Anyway, I just ordered this shirt. If you know me, you don't I don't part with money easily when it's for stuff I don't really need, but when I saw this on Twitter for $6, I knew I'd regret it forever if I didn't buy it.
The fact that this shirt even exists is funny, much less a sieve like me wearing it. It's aces. Just 110% aces, my friends. I cannot wait for it to get here. And for $9.99 shipping, it better fuckin' get here in a hurry.
Seriously, isn't there something The Man can inject in my knee to make it better by, say, Thursday? Hell, I'm willing to give it until Saturday. Okay, Sunday at 9:30 p.m.?
Whatever, I just really feel aimless not being able to play hockey. I can't even imagine what that's like when it's your job. At least I can still do my job (thank heavens I do that a little better than I play goal). But really, would a little bit of human growth hormone or whatever it is the studs take on the hush-hush to heal up faster be such a big ask for this weekend warrior?
Fine. I'm just grumpy. I don't just miss playing. I miss walking without a limp. I miss being able to move around without worrying about tweaking my knee.
That said, it does seem to be getting the tiniest bit better. But I'm still missing my second weekend in a row of being on the ice and that sucks. I've already committed to playing next Monday, and of course, Sunday for Novice, so I'm really hoping I'm good enough by then.
Honestly, it's a shitload harder to make the decision not to play than it is to just "man up" and play anyway. Staying home carries a lot more fear and insecurity than playing hurt does. Fear of looking like a sissy, of losing your spot, of being deemed "unreliable", etc. It sucks.
Have I mentioned my shoulder is jacked up, too? Yeah, 35 is turning out great. Maybe me and DiPietro can lick each others... wounds....
One thing I did kinda figure out is that this pain feels and behaves very much like my achilles tendinitis did. So now I'm looking at the solutions that fixed that and seeing if maybe they help with this. It involves deep, extremely painful massage of the damaged muscles in my groin and calf, which I'm trying to do myself for now, but I may end up seeing if my MT can work on me, too. We'll see. At least it's a direction to go in for now.
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So, I got my haircut last week, which rocked cuz I don't do it often. They have a new guy working there and he got his claws in me and waxed my brows, too. The shape is amazing. Queer Eye for the Hockey Girl, it was.
Anyway, while I was waiting, I was reading a Cosmo magazine for the first time since my early 20s. I quit reading magazines like that back then because I realized they were just warping my sense of self and my self esteem.
It really struck me while reading the feature article on Lada Gaga. Now, I'm not a big Gaga fan, but I respect her for pretty much showing up, doing things her way, and being a huge success at it. But this interview with her was literally question after question about men, relationships, etc.
I get that that's Cosmo's angle, but damn, here's a chance to feature a woman who kicked ass on her own terms and all they wanna know is what she looks for in a man? Who gives a shit? The whole article, I kept wishing she'd just say, "I'm a lesbian. So, can we talk about me now? *I* don't even care who I'm fucking as much as you people care!"
Anyway, I was reminded why I don't even bother with those mags. I'm convinced they turn you vapid and needy and encourage women to be someone they're not just to please men. Well, not YOU personwhoreadsMsConductANDCosmo, but the rest of them. You know who I'm talking about.
Not to say I haven't had a few glaring moments of hypocrisy on this front.... damn goalies.
Hey, and while I'm on empowering women, if you're ever in a "crazy bitch with subtitles" kinda mood, dial up La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson's French version) on Netflix or wherever and enjoy. I haven't watched it in years but that was on heavy rotation back in my 20s. If I ever get my name put on a jersey, I'm gonna put Nikita. She'd stop your puck and kill you before you're done with your follow-through.
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How about my freaking Blue Jays!!?! I'm totally taking credit for how lens flare and happy cat they are this season. Yeah, I know they haven't played anyone. Shut up. Let me enjoy it before angry little girl sets in.
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Just learned that they make Stetson Black... which is apparently the "sexy" Stetson fragrance. Um. Jesus.
Speaking of tingling down there, look who made it on to a fake billboard for the Aeros! Seeks it, huh? Heh.
Honestly, if that were a real billboard, I'd would find a reason to drive that way no matter where I'm going. "I'm going to Katy, but, uh, I'm gonna swing by Pearland first."
The Earth is literally off its axis due to the Chilean earthquake!
Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).Crunchy, you have my permission to use this as your excuse for letting in that game winner from Crosby, too.
I'm too angry tonight to write much about drop-in. It was a bad night. Top to bottom. I've never said this about playing goal, but I wish I'd just stayed home.
My instinct was to not go, because I was feeling tired and fried mentally from kind of a draining 24 hours prior, but I made a commitment to play for this group every week. I should have made a plan for how to deal with it when things didn't go my way. Something to focus on so that I didn't get dragged under my own mental bog of ... whatever... that's sitting on me this week.
