The roller-derby Donnelly girls

Last summer my three oldest daughters; Mary, Bridget and Molly drove to Austin, Texas, to check out women's roller derby.

Mary had been reading and researching how women's roller derby was making a comeback in the United States. She wanted to be in an organized physical activity with other women and the more she read about roller derby it intrigued her. She convinced Bridget and Molly that this would be a fun venue to check out.

They contacted the Texas Roller Girls who were an established roller derby team and headed south. They stayed with one of the roller derby girls in Texas and went to a game. Mary, Bridget and Molly said that the game was very exciting and they liked the fact that each girl took on a different persona when she became a roller derby girl. They stayed with a roller derby girl whose persona was Missy Demeanor. Her team was called the Hail Mary's and the women wore tartan skirts with white blouses as their team outfits.

When Mary, Bridget and Molly returned to Minnesota, they got busy recruiting girls to start their own roller derby. They handed out flyers and had their first recruiting party last August at Psycho Suzy's Motor Lounge in Minneapolis. Forty women showed up for the recruiting party. On a big screen television was a video of the Texas Roller Girls in action.

The women were excited about picking out a name and being part of something that hadn't been around since the 1970s. Mary organized the first meeting of the Minnesota Roller Girls at her home. The newly founded organization had to raise funding for the rent time of a roller rink for practices. The closest rink was in Coon Rapids.

They also had to find coaches to train them.

Their first fundraiser was a car wash and bake sale, at Robot Love located on Lyndale Avenue in South Minneapolis. It was a beautiful warm Saturday in September and they made over $1,500 in four hours. I drove to Minneapolis to offer moral support to them on the day of the car wash. I sat at a coffee shop across the street from Robot Love and watched car after car with single men lining up to have these young women in their shorts, skirts, and tight tees wash their cars. The girls charged $10 per car and most of the patrons gave them $20.

One man said as he watched the young women clean his car, "I know I have died and gone to heaven." Another young man drove his bright yellow hummer into the parking lot. The hummer driver really didn't want the women to wash his beautiful car as he thought that they might scratch it. He had only stopped to meet the women. He argued with the girls about washing it and then left. He returned later, and he agreed to let them wash his hummer. The girls took extreme care not to scratch it, but they were glad to see him leave.

They held another fundraiser at Pyscho Suzy's in October where they played Twister. The Roller derby girls by now had their personas picked out. Some of their names are Rose Wilder, Floggin Molly, Led Debby, Lilâ Hellion, Rebel Stella, Miss Adventure and Norah Torious. My son Timmy and I went to cheer them on for their Twister Party. Timmy and I even got names for the night. Timmy was called the Timanator and I was called Mama Hot.

By December, four roller derby teams were formed with 12 girls on each team. My daughter's team is called the Garda Belts. Garda is police in Gaelic. They wear Kelly green shirts and tartan skirts as their team outfits. Their first bout after six months of practicing, meetings and other fund raisers is this Sunday at Cheap Skates in Coon Rapids. Part of every fund raiser and bout that the Minnesota Roller Girls have they donate a percentage of the profits to non-profit groups. Two of them have been the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery and the Soo Art Gallery. Check out their website at www.mnrollergirls.com.

I will be heading to Coon Rapids to cheer them on Sunday. They do scare me with how rough the sport is, and I will be cringing watching them take down one another. But they have made lots of new friends, have learned to skate really fast and are having a ball.

Mom deals with new home

I saw my mother over the weekend. She was very unhappy. She feels that everyone has abandoned her now that she is in a different nursing home.

My sister, Kate, and 5-year-old niece, Siobhan, and I picked her up on Sunday to take her to another niece's baby shower. When we arrived to get Mom in her room at the Walker Nursing Home, Mom was sitting in a chair in a blue dress. As soon as we came in the room, she let Kate and I know that she had been waiting 10 hours for us to show up.

"Where have you been? I have to get out of here and get back to Albert Lea where I am a head of a Women's Deanery," she berated us.

We told her we were taking her to Erin's baby shower. She said, "Oh that's right, I forgot about that." She had soiled herself, so I had to clean her up and change her clothes. As I was changing her she asked me who had made the mess, and I told her that she had.

"Well, I did not. Someone else must have done this to me," she said indignantly.

I then took her out of the dress she was wearing and put purple pants and a white blouse and black sweater on her.

Kate brushed out her thick, wavy white hair that has an entity of its own. Kate said, "Mom you have the most amazing hair." She really does. Mom's hair glows and poufs up high when we comb it. My brother John was the only one of her 11 children who had glowing white thick hair like Mom's. When he was dying of cancer and was taking morphine, he could leave his body. People could see John's hair floating in the dark, as he wandered in the spirit world. John was as proud of his hair as Mom is of hers. Neither of them ever dyed their hair and people comment often on the color and ask if it is real.

