Hot and bothered, plus some Clutterbutter to spread on your Monday

So I'm finally catching up on my Google Reader news and seeing that the GMs are considering ditching the trapezoid that prevents goalies from playing the puck other than directly behind the net.

And I have to admit, especially after reading Razor's take on it with regard to Marty Turco, who already sends me into a frenzy with his third D-man shtick, to think that my favorite goalies, those lovely puck-movers, would be free to "roam the zone" and maximize their talents truly has me hot and bothered.

Dear GMs,

Vote YES on Prop 69, Removal of cock-blocking trapezoid bullshit rule. RAWR!

Sincerely,
Ms. C

As much as this is WAY less important than putting in place rules around hits to the head (love the "waiting for someone to get killed first" tactic the league is taking, BTW), this is one item for which I'm following the bureaucratic/political/horseshit end of the game with rapt attention.

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A wee Clutterbutter update for ya. Google Alerts found me this video (15 freaking minutes!) of him working out, skating, etc. The video was so jerky for me, I could barely watch it but maybe you'll have better luck.

Also, here's an update from the Wild on the Mo-Bros aka the godawful mustaches the boys are growing (for a great cause, so I'm trying not to make too many faces about it).

Cal looks like a Muppet. Those eyebrows + the stache. I dunno. Sorry Cal. I still love ya, and searches for "cal clutterbuck girlfriend" are not remotely on the downswing, so I think you're good to go. As one Russovillian put it today, "clutterbuck could fornicate with a minor at center ice and people would stand and cheer." So, you know, wear them whiskers any way you want.

Kobasew, OTOH, looks like goddamn Brad Pitt, which if I thought Brad Pitt was hot, I'd be really impressed. Maybe I'm impressed anyway, just not particularly interested.

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Call off the dogs. I've ordered a new car charger for my XM radio. Only a few more days of Houston radio. The "good" station I settled on last night was playing Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA remix when I got in the car today. *sigh* The search continues.

UPDATE: AHHHH! After scouring my car, I found the missing piece of the charger! Order canceled (hopefully) and XM back on the air in the Ms.Conductmobile! It's a Party in the USA!

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Goal-Setting Sunday & other stuff

So, after last weeks misery and some help from lots of folks to pull me out of my mental funk, I had my chance to redeem myself tonight with a novice game.

It was one of those fucked up nights where I played like shit but my team played great and we ended up winning. My first win in a long time, and while I wish I could take some credit for it, I think my D could have kept the score lower if they'd just been playing a 3rd D back.

HOWEVER....

I'm not beating myself up. I'm staying positive. Because I went in to tonight with the goal of just "moving up" when I could see blue paint in front of me. And I did that all night. I stayed at the top of my crease and just tried to get used to not seeing paint. It actually wasn't as scary as I thought it would be and it made me feel more confident the more I got used to it.

But, I think maybe I was relying too much on my depth to save me, because I had a real problem being square to the puck rather than the shooter, and I had a few go past my toes that I really should have had.

So, tomorrow night, we build on this progress with the main objective continuing to be, "If you see blue paint, move up" but also keeping somewhere in mind to stay square to the puck, not the shooter. I guess playing at the top of my crease, I have more ground to cover to stay square, so I'll have to get used to that.

I think what's happening is that I've just gotten so balled up in this and that, that my fundamentals have just gone to shit, so I'm really just having to simplify big time. Almost like I've built up this certain level of strength and skills and knowledge, and it's time to circle back and make repairs to the foundation.

I feel good though. All I can do is keep learning and building on whatever progress I make.

Fun things from the night were when I skated out to play a puck that was floating in on me. I thought I got pretty good wood on it but a red player got it and I didn't get back fast enough and they scored. But I'm okay with that. I'm gonna fuck that up a few times before I start to get it right. I should have moved the puck to the boards rather than trying to use a lane up the center of the ice. Next time I'll do that better.

Also, you know how sometimes you see a goalie in his crease and his d-man has the puck behind the net and there's an opposing player in on the forecheck who is just kinda crowding the crease, waiting for the d-man to make his move. And then the goalie will skate up really fast to sort of "scare" them back away from the net? I finally got to do that tonight and it actually worked! It startled her and she backed right off... though we were both laughing about it. :)

Anyway, enough of that. On to the "other stuff"...

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I forgot to mention in my game report from the Aeros game yesterday that I actually got to see former President Bush (the dad) Saturday night. We were headed to the locker room to interview and got held up because they had his SUV there to take him home.

