author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Updates!

On skating: Phase 2 happened. I hit people. They hit me back. I fell down once, but at no time did I reinjure my knee. I sure tired it out some good, though. It was starting to make grumpy noises at me by the time we did our five-minute sprint. But I still got 27 laps in 4:52, so I'm happy.

On content writing: My article about our upcoming St. Patrick's Day scrimmage got approved yesterday (huge thanks to Boom for giving me permission to use her photos; hers are the ones that actually look good), so I have indeed successfully posted my first content to AXS.com. However, AXS doesn't appear to believe in RSS feeds, at least not so far as I can tell. So until I have enough time and the necessary attention span to figure out how to write some sort of benevolent screen-scraper, I'm creating a feed by hand so that my AXS articles will show up in my Grand Unified Blog Post Feed.

On other sorts of writing: Life is just one damn thing after another, isn't it? Today's writing time got primarily eaten up by Audacity, the free audio editor. It's Wednesday, right? So I have to read an hour's worth of employment ads from around the Rocky Mountain region and upload the resulting recording to the Audio Information Network of Colorado by 2:48 PM at the very latest, right?

Except here's the thing: I just switched laptops.

John's series of programming jobs over the last ten years have not only supported my writing habit monetarily; they have also been beneficial from a hardware point of view. Which is to say, several of the jobs he's held have provided him with work laptops, and most of those employers did not ask for said laptops back when they parted ways. So there's been a sort of graveyard of neglected laptops on and off throughout the years, stacked under my desk, stowed in the closet. When my 15" Dell Inspiron outgrew its three-year warranty and began to sort of implode, I hopped off that sinking ship onto John's 14" Dell Inspiron, which he'd bought at the same time but used very little, having soon after that been assigned an Asus U56E by his job at the time.

To my eternal envy, that Asus acted like the gaming laptop that I'd spent extra money trying to ensure my Dell would be, but, as it turns out, wasn't. Since when were work laptops any good at gaming? And yet when we sat down to play Spiral Knights, he was always waiting in the elevator lobby, ready to play almost a full minute before my machine finished loading the next clockworks level. And, as it turns out, it handles Second Life with amazing smoothness.

Anyway, I got a good two, two and a half years out of his abandoned Dell Inspiron. And then it started to fall apart over the last few months. It began throwing more keys than that typewriter in Stephen King's Misery. (Dvorakly speaking, first the "o" started coming loose, then the "e", which are "s" and "d" in Qwerty, respectively. Then the right arrow, of all things.) The rubber strip contacting the tabletop began to stretch so that this loop of it hung out and caught on things; I eventually just ripped the dang thing off. The battery began to reach the end of its life. Its power cords broke, one after the other, and the replacement off eBay turned out to really mess with the functionality of the Alps touchpad--which was never that brilliant to begin with. (Seriously, Alps drivers need to learn a thing or two about effective touch-check. I'd have its sensitivity set so low, and its touch-check set so high, that I could barely use it at all--and yet it would still accidentally click on the position of the mouse cursor because the edge of my right palm pierced its airspace.)

Much of those things are fixable. A new keyboard, a new battery, a power cord from a different manufacturer--but would these be worth acquiring given that the thing was starting to run super hot, and that it sometimes crashed when I unplugged the external monitor, and it never could play a video all the way through without buffering, and it didn't have an HDMI jack--

And it gave me a Blue Screen of Death yesterday. First time I'd seen that since the 15" Dell Inspiron began to die.

So I grabbed the Asus from its spot near the TV--it had sort of turned into a dedicated but infrequently used HDMI media source--and began moving in.

(This, by the way, is my not-very-good-excuse for not getting to that AXS article until quite late at night. I was moving files from the 14" Dell to the Asus. Watching files cross the network can be mesmerizing.)

And then today it was time to do my reading. Now, generally I've used a copy of Studio Recorder with a non-profit license provided by AINC to its volunteers. But I really, really didn't want to go dig out the install CD from whatever box I'd stowed it away in at the back of the top of the closet. And Audacity is free, right? Any number of LibreVox readers use it! Why shouldn't I?

