Typing Out Loud: My Mojo, Update #944

 

When you have to judge and referee and skate. 

Do it for the tossies. Also, invited into an exclusive adult skating group. I accept!

Besties.

So satisfying. 

When you can come off the judges' stand and be one of the gang. 

PA represent!

Podium grins. You should have been with us Barbie. 

I have been doing more judging and refereeing lately than actual skating. In place of freestyles dedicated to figure skating, I’ve been making do on public ice with Hank the scary hockey guy. But I wanted to embrace where I’m at in the sport as opposed to making what I thought were excuses. The fact is I have been busy with work and family and judging and taking absurdly long exams to get that referee appointment.

What a fantastic mind shift that was. Instead of desperately playing "what if?" in my head, I just put out the best I could at that time. The result is the most satisfying bronze medal I’ve ever won. Gotta work on those twizzles... hey lumbar and hips, you with me?

What also resulted what being present with friends when I had the time. Breakfast with Cindy and Erica. Locker room talk with Karen and Judy. Hugs all around for my competitors. Small talk while waiting for results. Tossies. Banter about boobs.

It was a great event.

February's Secret Life of Objects: Record Bowl

What to do with old vinyl. 

I was due to make a craft around Christmas at the same time we dismantled the entertainment center and looked to get rid of some of the vinyl we weren't listening to. 

What do you do with a bunch of colorfully labeled LPs? You make bowls out of them. 

The process is simple, you heat the oven to 250 degrees, then place a glass bowl on a cookie sheet, then the LP on the bowl, and put the whole thing in the oven. Once it starts to warp, you take it out. With oven mitts on, shape the record into a bowl until it hardens again at room temperature. It took about 45 seconds in the oven, but over 10 minutes to completely cool. 

Of all the records I used to make Christmas gifts, I chose to keep The Supremes' A Bit of Liverpool for my own. Listening to The Beatles Channel, I have heard some of these songs already and they don't do a bad job of it. And this is how I remember what I made for Christmas 2022. 

End of Our Whitecap Era

Celebrating Pedro’s birthday with the crew, 2006.

After 16 seasons, three championships, and 23 players, the Whitecaps let us know that the host family program has come to an end. It is the aftermath of the labor agreement reached last year, calling for equity for all their minor league players in terms of access to wages, suitable training facilities, and fair housing. 

Fair housing means a two bedroom/two bath for all, not easy access to my basement. 

After being angry and heartbroken last week, I'm now at the acceptance stage. I get it. The Whitecaps may secretly be relieved that they don't have to wait for an exchange student to go back home or for us to get home from a vacation. Or worry about too many players sharing a bedroom. Or not having enough families to safely house players with all the roster moves that happen. 

But!

Host family of the groom, although we claim Mallory too. 

I'm going to miss that familial connection to my other favorite sport. Seeing the guys make their way through the system and take the field. Wishing them well when they move on. Celebrating their big moments, like Dane's wedding, Ryan's kids, Michael's new business, and Pedro's professional success. 

But!

I'm also going to appreciate having our basement be ours again. Not having to wear the host mom hat again and again and again. Gaining so much hot dog and nacho weight. 

But!

I'm going to miss that deeper connection to what's going on in the field. Yes, I played favorites when my boys were on the mound or up to bat. And I'm sad we may have missed our opportunity to host a major leaguer. We are counting on you Andre, Corey, Andrew, Dane, Aaron, and Garrett, you're our last hope. 

Hmm, maybe I'm in the negotiation portion of grieving. To console us, the Whitecaps, who have always been good to us, is giving us a final season of host family privileges: free tickets, free parking, and discounts at the shops. Stock up on those Caps sweatshirts and hold onto that host family pass, it's soon to be a relic. 

Why Art Matters: In Defense of Peggy Hill

Peggy has reciepts. 

Do not piss off a Platter. 

My show is coming back for a reboot in 2023!  This was my falling asleep show for years when we lived in Saint Louis, and now I'm binging episodes 10 at a time off FX. Early developments say they will age the show by 15 years to depict what Hank, Peggy, Dale, Minh, Bobby, and crew are doing in Texas in modern times. To do the math, that means Bobby, Connie, and Joseph will be 28 years old. 

Adult Bobby is going to be hilarious. 

Dave enjoys the show, just not as much as me. The reason is he cannot stand Peggy, the insecure yet overly confident wife of Hank. 

I gotta defend her. I don't want to go into too much detail, so maybe just a bullet list of whys. 

She is a stand-by-your-man gal. She doesn't let anyone get the best of Hank while she is around.

She's a good mom.

She's a good surrogate mom to Luanne. 

Boggle champ.

Blood donor. 

She is unafraid to try new things, such as becoming a folk artist, realtor, substitute science teacher, or organic gardener. 

She's a champion for the LGBTQ+ community, including her first lover and sharing grooming tips with a drag queen she befriended shoe shopping. 

She is a proud educator and lover of books. 

A writer of musings columns, country songs, and novelty Christmas songs. 

Peggy's failings are mostly due to her insecurities, which come from having size 16 feet and being considered second best, even to her convict brother. 

My prediction for Peggy 2023 is she has become, with her online master’s degree, Tom Landry Middle School principal and is still balancing between insecurity and overconfidence. Is hall monitor Emily her right hand? 

Typing Out Loud: Leadership a Year Later

 

I feel like I’ve learned a lot since completing the Leadership degree a year ago. Hard work pays off. So does being willing to step up. In skating, the concept of servant leadership. I really could go on.

