badger_14

A nice change from the various Parents Behaving Badly was the guy at the association meeting last night praising me and the other LTP coaches, in front of the association's president.

The kids I coach are starting to figure things out; they now look like miniature beer leaguers instead of semi-mobile pylons. Go kids go.

Might just might have a line on a job. Not full time or anything, but work is work. Now just wondering what kind of sacrifice I have to perform for the fickle Employment Gods to smile on me...

Nothing seems to be going right lately. Late January through March is a tenuous time of year for me mental-health-wise anyway, even without everything going on.

See if a doc will prescribe you codeine cough syrup. Even if it doesn't totally quell the cough, you'll stop caring. (in seriousness, coughs suck, hope you feel better.)

My mother is in the hospital with a mass and fluid in her abdomen. (she actually went in because she had abnormally low sodium levels, but guess why that was...)

Ouch. Hope it's not bad & you recover quickly.

It's a bit of a sticky situation in terms of who has authority to do what. The program coordinator is only there for the first set of kids, and since I'm there for both sessions (and have no kids of my own), I wind up being sort of default-responsible during the second hour. But I still have to go to the coordinator for "what's the protocol on handling [x]". It's not like I don't have experience dealing with the rowdy and/or intoxicated in other, non-hockey situations, it's a frustrating question of 'what am I allowed to do and who do I rely on for backup'. It's a potential safety thing. We're in a holding pattern over it at the moment, that is, I am waiting for the coordinator to get back to me about what the association president says about the situation.

This is my third year coaching, so I'm still quite new to the whole business, but this is the most difficult situation I've been faced with yet. The first year, there was just one guy who needed a reminder to back off and let the coaches do our jobs for the hour. Last year, I already knew a lot of the parents, and it was a great group of folks. As far as the kids, across the board they're good kids, a couple can be frustrating, but I'm sure I could be a pretty frustrating kid myself, so I do the best I can. I work with the learn-to-play kids, so between the littler ones and the bigger ones, I've got about sixty kids to remember. I'm lucky they all have their names on their helmets... What I hate most about this parent situation (inappropriate behavior at the rink) is that I'm afraid the kid - who's a good kid, enthusiastic and clearly loves to be on the ice - is going to get caught in the middle and suffer indirectly because of the whole mess.

Difficult situation with hockey parents continues, unabated.

One parent cools down, another parent heats up. Worrying that I didn't handle the situation as well (as assertively) as I could have, and hoping it's not a conflict I'll have to deal with again. I understand a parent being worried about their kid's safety, and it stemmed from a valid point initially. (We're a learn-to-play program with a wide discrepancy in age, size, and experience, even within the age groups (4-7/8 and 7/8 - 10), and sometimes smallish 7/8 year olds are playing with much bigger 9/10 year olds - usually, all I have to do is remind the bigger kids that they need to watch themselves, they heed, life goes on.) But having sharp words with some poor kid (who is not yours) over the boards isn't okay, and I wished I'd done a better job to making it clear to Parent that on-ice safety is the coaches' responsibility and we'll handle it. It was something I hadn't had to deal with before, had no one else to back me up, and no clear instruction on how to handle Parent Issues .

My dogwalking - client? boss? - asked if I could dogsit over Christmas, and I had to say no because I've got a lot going on (including a medical thing which will put me out for a day) that week, but I still feel terrible about it because I've been working for him/the dog for two years and I know it's very hard to get a dogsitter on short notice over a holiday. Frustrating situation.

Aw, man, that sucks. Hope your recovery goes quickly and well.

Haha, I don't think anybody's going to pay me to play hockey or to sing! And I did worry if Sunday service/choir would conflict with coaching ... fortunately it doesn't. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get back into choral singing but apparently, all those years of music education in school have stuck with me, and it's been easier than I thought. A lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to Christmas Eve, the next 'big' service to prepare for. :)

After a long hiatus from formal singing (as in, I stopped around 8th grade, and I'm 27 now), I decided to join my local church's choir a few weeks ago. Today was the church's annual 'music sunday' which is what it says on the tin, and the centerpiece of the service today was Vivaldi's Gloria. The whole program was so much fun to sing, and the Vivaldi with orchestral accompaniment was absolutely beautiful and we all got a standing ovation from the congregation. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, and I certainly still need practice, but I got through it was only a few cracks in the voice and had a grand time. What a way to jump back into something!

The local association's Learn to Play started this past weekend ... so happy to be coaching again. Even somehow got roped into an extra hour of coaching another association's LTP kids last Saturday! (They had 20-some young kids and one coach, I was at the rink early and was asked to help.) Looking forward to rest of LTP's season.

I've always thought Yakety Sax/the Benny Hill theme would be good for a fight.

The Senators do something like this, where they have a curriculum of hockey/Sens related activities/lessons for different subject areas (science, math, etc). I agree it sounds like a great opportunity for practical, hands-on cross-curricular stuff. So much going on at a professional (or even collegiate) game that you could tie in. Math, science, phys ed, English (write about going to the rink, write a 'news article' about the game), heck, cooking (if you think arena food qualifies as food)...

At the rink after stick & puck last night, I happened to notice that one of the kids playing in the game after was one of the kids I'd coached last year. So proud to see him. Nice to see the kids going on to bigger and better things.

It's been a terrible month. Messy family drama over Thanksgiving plans, two friends being hospitalized, another friend sick + his dogs are sick, my own mental health crisis resulting in a visit to the urgent care, and now it turns out my fiancee's cat is dying. She lives over 800 miles from me, so I can't even be there for her. wtf.

Good luck man, I hope you feel better.

Our water heater died. Luckily, it's under warranty, so we get a new one. Not so luckily, the one we have was out of stock so we won't get a new one until Monday afternoon or so. Ugh.

Couldn't post at the time, but while camping over Columbus Day weekend I caught the biggest trout (or fish, in general) I've ever caught. 13 1/2 inch rainbow trout. Not sure how much it weighed, my dad figured 3 pounds.

League told me repeatedly, 'you'll be helping out with [x] team this year', come to find out as of yesterday, 'oh sorry we already assigned everyone, we're not sure if you can help out with anybody this season'. Feeling like there's some deliberate miscommunication happening, trying not to think that. Still frustrated.

Thanks! I swam competitively when I was a kid, and I've always been really comfortable in the water, but I've only recently begun to really get back into doing laps and the like. Next big goal (aside from shaving my time down further) is doing a pool mile. :)