I won't even talk about the game. It would all be deemed excuse-making and maybe another week where I'm not on The Brink anyway, I would have coped better, but I coped for shit. I just got angry and discombobulated.
Moreover, I didn't have fun and as much as I want to blame everyone else, it was on me to keep the right attitude in the face of adversity, and I didn't muster the strength and composure to do that.
There's so much more I want to say, but I just need to cool down and get some perspective and try to learn from this.
Lesson for the night: Don't let the play of the team in front of you affect YOUR confidence level in net.
I don't play again until Sunday. Hopefully I'll find some peace and not want to hack people to bits with my stick by then. Have a therapeutic lunch scheduled with my friend tomorrow so I can hopefully exorcise the demons that are plaguing me off-ice (but I'm apparently bringing them on the ice with me, if tonight is any indication).
Man. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, eh? But this blog has always been about documenting this journey and keeping it as real as I can without getting too many people mad at me. Sometimes I'm just a bitch, and sometimes it sucks being the goalie and sometimes I just want to make saves with a motherfucking shotgun. Tonight's one of those nights.
Let's mellow out, bitches:
Ya ever have one of those nights where you give someone a wide open net and they whiff, fall down, and your defense accidentally puts the puck in your net on the clearing attempt?
That's kinda how I'm feeling tonight.
Thankfully my on-ice performance actually wasn't too shabby.
In fact, if I'd been keeping score, I think I might have won, because the other goalie got so lazy in the second half that she didn't even go down for shots. It was weird. But whatever. Way to make me look like a hard motherfuckin' worker out there. I'll take all the help I can get.
I may have some video to post, as my pal Snik came out and took video of about the last 3o or 40 minutes. Maybe you'll get to see them burn me glove side about seventy-billion times. Fucking glove.
A couple of things:
I got my Maltese neck and clavicle guard from UPS today and wore it tonight. As reviews promised, I didn't notice it at all while playing. Very comfortable, didn't really add to the heat, and the best part? SILENCE... I could move my head and the annoying plastic rattle of the dangler didn't jar my brain. Ahhh... Bliss!
The only problem is the "new" smell of it, even overpowered the stink of everything else I wear (which is really saying something). Kind of a chemical smell, so I'm hoping a few washes and that will dissipate. Still better than an odorless, noisy dangler.
Also, I wear these old cotton yoga pants when I play. I'd put knee pads in one pair because I was banging my knees on the ice when I went down, and I've been wearing those for several months. But tonight for some reason, I wore the pair without the knee pads and WOW was my butterfly so much better!!
I guess the thickness of the knee pads was interfering with the pads turning on my leg and without them and with the work I've been doing on that, they just flip down perfectly almost every time. Now I just need to work on being more vertical when I go down. I tend to let my weight fall backward a bit and I about ended up in the splits a couple of times. Ouch. But hey, I'll take progress.
And my knees don't feel banged up at all, so perhaps the knee pads are a thing of the past, too. That would be great since I have to keep re-sewing them.
Anyway, a good night in goal.
Raise your hand if you saw this coming after last night's terrifically cocky outing:
Tonight was a nightmare come true. From top to bottom. I was bad. I got absolutely no help, which just made me worse and worse. Deeper and deeper in my crease. I might as well have not even been there in the second half.
It was like I was playing on the moon compared to last night. Jesus H...
I can't even bring myself to try and be funny about it.
Worse even, I got bitchy about it. Now granted, they did come in offside once and score on me, but that was just something for me to focus my frustration on. I was frustrated with myself and just couldn't find a way to cope with it in the moment. Like a goddamn 5 year old. I was not a cool goalie tonight.
Chalk it up as a lesson in mental discipline. Or at least how NOT to do it.
And when I went down, they went top shelf. When I stayed up, they kept it on the ice. My timing was atrocious, I was getting burned back door to start and then I started cheating to cover the pass (I know, I know), so they'd keep it and pick a corner since I was off angle and too deep almost all the time.
In fact, I might have been just as well served to leave the ice entirely and stand behind the net there and take my shirt off and jump up and down. At least that might have made them miss the net.
Can't tell you how many times I looked up and there were 4 darks in a semi-circle in front of me and no white sweaters. Ahh, the joys of drop-in defense. But that doesn't matter. I gotta get out there and make them work harder for their goals.
Also, my left quad and hip were throbbing almost from the start. Hopefully the time I'm about to have off will help get that better, whatever is going on there. The thought of a massage right now brings tears to my eyes at how marvelous it would be. And yet I don't have time before I fly out tomorrow.
Okay. I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep and say some prayers of apology for sullying the good name of goaltending, women's hockey, RBK, Hackva, Memorial City Ice Rink, Korea, the Aeros, etc.
Sing it, Annie!!!
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