And Audacity is free. And it is powerful. Audacity is to Studio Recorder as GIMP is to Microsoft Paint. And the learning curve is just as steep.

Which means that by the time I finally got my recording finished and uploaded, I was sort of staring at spots on the wall and faintly laughing at them. ALL MY BRAIN. USED UP. CANNOT NO MORE.

Got by brain back just in time for derby! And then, you know, derby. I'm about to drop, y'all.

So now I have a date with my foam roller, and then I am due to plop into bed, where I will sleep very easily tonight.

Tomorrow, there shall be better writerly things to report. And also a roller derby scrimmage. You may have heard. Some skater from Boulder seems to have babbled about it on AXS.com. So.

Ahoy! It’s a brand new week, and I have done a brand new thing. I just put up an article on AXS.com. Probably. I mean, I completed and submitted it. So it’ll show up sometime tomorrow, I think, pending editor approval.

Back in October, Examiner sent out an email inviting its bloggers to apply to be AXS.com contributors. So I thought, sure, OK, why not? They’re all about local sports and entertainment, and I like to go to shows. Maybe I might want to write about them. Maybe do an article about best sports bars to watch NFL games in? I dunno.

And then I wrote nothing at all for them for months and months.

So this month I caught myself thinking, like I often do, “My league is doing another public event! I should publicize. Too bad it doesn’t really fit under either of my Examiner channels. Should I apply to create a Boulder Roller Derby channel…?” I have had that thought quite a bit since joining the Boulder County Bombers.

And then I smacked myself in the face. “Wake up, silly! You do have a roller derby channel.”

So that’s how my first AXS.com article came to be written and submitted. (Over the course of three effin’ hours. Why. Whyyyyyy. Five hundred words should not take three effin’ hours. Why.) It’s not up yet, so I can’t link you, but, better still, I can link you to the event:

Shamrocks & Shenanigans 2015: Another public holiday-themed mix-up scrimmage hosted by the Boulder County Bombers! Thursday, March 19, 7:30 PM, at the Ed & Ruth Lehman YMCA in Longmont (950 Lashley Street, zip code 80304). Wear green for St. Patrick’s Day and prepare to LIVE GOLD BLEED GOLD! …*ahem* Free admission, but bring cash for several fundraiser raffle/bake sale/drink stand type goodies.

I will be there in some non-skating capacity--not because I can't skate at all, but because I have not yet been reassessed. I went to Phase 1 practice on Saturday and last night, and aside from the expected morning-after experience of I am sore, dear Gods I'm sore, all my bits are sooooore, there have been no adverse effects. And I got 26 laps in I think 4:58 last night, with much hacking and coughing afterwards. I should easily be able to cram 27 laps into 5 minutes simply by skating on a less crowded track. (Our current Phase 1 class has like 20 new skaters. It's amazing! And wonderful!) I won't turn down any chances to practice between now and assessments, though. After eight weeks off skates, I'm in dire need of getting my wind back. The less hacking and coughing I can manage to do, the better.

Tomorrow night I'll go to Phase 2 and see how I handle contact practice. After that... well, I don't know for sure. I'll work with my coaches to schedule a time to make up the assessments that I missed thanks to my injury and to try out for the 2015 travel team roster. When that happens will depend on a lot of moving parts of which I am merely one, so I'm not going to make any positive statements about when I'll be back in the game for reals. I'm just going to get as much practice in as I possibly (and reasonably) can.

Which is, come to think of it, a pretty good aspiration in the context of writing, too. ROLLER DERBY IS TOTALLY A METAPHOR FOR WRITING. True story.

Which is not to say it's perfect. Fictionettes are never perfect; that's the point. They're a slice of process made presentable. (Again, I really know how to sell these things, don't I?) But the rightness of the shape of the world is relevant to this fictionette. I like to give the Friday blog posts a title that's relevant to the fictionette I'm posting. Even if it makes no sense to anyone but me. When do blog post titles make sense to anyone but me, right?

But anyway! The Friday Fictionette is here, while yet it's still Friday. It is called "No One's Home." You can read the excerpt in the usual places (here at the actually writing blog, there at Patreon, and I'll get it up on Wattpad over the weekend). Anyway, it's kind of this sad little creepy thing that ends in a kind of cautious hope. It's got bittersweet layers to it--in my mind, at least. Both the cat and the human are scarred by their pasts. All they've got is each other. And then this happens, whatever this is.

