Footprints on the Moon

I just posted the following on someone else’s blog comments and then I decided that I probably should share it with you. Bonnie D.Stroir from San Diego Derby Dolls asked about people’s magical how roller derby and I met stories… I don’t know that it’s a magical story, but roller derby and me… we could totally send out personalized note cards together. Anyways. Here’s what I wrote:

I don’t remember exactly when roller derby first came onto my radar, but I know that for the last few years I’ve been seeing glimpses of it here and there. I think every chubby girl has that one thing that they’ve promised themselves for when they get thin. Roller derby was that thing for me. If I ever lost the weight, I was going to find a roller derby team.

The funny thing is, I started Weight Watchers in April and only 9 pounds later, roller derby found me. I didn’t know it at the time, but at the roller rink across town, a group of girls was starting to meet that would eventually form our league. I found out about it when my one of my cousins joined. I hemmed and hawed for about a week… I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for it… I wasn’t thin yet, after all, and that was the deal I had with myself. But I knew that if I didn’t jump in on the ground floor and allow myself to learn with everyone else, I might not ever do it. And who says you have to wait until you’re thin for your life to start anyway?

So I joined, and 6 months later, I’ve lost 40 more pounds and I’m still skating. And it’s been amazing. It brought 40 amazing women into my life at a time when one of my oldest friendships was crashing and burning. It made me realize I am capable of more than I ever thought I was. I’m happier than I’ve been in a really long time, maybe ever.

So there wasn’t ever one magical moment that got me started in roller derby, but it’s been pretty magical ever since.

I’m thankful for my family, the fact that being at work today means that I have job, a roof over my head, my cats, Killian, my best friend Sarah, roller derby, Cyber Monday deals that mean I don’t have to go stand in the cold tomorrow, friends that come take care of me when I’m sick, a mom who will deliver food and chapstick to me at work if she’s in town, sunrises, old friends coming back into my life, yarn, quiet weekends, incredibly busy weekends, the fact that I get to go stuff my belly with good food and hang out with good people this afternoon.

I’m still trying to figure out what to do about Christmas shopping this year. Since Christmas is a little more than a month away, maybe I should get on that… Unfortunately, after being sick a couple of weeks ago and missing 2.5 days of work, money is a little tight right now. I do have ideas for most of the people on my list, but no real way to make it happen.

This would be the perfect year for some Black Friday shopping, but there are two problems with that. 1) That $200 short paycheck. 2) I have to work first shift on Black Friday.

I did discover about $60 in my paypal account, so maybe I’ll scope the sale ads and see if there are any non-door buster sales that can help me round out my list a bit. So far, the only one I’ve bought anything for is Killian! At the rate I’m going, he might be the only one to get a present from me lol

This is me, shortly before departing for Indianapolis in the wee hours of the morning… Okay, so 9:30 in the morning is not “wee” but it feels that way sometimes when I actually have to get up and get moving on a Sunday morning! I would usually be leaving for practice at about the same time, but I don’t have to get all that presentable to go get sweaty (sorry guys)!

But today! Today, 14 of our skaters were headed to Indianapolis to scrimmage with some of the Naptown Roller Girls. It’s the first time that our team has skated against another team, so it was super exciting! They pretty much wiped the floor with us, but that’s okay. We walked away having learned a LOT, having a new set of things to work on, etc.

Then it was time to turn around and drive three hours back home. All in all, it was a very good day! I got to spend 6 hours in the car with some of my favorite ladies and enough snacks to make you wonder do diet pills work? Not that bad, but we did have an entire seat dedicated to the food, and I did eat more cookies than advisable…

Ooh, and I almost forgot! They needed volunteers and pretty much none of ours came along to Indy so I jumped in and got to NSO for the first scrimmage (one of Naptown’s other teams played Demo City before our scrimmage). It was fun and now I know what to do for at least one NSO position at a bout if anyone needs help!

To go along with yesterday’s financial post… I’m here today to whine about a payment that’s coming up that I almost forgot about. My car registration. I got an email to remind me that I have to pay for my registration in the next two weeks. Just when I think I’ve got the budget figured out. *sigh*

It’s less than $60 so it could be worse… but it’s also going to fall on my paycheck that is really short from being sick! Thankfully, my car insurance which is due December 1st has already been paid. I set the money for that aside with my “extra” paycheck this summer and paid that bill as soon as it arrived.

