Ashley's Fables: The Tale of the Rollerskater and Inertia

I have been itching to rollerskate here lately.  As a young teen, I rollerskated often at Skate Country and in various driveways and parking lots.  I also have been itching to spend some time outdoors at one of the lovely parks in our fair city.  Because of my past driveway-skating experience, I thought to myself, "Oh Sequel!  There are a great many parks with sidewalks which are paved similarly to the skating driveways of Ye Olde 1998!  Perhaps thee might take the rollerblades out midday when few are about and have fun skating tymes!"  So I put on an old T-shirt and some jeans I didn't mind scuffing up - these would prove to be the only decisions made all afternoon that would not qualify as "Profoundly Stupid."

So I consulted Professor Google and found a local park which is near my home and has a nice multi-purpose "trail," which in this context is code for "sidewalk we wove through the woods."  Upon driving and parking, I was pleased to see picturesque flower beds and a nice smooth sidewalk with some small, innocuous inclines and declines.  So I put on my blades and tottered out in the sunshine, a little Bambi-esque at first because it's been a long time since I've skated.  But after a couple of minutes, I got my sea legs.  Then I reached a small hill, on which the sidewalk curved around to make the slope a lot less sharp than it is if you take the steps straight down.  There was also a handrail available.  "Great!" thought I.

Scientificism the First: Inertia does not care how sharp or not-sharp the slope is, most especially if you are on wheels.

I started to roll down the slope, feeling a little nervous.  Then I got a lot nervous, because my speed got a lot faster.  I tried lowering my skate brake- not so effective.  Realizing that the longer I waited to take action, the worse the inevitable stop would be, I reached for the handrail.

Scientificism the Second: Inertia thinks the best way to deal with being dissed by a hand grasping a hand rail is this:

So, not such a smooth start.  But the sharpest part of the decline was only a short distance, so being the optimist I am, I kept both hands on the handrail and lowered myself down until the sidewalk was just about even and decided to give it another go.

Scientificism the Third: Inertia does not think "just about even" is even enough.

My skates began rolling much faster than I wished, so I resorted to my old trick from Skate Country: when in doubt, skate off of the smooth surface.

Scientificism the Fourth: Inertia deals with moving from rink floor to carpet much more calmly than moving from sidewalk to grass.

Second spill of the day and still within sight of my car.  Still, I thought perhaps some of my troubles could be explained by being out of practice and also by being less-than-aerodynamic.  So for my last attempt, I decided to bend my knees so that I could use my weight to steer and maybe survive the elevation changes that way.

Scientificism the Fifth: Inertia appears to be cool with that.

I crouched on my skates and took a couple of curves uneventfully, if more quickly than I would have liked.  I began to get that weird mixture of terror and euphoria you get on a roller coaster: you are not in control of this experience, but MAN is it fun!

Until, of course, one of those curves is 90 degrees.

Scientificism the Sixth: Inertia laughs at your feeble grasp of physics.

CRASH.

I looked at the rest of the trail and realized that, although they were slight to the eye, there were elevation changes all along this trail, and I hadn't even approached an incline yet.  At first, I was despondent.  I wanted to try something new and had totally made an idiot of myself.  I felt like a failure and a loser and wished to melt into the tree roots that had broken my fall.

But then I realized, "Oh Sequel!  Thou art an amateur comedienne!  Document this, thine spectacular failure, and let the world gaze upon your complete humiliation in blog post form, where you can at least claim First Dibs on making fun of yourself!"

So let's laugh at the fallout from my falls!  Yay!

Right hip caught the impact from the last fall.  This is why the beat-up-able jeans were a good idea as opposed to shorts: no scrapes on the skin beneath.  Not even a bruise.

Left knee caught the impact from the second fall.  As with the right hip, the jeans protected me from scraping and bruising.

Caught myself with my left hand a couple of times.  Dirty, but not bad at all.

Little scraping on the right wrist

The worst of the injuries: a teeny elbow scrape.  Elbows, by the way, are very hard to photograph in a way that makes it obviously an elbow...this is why my eyes are all up in this picture.

A shot from In The Field...this was about a minute after the final fall.

Shirt all grass-stained.  Fun!

All things considered, it was actually not too bad.  I wasn't hurt and I gave it a good few tries before giving up.  Andrew's come back from dredging with WAY worse injuries.  So now it'll be parking lots and superflat sidewalks (hard to come by here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge).  Like, really flat.  Like, maybe I'll take a level with me next time...

Y'guys

I know I am the worst blogger on The Planet.  I've been busy these days.  There are lots of little nuggets in my brain to talk about, such as:

1. Folks who refer to my male colleagues as "sir" and me as "honey" and only shake the hands of my male colleagues but think it's cool to put a hand on my shoulder.