I'll want to come back to it, find out more about the two characters. The human calls the cat Micah, for instance, which is short for what she actually named it, which is Formica. Like the countertop laminate. Which is one of those odd and loveable details I want to know more about.

Boilerplate about Friday Fictionettes: I post a new story-like object every first through fourth Friday to my Patreon page for exclusive download (PDF) by Patrons pledging at least a dollar a month. Think of it as a short-short story subscription service with free access to all the back-issues while you subscribe. If you're not a Patron yet, you still get access to the one I release as a freebie at the end of each month, plus, again, access to all past Fictionette Freebies. I've been doing this since September 2014, so there's a good chunk of reading material in the archives by now.

Boilerplate ends. Thank you for reading.

Now! Now I must go to bed and sleeeeeeep. Because tomorrow I wake up bright and early and go to my first roller derby practice since getting injured on January 10th. Roller derby practice! With the skates on my feet and everything! So excited!

Hark! A blog post! What's it about? Er... probably not writing, I'm afraid.

Well, for one thing, you don't want to hear me complain about how despite Conlorado's being over I can't seem to string two hours together for any one thing. Other things keep intervening. I'm hoping next week will look better than this one, honestly.

For another thing, the really exciting thing happening this week isn't to do with writing. My life is large, it contains multitudes of things one might do with a life, and as it turns out the really exciting thing was putting my skates back on for the first time in eight weeks.

Yeah. Got cleared to skate at my physical therapy appointment today.

As always, the therapist asked how I was feeling and how my knee was feeling. "Extremely well!" I burbled. The quad pain that scared me so much last week was gone the next day, and the cripplingly stiff calf muscles loosened up until I could do full-stride lunges without pain again. I attribute this to the foam rolling iterations. They hurt but they work. They're like... well. Have you read Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy? Magic in those books can work utter miracles, but working it requires the mage to suffer self-inflicted pain. That's the cost of magic in that world. Foam rolling is like a limited-scope miracle of that sort of magic.

So he had me do the usual warm-ups, and then the usual balancing acts, and then a lot of jumping. This is a situation where "He said 'jump,' I said 'how high?'" is the literal truth. How high? How long? How many times? I jumped on two legs and I hopped on one. I hopped in place, and forward, and in a zig-zagging sideways progression. I jumped from side to side, which felt like I was back at derby doing my Inside/Outside drills. Finally, I chugged a glass of water and he said, "I'm comfortable with you skating." And I, of course, said "Yippee!"

So I accompanied John to scrimmage tonight. That had been my plan already; I wanted to make myself available as an extra non-skating official, like last week. But I augmented the plan by bringing my skates and skating laps during warm-ups and half-time.

It felt great.

Oh, sure, my left leg was noticeably quicker to tire than my right. But all my moves were there, and they didn't hurt. I skated forward and backward, clockwise and widdershins, crossovers and sculling. I performed tomahawk stops and hockey stops. I got up and down on my kneepads helping one of the refs re-tape parts of the track. And I got to know the slightly wobbly character of the barn floor. Skating! I still know how to do it!

So I'll be attending a couple of Phase 1 practices to make sure I'm good to go, then I'll do Phase 2 until the coaches have time to assess me for minimum skills and team placement. And then everything will be back to normal. Derby will go back to eating my life right up, bones and all. And soon we'll move house, and I won't have to carry my skate bag up 24 steps after practice.

Now I'll post this, and I'll go do my magic foam roller ritual, and I'll probably say some very unprintable things while I do. My left IT band is already grumbling at me after all the unexpected work, so I expect tonight's foam roller session will be particularly eventful.

Please welcome the latest Friday Fictionette to the family, "Please To Confirm Your Appointment With BRIGHT SMILES!," an excerpt of which you may read here. It was a lot of fun to write. I should warn you, though, it ends on a cliff-hanger. I have several ideas for what happens next, any of which could supply the material for a full-length short story. Deciding between them, now, that's the trick.

