Athena’s Mind

Who-hoo!  We had 11 players show up tonight!  Okay, 1 left at the half with a sprained ankle but we still had 10!  It rocked!  Oh yeah and by the way, WE WON!

Lots of motivated players came out tonight so that was good.  A bunch of us are getting together for practice on the side.  It’s late in the season but we’ve got time to pick up our socks for the play-offs.

Oh, and the other team?  Whiners.  Very physical whiners.  We were tripped and held and pushed and shoved and didn’t say a thing.  Then, I tripped one girl by accident (really-I was going for the ball and I just didn’t get to it in time – too winded) and she started yelling “Tripping, tripping – aren’t you going to call that ref?”  Oy yoy yoy!  I apologized and said I was going for the ball.  What did the little bitch do next?  Came charging at me to get the ball (okay – I get that) and then lifted her elbow (hunh?) and nailed me right in the boob.  Ouch!  But did I whine?  No.  And did I lose the ball?  Nope! After the play I quite loudly said something along the lines of “WTF was that?  You elbowed me in the boob – which hurt btw – but do you hear me whining about it the ref?  Noooooo, you don’t.”  I never wanted to trip someone on purpose before, so badly in my entire life. *exhale* Oookay – let’s put the lid back on that scary competitive monster inside me, shall we?

Good game ladies!  Let’s keep this going.  We’re quite good when we all show up!

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve recently joined a women’s soccer team.  I’ve only played 2 games so far.  We barely had enough players show up at the first game I went to.  We had 9 (you need 7 to avoid forfeiting the game).  We played 9 vs 11 and held the other team off for the first half of the game.  We eventually lost.

Last night, we had 6 players show up.  6 out of a roster of 15.  Un-fucking-believable.  The core group that keeps showing up is quite disappointed.  On the one hand, you’ve got 5 of us who not only show up all the time, but we also want extra practice time and are willing to commit to that.

This team has now forfeited 3 games.  They’ve never had a full team show up to play.  While all this was going on, I was sitting on a frickin’ waiting list until 2 games ago.  Me and about 30 other women. Do you have any idea how disappointing this is?  And now, the Club is diligently calling women on the waiting list, trying to add to our team roster and (quite naturally) people are not interested in committing.  There are only about 8 games left in the season.  People have booked their summer already, I’m sure.

If you sign up for a team, please honour that commitment.  If you can’t be there, please be polite and respectful and tell your team administrator/coach/contact person, that you’ll be away.  If you join a team, certain expectations are placed up on you.  It doesn’t matter if you’re joining a rep team, a select team or a rec team.  You’re still expected to show up and you’re expected to play.

We decided to kick off this weekend with a trip to the ER.  Mr. Athena has been having issues taking deep breaths for the past 3 days and today it was bad enough/noticeable enough that a co-worker offered to take him to the hospital.  Of course, Mr. Athena didn’t go because he had work to finish.  Word to everyone reading this post: if you’re having issues breathing/any issues with your cardio-pulmonary system, don’t wait to be seen by a health care professional.  Pack up your desk.  Go. NOW.  I don’t know of anyone who, on their death bed, wished they had worked more.

Cut back to Mr. Athena’s arrival home from work at his regular time.  He’s still having issues.  I inquire about some other symptoms (all heart attack related) and get a bunch of positive responses.  At this time, I didn’t know that he was ill enough during the day to get the aforementioned offer of a lift to the hospital.  A few phone calls later, Mr. Athena drives himself to the hospital and I await some family members who can stay with the kidlets for an extended period of time.  It was the longest wait. Ever.  Or so I thought.  After at least an hour, family arrived and off I scooted to the hospital.  Mr. Athena had just seen the triage nurse and the second Longest Wait. Ever. started.  Things started rolling slowly and eventually picked up steam.  Within 2 hours of his arrival at the hospital, Mr. Athena had had blood drawn, been x-rayed and seen by the ER doc.  Test results started rolling in after that.  The good news?  No heart attack.  No asthma.  No decipherable medical reason for the breathing issue.  The no-so-good news?  There is something obviously going on and I’ve left Mr. Athena at the hospital, patiently waiting to be seen by a specialist.  It’s 1:17 and I have to be a happy, energetic soccer coach at 8:30 am tomorrow morning.  It may be another 2-3 hours before the specialist gets to Mr. Athena.  I can’t function like that and one of us will have to, assuming Mr. Athena gets home.

