Last night Xavier and Mel were sitting in the kitchen talking and for some reason players from various sports came up and Xavier was asking Mel if she knew who certain people were. Xavier mentioned some soccer players and Mel was asking what their first names were. Xavier was laughing at Mel not knowing any names so he asked if she knew what Ronaldo’s first name was. I was in our bedroom and said Steve as Xavier was within my line of sight and thought he could hear me. Sure enough when Mel asked he replied Steve. She obviously did not believe him so he replied ask Dad. She probably thought that I was not privy to the conversation so I shouted Steve. What I need everyone to help out with is if it ever comes up in conversation. Ronaldo’s first name is Steve. The best part is when she was trying to validate Ronaldo’s first name they shouted to Olivier who was downstairs on what his name was. Without missing a beat he replied Steve. Mel is not convinced and she will not look it up. The ridiculousness of this whole conversation and with other names made me laugh. Laughing hurts. A lot. Totally worth it though and would 100% do it again. During this exchange she mentioned she knew that there was some guy named Steve. Xavier said Yzerman? And she knew who he was. He has a trophy named after him. Xavier and I were laughing having no clue about what trophy was named after Yzerman. She mixed up Yzerman with Heisman. I am not sure why she knows about the Heisman trophy, but to her the two sound close enough together. I am grateful that the boys have inherited my sense of mischief and that they are generally aligned when it involves any sort of shenanigans involving tricking their mother. Moments like this bring levity into the household when there is always the lingering unspoken cancer treatment hanging in the background. We can forget that I am a delicate flower that needs to be protected and use all of our energy into playing on Mel’s lack of sport knowledge. The thing that sucks a bit is my abdomen is still sore from laughing so much. I understand how it can be dangerous lifting something and it can be easily overlooked.
I got up to eat at 7am this morning as we will be traveling to Sturgeon Falls for a hockey game today. My eating schedule may be thrown off as we spend 11 hours outside of the home on the road. This will give me a good baseline for next weekend when we go to Timmins for some games. Next weekend there is only a 1hr break between our games, so not as much time will be spent at the arenas. I will monitor the impacts daily and see what the cumulative effects are over time. Hopefully the impact will not be as bad as last time where I had to switch to a liquid diet since swallowing was so painful.
It is the end of the day now and I am exhausted. This was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. My abdomen is quite sore and I am very fatigued. Mel is going to drive us home as I do not currently have the energy to focus for another 90 minutes. Fortunately I had some energy chews on me that I took in the first period and I will need to replenish my jacket with those. Being out and about for 10+ hours is too much. Luckily next weekend the games are much closer together and I will be able to handle it hopefully. If I struggle too much then I may avoid going to Ottawa and stay at home. I should have enough assistance that it would not be much of an issue at all. This was a good learning experience to better understand my limitations. Now I need to figure out what I need to do in order to adjust to this. I ate enough today which is at least reassuring. My liquid intake was not high enough, but it is difficult when we are out. I just drank coffee today and not much else. Next weekend I will make sure I have my water bottle on hand and slowly sip from it through our the day.
Today will be a learning experience for Xavier. He did not play the best and the games for our of hand at times. There was a lot of complaining about the refs and fairness and we will use this as a teaching moment for him. Focus on what is within your control. Life will not always be fair and it may seem that things are stacked against you. When this happens what is the positive that you can draw from the situation. The refs were just providing us with an opportunity to practice our penalty kill and give the goalies more action. Xavier has said that the last two days he has not played well, not up to what his standards are. That is ok, everyone has bad shift and bad days. What is important is how do you bounce back and how do you show some resilience to this. I am grateful that we are in a situation where we can afford to provide him 1:1 coaching sessions to overcome his weaknesses. At lunch today between games we told him that his strength is inherited from his parents and that we are both smart. He agreed with Mel that his parents are both intelligent. It is a bit of a stretch as there are numerous times where I probably do things that are less than ideal. This discomfort is a reminder that I am not smart enough to limit myself and stay within my boundaries. Physical fatigue wins this time and trumps mental resilience.
Q