Conlorado weekend continues; the whole gang's in town now and they're over at a friend's house playing games. I'm at home because after trips to the airport and the liquor store I was kind of tired, and I'm also rather enjoying the empty house. For a little while, the whole gang was over here in our tiny living room/dining room area, and I was hiding in the bedroom with a book. I like to hear a house full of happy people, but I get overwhelmed by the bustle and crowd very easily. Most of the afternoon they were playing a game of Paperback, which looks like a lot of fun--it even has a writer theme to it!--but I couldn't see my way to squeezing into the group who were already sitting shoulder-to-shoulder around the table. So I just listened in and enjoyed things vicariously.

Yes, in fact, I proudly and cheerfully accept the label "introvert." I suggest printing it in bold-face capitals, possibly ones constructed from bright flashing neon tubes. But not where I can see them, because argh, blinking lights.

We had some delightful surprises at the liquor store. Hazel's is a great place for delightful surprises, because they have everything. They had Abita's Grapefruit Harvest IPA, which I didn't know ever made it out of Louisiana. It's one of the few IPAs I will willingly drink. They also had in their soft drink section four different handmade flavors from the Rocky Mountain Soda Company. We brought home the "Evergreen Elderberry" and the "Breckenridge Blackberry."

"We brought you local sodas!" John crowed to our friend who'd asked for interesting caffeine-free soft drinks. "It's the Boulder Way!"

And now I had better hurry up and do my PT before I go to bed--

About that. Alas, the therapist did not clear me to skate yesterday. I came in complaining of cripplingly tight calf-muscles and stabbing pains in the quads of the affected leg. ("I have this terrible pain in the diodes down my left side...") He determined these were normal reactions from the muscles surrounding an injured ligament as regular work is once more required from them and they're grumpy about it. So I have another week of strengthening things up, plus daily foam roller sessions on quads, calves, and IT bands to work the kinks out.

Thus, Foam Roller Hell, here I come!

This will be a very quick post, because today has been a very long day. It was a day involving both physical therapy and roller derby (albeit in a non-skating capacity for me; I was a penalty timer), which means by the time I got home for the night I was ready to collapse. Additionally, there were elements of The House-Buying Saga (though they were admittedly quickly dispatched) and highly energetic social times involving people arriving from out of town for the annual gathering we call Conlorado.

(Short story: One year, John came home from Gen Con disappointed that he and his friends just didn't get to play enough games together. So he invited everyone to come visit and play games in the context of a private weekend-long con of their own. Thus Conlorado was born. This is its third iteration.)

It's the sort of day where everything will get done, but some will get done very briefly and on the way to sleep.

So this will be a very quick post wherein I recommend another post: Kameron Hurley's post on Tor.com, "I Love Writing Books, So I Need To Get Better At Writing Them."

Despite having been written three months earlier, it's crossed my radar at a time when my various online circles of writerly friends and acquaintances are talking about what might be charitably described as an ego-piece by an ex-teacher who, if this is how he felt about teaching, would have been happier and would have done less damage had he quit teaching sooner. I've had it recommended to me by readers who admired it for its much-needed candor, which strikes me as a noun related to the adjectival phrase "proudly politically incorrect." I've also seen it skewered by the likes of the inimitable Chuck Wendig and the very wise Foz Meadows, who quite rightly have no time or patience for his bullshit.

Basically, the ex-teacher has a few smart things to say about how talking about writing isn't writing, and how you need to actually write to make it as a writer, and how that involves hard work and the willingness to take criticism and forge that into better writting.

And then he wraps those unarguable truths in a lot of poison for which there is no excuse.

And then his admirers say that you have to excuse him the poison, because he's just jaded and tired and has had to deal with obnoxious self-entitled grad students, and besides, you're ignoring his real point.

(And I think, wouldn't it be nice if female writers who wrapped some hard, inarguable truths in a coating of righteous wrath were supported for the sake of their good points, their abrasiveness understood in the context of how much crap they'd had to put up with? Instead of being condemned and dismissed for their anger, their harsh "tone," their profanity, if only they'd be more polite maybe they'd succeed at winning allies--)

(But I digress.)