It was a banner week for me - Monday, I was promoted to Senior Marketing Project Manager at GVSU. And today, I received word I was appointed a referee by US Figure Skating with a letter of such glowing praise I’m shocked at the level of positivity. 

While pleased, I can’t rest too much on my laurels, there’s work to be done. 

February Playlist, Nationals Edition: I'll Skate to That!

There is a quote in a figure skating book, where the author asks a former competitor if they choreograph programs in their head to the music, and the answer was "always." 

I'm no different, and since the national championships just wrapped, my brain will assert my meager skills upon song selections as I indulge in a thousand hours of recorded coverage and controversy. The first three are songs I'm already using; the rest are songs that I'm skating to in my head at the grocery store while lunging for milk or gliding toward cereal. Let's see if I can keep it to 10.

I'm Only Sleeping, The Beatles YES, kicking it off with another song from the Fabs. It wouldn't be here if they hadn't rereleased the Revolver album with a wonderful video of this song. We are leaning towards comedy showcase as I attempt to sleepwalk through a program. It's a pain to attempt this on a busy open skate session. 

Saturday Night, Bay City Rollers  It's a solo free dance I choreographed myself during the pandemic. Bubblegum glam rock from the 70s when I was around eight years old. Plaid shorts and fishnets, naturally. Do it all, have a ball. The benefit of ice dance is off-ice runthroughs. 

Melissa, Allman Brothers Band  As discussed last year at this time, it's been choreographed and costumed. This is one I expect to pull out of my back pocket when I want to compete and can go from locker room to judges' hospitality. 

Moon River, Audrey Hepburn  This comes not from our nationals but a competition I judged in Canada. Yes, I'm international now! I could skate in a pair of cigarette pants and a button-down shirt that skims instead of clings. 

Audition (Fools Who Dream), Emma Stone  See last month's Why Art Matters. How did I overlook this?

I can also list what is on the do not skate list - Adele, Disney, sad girl choices like Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Billie Ellish. There's nothing like angsty teenagers. 

Clair de Lune, Debussy If I had to go classical, I'm still holding out for this one, even though everyone around me says no. Is it that it isn't in my wheelhouse or that it's overdone? I feel like I need to be classy. 

Taxi Driver, Bernard Herman BUT I could also go film noir. I think I listed this long ago, where the dress is black-blue lace lingerie worn under a men's suit jacket. Look like I ran out of an apartment at 1am in the rain. That's what the music sounds like anyway. I always envisioned starting the program by stubbing out an imaginary cigarette with my toepick. I could be a dirty girl. 

This is a lot of ambition for someone not doing much skating these days. 

Typing Out Loud: Alt Universe Rock Star Album Cover

Only I would get this deep creating a fictional album cover for my alter ego.

So as I am taking myself through the exercise of composing original songs for my fantasy set using my alter ego at an imagined club while plinking away at guitar basics, I need to have a fictional album available to sell out of the back of the Escape after my set, of course. So I need something clever and complex. 

Growing up, our county beauty pageant crowned the Rose Queen. She would compete for Miss Michigan, who would then go on to Miss America. Few, if any, Jackson County Rose Queens would go on to claim Miss Michigan, meaning Rose Queen was likely the end of the road. And my high school graduating class was one of the first to not have a girl make a run for the Rose Queen title. 

Competing for near-impossible beauty standards was on the way out. 

The crown depicted in the photo is my bridal headpiece featuring handmade rum-pink silk rosebuds, seed pearls, and crystals. In order for it to sit beautifully and delicately on my head, the comb dug mercilessly into my skull for more than 12 hours on my wedding day.

It was beautiful torture. 

Fancy dress parade!

Finally, the title also serves as an homage to the Beatles and the curious day of July 6, 1957, in Liverpool at the Woolton Parish garden fete. This church picnic is where Paul and John first met. But what of the Rose Queen, whose day is now a footnote in history? 

"The first lorry carried the Rose Queen, seated on her throne, surrounded by her retinue, all dressed in pink and white satin, sporting long ribbons and hand-made roses in their hair. These girls had been chosen from the Sunday school groups, on the basis of age and good behaviour."

Woolton Rose Court, 1957

I posted the question to a Beatles fan page and someone did come up with the name of the Rose Queen as easy as you please and I'll be damned if I didn't forget it. Dorothy? Ellie? Cissie? 

I'm feeling a sense of fleeting beauty, melancholy, and being upstaged. I'm guessing I should write a title song about this... 

February's Song: Fat Mom

Goal: write a song a month, with the resolve to not self-edit or worry if it’s crap. This one will be fast, a little punk rock. 

Yeah, I'm a fat mom, I'm a fat mom. Don't you want to be one too?

I'm a fat mom yeah I'm a fat mom. Baby, I've got the blues.

I did soulcycle, tried kick boxing, 

Ate the Snackwells too. 

Tried the cabbage diet,

Had a slide board, even had the slipper boots. 

Yeah, I'm a fat mom, I'm a fat mom. Don't you want to be one too?

I'm a fat mom yeah I'm a fat mom. Baby, I've done it too.

Water aerobics to classic rock, earned sauna time, 

Baby I was a prune. 

Tripped on the step during power dance class, 

Got twenty percent off running shoes.

Yeah I'm a fat mom, I'm a fat mom. Don't you want to be one too?

I'm a fat mom yeah I'm a fat mom. Baby, I've paid my dues. 

Found fun in skating, got the spandex,

Got some gold medals too. 

Got Rubbermaid tote of funny costumes,

Hey, is that a tutu? 

Yeah I'm a fat mom, I'm a fat mom. Don't you want to be one too?

I'm a fat mom yeah I'm a fat mom, I've got diabetes too.