goalie girl

two days in a row without meetings has left me with nubs for nails...

and my cyclosporine swelling is so painful that i'm officially shopping for men's jeans tomorrow at value village.

home turf is 2100 miles away, but my home is still undeclared.

and my own skin weighs as heavy and tight, as an aced up, laced up, strapped on, million dollar uniform.

tonight we caught a hockey game (a.k.a. "the game") between the winnipeg jets and the l.a. kings. winnipeg as a city, has been abnormally obsessed with acquiring an NHL hockey team again, after a 15 year absence, even by canadian standards.

and canadian standards are HIGH.

canadians do not want to win hockey games. they need to win them.

i even played goalie in grades 4 and 5.

[can pucks flying at your head be an analogy for life unmanageable?]

even the most cosmopolitan, sophisticated, cultured (or those who like to think we are) canucks, can't help but feed off the infectious energy when that puck clicks and clacks between sticks. it is a quintessentially canadian experience, that crosses all ages, genders, races and sexual orientations. its power is stranger than fiction. in our cabin, in the sunny, california hills, i watched the gold medal, olympic match between the u.s. and canada, ALONE, and couldn't stop berating the 50 " screen...

["he shoots...he scooooorrrrrrrrreesss!!!!"]

it is mandatory in being canadian:

hockey night in canada.

father/daughter bonding ran deep over the toronto maple leafs in the early 70's. he was an eager subject to his adopted country's king sport, embracing all things hockey from ear splitting slapshots, to helmet-less, tooth-less brawls and the unusual, graceful maneuvering of the almighty zamboni. he was my mvp, and i was his, until don cherry's voice would hypnotize me to sleep, like a countdown, just before the end of the second period intermission.

too hard for the little red haired girl; so deeply worried about the growing collection of molson goldens stacked upon his office floor. too hard for her to keep awake; too alert to the possibility of offside.

and tonight was too hard. tonight was too soon.

two weeks out of rehab, and i'm squished beside a man nursing a beer all night long. (read: long)

[i actually wonder if there could have been MORE beer at the hockey game...sigh...]

i thought a lot about my dad tonight, and how much fun we had together watching games; cramped in his tiny, leathery-scented office and i wondered if he watched any sober.

i don't know if i had that much fun tonight, but i did do it sober.

and i think we would have bonded over that.