development of the antagonist of this fictionette.

Look, I never promised you subtlety in this exercise. You get an ebook and an audiobook version depending on your subscription tier, you get them four times a month, you get sentences and paragraphs that more or less make sense and add up to a story-like object, and you get a glimpse into my writing process whether you want it or not. You don't necessarily get literature.

I had a nice long day in Metairie after my nice long day on the train: rental car adventures, traffic on I-10 West, the last 15 minutes of game play (which is to say, the better part of an hour) of my high school's homecoming game--which they won by a comfortable margin and with several showy interceptions too--and then dinner courtesy of My Father the Cook. (Venison and green onion sausage with a side of garden-fresh okra? Yes please thank you any time!) Stayed up late talking with Dad and exchanging stand-up comedian recommendations--not the best of ideas, as it turns out; he didn't get Maria Bamford, and I'll be happy not to hear any more of Anthony Jeselnik pretty much ever. But we both partake of the geek/nerd/fan nature and want so much to share with each other the things we enjoy! In any case, we didn't part ways for the night until well past 9:00 PM. Generally I consider that downright early, but after all the day's activity and travel I was ready to drop.

Oh, right, predictions for Thursday. They were good! Everything happened as hope--including skating in Chicago! There was no rain falling when I got there, though it clearly had fallen (and was still falling in Naperville). I did indeed skate the Lakefront Trail to Navy Pier. The trail's paving is not the best for skates--it's very bumpy--but it goes all the way there. Then a very diligent security guard made me de-wheel myself on the pier itself. I met my friend for dinner at Giordanos by the Children's Museum and we had a far too short visit before he had to drive me back to the train station.

Once I got settled on the train, I spent some time trying to prepare "Stand By For Your Assignment" for submission. That story is giving me such trouble. I can't seem to make the words do what I want them to do. The story goes clunk, clunk, clunk. I think I need to stand back and give it more of an eagle's eye once-over, ask myself what I'm trying to do with the story overall, and only once I have the larger structure pointing in that direction will I be able to get any joy on a line-by-line level.

I'm terribly afraid I'm stuck in the perfection trap, though. The one where you never finish and you never move on because you can't seem to get it perfect. I keep telling myself, just let the story stand as a record of where your craft is now, so you can move on to where your craft is trying to go. But the story needs to be at least publishable before I let it go, right? In theory?

Anyway, that was Thursday night. Friday morning, instead of doing more work on "Stand By...," I played around with a new story idea inspired by an anecdote I overheard, told by one of the train staff (assistant conductor, maybe?) in the sightseer lounge. I'm not going to get this right, and I have no idea how true it is, but it began, "This town we're passing through here, Stanton, Iowa..." Seems there was a woman who traveled from France to the U.S., took a job as a nanny for some family somewhere, but turned out to be unsuited for the job, possibly due to mental illness, also possibly due to not having the proper immigration documents, and she just... ran away? Disappeared into the midwest, I guess, and wound up in Stanton, Iowa. And that's where the immigration officials finally caught up with her, months later. Or at least found out what became of her? I'm not sure; I just remember that the last thing the storyteller said, which seemed like a complete non sequitor, not to mention at right angles to reality, was, "I guess the feral cats got to her."

*Blink. Blink.* Feral cats? Did I mishear? I don't know, but that day's freewriting exercise had the writing prompt "The feral cats of Stanton, Iowa." (It may also have been influenced by having recently read "If You Were a Tiger, I'd Have to Wear White" by Maria Dahvana Headley.) It seems likely to turn into a real story, too. And that's good, because I need to stockpile submission-ready short stories this month--but that's another story which I shall tell at another time.

Tonight, like last night, I'll spend on a train with no internet access. My only chance to upload a blog post will be during my five-hour layover, and only a very little of that since I have made plans to visit with an old friend. Which means I'm blogging from the naive and optimistic beginning of the day rather than from the resigned and exhausted end.

