At the Hockey Game


Is it game? Or match? Or maybe meet? I have no idea. It was Fan Appreciation Night at Rexall Place, which is where the Edmonton Oilers play their home games. It is games, I think. We did not see them. We watched a WHL junior game. The Oil Kings versus the Rebels, who are from Red Deer. Both teams are just about dead last in their division and when we left, after the second period (it’s period, right?) because Katy was getting tired and it was late, the Oil Kings were winning 4 to 1. That’s goals. I do know that. But not much more.

 

My husband, Rob, has played hockey nearly all his life, and my late husband, Will, was nearly as interested in hockey as he was in NFL football, but even with their combined instruction so far – I still can’t make heads or tails of the game. Why is some body slamming against the wall (or is it boards?) okay and other times it elicits a time-out (that’s a penalty and you sit in a box for it)? I don’t know and neither does anyone else because when I ask, I get the “it all depends” speech, which leaves me as unenlightened as ever. 

 

Katy thoroughly enjoyed herself. She got to have popcorn and a Coke. She is almost never allowed pop (it’s pop up here not soda) and that in itself is noteworthy. There was plenty of extraneous activity to keep even the marginally interested spectator engaged. Things like the usual t-shirt giveaway every 10 minutes or so, and some blond toothy twenty-something who kept popping up on the big screen above the ice to yammer at the crowd about prizes and giveaways and contests whenever eager young people in the employ of the arena were not hurling things at the spectators. I asked Rob if he recognized the young man. Was he a local celebrity? TV or radio? Only to be reminded by my husband that we don’t watch TV. Right. Hard to keep up on the local talking heads when you listen to XM exclusively and read the newspaper to find things out about the world – mostly beyond Alberta because if you only watched the local TV stations for news, you might wonder if the rest of the world had been destroyed in some geological disaster or nuclear accident that we didn’t hear about here because, well, it didn’t happen in Alberta.

 

Unlike the last hockey….thing….I attended with Will about eight or nine years ago this one flew by, but mainly because I was sitting next to Katy. She had many questions about the goings on. Most of them I couldn’t answer with any degree of accuracy, but she appeared to be fine with that. She was very concerned about the officials’ safety and well being.  Probably something to do with their decided lack of protective gear. She also seemed a bit worried about the players who jumped over the wall onto the ice instead of using the door.  She wondered about the coaches and decided that she didn’t want to be a hockey player herself because I mistakenly referred to the intermissions between periods, as “time-outs” and she didn’t like to be timed out.

 

As we were leaving, I became aware that my boots were glued to the floor by some congealed liquid. Pop, no doubt but aside from this, the arena was remarkably clean. Even the washroom. If you know me, you know that I have an aversion to public washrooms due to their general state of disgustingness. The washrooms at Rexall Place have that worn out look that much of Canada’s public areas do but it was clean. There was even a washroom attendant to mop up the sink area which, if you watch Oprah at all, you know is just a cesspool of germs that makes sitting on the toilet seat about the cleanest thing a person can do in a washroom.

 

Katy acquired an Oil Kings flag in the gift shop on the way out and wheedled unsuccessfully for a jersey (I would have liked a t-shirt myself), and we emerged from the arena to find it was still snowing as hard as it had been when we arrived. Winter is cruel. Parking lots and sidewalks have been snow free and dry since early in the week and spring threatened. And so, it follows that snow must fall. It is only mid-March and this is Canada – as I am reminded often when I read about the warming and melting back in Iowa.

 

Katy is excited about her next hockey game. She has a flag to wave now and knows that if she wants something free thrown at her, she must stand up and wave or dance for the webcam like the little boy that the perky talking head spoke to at one point in his give-away madness. The boy looked about eight or nine and would dance suggestively on demand much to the delight of the crowd. Rob remarked that the kid would be much in demand by the ladies someday, provided that he was playing on that team.

 

I think a hockey game here and there would make a nice family outing. Like hiking  and camping, it is a Canadian thing to do and we are fast forgetting our American ways in favor of our new home.

 

 

Letters Between Lovers


I was tag surfing and discovered a blog entry on Nicole Shannon’s Making Waves around the Reservoir about a joint venture between the U.S. Postal Service and HBO to promote letter writing. HBO is showing (or about to show – I don’t know ’cause I don’t watch TV) a mini-series on John Adams. The series is based on the book by David McCullough – who is a fabulous historian by the way and I love, love, loved him best of all the narrators involved in Ken Burn’s Civil War extravaganza (I could, and have, watched that series for hours at a time). The only other person who comes close is Shelby Foote (I love the stories he told about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a pretty heinous person overall but a great horse soldier), he has southern drawl that just melts your earlobes. Anyway, the John Adams biography by McCullough was based largely on the letters that John and his wife Abigail wrote to each other over the course of their courtship and marriage. One letter I remember has Abigail reminding her husband to press harder for women’s rights during the spring of 1776.