I say, we are blessed in this world with so many great writers that the very finite nature of our time upon this earth obliges us to pick and choose among them. Everyone has their own criteria for this choice. Me, I tend to choose those who can express hard, inarguable truths without wrapping them in dog turds and arsenic.

Here, therefore, is Hurley writing about the ways in which a writer at any level, at any age works hard to improve her craft. Her article has in common with the other article the hard, inarguable truths that you must work hard, you must continue to work hard, your work will never be done. But it makes no toxic pretense of prophesying. There are no attempts in Hurley's piece to distinguish between the writers with talent versus the writers who'll never make it, nor to tell the later to give up and stop trying.

Much the opposite.

The ex-MFA dude says, if you don't have talent you'll never make it. If you didn't take the art seriously before you were legal to drink, you'll never make it. If you are currently having a hard time making time to write, if you spend more time talking about writing than you do actually writing, if you're not in fact good at writing yet, if you--

Hurley says, "So what? You're not dead yet."

If you're still alive, you've still got time: to break bad habits, to figure out your schedule, to shift your priorities, to improve your fluency, to deepen your craft, to stop talking and start writing, to make it as a writer, to decide for yourself what "making it" means, to decide that "making it" is a mirage and a chimera and that you are content to keep working at this writing thing "until the last breath leaves your body."

So no one--no writer, no teacher, no Nobel laureate--has any business telling you "you'll never make it as a writer." And why the crap should they want to? Seems a little busy-body of them. Seems like something that doesn't do themselves any good, and has the potential to do others a measure of harm. Seems like a writer should be more concerned with their own writing than with whether other writers are Doing Writing Right.

So... that went a little longer than I meant to go. But then I've been sitting on some of these thoughts all week and they just sort of exploded when I read Hurley's piece and felt this grateful wave of Yes! You get it! in response. That tends to make me wordy.

Anyway. Tomorrow there will be a new Fictionette and also progress on the story-in-revision. See you then.

Alas, this week's Friday Fictionette will arrive on Saturday. Today has just been one of those days, full of unforeseen things hijacking my plans. And now it is almost eleven o' clock, and the idea of doing a rush job on the PDF is simply painful.

Also, my brain just coughed up the best possibility for an ending, such as these things have endings. I want to let it percolate overnight to see what kind of prose it turns into.

Meanwhile...

• A bit of hopping has been added to my physical therapy routine--you know the one where they have you lunge, but your back foot is on a raised block, and then you hop on your forward foot? Right. My next appointment is on March 5, at which point I will very possibly, hopefully, if all goes well, be cleared to skate. Setting my sights on a Phase One practice that Saturday!
• The potential buyer from Thursday won't, but that was only the first showing, so, oh well and onward. Tomorrow we head to a south Boulder condo unit that's smaller but has a two-story layout separating bedrooms upstairs from common areas downstairs, no one living above or below, and a backyard. A postage stamp of a backyard, I'm sure, but still. The property we looked at Wednesday remains an option, too. There are so many options. Wheels continue turning and I am seriously visualizing myself Not At This Address Anymore.
• The very last closet door panel is fully stained and will get finished with three coats of polycrylic per side over the weekend. I am so glad to be finally done with this project. Then there will be a flurry of house cleaning and moving things to storage so that the realtor can take pictures on Mondays for listing the place.
• And next week will be the week of Finishing The Short Story Rewrite, Dammit. Yes, small goals, I know, but--this is ridiculous. I'm tired of it not being done. So, small goals, yes, but one small goal every few hours rather than every few days, yes?

February. The month of Getting Things Done Finally Dammit.

My blogging has been sparse these past two weeks, but my days have been rather full. As you know (Bob), I've been in the middle of several "sagas" for some time now. How much time? Oh, several weeks, or several months, or even a couple of years, depending on the saga. Or quest, as I like to think of it. As in, "No more quests! I do not need to embark on any more quests. I have enough quests in my life right now."

Well, significant progress has been made on all active quests recently. Here's the review!

The Quest to Move House! (since Aug. 2013) John is this close to being done repainting the kitchen. I am this close to being done refurbishing the living room closet door. The plan is to take pictures on Monday and officially list the place on Wednesday.

