Quick Hits: Happiness; Soupy; Headcase; House; John Lynch

I have this theory that people who need lots of pithy, inspirational quotes in their lives are, deep down, the most miserable.

Of course, they generally seem like balanced, happy people, so I think my theory is probably bullshit, but it makes me feel better for rolling my eyes at their pearls of wisdom.

I'm not remotely a miserable person, even though I think some people think I am if they don't know me well. Mostly I just like to kvetch and be dramatic. It's just how I roll. But I'm generally pretty happy. And I do it WITHOUT quotes from Oprah on my wall...

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Swear to God I saw Brian Campbell with some other really attractive hockey guy at Home Depot this morning. In Houston. Yeah. But I swear it was him. Nearly chased him down to somehow get in front of him and look at his knees.

Hockey players: You can tell them by their Bauer bumps and their freakish knees.

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I feel kinda bad when well-adjusted goalies try to help me with my game. I'm used to being sort of a mess and don't really mind most of the time, but they don't understand that and always get to the point of, like, "Well, good luck with that."

Maybe I should start those conversations with, "Just a heads up, you won't be able to help me." Just trust me. Others have traveled that path. People with patience and kindness and lots of knowledge. And they've finally had to be all, "Um, I need to go... wash my hair/dog/car," when it was clear my neuroses are firmly attached.

It's funny, when I first started playing, I'd suck and I'd beat myself up and people were like, "Gahhh, stop taking it so seriously!"

Well, I finally learned to not take it so seriously and now it's like, "If you're not taking it seriously, how can you get better?"

Well shit.

But I have more fun not taking it seriously, so I'll stick with that route.

I've only met one other goalie who really seemed to understand where I'm coming from as a new goalie. She's a new goalie, too, in California. Neither of us have athletic backgrounds. Both of us approach the game intellectually first. It's like this:

Step 1: Wrap brain around concept. Tell me why you want me to do something a certain way. Tell me why we're going to work on it a certain way. OVERexplain. Pretend I'm learning disabled. Because I kinda am here.

Step 2: If I'm continuously doing it wrong, stop everything and figure out WHY I'm doing it wrong. It's not because I'm not trying. It's because I don't understand what's keeping me from doing it right. There is rarely time for Step 2, BTW.

For instance, one of the drills Thursday was working on the dreaded, hated VHS. I can do the VHS marginally on my glove side. But I go over and try to do it on my left and I can't do anything but full butterfly.

So I do it the first time and Brusty's like, "Keep your post leg up." I'm all, "Uh, I did, didn't it?" "Nope." "Oh..."

Okay, so we try again. Son of a... he's right. I can't keep that right leg straight up against the post. It leans in  and that sends the other leg sliding and then it all just craters into a full butterfly. (I should note right here that I did actually STOP all the practice shots even though I couldn't do the VHS, soooo....  anyway....)

I tried to diagnose it a bit myself, by bowing out of the awful looking center ice skating drill (the WORST part of camp since I'm a terrible skater) and grabbing an empty net to work on that. Mostly I think all I did was fuck up my hip. Big ol' middle finger to the VHS.

Glad I couldn't read Brusty's mind during that. Haha. "Oh my god, she's a mess." At least that's what I was thinking. That and, "Dear Self, I was only kidding about being awful at Brusty's drill so he'd have to work with me more!"

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Okay. Back to cleaning out the house. I'm so excited about moving into our tiny flood plain house. We already bought numbers for the front of it because it doesn't have any right now. Can't wait to only be on ONE FLOOR!

And like the dork that I am, I'm probably most excited about our oversized garage. Mr.C is in charge of "wealth management" and I'm in charge of "tools and fixin' stuff." I definitely have the better end of that deal, until I can't fix something and it costs us $200 to get the plumber or handyman or whoever out.

Then I have to present the issue to Mr.C and tell him how it's going to cost twice as much as he thinks it should. That end of my deal isn't so great. He's not "cheap" per se, but he hates to spend money unnecessarily. But sometimes you just have to hire a pro and do it right. 

Regardless, I have a place to hang all my tools. We're even getting me a proper toolbox! *grunt!*

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I was cleaning out my desk stuff today and found my autographed photo of John Lynch, my first sports boyfriend. I still think that guy is the cat's meow. Wish I could find an online version of the pic I have. It's ubersexy. This will have to do:

#PantySoup

I'd probably still have some semblance of football fannage left in me if he still played. Any wonder my favorite position, after kickers (poor little weirdos), is safety. :) #mmmmlastlineofdefense