Hockey, as you probably know, is one of my favorite things. (And hockey in my world ALWAYS refers to ice hockey. If I meant field hockey, the word hockey would be prefaced by field. In Hong Kong, though, hockey seems to unfortunately refer to the kind played on grass. More often by men, not women. Totally alien to my background.)
I had an eight year hiatus from hockey from the time I fell pregnant with Claire in 1999 until June of 2007. When I wasn't playing hockey, I would dream about it from time to time. I was always due to play in a game and would never actually make it onto the ice for one reason or other.
I don't dream about hockey much these days now that I play once a week. It's been a frustrating year of sorts for me, though. I don't have my own team...I'm sharing two with another goalie (whom I have never met). I enjoy playing with one of my teams and look forward to those games. The other team I have a lack of enthusiasm for...the level of play is quite low and the games are unfortunately always at 8 pm which is difficult for me.
Between Christmas and Chinese New Year, I've been off. Seriously off. Just not playing well...nothing that I could totally put my finger on. I wasn't going down enough...I wasn't catching well...my rebounds were crap at times...just off. Part of it stemmed from the fact that I have all new equipment other than my helmet (which I think I need to replace...my ears will ring for up to 48 hours if I get hit on my helmet) and upper body pads. I like my new blocker and pads but my catching glove is a totally different shape from the old one. It's been frustrating.
However that all changed Monday night. After not skating for a month (MegaIce didn't give our league any ice time), I felt pretty rusty. My ankles were especially protesting during the first half of the game. But everything just came together for me and it was FUN. There were a lot of scoring opportunities for the other team but I was there. And everything just clicked. We finally scored with about 6 minutes left in the third period. Unfortunately the Wendigos evened it up on the next play but that's all they got. And we walked away with a tie. Yes! I especially focused on my catching hand and one tying up the puck cleanly. (The latter didn't work all of the time but it was a huge improvement.)
I could have played for my other team on Wednesday night. The other goalie canceled again. I don't know why I feel guilty if I don't pick up the slack...but I do. However, I haven't been sleeping much for the last 5 days. So I did turn down the opportunity. It's fortunate that I did as Claire came down with an ear infection last night and was pretty miserable.
I spent this morning in Repulse Bay at the doctor's with Claire. She's now on antibiotics. Not sure if she'll make school tomorrow and both kids have a b-day party at Pizza Express in the afternoon. Saturday Claire's been invited to Disneyland (another b-day) and then to her first sleepover. She's very excited but I'm afraid that I may have to nix the sleepover part of the plan because sleep is always lacking at sleepovers. And she really needs to get better so that this doesn't linger. This afternoon I also got to return to the doctor's with James for his second flu shot. He was not at all fussed with receiving the second jab. However he reacted poorly to it this evening. The trunk of his body was covered in hives. I gave him some Benadryl for the first time ever and it cleared up. However he had great difficulty falling asleep even though Benadryl is usually a sedative. (He used to get extremely jacked up on Dimetapp...)
Must try to get organized for tomorrow...it's already nearly 11. And I still need to look at Heather's resume and Philosophy of Teaching. (I haven't forgotten but I need to be ALERT for that, H!)
