Perspective is an interesting thing. Your vantage point and your own bias influence how you see thIngs. I have had chats with various people about hockey and playing time. There are quite varied views on whether kids should have even playing time or not. I know parents on both sides of the fence and interestingly enough it is not divided by skillset. I asked Xavier how he would feel and with the way that he is, he said he would never be in that situation where he is benched for extended games. He has played poorly at times and has deservedly been pulled, but not on a repeated basis. He also knows that I would not advocate for him and it would be up to him. He knows that I would not have any sympathy and would tell him that if he wants to play more than he needs to earn it. Be better. He let in 2 goals today and the team ended up in a tie and he broke his shutout streak. I sat with a dad from the other team and he thought Xavier played well and kept them in the game. I also have a reputation for being hard on Xavier, not padding his stats, and being strict about what I count as a stat. He asked that if he has 29, whether I would round it to 30. I said no as I keep stats not for an ego boost, but to highlight deficiencies. Xavier also will call something out that was not a save. While a lot of goalie parents have a reputation for inflating the stats of their kids, I do not. We also generally do not share his stats with everyone as the only acceptable save percentage is 100%. If he does not get a shutout he has failed, so everyone knows automatically if he has failed or not. And when he does get a shutout it is whether he made the saves properly or not. Today he made quite a few beautiful saves, but they were desperation saves and he was not in control. He is aware of things like this and will work harder to make sure that the saves look simple and controlled.
The perspective that I have is, if life is not fair, so what. You do not give up but work harder and show without a shadow of a doubt that you understand your flaws and get better. I think it is important in life to face some set backs and to work your way through the problems and come up with your solutions. It helps build resilience. Kids who are told that they are smart all of the time and who never have learned the art of actually learning struggle later when they run into issues. The perception is that they are not smart enough, not that they did not work hard enough.
This is where I think I tend to piss off Mel a lot. From her perspective I am not pro-active enough in my care. I do not actively try and look for ways to take care of myself. She thinks that instead of trying to deal with the pain and discomfort that I should be contacting people and doing something about it. I just try to deal with it and manage. I have a much higher pain tolerance than she does and will live with the discomfort for longer than she would accept if for.
This morning I found out that eating something heavier to start the day is not wise. I started the morning eating a couple pieces of sushi and I was unable to eat much for a while. This is a new development but it helps me understand what I can or can not do. I can start the morning with a warm tea based beverage without any dairy products. After an hour or so I can eat a light meal and then drink some liquids a bit later. This in turn will allow me to eat at 3 intervals prior to noon. This is the ideal pattern that I think will work. I just need to test this out in the next week. Weight is stable and did not increase yesterday, which is a good sign, as I do not necessarily expect an upward trend everyday. I would suspect something is off if it was always increasing with no blips. The key is to control how many of those blips occur and understand what happened. Yesterday’s blip was because of the travel and alteration in schedule. I suspect the same thing for today. This will then be a data point highlighting this. Tomorrow we will see how well I can manage things in the morning for my meals. I drove home from Espanola today so Mel could eat while we were in the vehicle and I managed fine without any fatigue or speeding tickets.
Q