So. Hello from 9:20 in the morning!. That's rather earlier than my morning shift usually starts. But I gave up on sleep as a lost cause when I heard the man in the seat behind me saying, loudly, clearly, in an unmoderated daytime voice, "They don't start serving coffee until six o'clock." Thank you, good sir, for that information, which is only relevant to my life because you and your loud voice and lack of situational awareness wouldn't let me sleep past six. But since you have made it relevant to me, thank you for passing it along. Also thank you for your continuing updates on how you think everyone around you slept. Slept, past tense, as though no one around you were still trying to sleep.

From here it is still impossible to tell whether I'll get to go trail-skating in Chicago. I leaned on another passenger and their smartphone to give me an update on the weather forecast; they told me "Sixty percent chance of rain diminishing to fifty and then forty as the day goes on." That sounds slightly more optimistic than the NOAA's bare-bones prediction of fifty percent all day. I do not like uncertainty! I want to make plans. I don't want to spring last-minute changes on my friend, who has to drive and park and navigate a work schedule. I'm almost to the point of saying, whatever, fine, I'm skating, I'm committing to it, meet me at Navy Pier. If my wheels get wet, who cares? I'm riding on my oldest and crappiest set of bearings. But then I think about attempting to get traction over two miles of wet pavement, and I get doubts.

From here, too, I can't so much report on today's writing as make predictions about it. So. Based on the time available to me on the train, I predict hitting the five hour mark. Based on how close I got to completing the overdue September 23 fictionette during yesterday's five hours, I predict there will be a solid session of short story revision today. I'm a little disappointed over not having a revision session yesterday, but it couldn't be helped. The fictionette's lingering. The story itself is... well, not very subtle, I guess. Not a surprise. Lack of subtlety is why it's a fictionette. One way a freewriting session becomes a fictionette is, when the 25-minute timer goes ding, I say to myself, "I'm going to get a lot of satisfaction out of turning this into a real story, but there is no way any editor in charge of a budget will want to buy it." But it would appear I'm less resigned to producing a 1200-word clue-by-four to the head than I thought I'd be. Also there's this temptation to turn the author's note into a full-on detailed review of the short story to which this fictionette is reacting. Not a favorable review, as you might imagine. Intensely unfavorable. There's the temptation to go on and on.

Still, I got it mostly done. I expect to get it all the way done today, or at least as close to done as I can while both offline (no uploadig) and in public (no recording the audiofictionette), such that what remains will be easily accomplished Friday evening in Metairie.

So those are my predictions. Come back tomorrow to see how accurate they were!

The Friday Fictionette for September 16 is up. It's "The Starring Role" (subscriber links: ebook, audiobook) and it's about fairy tales and protagonizing in them. It's not a lot of fun, really. Lots of ashes to sweep. Lots of fiddly grains and seeds to sort. And then at the end of it all, what do you get? A prince, sure, but is he really all that and a bag of Zapp's Cajun Dill Gator-Tators? Also, fairy tales generally don't stock Zapp's potato chips. *Sad.*

It's bout weekend for the Boulder County Bombers "Bombshells" team--tournament weekend, actually. Two days. Seven teams. A heck of a lot of roller derby. We went in this evening and taped the track, set up tables and chairs, erected a scoreboard projection screen, and arranged other assorted props and items of furniture. The place is set up and more or less ready to go. Skaters begin checking in bright and early tomorrow morning, and the first bout begins at 10:00 AM. The last bout of the day won't be over until at least 7:30 PM, and then we do it all over again on Sunday. YOU WANT TO BE THERE. No, you do, you really do. I'm going to be there. So should you.

Dang. This blog post is a complete and balanced breakfast, isn't it? Writing, derby, grains and legumes, potato chips. All it needs is coffee or something.

