Xavier ended up getting a shutout last night and we found out after the game that our afternoon game was moved to first thing in the morning. What this meant was that Olivier would be home alone for quite some time. I texted my favorite brother and asked him if he could pick up Olivier to bring to my parents house. He replied in the morning and said sure. I informed him that he did not have to go right away and to let Olivier get ready. My brother showed up at 8:05. I am not sure if he has things to do or not but he got Olivier to my parents place bright and early. When he is at home, he will sleep with the overhead fan on as well as his window open. His room is approximately -20 degree Celsius and we use it as our spare freezer. My parents being old school Asian do not like him sleeping with a fan on and tell him that it is not good. So he proceeded to call Mel this morning so that she could confirm that he was allowed to. As soon as he recieved the confirmation he hung up on Mel. Needless to say, I do not think that my parents were expecting their grandchild to show up so early in the morning. They would not care though as they love him and appreciate anytime that they get with him. He will be quite spoiled with his food options over the weekend.
You would think that would be the only drama for the morning, but alas that would have made things too simple. As we had no gas in the vehicle and had to fill up this morning, it would not have been a big deal since we were not supposed to be playing until the afternoon. The gas stations by us are not open at 6:30 in the morning so I needed to takes detour to go get gas. Xavier likes to be at the arena 90 minutes early. Mel likes to be there 9 minutes early. There was a compromise this morning and we planned to be there 60 minutes early as scheduled by the team. Unfortunately because of the lack of gas we ended up leaving 8 minutes late. If Mel had not been traveling with us then I would have left the house at 6am instead of 6:38. But Mel still does not trust me to drive in case I am too fatigued.
As you can tell by now our morning is going awesomely. I suspect that we should have started the morning drive by playing “Everything is Awesome” by Tegan and Sara. I think that this is the cause of all the disruption this morning. I forgot to sing the song while we were getting ready. We arrived at the arena all set to win. I had a lovely chat with some of the parents on the other team and apparently one of the kids knows Xavier and said good morning to me as I was walking by him. Very polite and nice kid. I said good morning back to him as I walked by. As game time approached the managers and coaches started talking to each other and what we realized was we had no timekeepers or referees for our game. I suspect that our manager secretly paid off the referees to not show up so we could then win by forfeit, extending our winning streak to 4 and further extending our shutout streak to 2. It should be 4 games, but the team let in a goal in the last game of the tournament. So to recap we got up at 6am, drove 2 hrs to the arena, hung out for an hour and then drove back 2 hours. Just because our manager thought it was safer to pay the referees to not show up and extend our shutout streak. Xavier was not starting today, otherwise he would have extended his shutout streak. We did not need the whole team to show up and we should have drawn straws for who got to stay home and sleep in. Clearly this is the truth of what happened because hockey associations are always perfect and never forget to schedule referees. The parents and coaches on the other team were apologetic about the whole thing and attempts were made to try and find some referees. But who wants to get up and show up at the arena instantly when you have been bribed to not answer your phone. I would like to point out that I accept bribes to accidentally not bring Xavier to hockey games because he is “sick”. Bribes start at $30,000USD. I like attending games and go even when he is not playing, so it is expensive to get me to avoid games.
The good thing though is that for the most part I felt fairly well. I brought along a lemon tea and ate half a bagel with cream cheese. Once we arrived at the arena though I did not feel so hot so I put my drink into the van to prevent myself from drinking more. I was also smart enough to take one of my nausea pills as preventative even though I was done eating. We ended up leaving and we ate on the drive home. This is when I also realized that the nausea is real and all of the bumps does not make me feel so fantastic. Luckily I did not eat too much so it was not too rough. I am doing fine for fatigue levels and I have managed to eat fairly well today. I had to take a nap this afternoon as I did not sleep well last night. I had eaten right before bed and I was lying down I felt like I had to vomit. I sat up and was burping a lot and that made me feel better. This continued for 45minutes before I could fall asleep.
Mel and I are quite lucky that we have do many options for help here. Olivier has the choice on which grandparent he goes for a sleep over. He has a VR gaming event on Sunday at 2pm, so he opted for my parents as they will let him do what he wants without distraction and there is space for him. His other grandparents might have his cousins over and he would not have the freedom or room to play by himself. Tim is also available to entertain him and to watch him and will help our when he can. And in the event where we are desperate for assistance, we can ship him to Toronto to stay with my sister. As a 10 year he should be old enough to fend for himself. When I was his age I was gallivanting on buses by myself all over Sudbury going into arcades to play video games.
The lessons from today are that I am capable of spending a day out and my weight is slowly increasing and my energy levels are doing well. My stomach is easily irritated by anything rubbing against it so I need to figure that out. I have put cream on it and it feels fine for a while but after time it gets a bit worse. We will see what tomorrow brings when we travel to Manitoulin for another game.
Quoc Hao