Okay folks, this one is going to be a bit painful to write, which is part of why I’ve been putting it off for so long. And honestly, I’ve kind of been sticking my head in the sand and not really been dealing with the financial situation. A couple of days ago, though, I ran across the starting numbers… from February 2008. I decided it was time to stop hiding, total everything up and figure out how to move forward.

Since the last financial update I posted with numbers was in November of 2009, I used those numbers, and the numbers from today I pulled from all of my online account balances about 20 minutes ago. I did have to add the Amazon Chase card in to the totals because apparently in November of last year I was trying to pretend like I hadn’t opened another credit card to buy a laptop. I also removed the WaMu/Chase card that I paid off in August 09 from the chart. So anyways, without further ado, let’s rip off the bandaid.

Ouch, right? I mean, I should be able to make more than a $280 dent in my total debt in a year. (Suffice it to say, I won’t be planning any Branson vacation any time soon.) Granted, everything on this list is showing a downward trend, outside of the Discover card which went up more than a thousand dollars (!!!!) but that’s not really the big picture. In April of this year, that Capital One card was around $2700, the Discover Card was just under $5000, and that Amazon Chase card was about $500 away from being paid off. In other words, the only debts I made real progress on were my student loans– also the only ones that don’t allow me to add to them! *sigh*

So what happened? A combination of a lot of things really. First and foremost, the lack of an emergency fund. In June or July, I had finally had enough of my car troubles as my dashboard had been completely dark for months… since I didn’t have any money in savings (outside of about $30), that went on my Discover Card to the tune of about $760. The rest of that $1222 is the result of overdrawing my bank account and still needing to buy groceries and the like. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, running out of money before the week is up will set you back for a month or two. In the end, I didn’t get back on track until I finally managed to buy back some vacation time from the company. Not how I really wanted to use it, but I had to do something.

The Amazon card… that’s derby. And Weight Watchers. Both were things that I felt couldn’t wait. And roller derby can be very expensive to get started in! I needed skates, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, a helmet and a mouthguard. Later I added new wheels, bearings, and crash pads to protect my hips and tailbone. Ideally, I would have liked to have had the cash to finance this venture, but I can’t say I have any real regrets about this one.

The Capital One… I have to admit, that one is just buying things I probably shouldn’t have and didn’t have the cash for.

So, that’s where I’m at. What am I going to do about it? Well, I’m not really sure. I need to revisit the budget AND START FOLLOWING it, that’s for sure. Ever since I lost all the overtime in March though, the paychecks are budgeted pretty tightly. It gets tiring to deny myself of absolutely everything all of the time. That’s pretty much what happened with those accounts on this list that are down from this time last year, but up from where they were this spring. I don’t have much money to pay on top of minimum payments, but for right now, I’m just going to try and get through Christmas and then it will be time to really refocus and see what can be done to try and bring those balances back down.

I had been doing so well with this whole not getting sick thing… I even managed to avoid the whole changing of the seasons respiratory infection I seem to get every spring/summer. But it caught up with me!

I posted those pretty pictures of me in my halloween costume, talking about the good time I had with my family, etc… little did I know, there was a carrier monkey in our midst. He was complaining that his tummy hurt on Halloween and didn’t eat any dinner. By Tuesday, I knew why. I woke up feeling fine, but by lunch time, I was starting to feel dizzy and nauseous. I actually thought I might be getting a migraine, so I called one of my coworkers to come in and let me go home early. I thought I’d sleep for a few hours and wake up feeling fine. Yeeeeaaahhh… within 2 hours of going home, I was not even keeping down liquids! I missed two and half days of work, and have been dealing with a nagging cough/sinus infection since. Joy!

These days, I’m pretty glad that my job pretty much consists of keeping an eye on security cameras all day. Obviously, there is a bit more to it than that, but I do have a coworker here with me who is willing to do all the other work while I sit here and attempt to expel my lungs from my body.

Miraculously, I managed to skate at practice last night without too much issue… no problems at all during drills or jams, it was just the times in between that were a bit rough. I’d love to say that I’m feeling a bit better today, but I think that’s probably more that I struck upon a better combination of decongestants than anything else.