I'm just back from viewing D2 footage with some of my teammates. I have thoughts. I will probably incorporate those thoughts into the long-delayed blog post, tentatively titled "What I Did On My Summer Vacation in Wichita," that I've been meaning to write for going on a month now. I will probably write it tomorrow. Definitely not tonight. Tonight I do not have any thoughts. It is late and I am tired. I am also inordinately full of beer, having hung out at Skeye Brewing again after my chiro appointment and having purchased a growler of their Jinxie Wheat. It's a little more bitter than I generally like my wheat beers, but that did not stop me from drinking it all afternoon and evening.

(When I do write that long-delayed D2 blog post, I need to remember Whiskey's comment about back-block penalties and chiropractic treatments. Not now. Tomorrow. I'm just dropping this parenthetical here so I stand a chance of remembering tomorrow.)

Note: Turns out, the restaurant I ordered the crispy duck from last week was Spicy House. I ordered from them again today. They're on Eat24.com, so I placed my order over the internet while I was still at Cafe of Life enjoying a post-traction ice pack on my neck. Food arrived maybe five minutes after I arrived at Skeye. Super convenient! I had the Seafood Delight this time. Its portions of jumbo shrimp, fish, scallop, and squid are exceedingly generous.

Anyway, I arrived home tired and a little tipsy, but not so much of either that I couldn't accept a little help from Papa Whiskey with my push-up form. We got to talking on the drive home about what I need to be a more effective blocker on the track, and, in his opinion, it's more muscle. He made an off-hand comment about "if we could just pack about 50 pounds more muscle on you," then, after acknowledging that this was quite probably an exaggeration, he noted that, realistically, when I go to block an opponent and my timing is good, my technique is good, but the execution still somehow just fails, it's a matter of strength.

Honestly, says he, what I really need to do is start lifting. I say, cool. Please to suggest some baby steps toward incorporating lifting into my life. So what we come up with is, let's start with 10 push-ups twice a week, then add some kettle-bell hell in a couple weeks. So we spent a few minutes finding space in the house where we could have me do push-ups and swing a kettle-bell to make sure my form is correct, which is to say, likely to work the target muscle groups and also unlikely to injure me.

I should point out that extra-curricular one-on-one strength-training is not in the job description of the Boulder County Bombers Head Coach position. That John tolerates, even encourages, my continuing to pick his brain at home, is rather above and beyond the call of duty. I recognize this and appreciate it accordingly.

But anyway, so, that's why Fleur is just that much more tired tonight. Yay?

Hello! This blog post is coming from you live and entire from the new new Asus, the celebrated X544, which I have named Phenix-Segundus. The old new Asus, the X540, never got a name while I had it, but I'm retroactively calling it Phenix-Primus. I am considering them to be two incarnations of the same firebird which has lifted the whole of my computing life out of the impending ashes of the old old Asus. That one hasn't died yet, thankfully, but every day it sounds like it's gonna. It's that fan, or maybe its hard drive: clack-a-clack-a-clack-a-whirrrrrrrrrr-thunk!-tickticktickticktick....

Also completed on Phenix-Segundus: A brand new Friday Fictionette! On time? Hoo-howdy, that thing was early. As in out before dark! (Its mama told it always to be home before the streetlights came on.) Right so, it's called "All Dolled Up," and it's about blind dates with no expectations, a fine friendship cemented in espresso and alcohol, and a sleazy pick-up artist with a... well. That would be telling. It ain't playing fair, is what it is. (Subscriber links ahoy: ebook, audiobook.)

In other Fictionette-related news, it turns out that outdated sectional aeronautical charts make very attractive stationery.

So this week I achieved a great accomplishment! I bought new jeans. Not only that, I bought 'em without waiting for the old ones to start to shred. The old ones, which more or less fit me when I bought them, are now falling off my hips. I freakin' lost weight, y'all. Like, fifteen pounds since February. Don't congratulate me--I wasn't trying to lose weight, and I'm honestly not sure it's a good thing. I've been about the same weight most of my post-college life, OK, and that includes the years spent playing roller derby other than this one. It wasn't going up, it wasn't going down--near twenty years of the same weight, you start to figure, OK, that's just me. A change that big and that sudden prompts a bit of an identity crisis.