I’m a little concerned but not nearly as much as I was prior to the ekg/x-ray/other tests.  I’ve never been on this end of things before.  Usually it’s me in the hospital (birthing children, cutting off thumbs).  Given the chance to repeat this experience, I’d pass.

Update: Turns out Mr. Athena was full of shit.  Literally.  Yes, we can joke about this now, can’t we? He had a block in his intestine.  No idea what caused it.  It wasn’t serious enough to require surgery.  Now before you think we’re completely ignorant and should have figured out this issue, I feel compelled to state that Mr. Athena had been having regular bms so nothing tipped us off to this.  And to make us feel better, it took the specialist a good 20 mins to figure this out too.  24 hours and some super-duper-pooper laxatives later, we’re all back to normal.  Whew!

I want to like you, I really do.  Sometimes you make it more challenging than I’d like.

I would like to know what possessed you (yes, you, the people we’ve lovingly nicknamed “The Crazy People”, in the corner) to put up some pergola type thingy that appears to have vomited lattice.  At first, when we saw the huge beams being erected, we figured you were building a pergola.  We weren’t crazy about the fact that it dominates our rear view or that you left the price stickers on the ends of the wood so we can see the white glaring off the pressure treated wood.  We did think we could probably live with your pergola though and understood the need for shade.  You didn’t stop there though.  You went ahead and erected lattice from the top down.  But it only goes about 1/3 of the way down.  Which we thought was odd.  Then you went ahead and installed one out of 4 pieces on the north side with the lattice criss-crossing in the opposite direction to all the other pieces of lattice.  Signs of shoddy, shoddy workmanship my friend.  We do have some concerns about the stability of your shade/privacy/ugly structure.  We noticed you attached it to your deck.  Which might be okay except your deck is held up by cement post-holds.  We noticed you didn’t actually use cement or dig holes.  So your 12 foot high visual abomination doesn’t appear very secure.  We’re due for some storms in the next few days and we’re watching to see if your hard work is going to come crashing down.  If it does, could you please refrain from installing all the lattice on the second go-round?  The only place lattice belongs, is on a cherry pie, in the form of pie dough.

Ahhh, that leaves you, The Fish People.  I see you’re enjoying a life of leisure lately.  It’s nice to have a few days off, isn’t it?  I see you’re enjoying some company these days too.  It’s great to entertain, isn’t it?  Especially when it’s family members.  They’ve been staying with you for some time now and you’ve all settled into a comfortable routine.  As part of that comfort, it seems like nothing feels quite as good as your pyjama bottoms.  They’re comfy!  They’re cosy!  They’re NOT meant to be worn EVERY day and they’re especially NOT meant to be worn in your backyard which is graded in such a way that we can’t help but see you as soon as we look out the back of our house.  I don’t want to see you or your significant other in your pj bottoms any more.  I don’t want to see your mom and dad in pj bottoms anymore.  I’m thankful I didn’t see your mom (age approximately 70) in what appeared to be a pink bikini bottom.  Either that or they were pink bikini panties.  Whatever they were, they’ve caused my husband to bleach his eyes every day since seeing you, in an attempt to erase the visual.  I’ve gotten used to the fact that you cook in your backyard every night.  I see you’ve upgraded from a 2 burner hot-plate and now use a propane burner to heat your wok.  That’s great.  I’m sure it works much better.  But again, it comes back to the pjs.  You’re out there every night, cooking, in the aforementioned pjs.  Which means every night that I look out the back of my house, I see you.  Please, please, please for the love of all that is good, trade the pjs in for a pair of jeans/cargo pants/sweat pants, even.

So I had my first soccer game tonight.  We lost.  The first goal for the other team was a ball that bounced off my shin, into our net.  Not great.  It was good to get out and fun to run around.  It was also a little exhausting as we were short players so we were all on the field the whole game.  We only had 9 to the other team’s 11.  So we’ll see how it goes next week.  Most of the team expressed an interest in getting together for practice sessions.  We’ll see if that materializes.

Oh, and my new cleats?  They shredded my heels.  Massive skin-pealing blisters that will never heal in time for next week’s game.  I’m hoping I can take my cleats back where I purchased them and get a credit towards a new pair.  After wearing them twice, that just shouldn’t happen.  They obviously don’t fit well.  Guess it’s flip flops and band-aids for me for the next little while.  You’ll know me if you see me – I’ll be the mom with the Disney Princess and/or Power Ranger band-aids on both heels.

In other news…

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