Pee-new-moan-ya

First of all, let me just say: OMFG, SLICE is THE coldest building in Houston. There must be meat lockers that are toastier. I'm not sure at what temperature breath and body heat turn to "steam" but it was at least that temperature in there tonight. If there had been a breeze, we might have been using words like "bitter" and "Winnipeg."

By the time I pegged my net, I could barely get my trapper on correctly because I couldn't feel my fingers. Never been so cold in a rink before.

The glass was all fogged up and it was literally raining as the condensation on the ceiling was gathering in spots and dripping down. One drip was right at the top of my crease so it kept dripping on the back of my neck. I guess that's one way to know I'm at the top of the paint, eh?

Anyway, kind of a rough night, but I ended up playing okay. As usual with this drop in, I got better as the night went on. I'm starting to think the shooters are getting tired instead, but whatever. Let's pretend I'm getting better.

But as soon as I hit the ice, my heart started racing and I never could get it to settle down. Sooo, I guess I'm back off the caffeine again. I fell off the wagon a few weeks ago because I get so friggin' tired, not only from playing this 3 in 3 schedule every week but then not being able to sleep for 3 or more hours after I get home.

By Wednesday and Thursday, I'm being held together with chewed gum and dental floss. At least, that's how I feel. Being a little more liberal with the Advil and doing a LOT more stretching in hopes of keeping my hips a little happier. I was still hurting doing any kind of hip rotation on Sunday, so clearly, there's some anger in them there hips that rest alone isn't fixing.

Hopefully stretching and rest will do the trick.

Anyway, game on and my heart is racing and that's pretty draining, energy-wise. I realize I'm falling back into bad habits of playing too deep because my energy is about 50% what it should be, so I try to follow my rule but finally give up and just go into brainless survival mode. And I actually play much better. Though I think the second half, the team in front of me was just harder-working and more skilled defensively, so I had lots of good stops in the second half because they made my job easier.

Of course, as is Murphy's Law, when I'm feeling terrible and basically just leaning on my pads trying to catch my breath when the puck's at the other end, the friggin' zamboni guys didn't kick us off for nearly an extra 30 minutes after our scheduled ice time.

Any other week, I would have loved that and would have even stayed out and worked with the shooters, but I was practically crawling to the gate and just needed to go sit. 5 minutes after I got off the ice, I felt fine. Except for my sweaty clothes freezing on me and wishing for some hot chocolate. Credit to me though, the other goalie got off the ice first. I was told I won the goalie battle because of that. Sweet! I'll take it. ;)

My new sweatband either sucks or I'm sweating a lot more than I used to. At one point, about an hour in, I couldn't see at all, my eyes were burning so bad from the sweat pouring into them. Augh. Annoying. I've heard of people making their own out of Sham-Wow (yeah really) fabric. I'm thinking I may have to try that. Apparently it works quite well. And please, don't anyone recommend sanitary napkins (which is an incredibly stupid name for those things).... I may be a sieve but I will cling to whatever dignity I have left.

Hitting it with the Tuesday night drop-in tomorrow night. I'm super excited for the challenge of getting back to working on the fundamentals I started working on Sunday night. (That's me being relentlessly positive!) At least I know, being connected to the mall, it will be anything but freezing in there.

What could be a more perfect song than this for my more-frozen-than-usual night of hockey?