Well … it’s a great day.  My much maligned Red Sox have won the World Series.  LightGirl won a game and so did LightBoy.  For a woman who ordinarily doesn’t pay any attention to sports, it’s quite a day.

I was amazed that the Sox won so handily and quickly.  They did well this year.  I watched from afar.  I never hope for too much.  As a Red Sox far since I was a child I learned young.  They fold after the All Star break.  But not in 2004 and not this year.  Who knew?  Every win is a surprise and delight and every loss expected.  I’m such a pessimist when it comes to baseball.  But you know?  When you’ve had 2 World Series championships in 3 years … but the one before that was in 1918, you kinda get a little cynical.

To my friends who are Rockies fans … I am sorry.  Just not very much.

So, here’s to the Red Sox …

And here’s to LightGirl and her team.  I watched something truly remarkable happen this weekend.  I watched a group of girls learn how to play as a team.  I watched synchronicity happen.  They won too.  But the best part was watching them finally “get it.”  Yeah … that was grand.

Here’s my young woman … playing hard last Sunday morning against a tough team. I’m pretty proud of her and her whole team.

Today we’re off for another hockey, hockey weekend. LightHusband and I are taking the Girl up the coast to LibertyCity to play two games and watch a professional game. We found that the NHL hometeam developmental club (or American Hockey League) team is playing tonight. So we’re going to see that game as a team. What fun. LightBoy is staying here with his friends on his team.

Maybe I’ll get Leopard installed next week … sigh!

We just got home from an early hockey game. We played at a new rink in the area. It’s the rink that the Washington Capitals practice in. Ooohhh. Aaaahhhh. There was a certain sweaty aura about the ice there.

It was a hard game. The girls played really hard and really well.

They lost. 8-0.

This morning it was hard work to be a hockey mom. It was, I’m certain, even more difficult to be a hockey girl. It was heart-breaking to watch these girls who I’ve come to love skate their hearts out, do the moves, and get wiped up.

Then, it made me angry.

We faced a team of seventeen 14 year olds. We had 11 on our bench. 2 of those girls just turned 11. So … them’s the breaks you might be saying. Yeah … I could say that.

Here’s the thing though. The team we faced is part of a club that supports girls hockey. It opens up space for the girls to flourish and grow. They don’t just have travel teams. They have house teams that feed into the travel teams. The club board supports the girls program and knows what’s happening on that program at any given time. They get special coaching at the same level that the boys teams get.

Our team? Our team belongs to a club that pays lip service to girls hockey. Last year’s club president didn’t support girls hockey and this years club president doesn’t really either. So we have girls hockey teams. Yep. They’re invited. Yep. We have equality. Girls are present and they are part of the program. Backsasswards County Virginia has girls hockey. Guess how many girls are in the house program right now?

Five.

Five. That’s right. One hand’s worth. That is what happens in a program that does not open up space for the girls to flourish and grow. There is no one coming along in the wings to build the program on. We essentially have a developmental team as a travel team. It is disheartening.

Slowly it seems that things might have a chance to change. CoachWonderWoman has spoken of her plans. The girls have taken some initiative to learn more and practice harder. But still … without that support, leading and space. Without those younger girls coming in from behind to feed into each of the older more experienced teams, all of the plans and initiatives in the world aren’t going to help a team of eleven grow against a team of seventeen. The problem is not with the team … it’s with the club. The problem is not even with the notion of equality. Because that is evident in both clubs. Both clubs have equality of gender, right?

I imagine if you were to talk to the men on the board of our club (which I do need to start doing), you might hear things like, “Maybe we do have a responsibility to do something, but everytime we do the response is, ‘It’s not good enough,’ so I’m sick of doing anything.” or “We have two girls teams … isn’t that good enough?” (two girls teams vs. eleven boys teams) or “I’m tired of everything always coming back to the gender issue, can’t we talk about something else?”

Maybe we can … someday, when we face that team with a more equitable bench.

(Any resemblance the reader may see to the discussion on gender in the church is purely in the eye of the writer.)

Yesterday was hockey, hockey and more hockey.

Lightboy had practice from 7:20 to 8:50 a.m. at our home rink. Meanwhile LightGirl had a game that she needed to be at by 9:40 that was almost 2 hours away. Her team was playing a team that was 2 years older, but they had alluded to the fact that they would bench their older players and play some younger developmental players for this game.

