Swampwater Debutante

Yeah, I am bad with this blogging thing.

Thing is, suddenly blogging is like therapy – I just don’t need it as much anymore. I still want my blog, but I don’t have much of anything to work out these days. I would say no one is interested in reading my every day babble, but I know better. I am coming to terms with the idea that to a lot of people, for different reasons, I am maybe kind of remarkable. Which means I must shut up with the self-deprecation.

Yikes.

My customary modesty has been working overtime lately, I’m sure to the chagrin of the new people who are only just getting to know me. I am being asked to come meet and speak to people about my video, asked for interviews (not like, news things, I’d tell you or you’d hear about it), asked to set up – and I shit you not – Facebook fan pages. For me.

Look back where I was a year ago. Would you have thought that girl could ever get to this place?

No one is sure how to hammer it through my head that I deserve this. I am not sure how to understand it. But it is here, and since I do not intend to quit hooping any time soon, it is here to stay. Well – I wanted a better platform to speak out about how depression is a disease and not an emotion. I’ve got one now, I guess.

But I did not mean to go off on that tangent. Not exactly.

I walked into my first therapy session in over a month about two weeks ago. We hadn’t meant to have that long a break, between illness and me being contrary it just happened.

I settled into my chair and smiled at Dr. Dana. “So,” she smiles back, “How have you been? It’s been a while – what have you been up to?”

I took a deep breath. “Well. Since December, I have learned how to make my own yogurt, I have knitted an entire sweater, pledged to give up fast food, plus I am finally hooping again and I have been nominated for two awards because of it.”

This appointment marked the beginning of my fourth year of therapy. It also marked the first time I think I had rendered my therapist entirely speechless.

We are not a codfish, Michael, floated through my head as I grinned at her.

She recovered admirably and had me hop on the scale.

I’d lost five pounds.

At the end of the appointment we agreed that after the appointment coming up this week, I’d go to a three week schedule rather than two.

I swear. Hooping made a lot of the difference. Once I could hoop again, it flipped a switch in me.

I have to be so so careful – I overdid some jumpthrough moves and strained the tendons again – but I have to keep hooping. Have to. I hope as I continue to work that I continue to strengthen the leg. I have had to choose between hooping and running – I chose hooping. A pity, since I spent enough money on my running shoes. But I will still run occasionally, just not every day for a while.

I retrieved all of the hoops I had scattered at various friends’ homes – reunited with Sparkly Edward, I am realizing that is my first and very favorite hoop. It’s like putting on an old pair of jeans that you love.

I mended my Hoopnotica Twist hoop as well, finally – a warping incident last summer put it out of commission for a while – and it’s the hoop that’s going to Wales with me. Originally, I’d planned to take my collapsible TravelHoop, but I am trying to wean off of it. It’s the biggest and heaviest of my hoops, it no longer works as well for me as any of the others. It’ll be good for Maggie, who will be borrowing it.

I hadn’t really intended to ever size down, but it’s happening whether I like it or not. The TravelHoop is too big right now, and I am not to the point where I can use it with a segment removed. Both Sparkly Edward (it is a very bad joke, I promise), and the Twist are a little smaller and lighter, and I move better with them now.

Plus, they do not creak.

With the peculiar ballet-flavored hooping style I seem to be settling into (dance what you know…), lighter hoops are better, I have determined. But not too light. I need to be able to fling them around in off body work, but I need a little weight for on body stuff as well, so the hoop moves fluidly with me at a slower speed than most folks move in.

I’ll work it out.

Man, sometimes I don’t know who I am or what the heck I am talking about, but you know – I am having an awful lot of fun with it.