It might have something to do with going on medication to control my blood pressure, although my blood pressure was fine until late 2014 or so. More likely, I guess, it had to do with six months of practicing with not one but two travel teams under coaches who bring serious strength conditioning and cardio to each table. Look at it that way, it kind makes sense. Does that mean I'll put the pounds back on again now that I'm only practicing with one team? Maybe that would be a good thing? I feel like, when I'm on the track, I need all the mass I can bring to bear, you know?

The BMI, of course, has an opinion about this. But the BMI can go dunk its head in the nearest lake for all I care. The BMI is not the boss of me.

Main thing is, I bought new jeans, and they fit. Huzzah! That, at least, is inarguably a good thing.

All right! Here is last Friday's fictionette, the one for August 26: "How the Drought Was Ended" (...and at what price). There's a touch of political satire in there, if you're looking for it. It's not a big thing. It was just, given the premise, how could I resist a little poke? Anyway, you can read the teaser excerpt via the link above (here it is again!). For subscribers, there is the ebook (pdf and epub) and the audio (mp3). The latter is useful if you want to know how I pronounce the name of the Royal Hero. (You, of course, may pronounce it any way you like.)

I suspect I'll wait until Friday to release the Fictionette Freebie for August 2016. Yes, that means waiting until September 2, but it also means I can roll that announcement out with that of the first Friday Fictionette of September. Presuming I upload the thing on time. I darn well intend to. I am tired of this always-being-late nonsense!

In the meantime, I get to breathe a little. I am officially off from All Stars practice until September 20th. It's nice to have a few weeks during which I'm not working my butt off three nights a week. And, weird though it is to see my arms utterly bare of bruises, it's very nice to have a few weeks during which I'm not getting voluntarily beat up for the love of roller derby--this, in fact, is the stated purpose of having a month off; we're supposed to take this time to heal. But I miss being on skates!

Today I did a little something about that, going for a bit of an evening trail skate with my good friend and ex-next-door-neighbor Seven of Grind. (Not ex-neighbor. A five-minute walk means we remain neighbors. But before we moved, it was a 5-second walk barefoot and, if necessary, in a bathrobe.) I think we were on skates for the better part of an hour, and there were uphills and downhills and bumpy bits to toe-stop-walk over. A bit more agility and cardio than going to the Wagon Wheel would have required (we were planning on going, but not enough people RSVP'd to justify holding the adult skate session this time around), but also a bit less endurance over time, so it evens out.

Then there was yummy food and tasty beverages at the Rayback Collective, Boulder's newest... well, I don't know what to call it. Food truck park and microbrew oasis? Community space? Permanent street party? It's very Boulder, is what it is. I've had a good time hanging out there in the past for some quality playtime on my laptop. Its location right on Elmer's Two Mile Creek Greenway makes it a great place to meet friends, gear up, and start skating, which is essentially what we did.

I could see myself doing this, or something like this, once a week during my "roller derby vacation." Possibly more. Taking the time to heal is good, but there's no call to let the skating muscles get entirely out of condition.

Oh! Almost forgot: Attached please find the weekly Still Life With CSA Vegetables photo. It features:

• The weekly loaf of sourdough bread,
• garlic,
• tomatoes (including a Green Zebra - yes, it's ripe),
• collard greens,
• kale,
• radishes,
• and a bag of young salad greens.

Here is what I've been doing with the collard greens: I have been shredding some four or so leaves into a mixture of grated potato, grated turnip, and minced garlic, all bound up with a couple beaten eggs and seasoned with garlic salt and both black and red pepper, the resulting hash/fritter/omelet/pancake fried in canola oil until thoroughly cooked and crispy on both sides. Spread apple sauce on top, and breakfast is a time of great joy.

Ta-da!

