On Friday morning, the weekend seemed that it was going to be relatively calm and quiet. Xavier had a game on Friday night and that was all that was on the agenda. By the end of the afternoon we found out that he was going to have 4 more additional games. He is playing 3 games with another team, but we also had a game added to our schedule. Right now I feel great and actually not too fatigued at all, so I will try and attend all of the games. We won last night and most of the parents/coaches/players thought that he had a great game. He let in 1 goal and I was telling parents that it was not a good goal to let in and I would have blamed him for it. I am going to set the context and explain both sides. The other team scored on a 2 on 1 breakaway. There was a pass across, where he slid across and made the save. While making the save the puck deflected off of him back to the other side where the player scored on the rebound. Most people would not blame that on the goalie as someone should be there to pick up the trailing player and clear the rebound. The perception is that the goal was out of his control. A lot of goalie parents will tell their child that it was not their fault and the team should have helped out. Mel thinks that I am too hard on Xavier, but perspectives are different. When the puck hits him, a good goalie will make the save. A great goalie and what he has been taught and practices is responsible for controlling where the puck ends up. It is not enough to make the save, how are you setting yourself up for the next situation. He practices this weekly and making the initial save is not enough. Of course he will not always be able to do it, but that is what he strives for. It is the next level for his position. When you are more advanced you worry about those things. Do not rely on others when you have the ability to influence and impact your future. As soon as he entered the car he said that goal was so bad and that he should have had it. The puck deflected off his pants and did not ricochet where he expected it to go. He thought he had absorbed it into his body but it careened sideways. This is what he viewed as a mistake where others would just be happy that they made the initial save. People think I am crazy and too hard on him when I verbalize that he should have had that, but my son and I are in lock step with the same mentality.
Over the course of the last couple of days I have learned how to control my appetite and my eating much better now. When I return home from my morning session I take one of my Ondansetron pills and take another in the evening. I wake up at 6am normally and what I decided to do was get up and have a small bite to eat. Not enough to get full, just enough so that I can drink still. I can then sip on liquids slowly every 10 to 15 minutes and maintain hydration which helps with bowel movements, which in turn helps with motility and allows me to eat more. The small things that you need to do in order to get the bigger end results. The radiation treatment creates nausea and decreases my appetite to the point that I do not really want to eat. The key is to not eat until I am full, but just enough so that I can eat again in a little while or drink. As soon as I feel full I need to generally wait 2 hours. I need to prevent that from happening, it may not seem like a big deal but it is as I can only eat 1/2 max. If I eat smaller portions more frequently I can exceed 1/2 in the same time frame. It is more work and effort but it allows me to control things and I should be able to increase my weight. Things may change once week 4 comes along and I need to adjust, but for now this is the revised game plan.
Last night at the game some friends from last year’s team came to watch with their kids. They sat with me and chatted while watching the game. It was nice to see them and interact with them. As something that will probably shock everyone, I keep strict statistics during the game and track everything. I am very particular about how I score things and often have parents think that my standards are very rigid. A lot of goalie parents keep stats of how their kid plays. A lot of parents say that they do it strict but they say that my methodology is far too strict. If the goalie makes a “save” on a puck that is going to miss the net I do not count it as a save. So if Xavier catches a puck or freezes the play on something like that I do not count it. During the game last night my friends were teasing me about it and telling me that surely that was a save. In the last mom’s on our team would be trying to advocate on the behalf of the goalie to say it was a save. I do not care. Including those numbers inflate the save percentage considerably and it can be useful if your child has confidence issues. We do not track his stats for his confidence but to highlight opportunities for improvement. Accuracy is more important than ego. I will go back and rewatch games to ensure accuracy on the count. A shot on goal is only counted if there is the potential for the shot to go into the net by the other team. A shot that hits the post or the crossbar do not count. On a delayed offside if the puck is shot in, it does not count because he can let it in and it would not count as a goal because of the offside. If his team deflects it on a pass at him it does not count. I will count it if the original shot had the potential to go in. Xavier knows what the criteria is and laughs when he hears about elevated shot counts. The shot counts at the arena by the time keeper and mine never line up. They are always much higher. It was nice seeing the parents again and they told me that they missed having someone take accurate statistics. Everyone believes in my numbers because I am Asian and I just activate my Asian superpowers for math. It makes them automatically right. True story.
Tomorrow my sister arrives and I am grateful to have her around. We do not always agree on things and bicker like true siblings, but we are always there for each other when we need it. My kids both love her and want to spend time with her, but she has plans when she is here so we try and coordinate things. They like to cook with her as she lets them do anything even if it makes a mess. She is super patient with them and far more patient then I would be. Olivier wants a sleep over at my parents so that he can spend time with her. She will also help out a lot for meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. We still need to go out shopping for that so that will be fun. Hopefully I will put together a menu this weekend and we can go buy stuff for the meals on Monday.
QHM