I may have mentioned here that CoachWonderWoman is about the only woman coach that we face, she is certainly the only woman coach in our club. Her coaching style is different from the teams which we face each week. I’m never certain if this is her personal style or if it is in part based upon her gender. Yesterday, I discovered that at least some of the difference is gender.

I may have mentioned that this year I am the team manager for LightGirl’s hockey team. I’m enjoying this role thus far. It doesn’t require too much of me and I get to do some different things that I sorta like. One thing that I’m ambivalent about is that I see more e-mail traffic about scheduling games than the average parent. I don’t know that I need to see this traffic, but I do. In the case of the game we played this past Sunday, it was alluded to by the opposing coach that he would pull back his older, more experienced players for this (non-league) game. It would be a chance for both teams to get some competitive experience without the pressure of league play. All was good.

Our team is significantly smaller (in terms of numbers) than the other team. We had 10 or 11 players there and they had at least 15. This means that we only had 2 full lines and they had at least three. They were able to rotate more players on the ice than we could. I saw a bunch of their players before hand. Now … remember I’ve spent significant years in youth ministry. I know how girls faces and bodies mature. Many of these girls were not under 14. There were at least 5 of them who were nearly capable of driving themselves to the rink.

But … their coach was restrained. For the first two periods. He mixed things up and kept his less mature players on the ice with the more mature players. He did this for a long time. Until it became apparent that doing this might cost him the game.

Then.

All bets were off. He put his best players on a line together and kept them out on the ice for a good long while. His rastafarian hat that one of his players had dared him to wear, came off. He paced the bench. Things looked bleak for our team. But, CoachWonderWoman and AssistantCoachSuperMan never shifted gears. They continued in the same vein and told our girls to keep their wits about them and do their best. It turned out that their best was indeed good enough. They won the game!! 8 to 7. And one of those goals belonged to LightGirl.

It got me thinking, though, about the differences between men and women. Men and women process these sorts of things very differently. They *see* the playing field differently. Men have a deep-seated need to win … at all costs. To women it’s more important to play the game well and fairly AND win. How we play the game is at least as important as winning. Men seem to find winning the sole factor in the game.

I pulled back a little further and now I’m thinking about how this plays out in our culture and more importantly in church. In our male dominated culture and especially the male dominated church, where gamesmanship and winning become the goal of an institution (even when it’s unstated and underground) I think that is how we have come to have these huge megachurches and ministries that “win” more souls than the church around the corner each week.

This is why it’s so important to have both men and women equally involved in leadership … in church and in life.  It’s not just winning.  It’s how you play the game.

I’m exhausted! Up at 5:30 both mornings. Out the door by 7 to go to the first hockey games of the season. LightHusband was out the door even earlier with LightBoy to his practices. The first game was at our home rink on Saturday. The second game was an hour and a half away in Maryland on Sunday. LightGirl scored her first goal on Sunday. Here is the celebration:

As you might imagine, this proud mama whooped it up in the stands for a solid minute. She played a good game yesterday. Strong and focused. All the girls did. They showed up with their heads in the game. It is so amazing to watch these girls play this game and do a good job. I love it. I love watching them be strong, think hard, and overcome places where they were weak previously. I love watching them grow. It makes the early morning sacrifices pale in comparison.

Up for conversation between LightGirl and I during our journey … “Mom, do you think that the girls program at our rink takes second place to the boys program?” Of course, she asked this question during the part of our journey where I had to pay attention to directions. But. I had to answer in the affirmative. Yes, honey it does take a back seat. But there are several reasons for that. First of all it’s a young program. It’s still building and growing. Second. Like it or not, hockey is still primarily a boys sport and girls aren’t as welcome as we’d like them to be. It’s changing, but it’s slow. We talked about how much she likes having Coach Wonderwoman (the only woman coach in our club) as her coach, and the only woman coach we face. We also talked about how Coach Wonderwoman *is* a woman in a man’s club and that makes it hard for her. That alot of people become uncomfortable when women take on roles that are perceived as “men’s” roles. She wanted to know why. I wish I could tell her.