“…remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” 

 Something I didn’t know until recently was that women in Colonial times possessed the right to vote in most colonies so long as they were property owners. Voting was a privilege reserved to those holding property and gender didn’t matter. It wasn’t until after the Revolution that women were specifically stripped of this right by the new states as they crafted their individual constitutions. The oppression of women is never an accident. HBO is just looking for publicity but the Postal Service is hoping to revive the lost art of letter writing, which has been lost to the phone – land and cell, texting and email/messaging. John and Abigail wrote 1,100 letters back and forth over 56 years. Wow. She called him “dearest friend” and he addressed her as “Miss Adorable”. Do you suppose Bill and Hillary send each other missives with their special pet names for each other? Okay, maybe not. But Rob and I did have quite the exchange of emails going on during the long distance phase of our romance. That and IM sessions that stretched into the wee hours and phone conversations that surpassed even them. But, I have written about this before and I bring it up now only because I am moving my archived posts from my .mac blog to this one and was rereading entries from last spring and up almost up to our wedding last June. I have forgotten many of those pieces. It’s like reading someone else but it’s me. 

I told Rob about my topic for tonight after he wondered why I needed to know the name of a famous Southern Civil War Calvary general (and I asked him because I knew he would know or probably know. It’s nice to be able to ask obscure and out of the blue American history questions of one’s life mate and be assured they will have little trouble catching your train of thought). He rolled his eyes a bit. I think he gets a bit embarrassed about the way I gush about him. A lot. What’s the point of keeping his wonderfulness a secret though, I ask you? Even as I type this, he is rubbing my foot and reading me snippets of the latest Johnny Virgil. What an awesome man. My husband that is though I am sure JV is a nice guy too.

It’s been almost a year since our trip to Arkansas and our engagement. I was telling the story to Kathy and Susan at writing group Wednesday night and instead of being shocked at the brief span of our courtship; they both agreed that when you know, you just know. And we knew. Still do. We don’t write those long letters anymore. Hardly email at all, but so many other things have replaced those early expressions of love. Like foot rubs and reading to each other from the newspaper and blogs and books we are currently reading. 

Getting My Hair Done


I was dragging around yesterday at lunch and Rob noticed. He asked me what was wrong and I told him I had a hair appointment and didn’t feel like going. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like anything to be morose about and it seems silly, but as I explained to Rob – I just wanted to do something other than sit for two hours in a salon making small talk with my stylist. Fredrique is a nice man, but we rarely ever talk about anything but American politics and American cultural defects. Cindy, my previous stylist, would chat with me about kids – mine and hers and tell me what she’d been up to. The time went by much faster. But the best thing about Cindy is that she would let me not talk if that’s what I wanted. I didn’t feel any pressure to fill the air or entertain her. And then there was the sitting for two hours without much to do. Okay, I could have taken a book and I did talk my yoga for dummies, but I really wanted to spend some serious time on my writing. My writing muse is feeling quite neglected and isn’t happy with the snatched moments I have been getting in the past couple of weeks. Life calls and I answer and the muse knows this is the reality, but she was pouty yesterday because my best friend sent me a very belated birthday gift of a novel formatting program. The muse very much wanted to spend a few hours with it yesterday, but I had this hair appointment. We are finally getting to take our honeymoon as part of the trip. Katy is staying with the folks and Rob and I are taking off for a cabin in Southern Illinois for five days on our own. I can’t have grays and roots showing. Hairy legs perhaps, but not grays and roots. So, I sucked it up and went to the appointment. And it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Reading helped. The shampoo girl gave me a great scalp massage. Reminded me a bit of the lonely caregiver days when I would go to get a wash and style at Cost Cutters just to have someone rub my head. Sad, pathetic days. Yesterday it mainly reminded me of Rob and the way he rubs my head at night when I am laying on his chest. Happy, contented days. Having my hair done in the middle of the day is another reminder of what a different life I live now. I don’t have to be anywhere at any given time expect for school drop-off and home in time to meet the bus later. I have things to do – shopping, housework, cooking, working out, writing – but there is no specific time table for any of this. I don’t have to dress any particular way, so I am usually pretty casual in my yoga togs. I don’t wear a bra anymore. I don’t shave my legs. I never wear make-up. They were things that seemed so non-sensical  when I had to do them and did I really have to do them? Or was I just lock step with all the other women in this post-feminist era? Yoga duds aren’t professional. Bralessness is too provacative. Make-up free is a sign of disinterest. Hairy legs are just gross (and another sign you don’t care about yourself or upkeep). A new blogging friend asked via a comment why I didn’t identify with feminists. And perhaps this is part of it. Feminism is just another way we women pressure each other to conform to a standard that does not fit every one of us. I never wanted a career. I just wanted a job that I enjoyed. Do what you enjoy and the money will follow. Isn’t that what they say? I never saw motherhood as limiting or men as evil. Although both can be true, motherhood is about sacrifice and most men are not bright enough to be evil – just annoying (as are women). Feminism is black and white and I have always known that life is not that simplistic. Being blond is my only girly vice really and even that takes a back seat to my muse.