Yesterday we took a look at a condo unit about half a mile away from our current address, and fell rather in love with it. It's not "more house-like," as I had hoped; rather, it's like our current home but upgraded. There's 200 more square feet, which shows in the second bathroom, the spacious master bedroom with walk-in closet, the huge common area which communicates with a roomy kitchen over a sit-down countertop. Also a utility closet with washer and dryer, which would mean no more obsessing over quarters or dragging laundry up and down all those stairs.

Though the units are stacked in rows just like at our current place, the clever floor plan allows the master bedroom to receive lots of natural lighting through a west and a north window. The unit is on the "ground" floor, with nothing below us but underground parking accessible by elevator.

Also, forced air instead of radiant heating. Wood fireplace. Two sinks in the master bathroom. Half a block away from the Wonderland Path greenway trail. Across the street from a wee private lake. So many good things.

We fell in love with it and said, "Oh, if only this had come up next week instead of now!" The realtor said he'd contact the seller about timelines. The seller seems flexible. And, on top of everything, despite our place not yet being listed, we've a potential buyer coming to see it. Tomorrow. At noon.

The buyer reportedly doesn't mind that the place currently resembles a low-key construction zone, but I predict a flurry of house cleaning tomorrow around 8:30 AM.

The Quest to Get Back on Skates! (since Jan. 10, 2015) Last week Tuesday my physical therapist gave me homework that involves lateral movement. Have I mentioned this before? It's a big deal. Lateral movement was taboo up to that point.

Well, yesterday we hit another big deal: He had me do a few different jumping exercises to see how that felt. Jumping! It felt OK. A little tired-sore behind the recovering knee, but OK. He says he may give me some jumping homework after tomorrow's appointment.

Meanwhile we're spacing out my PT appointments. We started at twice a week, but we're taking next week off and then doing only one a week. I'm scheduled on the 17th, March 5, and finally March 12. Do I get to skate after that? I do not know. I can only hope, and do my PT exercises. Religiously.

The Quest to Revise That Damn Story! (since Sep. 2014) ...well, I'm getting to that. I haven't moved much on it since last week. Hopefully I manage to get it moving tonight and tomorrow. Returning to my strategy of small goals, I am setting myself the Small Goal of "Don't worry about getting it right; just get it down."

What I have before me is the task of re-homing a bit of key dialogue from the scene I'm cutting to the scene the story now starts with. "Getting it down" might simply consist of copying and pasting whole blocks of text from the previous draft. It might consist of a bunch of sentences in the style of "And then this happened and then that happened." What it doesn't consist of is creating the perfect micro-segue written with the perfect phrasing in the perfect final-draft way.

It's hard to come up with the right words on the first go. I get stuck when I try to put perfect words down on a blank page. But if I put so-so words down, and then I read them, I will then magically know what the perfect words should be. Or at least I'll know how to turn so-so words into better words, which can then be turned into even-better words, and finally into not-perfect-but-it'll-do words.

I know this. I've known this for a long time. But I keep having to learn it over again. My excuse this time is, "Well, I'm working on a revision for resubmission. I can be forgiven for thinking that what comes out my keyboard next had better by perfect." The moral of the story is, One Revision Ain't. Ain't "one" revision, I mean. Any work on a story at any stage in its life cycle involves iterations of micro-revision. There's no getting around it. I'm happier, and more productive, when I don't try to get around it.

So my goal is to get the bit I'm working on unstuck by giving myself permission to write it badly. I'll tell you tomorrow how it went.

So, about that injured knee.

Today, our emphasis shifted from regaining range of motion to strength and motion training. This is good news. It is also exhausting.

Unlike previous appointments, I didn't spend any time lying on the table while the physical therapist manipulated my leg. I was a much more active participant in my recovery today. I was compelled to do a whole bunch of exercises that required standing on one leg and lifting the other in inventive ways, generally while wearing a big rubber band around my knees or ankles. There were also some squats, a few balancing acts, and a bit of shuffling back and forth. (The shuffling was especially exciting; up until now I'd been forbidden all lateral movement.)

The long and the short of it is, I needed a nap when I got home, and I am going to be very sore tomorrow. I am also going to be decently strong by the time I'm cleared to skate. The latter makes the former totally worth it.