I repeated the bones of this conversation to some of the moms I sit with in the stands. We are of an age together. We talked about the failure of feminism in this country. That we pay lip service to women being equal, but really we are not. There are few women leaders for any of us to look up to. The women that are out in front are set up to fail (Hilary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice being the two I can think of off the top of my head). They are also forced to play by the men’s rules and thus look harsh and ugly. Bitchy. We don’t like women leaders because they are not feminine. The manner in which women lead is entirely different from the manner in which men lead. However, women in leadership are not allowed to fully engage in that leadership style. They are forced to play by male rules in order to gain power. There is little parity.

I wonder how change will come about? What will it take? I hope it is the small things like playing hockey and learning to lead each other by their own standards rather than those of males are the things that will help bring the genders together. I don’t think we need to replace the male with the female … but that we need to enhance the male with the female. That it takes both to bring about good decisions and right leadership. Someday. Someday soon.

So. Painting is indeed taking longer than I thought. It always does.

The green wall is finished. It is a lovely pale shade of celery. I held up one of the drapes next to it last night and felt very accomplished.

BlazingEwe and I just finished putting the first of (maybe) three coats of red on the remaining walls this afternoon.

More tests required more doctors visits this week. More in the future. These have slowed down the progress on the walls. And have made me crabby. Crabby enough that LightBoy passed me a note last night. It said, “Go fabric shopping tomorrow.”

Instead I called my friend and asked for help painting.

Tomorrow LightBoy has early hockey practice. LightGirl has an early game. The first game of the season. The same goes for Sunday. More painting in the afternoons and hopefully we will have finished up by the end of the weekend. I’ll post a photo of the progress tomorrow. It really is pretty. I’m just tired. And, have I mentioned? Crabby.

There also seems to be a dead carcass stinking up our backyard. This also makes me crabby. I do not like smelly backyards. I do not like smelly dead carcasses. It is one of the reasons I live in the suburbs. Really. It is. I endured enough of those as a youngster on the farm. Yuck. Eweth. It must go.

I’ve joined the BlogRush rush. It’s the thing to do. Since everyone is doing it and I have to keep up with the Jones’ I decided I would. So that little widget thingy is there on my sidebar now. May everyone’s traffic increase.

UPDATE:

Pictures of the livingroom as of yesterday evening … more layers of red to happen today.

You can see the new drapes in this one … they look really good with the paint.  I’m looking forward to putting it all together.

We have a new rhythm to our life now.

Hockey.

LightBoy has now joined a team. His team has the traditional o’dark thirty practice on a weekend morning. So this morning saw LightHusband and I up before dawn, traipsing to the rink to watch LightBoy at his first official hockey practice. Today was evaluations. They herded all the Squirts together and put them through their paces. This was to make sure that the talent, and the need, is evenly spread out throughout all three teams. I’m happy to say that while LightBoy towered above all the other children in height, he was dead center in terms of talent and ability. He was also very polite and listened well. It was fun watching all the kids in the rink. I saw something I never saw before. I saw a boy a skate with an imaginary sawhorse between his legs. It was quite a feat, but he accomplished it. With grace.

Then the whole lot of them had to skate backwards. That was priceless. For some, their feet went faster than their legs. For others, their legs moved faster than their feet. Still others it was their bodies which were out of sync with the whole process. But in any case, it was comical all around.

This is LightBoy taking instruction from one of the coaches:

We got home at 7:30 in the morning.

I took a nap.

We then began the process of preparing the livingroom for painting.  It was a mess.  I had LightHusband take some before photos.  Here are one or two.  Just so you know what we’re working with.  Tomorrow I’ll post a photo of what we did today.  Today we cleaned up the room, and moved all the furniture into the middle of the room.  We took everything off the walls, and vacuumed.  Tomorrow I’m going to wash the walls, tape and spackle the holes.  We’ll be ready to paint on Monday.

We missed our deadline.  But I’ll have photos to show my counselor that we’ve made some serious progress.  It will be finished this week.  Our goal is to have the entire downstairs and our bedroom painted by Thanksgiving.  LightHusband’s family is coming for Thanksgiving.  But hey, with every weekend day being 4 days instead of 2 because of this new hockey rhythm we might just accomplish this goal.

I have to keep reminding myself to breath. There just doesn’t seem to be time to do that. I’m running, running, running and getting nowhere fast.

A recap of the last three days.