So here's last week's Friday Fictionette, "Making Friends," which could as well be called "Baking Friends" without really spoiling anything. It's about a lonely little girl who knows just how fortunate she is and is always glad to help her benefactor to whom she is very grateful. It's also about witchcraft, because what would a Fictionette be without that speculative element?

It's a week late, and this week's will be a few days late, because I have been unexpectedly slow at getting back to any sort of regular working routine since playoffs. Your patience is, as always, appreciated. My hope, however, is that September will run like clockwork. With playoffs behind us, my roller derby team is now officially in our off-season, and we're taking a little time off to rest and recuperate. I won't be entirely off the hook for league stuff, but I won't be practicing 9 hours a week either. I'm going to try to put that time toward getting the writing work day back on track.

("Was it ever on track in the first place?" "Hush.")

Speaking of playoffs, I intend to post a big round-up of archived game footage, photo albums by various derby photographers, and text coverage of each of the games we played at D2 Wichita. I've been meaning to do that all week, but, well, see above. I still mean to do that, despite that we are now a full day into D2 Lansing. Late or not, it'll be useful to have a repository of links that isn't a bunch of open Facebook tabs I've got to preserve in my browser forever. (Facebook kind of sucks for searching for things. It's great at searching for people, but if there's a particular two-week-old post you're trying to find, forget it.)

Stay tuned through the weekend for updates on both the Fictionette and roller derby situations.

OK. So. D2 Wichita. That... was a thing that happened.

It is much easier to talk about vegetables.

Yesterday I managed to drag myself up to Longmont for chiro and then back down to Boulder to drop off the rental car. Then I managed to walk home from the Hertz establishment (via the Parkway Cafe for brunch and the bank for check deposits). Today I managed to get out of the house like a regular human being and bike up to the farm for CSA pick-up. I keep saying "managed" because it feels like an accomplishment.

Quite a few of my teammates--and my coach, too--had to go back to work on Monday. I am not sure how they managed it.

While I was at the Parkway Cafe, one of the waitstaff looked at me and said, "So who's been beating on you? Roller derby, right?" I said, "Yeah, about four teams worth. It was playoffs." When she brought me my check she told me to "go home and heal up." I have come home from derby looking bruised before, but this time around, I looked like a plague victim. It was ridiculous. And I had a swollen, tender lymph node on the right because apparently sufficient blunt force trauma can trigger an immune system reaction. Turns out that four games against D2-level teams can do that to a body.

Nevertheless, like I said, I did manage to bring home the veggies today. What we have here is the weekly loaf of bread plus kale, collards, kohlrabi, tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, and radishes. I immediately broke into that bounty to use up most of the rest of my stuffed chard leaf stuffing from Thursday: breakfast sausage, wild rice, garlic, chives, parsley, salt, pepper, red pepper, and an egg. This time I blanched all the kohlrabi leaves from this and previous weeks, and some of last week's kale, to wrap it up in, overlapping leaves where a single leaf was too small. That, plus some cucumber-and-tomato salad, was dinner.

The stuffed chard leaves worked out quite well, by the way. I munched half of them on the ride over to Wichita and the other half on Friday between games.

Do I sound a little scattered? I'm still a little scattered. Getting better. Managed to get some writing done and also some league admin stuff--mostly the bout production and forum admin stuff that was waiting for me. Spent most of the evening pruning spam registrations out of the database, as that takes mercifully little brain.

The weekend used up all of my brain. Well, most of it. What little mind it didn't use up it simply blew. Lots of minds were blown. Because out of our four games, we won three. We came in as the #8 seed but walked away with 5th Place. We came within 15 points of beating the #1 seed, and we did beat the #2 seed, making WFTDA history thereby. Then we drove home, essentially going "That game. OMG that game" to each other pretty much all 550 miles of the way.

OMG that game. Those games. OMG this weekend.

That's the short story.

I may manage the longer version tomorrow.

The hard part starts tomorrow.

Good night!