Another Saturday morning, another skunking by the 7-year-old sniper

The 4:45 a.m. stick and puck was lightly attended this morning. Scott TFCG's crew slept in, so it was just me, my 7-year-old nemesis, her little sister, their dad, and some other little kid who must be on that team of little kids.

My knee still feels like it's got a screwdriver jammed under the kneecap when I get up off the ice, so I only spent about half my time working with that crew (and took it pretty easy with them) and spent a good bit of time on my own at the other end working on moving the puck.

I must be missing something with this because I just can't seem to find a hand/glove position that gives me decent leverage. But this is also something that I almost never get to work on because someone's always wanting to shoot pucks at me, which I like, so I'd usually rather do that, too. But it's a skill that gets ignored, so I'm glad I took some time out with it, even though I don't know that I accomplished much.

Oh, but you know what feels awesome? Taking the mask off for a 15-20 minutes and the sweatband gets really cold... Ohhh, man that felt so good to put back on.

Nemesis hurt her foot or something and left the ice crying at the end. I think it was really because I started shutting her down in the end. :) At least I didn't call her any bad names this time.

Can you believe I've been doing this for 6 months and today is the first time I took a hard shot off the shoulder? That SOB hurt. Not as bad as shots to my upper arms, but it hit my shoulder and then tagged my head, too. Bitch. Don't do that. But I stopped it. :)

That shot was from the coach/dad. I dunno what it is. I can stop him but these little kids... I think because they're down more at puck level, they see the holes better and they move slower so I kinda get bored waiting on them and also don't really take them as seriously, so boom. Goals galore.

Anyway, everybody gets to eat because everybody scored, so I've done my weekly duty to encourage and feed Houston's hockey youth. I should get a key to the city or something, eh?

Tomorrow night at novice league, it's coach vs. coachee again as Scotty comes out to backstop the red team. I'll be jacked about that, no doubt, though right now, the thought of getting up for it is making me want a nap. Perhaps because I just need a nap.

Didn't get but 3 or so hours of sleep, and that was on the couch since poor Mr. C has the flu and I didn't want to bother him this morning with my alarm going off. And I had to use my cell phone alarm, and I don't really trust my cell to do anything right, much less wake me up, so I kept waking up to check the time. It's fun being neurotic. Really.

Okay, 2 hours to the resumption of the draft. Get me a goalie, Fletch. I'm so nervous about the goaltending depth for the Wild. We're a broken foot and a groin strain from having to put ME in... and I get beat by 7-year-olds.