Tuesday. Wake up at 4:30, pack the last few things. Shower. Get in the car and sit for 10 hours. Arrive at home at 3:30. Check the house … the house doesn’t look nearly as clean as I thought I’d left it. But it is … I’m just slightly neurotic. Unpack all the dirty clothes and sort into hampers with the LightChildren. Get back into the car with hockey gear. Go to hockey practice. Re-connect with team and parents. Make certain discoveries about a dinner of crow that I must eat. Return home for twenty minutes. Run out to another meeting til about 10:15. Second meeting a complete waste of time.

While en route to second meeting (this meeting is at Curves and is part of a non-diet guided eating program I am participating in), I see a very large and obese woman driving in a car near me. She is eating something scrumptious. I immediately become jealous and angry with her. What is WRONG with me? Now I’m jealous of large, overweight women?? Because they can eat whatever they want without dire consequences. I, on the other hand, suffer bags of hot nails when I eat scrumptious things. There is no justice. Not that I actually **want** to blow up like a blimp, but … you know … I also want some ice cream. I am having to face my inner demons of emotional eating. They are legion. When you really do only eat to live and can no longer use food as a tool to assuage every other emotion you have … well … then you have to actually feel the other emotions. It can get dicey. Let’s just also say that these last several days have been those particular days when a woman has *lots* of extra emotions to feel and leave it at that.

Wednesday. Wake up at 6 a.m. and wonder what on God’s green earth is wrong with me that I’m up so early. But I’m going to run with it. Make a “to do” list. It looks do-able. Start on the “to-do” list. Get side-tracked by breakfast. Get sidetracked again by attempting to locate cereal which was mis-packed from trip home. Continue this downward spiral. Eventually end up writing e-mail, making phone calls and then eating breakfast by 10 a.m. Remember that meal of crow? Yes. That too, was eaten on this fine morning.

Leave at 1 p.m. Take LightBoy to Latin class. Go to my counseling session. It was a good session. Several epiphanies were illuminated and I felt lighter. Return to pick up LightBoy and do some block design with BlazingEwe and another friend. This turned into some supportive counseling for all three of us. Return home. Turn around and take LightGirl to another session of hockey practice. Home by 9:30.

Today. Up at 6 again. Screw the to do list. It just highlights my shortcomings. Take LightGirl to her follow up orthopedist appointment. She has been released to full play. No goalie yet. She has to be able to drop and get up without using her stick for support (about another 4 to 6 weeks). Come home. Fight with the printer to print ONE page. Lose the fight. Go to Staples for school supplies and to laminate a couple of things. Fight with LightBoy over booksock. Win the fight. He pouts. Return home for lunch. Leave again for my annual physical. My doctor is very concerned that I have not been recuperating from my little bout with pancreatitis very well. She says I need to see the gastroenterologist … like … tomorrow. Not next month. So. I am. Return and spend time with Blazing Ewe. Go to grocery store. Have dinner. Fight with LightBoy over spinach salad. Win again. He doesn’t pout.

One interesting thing happened while I waited for my doctor’s appointment. There was a young boy about LightGirl’s age also in the waiting room. He had on a very nice pair of sneakers. He also had a cell phone. All of a sudden, I noticed he took off one of his shoes and put it on a chair. He stood up, backed away from the chair and took a photo of his shoe with the cell phone. Now … I don’t know about any of you … but I am dying to know why he took that photo. There just has to be a good story there.

Tomorrow, I go back to the doctors … the gastro’s at 8:15 a.m.

I just want to get into the school room and clean it up. I need to plan next week. I want to get some organizing done so we can get this show on the road. It’s just killing me. Maybe tomorrow afternoon.

It’s just been a killer re-entry … that’s all I can say.

… a week makes.

This morning I woke up at the regular time.  Having only been woken by a spectacular thunderstorm in the middle of the night.  There was no pain in my mid-section.  I did not feel like clawing my body in half.  And I had slept all night.  This was in marked difference to last Thursday night.

I am on the mend.  It’s very slow going and that makes me a little crabby.  I don’t recuperate well.  I may have mentioned a time or two in the past that patience is not one of my gifts.  Nor do I want it.  I understand that it’s a fruit of the spirit.  But as far as I’m concerned it’s the grapefruit of the spirit.  You need to add a lot of sugar to make it palatable.