So, he was walking to his SUV about 10 feet from me and he sees me and gives me a wave! I was like, Holy crap! I totally didn't vote for you and I think your son is a slack-jawed idiot, but you were the freaking president! So, HIII!!!!! *wavewavewave*

He's still pretty dapper, I have to say. It was cool that he and Barb and some grandkid of theirs came out to the game. Glad the boys put on a great show for him and that their presence works better for the Aeros than it does for the Astros. Ha.

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Finally had to toss my original mask sweat band after the game tonight. The end of an era, my friends. It was starting to not be very absorbent any more, or at least starting to leak way too early in the game. I was getting big drips into my face after only an hour. Used to, it would hold the sweat back for 2+ hours without issue.

So, we'll see tomorrow night how these new ones I got off ebay work.

Speaking of gear, I'm IN LOVE with my Maltese neck/clav protector. Took me about 3 games but it's comfortable and doesn't smell and is soft and not hot. I LOVE being dangler-free!!!!

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Yeah, so another 3 in 3 this week, but the off-ice distractions I had last week have been put to rest and I'm feeling good having a plan. Thank you to Absolute Mental Training for the work you put into articles so that we amateurs can benefit from your knowledge. Some day I'll be a better goalie for it, but I'm already a happier goalie for it.

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The power plug for my XM radio broke today and I had to listen to regular Houston radio. God, what a miserable thing. I literally put at least 20 miles in today with my radio on SCAN because it was better than committing to one of the 30 Tejano stations or 20 country stations or 10 R&B stations.

I finally found a mix station on the way home that played a whole two good songs in a row. I gotta get my XM working pronto. I drive too much lately, and late at night... I need my XM.

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My song for the night has caught my attention because the singer has a "second coming of Dolly Parton" in her voice. Take a listen and try and tell me I'm wrong:



I'm a huge Dolly fan though, so that's a good thing in my book. Love it.

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Quick Hits: Fake It Til You Make It

One of the things I'm learning as I get older, and is being heavily reinforced as a goalie, is that I'm in charge of my emotional and mental status. It's a tough lesson, because it's much easier to just ride the waves of your emotions and screw you if you don't like that I'm a crabby bitch all the time.

But sometimes you hit weeks like I'm having where the grumpy/angry/hurt/FAIL/rejected feelings just won't shake. I'm not excited about anything, especially playing goal. Usually by now I'm ready to get out there and redeem a bad game, but right now, I just still feel burned out and tired. In fact, I last played Tuesday night and only this morning found the will to deal with my gear bag. Yuck.

Part of that is that I really just am tired. I'm pleading my case to get a really, really lazy Saturday tomorrow. Nap when I'm tired and watch football and then the Aeros game. Hopefully that means my batteries will be recharged on Sunday.

But the other part of it is that I just need to suck it up and pepper myself with positive thoughts.

I have been dreaming about goal, so it just goes to show that my mind knows what I need to be doing. And that is, figuring out how to avoid another night like Tuesday, or at least how to turn it around mid-stream.

#1 is if I see blue paint in front of me, to move up. No judgment or fear, no "you're playing too deep again" or "what if I can't get back?"

Just "move up."

In fact, that may be the only thing I worry about Sunday. I need to develop faith in that behavior and I wager that's one of the hardest things to do as a new goalie.

I promise, this is my last big pity party sigh.

*sigh*

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My colleague over at In Goal Mag has a great post on the goalie mask chin strap. Took me AGES to figure out what the chin strap even was. At least on Hackvas, it's a very unfriendly kind of strapping material, and though it doesn't touch skin, it just seems like an uncomfortable thing to have to fasten. So I just never have.

Plus, you always see goalies flipping their masks up (ahhh, precious cool air to the head!) without unfastening anything, so I'm thinking, "What is this? To hang it by?" LOL Apparently I need a mask from IKEA with pictures on how to use.

Anyway, a good read for my goalie readers. And if you're not already subscribing to IGM, why not? Hutch is relentless in his drive to find great goalie content to post there, which makes it a truly unique site and I'm just privileged to be a small part of it.

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I noticed that someone came to the T3I site from one of those "info compilation" pages that gathers resources on a subject from all over the web and puts them on one page for you.

The subject of the page was Barry Brust, but if you go all the way to the bottom, there are some Google Ads. The system tries to tailor the ads to the subject matter, so what you get is an ad for Berry Burst.
Not sure what exactly they mean to be selling, but after a quick search, it appears there is Berry Burst-flavored Metamucil in case you need fiber, and Berry Burst Cheerios in case you need breakfast, and Berry Burst "energy chews" in case you need caffeination. There's a whole Berry Burst diet out there if you're into that sort of thing.