And it can't come too soon. Yesterday I had my first impatient-to-skate dream; I was walking into the Wagon Wheel with John, holding my skates in my hand, getting ready to participate in some really simple Phase 1 style skate training (individual skating skills, no pack or contact stuff). Then I realized, "Wait, I haven't been cleared to skate yet. I could re-injure myself. Damn." So I walked back out to the car to put my skates away. At least I could watch John skate, that would be nice. I woke up before I actually got back out to the car.

Mid-March seems so very far away.

I'm walking more or less fine now, incorporating all the bent-knee and straight-leg motions of a normal walking stride, and both the knee-brace and the compression aids are on an only-as-needed basis. I actually went downtown tonight without either, which feels a little daring.

Not that I anticipate maneuvering through crowds much tonight. I've taken my work out to Lindsay's Boulder Deli for dinner and I might make my way over to Bohemian Biergarten once the trivia crowd disperses. I really enjoyed the Biergarten Saturday night, when I meant to see about the Mardi Gras party in the back, but I wound up just enjoying my food, drink, computer, and the restaurant's 80s New Wave mix in a quiet corner near the front. When I walked by tonight, the theme was more Oktoberfest Polka as far as I could tell. We'll see what it's like in an hour or so.

I appear to be doing my work these days according to the theory of productive procrastination. I've been putting off my short story revision for last while doing all my blogging first, and I put off my Boulder Writing Examiner blogging while banking a bit of elbow grease toward refurbishing the final living room closet bi-fold. And of course the whole day gets put off for about 25 minutes while I take time first thing to do my Morning Pages.

And the Morning Pages get put off by... well, by sleeping in. Because Monday morning Morning Pages means oh, Gods, another week has started, why can't it still be Sunday? OK, but aside from that...

...we do get to the story revision in the end. And with plenty of time left in the evening, too, given that I typically don't go to bed until 1:00 AM. So. Wish me luck and I'll tell you how it went tomorrow.

So here is a thing I've learned from physical therapy: Apparently one of the common precursors to an ACL injury is a tendency to stand or sit with the knees "inside of the shoes."

My therapist demonstrated, which involved temporarily taking a pose that was all too familiar to this southern gal.

You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.

I was never actually forced to do the aspirin thing (though I know some women who were). But I certainly got scolded from early childhood through high school for sitting with my legs too far apart. "You want someone looking up your skirt?" "It just seems rude." "People will think I didn't raise you right." "It's not ladylike."

Well. That was the posture my therapist briefly adopted to demonstrate what he's talking about: feet planted at hip-width, knees pointing toward each other. "Even five degrees of rotation inward, we see that as a warning sign," he said. "Ten degrees is definitely a problem."

Knees collapsing to the midline of the body are the main cause behind ACL-tears, especially among women.

So now you have one more reason to despise purity culture and enforced "ladylike" behavior. In addition to being stuffed to the gills with misogyny, this crap also sets up female athletes for a higher rate of ACL injury.

That women do suffer a higher rate of ACL injury is not in dispute. However, you're unlikely to see any official reports speculating on the role that training young women in "ladylike posture" plays in helping to cause this disparity. No, officially they're all guessing it's to do with higher estrogen levels, weaker hamstrings, wider pelvises, etc. Even the article quoted above links the "knees collapsing to the midline of the body" to weaker, less-well-developed glutes. It wouldn't be the first time a difference between the genders was explained away as purely biological, while great glaring differences in social treatment were swept under the rug.

In jumping and landing women tend to land with slightly straighter legs than men who land in a more powerful squat position with knees slightly apart....

Specific skills therefore need to be learnt in landing and jumping techniques - the principle being to land with the knee forwards and not buckling to the side – inwards or outwards. For the female, this means landing with the knees slightly apart, in a more squat and perhaps un-ladylike male posture.

This author comes tragically close to the point before missing it, and so he fails to question it. To wit: Why in heaven's name are we teaching girls and young women that certain stances, postures, and movements are "unladylike" and "male" in the first place? And why the fuck are the endorsed "ladylike" stances, postures, and movements always the ones most likely to fuck up your body down the line?