2. Clothing that looks totally legit on some women, but indecent on me.  Girls: you know what I mean.  UNFAIR.

3. Punditry and the rash of ideological morons (or sellouts to sensationalism) who feel the urge to reduce every situation or issue down to a false cartoonish good people - bad people dichotomy and ignore the vast majority of responses and needs (which have the added characteristic of actually existing in real life) in between.

4. Coffee, you guys.  COFFEE.

5. Southern Social Exercises: What We Say and What We Mean.

6. Public personalities and the blurring line between what you produce being a commodity and your person/existence being a commodity.

7. Reclaiming My Face: Actively Trying To Leave The House Sans Makeup And Not Care

These may or may not be expanded in some way.  We'll see.  In the meantime, enjoy the new widget to the right of this here text that shows you what all I've shared on Google Buzz!

A Glimpse Into Me Time

When I'm at home alone, I mess around on the piano, playing and singing songs I like.  Here's an example of some such tomfoolery.  Perfect?  No.  Fun?  Yes.

Kathryn

I have a cousin named Kathryn.  This is her singing the Batman theme and generally being silly.  (Warning: set the sound so you can barely hear her, because I start laughing about 10 seconds in and my laughter is WAY louder than her singing)

She is one of my favorite people.

Kathryn and Ashley on Theology
K: This is Lucy (indicates her doll)
Me: Oh!  And Lucy has a pacifier!
K: Yes
Me: Did you take a paci when you were a baby?
K: (shakes head)
Me: Oh yeah, you only sucked your thumb.
K: I still suck my thumb sometimes.
Me: Is that so?
K: And I still like God.
Me: (stifling laughter) Really?
K: Yes.  I like God.
Me: God likes you too, a lot.
K: Sometimes I wish I could hug God.
Me: You know what?  So do I.  We will get to someday, though, when we go to Heaven.
K: When will we go to Heaven?
Me: It won't be for a long time.  But we have lots of stuff to do here while we wait.
K: (nods)  And we don't like Satan.
Me: That's right.

Kathryn on Bad Weather
K: Be careful out there.  You'll get stormed and die.
Amber: Do what?
Kathryn's brother Daniel: She means you'll be struck by lightning.

Kathryn's Body Image
"I am very, very heavy."  (No, she isn't)

Ashley Tries to Read to Kathryn
Me: And the doggie said, "What time is the party?"
(looks up to notice Kathryn is goofing off)
Me: ...and then Kathryn stopped listening to the story and Ashley was confused!
K: (quizzical look) That's not the story how it goes, but ok. 

Kathryn Sings Songs
Kathryn's mother Dana: Kathryn, can you sing us the song you learned yesterday about Jesus?  (meaning "Jesus Loves Me")
K: Jesus...all the way...Old McDonald had a duck!

A month or so later when Andy and I were en route to Florida for a vacation, we saw a series of signs with Bible verses and proclamations about Jesus.  I couldn't read them all because I was driving, so I asked Andy what they said.
"Jesus all the way Old McDonald had a duck."

Addendum to my previous post

It just occurred to me that some readers might believe that they have done or said something to inspire the previous post.  The answer to that is no!

My Thorn in My Side: LET ME SHOW YOU IT

I was musing about this in my personal journal, but then decided that it's probably either universal enough or funny enough to warrant a blog post.

Everyone has pet peeves.  They can reveal much about us, or in this particular case, underline something I already knew about myself and remind me how pervasive this problem is. 
I put a lot of my self-worth in my "intelligence."  I put it in skeptical quotes because mine is a very specific brand of intelligence: the memory-wordy-musical kind.  I remember things well, I use uncommon words and I got musics.  My math skills are tenuous; I understand the concepts, but I understand them from a verbal standpoint.  I remember that 5 - 3 = 2, not because I am mentally fleshing out the images of 5, 3, and 2, but because I remember the sentence "Five minus three equals two."  And in elementary school when I was learning basic addition, I added numbers up to eight not by counting on fingers or other visualizing methods, but by rhythmically counting up.  To reach a solution to 6 + 8, I would say "Six" to myself, and then say "SEVEN - eight - NINE - ten - ELEVEN - twelve - THIRTEEN - fourteen" with that specific syllabic emphasis (hint: I was counting out two full measures in 4/4, stressing beats one and three, unconsciously) because it just felt right.  That felt like eight.  And to stop in beat 3 of the second measure felt like seven.  To stop in beat 1 of the second measure felt like five.  Past eight, I would lose my place.  You can imagine how well this worked out as I got older.  But words and musics, I has them.