My doctor told me to add foods as I felt able and to keep them low fat.  Oh bother.  It seems this sludge in my gall bladder will respond to low fat.  So I’m calling this my sludge free eating.  It sounds less mean and stingy.  The very last thing I’m to add back is dairy.  This is presenting a problem because dairy foods are my comfort foods.  I love milk, cheese and yogurt.  LightHusband teases me that I’d make a great Middle Ages woman … just give me bread and cheese and I’m happy.  Soy is out because I’m allergic to it.  So that leaves fish (yuck), chicken and beans for sources of protein.  I guess I’m going to learn to like fish.  I’ve rediscovered Jello.  I love red Jello and forgotten it.  And LightHusband found an organic applesauce that comes very, very close to a replacement for ice cream.  Now, if you knew how much I love, love, love ice cream you’d know how astonishing that statement is.  I’m still going to “need” ice cream once in a while, but this applesauce is darn good.  I see a gastroenterologist in early October to begin the process of figuring out why this happened.
In other news, LightGirl had a followup with her orthopedist yesterday, and he gave her the green light to start skating again.  NO PLAYING HOCKEY.  She can skate, but she can’t play.  She can practice, but she can’t play.  He was very specific about her boundaries.  But he was also very, very pleased with the progress she’s made.  She’s doing a lot of walking now without her brace or crutches.  She still can’t completely flex her leg straight, but she’s very close and she’s much stronger now than she was three weeks ago.  However, I do think she may have lost some of that tone in the last 24 hours because she’s just been floating around the house and not using her leg at all 😀 she’s been so happy.

Sooo … all in all we’ve been given the green light to return to Vermont for the last week of the summer.  This is good because my brothers and their families will be gathered at camp the last weekend of August.  So we’ll be having a mini-family reunion then.  I’m looking forward to seeing all the nieces and the nephews together.  Laughing with my brothers in the way that we only do when we’re together.  Teasing my mom and dad.  Watching my brothers be uncles and getting to be the auntie to their kiddos.  Life is good.

After interminable waiting for an MRI and then for the reading of the MRI, we got the news yesterday that LightGirl does indeed have a tear on the anterior horn of the tibial surface of the left meniscus.  Uhhhh … okay.  So, now we go see an orthopedist, right?  Right.  Her doctor gave me the names of three practices to call and the advice to call all of them and take the first available appointment.  Okay.  Where do I find the phone numbers?  In the phone book.  Huh?  The phone book?  That antique?

As chance would have it the first office had a cancellation for 1 p.m. this afternoon.  Alrighty then.  Dr. Gabriel Gluck.  I recognized the name because I see his office sign every time I leave my place of exercise and think that his name is unfortunate.  He has had a practice next to the hospital for as long as I can remember, because I’ve always wondered about his name.

When we appeared for her appointment the waiting room was empty.  She was wearing one of her many hockey t-shirts … this one happened to have the 2006 Stanley Cup champions on it.  Some minutes later another patient arrived; a 20’s-ish man and his tiny daughter … who was adorable and outgoing with her tiny pink Crocs on and carrying a bright orange balloon.  She started charming everyone in the place including LightGirl and I.  Her dad mentioned that he wouldn’t hold it against LightGirl for liking the ‘Canes, but he was a Canadiens fan as he was from Canada.  And so we began chatting about hockey and why LightGirl was even here, etc.  We were happy to discover that Dr. Gluck was originally Canadian!  Originally a hockey player!  And loves to treat hockey players.  Hah!!!  What serendipity.  Upon further conversation we also discovered that TinyCrockCharmer had been named for a hockey player and her father is a youth pastor at a local church.  It was a lovely visit to the doctor’s office and we hadn’t even seen the doctor yet.

Upon a thorough examination which included more x-rays done right there at the office, we were pleased to discover that LightGirl will NOT need surgery for this.  In fact, as it turns out, the meniscus tear is not the culprit at all.  She has hyper-mobile ligaments and her knee cap (patella) had become unstable because of all the activity during her hockey camp.  This caused a downward cycle of pain and instability between her quadricep and patella that continued until she couldn’t use her knee because her quad became increasingly weak which caused further instability, etc.  So, she needs physical therapy to rebuild the quad and stabilize the patella.  With some patience and persistence she should be back on the ice in about six weeks.  Yay for a good sports med doctor … from Canada who likes hockey players 😀

It was … all in all … a good afternoon.