After we had Mom all cleaned and spruced up, Kate and I then got her in a wheelchair to take the elevator down the five floors to the car. Five-year-old Siobhan hopped on Mom's lap for a ride and for the first time all day mom smiled as she held Siobhan in her arms.

Kate drove her van up to the doors of the nursing home and then we had to get Mom out of the wheelchair and into the van. Mom could lift her left foot into the car, but not her right foot. She was kneeling on the car floor with her left foot bent underneath her and her head was leaning down into the seat of the car. It wasn't a good situation, but she wasn't complaining. I finally picked her up by her bottom and got her turned around. We were laughing and told mom that she was actually pretty flexible.

"I don't know why you don't leave me home, I am such a bother," Mom moaned.

"Quit complaining," Kate said. "You have been complaining since we came to get you. You complained because we hadn't come and now you are complaining because we got you out. You are free for a couple of hours, enjoy it."

We were an hour late for the shower but we got there for the gift opening. Mom complained that she hadn't known we were coming to a baby shower. Everyone told her that they had been telling her about the shower for the last two weeks. Mom brightened up when she ate a big piece of homemade cheesecake and drank a cup of strong black coffee.

We didn't have as much trouble getting Mom in the van on the ride back to the nursing home as we put her in the front seat. She was tired when we got her back to her room and moaned that no one ever comes to see her. She hates being at Walker and wonders why she can't come live with one of her children, as she doesn't see any of us. This isn't true as she has a stream of visitors almost everyday. She does require more care each day but we're doing the best we can for her.

The unwitting pet mortician

Last week Timmy had the flu and then over the weekend I got it.

I have been miserable and haven't been able to recognize that bleary-eyed person in the mirror that stares back at me. I really look like hell. My eyes have been watery and my nose runs nonstop.

I felt like I became a part of the couch on Monday, because I couldn't get myself off of it. I did rise up once because the dogs were barking. I looked out the window and saw that the cattle were running and kicking up their hoofs in the pasture. At first I thought something must be chasing them, but then I saw that they were just having an early touch of spring fever. They hadn't been moving around much since we had the cold, cold weather. They seemed happy that the temperature outdoors was in the thirties.

Spring seems like it might come early this year with today being Ground Hog Day and next week being Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

I don't usually give something up for Lent; instead I make an effort to do something extra. When my older children were young, I had them write a letter a week during Lent to their grandparents that live in Colorado. Even the youngest child, who couldn't write would dictate a letter and I would write down, word for word, what she said. The grandparents loved the letters and the extra effort the kids put into writing.

I am going to have Timmy do this during Lent, write a letter a week to his grandmas that are both in nursing homes. I will write to them too. Besides keeping in touch with them, it is good practice for Timmy to write letters. One Lent when I had the older kids do this, their grandma and grandpa in Colorado sent each of the kids new Easter outfits.

That was a fun Easter having them all dressed up looking so fine. Last Friday night was my birthday. Tom, my sons, Dan and Timmy met my daughters Bridget, Mary and Mary's husband, Dave, along with my brother Steve and sisters Joann, Kate and her husband, Adrian, for dinner at an Indian restaurant in Minneapolis. The food was great. After the delicious meal, some of us went to Orchestra Hall to see the Chieftains perform.

Kate and her husband had just been to visit their daughter, Keavagh, at college in Winona. They shared this story with us at the restaurant: A friend of Keavagh's from high school lives in Chicago where she attends college.

Keavagh's friend lives in an apartment and she had brought her 150 lb. dog to live with her. A couple of weeks ago her dog died. Keavagh's friend called around on how to dispose of her dog. She contacted a veterinary clinic and they told her that it would cost $350 to dispose of the dog. The girl said she was a student and didn't have that much money. The clinic told her that if she brought the dog to them, they would dispose of the remains for $30. The girl got her largest suitcase and stuffed the dead 150 lb. dog into it. She then carried and dragged the suitcase down the street to the subway. A man saw her struggling and offered to help her carry the bag.

He picked the bag up and asked, "Gee, this is really heavy. What do you have in here?" Keavagh's friend said, "I just broke up with my boyfriend and am moving out. This bag contains all my possessions."

The man helped the girl get the suitcase onto the subway. The girl was standing at the subway door holding the suitcase, and just as the doors of the subway were closing the man reached in and grabbed the suitcase and ran off with it. The girl was stunned, but the man had just saved her $30. She and Keavagh and the rest of us wondered what the man must have thought when he opened up the suitcase and found a dead 150 lb. dog.