So, particularly because of my memory smarts, I'm pretty accustomed to being able to get the right answer, to learn the rules and routines quickly, and to do my tasks well and correctly.  And I put a lot of stock in being smart.  It's become more and more apparent to me how much I put that memory to work in every aspect of my life as of late, especially in relationships.  I had the usual push-pull as a teen, but now...if I did something that seemed to cause you to snap at me?  I'll probably go out of my way not to do it again.  I asked you for something and you said no, but your no was due to a temporary deterrent?  I *still* will probably not ask you again.  I needed something and you were in a bad mood and blew me off?  I will either conclude that I can't depend on you for what I need or that what I need is frivolous.  Something in me makes me think I can learn all the rules of people and if I just learn them all and follow them all, I won't get snapped at, won't be disliked, and (most importantly) won't be considered stupid.  Because people are totally static and never develop or change!  (That's facetiousness, in case you can't tell)

The pet peeve that brought on this deluge of navel-gazing introspection is: receiving unsolicited advice.  This drives me insane.  Now, of course, there are times when I am able to excuse it.  If I were to, say, draw the hem of my robe over a candle and set it afire, I would not only tolerate a "YOUR ROBE IS ON FIRE!" from you, I would likely welcome it.  An "AAAAAAAH!!" with much pointing would also suffice.  And I am not a complete idiot: I realize that advice is sometimes helpful and even occasionally needed.  I often times actually solicit advice from people.  But getting pointers I didn't ask for is so annoying to me as to be cringeworthy.  If the advice is something I didn't know that is relevant to the situation, it will bother me because by the time I embark on some task, I'm supposed to have learned enough about it to do it without help; if I still need help in the execution phase, it means I'm stupid.  If the advice is (1) something I already knew, (2) not necessarily relevant to the situation, as often happens when someone doesn't know enough about it to be giving advice, or (3) something I know to be inaccurate, it takes effort to conceal my anger.  Because in those cases, someone underestimated my knowledge or abilities, but my Rules of People dictate that I can't correct them because that's defensive/immature/unladylike/whatever.  So there I am, either actually being stupid or being perceived as stupid and without a dern thing to do about it except bottle the frustration and pop the top right here on this blog!

So that's one of my big flaws.  I try to get around it by not doing things I haven't extensively researched or studied, or by saving new tasks for when I am alone.  It's not that I believe I should never require help - I seek it pretty often - but that I should require help at a certain time.  I treat the whole world like school.  I learn about a potential task or project by Googling it and asking other people about it - this is the studying phase.  When I set out to do it, that's the test phase.  And at the test phase, you're supposed to know it and not need any further assistance.  If you haven't properly prepared, you fail the test.  So when I get unsolicited advice that I actually needed, I feel like I've failed a test.  And when I get some that I didn't need, I feel like I'm being accused of failing.

I hope that in this exercise in transparency I have made someone else feel a little bit better about one of his or her particular thorns.

The Irish Tan: A Look at My Summers

Every summer, I undergo a transformation.  The winter so stifles my spirit that by the time summer comes, I'm ready to soak up the sun, sprout some freckles and start a process that takes my skin color from one extreme to another:

 

As you can see, it's a major upheaval that requires a specific process.

This process usually begins around this time of the year, when the sun starts to come out and the temperatures rise, making the outdoors not only tolerable, but in some instances preferable.  It is during this time of year that I start venturing into my backyard for short sunning sessions, taking all the necessary SPF precautions.

 

The once-a-week backyard sun sessions are a good start.  Then, usually around the beginning of the summer, I get the opportunity to go on a beach vacation, which in my feeble mind will undoubtedly become my personal Shangri-La regardless of the presence of other humans...

 

But after a few days on this beach vacation, I note with some dismay that the parts of my body that have been regularly exposed to the sun are not really distinguishable from the parts of my body that have never been exposed to the sun.

 

After having reached this epiphany and having had a night to sleep on it, the next morning's sun preparation becomes a much higher-stakes event.

 

"Ok, I'll only wear it for a few minutes.  I'll just go poolside with it, stay out for a very short while, and then dart back in."

So I slather on the mystical tanning lotion and take it to the pool, at which point I am invariably too distracted to notice that the sun has become a little more agitated.

 

There's a reason the sun has taken notice.

You know how those special tanning-specific lotions work?

SUN PHEREMONES.

 

The sun is driven mad with affection for the lotion.  And because the lotion is attached to my skin, it becomes the hapless honeymoon destination for a very pro-jazz-hands group of sunbeams and lotion molecules.

 

(Sunbeam not to be confused with Spaghatta Nadle)

Also, I linked to a clean Spaghatta Nadle clip - the others are more vulgar

The meeting of these star-crossed lovers does not bode well for me.

 

For a while, I declare myself as being No Longer on Speaking Terms with the sun.

 

But after a while, the burns go away and my alleged "highly rententive memory" dismisses the memories of being burned in favor of remembering lines from Scrubs and I resume my backyard ritual.

 

Unfortunately, I don't reach this point until the summer starts to draw to a close and conditions are becoming increasingly hostile towards sunbathing.

 

So I get all the UVA and UVB rays (again, with SPF 15) I can until the shivering causes me to fall off my sun chair, finally achieving my impeccable Irish Tan.

Then winter comes and I get to the business of fading it and wishing summer were back.