Better yet, when Brusty has to nut a bastard for screening or generally being a dick around the net, it should be officially called the Berry Burst™. Feel free to use that, B.

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I always forget how much I like Jane's Addiction until I happen to hear one of their songs on the radio. Heard this one yesterday and it's been stuck in my head since. Is it fair to say they have a certain timelessness? Or is it just that I never managed to get overexposed to them and so, never tired of them?



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John Scott actually pulls off the stache pretty well. @mnwild Very nice.

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Cross the blue line with that thing and I'm pulling the trigger

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:

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Quick Hits: Take off, hoser!

First up, I know I'm always demanding you read this blog or that blog, but I try to only feed y0u the very best stuff.

Justin Bourne is at it again, this time taking on the homophobic culture of hockey. Read the original piece here and his response to the response (so far) here.

I frankly don't have a lot to say about the subject, other than I support the sentiment. I certainly don't contribute to the problem as it seems like there are a lot funnier ways to make fun of people, especially in a sport as humbling as hockey, but I think it's a guy thing.

And really, sometimes my dealings with some men are so bewildering and frustrating (probably for them, too), I gotta think the gays are on to something. Stick with your own kind and save a lot of headaches trying to bridge the Mars/Venus gap.

But there's penises and strong arms and that bit of scruffy beard brushing your cheek (not necessarily listed in order of enjoyment, as shocking as that might be to some of you).

Anyway.

Where was I?

Homophobia. Right. But I think I've pretty much said all I want about it. The whole thing just falls under the, "Don't be such a f**king prick" category. But a lot of things are falling under that today.

Kudos to Justin for, as always, writing a really thoughtful piece and showing vulnerability that most guys don't have the stones to show. Takes a big man to say, "I've been doing this wrong, like, forever. I'm sorry. Let's fix it."

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Totally feeling this song today.



Christ, I love Lily Allen.

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And while I'm on video, Wild.com pointed readers to this fun video of Wild goalie coach Bob Mason getting his fight on (and, well, losing) back in the day, plus it's in French.

It's fun to watch a little hockey in French occasionally. It's all "blah blah blah LE BUUUUUUUUT! blah blah blah" to me since I can't do anything BUT acknowledge a goal in French. Oh, and say, "Yes."



Though I gotta say, skater/goalie fights aren't nearly as fun to watch as goalie/goalie fights. Something about a couple'a marshmallows going at is just fabulous. The head butt is pretty nice though.

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More hockey for me tonight. Hips are hurting from going Bambi a few times last night. And I mean that in the "small deer on ice going boom with legs askew" sense. Not any other sense. Wish I had some buddies at this drop-in. I could use a post-game drink that doesn't end in "Lite." For that matter, I could use a mid-afternoon drink.

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SLICE is nice

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.

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Pracky Sunday

Pracky's my new favorite hockey player slang. It's probably just the real hosers who use it, but nobody tell me for a while because I'm enjoying it. It's so much better than praaactice. Ugh. Practice is a drag. But Pracky? Oh! Pracky is fun!

Anyway, lots of positioning work for the skaters and butterfly sliding work for me. Scott TFCG came out and worked with me. I only said, "I'm 34 years old. I'm not doing that." one time, so I figure I was a pretty good student. Heh. We hit a lot of subjects, but it's just nice to have someone to say, "WTF do I do here?" or "I have this problem when I do this" and get an an answer on the spot.

His brother in law is in town, so he skated out and played D for me in the scrimmage. Gotta love when you have a real live Canadian playing in front of you. That's legit.

Nothing really spectacular from the night to report and I'm tired and massively hungry after eating only a granola bar and 2 flour tortillas in the last 12 hours. So, it's off to the kitchen and then bed for me to watch old epis of Trailer Park Boys while I drift off. I haven't met my f-bomb and dope-reference quota for the week, so it's essential that I work a little of that in.

Back to SLICE tomorrow night. Can't tell you how happy I am to be getting this gig on a fairly regular basis. It's a really nice, chick-friendly group and they're a good challenge, on top of the ice being such a pleasure to play on there. Though as cool as it's been, ice all over town should be getting better and better.

It was a little kludgy tonight at Willowbrook but not too bad, other than the HUGE divot in my crease. If we hadn't been close to finishing when I noticed it, I would have gotten someone to put some water in it. It was a good inch deep and 3" wide. You could lose a Ukrainian figure skater in it....
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Aeros lost again tonight. I still think this team is going to pull it together at some point. I still don't like Dubie. I wish they'd let Jaeger get in a game just to see what he can do. Oh well. When they make me the coach...

OK. Fooood. Nooooow.

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