Well it’s a very quiet Saturday morning here in my shiny new office. Still feeling pretty good about building a nice room all by myself. I managed to figure out how to connect the desktop monitor and keyboard to my MacBook, so I have a little more room and a Windows keyboard I am more used to. I went to bed around 1AM and woke up at 4:50AM. I tried going back to sleep, but it just isn’t happening. The hamster that runs in my brain is going full speed in his wheel this morning.
Liz is off to work, Logan stayed at a buddy’s house after practice last night, and Luke is in our bed out cold. The boys had a very up and down week. They began the week grounded from electronics as Luke lied about not having homework and Logan for some kind of three strikes you’re out policy on mouthing off to teachers. Logan managed to get some sort of punishment by having a “closed” lunch. I thought that meant he’d have to eat in the office, but apparently there are way too many kids in trouble for that. So they have all the troublemakers sit together. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It doesn’t seem to work for rehabilitating people in prison.
Logan is a world famous smart mouth to his parents and brother and sister. Mouthing off to a teacher was a major surprise. And not a happy one. He’s been awfully angry lately. Luke has been in quite the mood as well. The difference is Luke is still keeping his grades up by acing tests whether he does the homework or not. Is it possible that faking your way through school is hereditary? Luke is copying my school playbook word for word. I made a sport of doing as little work as possible in school until the day before a test. I crammed all day and night and would rock all my tests to skip as much homework as possible. Technically this worked as I kept a 3.0 or above all the way through college. In fact I graduated college with honors. Problem is when someone asks me anything I learned or I need that knowledge applied in real life and it isn’t there, because I crammed the info and dumped it all on the tests to never be thought of again. I hope I haven’t passed this gene on.
I am fairly certain the boys are both frustrated with hockey and that’s bleeding over into school. Luke is still bummed that all his friends made higher skill level teams. He feels like he should be on a higher level team or they should be down with him. After watching a lot of practice and a few games I’d say the difference in levels is really negligible and he’s got some really good kids on his team. It’s just having to see his buddies on teams together while he struggles with some kids brand new to him and brand new to hockey. There are only two other kids on the team that have played full ice hockey before. They have some really good coaches and I think they will get it together and he’s starting to make friends. Thing is, I tried to tell him as gently as I could that while he can skate literal circles around some of the kids on his team in practice, he’s still smaller than most of them and his pretty skating doesn’t get him very far in a game. Thus maybe he’s exactly where he should be until he learns how to eat and puts some meat on his tiny little bones. We got on him about lying about some social studies homework and the turkey goes and gets a 95% on his social studies test yesterday. Great.
Then there’s Logan. Logan. Logan. Logan. Logan is a goalie. Goalies are a whole different animal. Much to the dismay of snipers, playmakers, and defenders, the goalie is the most important player on a hockey team. Unfortunately in our club the goalie is the most ignored position. They’re development is mostly up to themselves and their parents getting them outside coaching, unless your team has someone willing to work with them. Major bonus if they actually know what they’re doing. Meanwhile the club spends countless hours working with the skaters day in and day out in team practices as well as a specific “Skills” night each week which is focused completely on the skaters unless some goalie oriented coaches show up. That was a private bitch session that has nothing to do with anything really. I just wanted to “say” it out loud as it’s really stupid.
Logan’s first year at full ice as a Squirt was his first full season as goalie. He was on a bottom skill level team, but we had a great coach and a great goalie dad helping him when he could. Best of all we had great parents that we are great friends with five years later. We were already at the bottom so there was only one way to go from there. This being the case there was zero pressure. From his first year at the bottom on a “Silver” team his next evaluation moved him all the way up to A2 which is a pretty good jump, but he earned it. Then in an inexplicable move of dumbassery his A2 team was demoted in declaration season to a B team. This is due to a couple of teams from other clubs committing the sin of “sandbagging.” This is when a team declares to be an A2 team, but they are really way more skilled more like an A1 or AA team, but they want to win all the games by crushing every team they play. The teams that sandbagged that year were all moved up, but Logan’s team was somehow moved down even though the other teams didn’t belong that low. Why move our team down if you moved those teams up? We protested and no one cared. We were afraid that we would become the sandbaggers of the B division which is exactly what we were. We annihilated every team in the division except for another team that was moved down from A2. We met them in the State Championship and won in OT which was really cool, but they were the only real opponent we had all year except for out of town tournaments. They were the only team to beat us in the regular season. Logan would average maybe 10-12 shots a game. He became so bored at one early morning game he actually no kidding fell asleep in goal. The other team didn’t register a shot until deep into the 2nd period. Their “shot” was just a kid clearing the puck out of their zone to get us off them and it cruised all the way down to Logan and right between his wide open legs as he was slumped over fast asleep. He didn’t wake up until the horn went off for their goal. He had 5 shutouts that year, medals galore, and a state championship.
The next year his team was even better I think, and we again slaughtered our division and Logan saw a few more shots. They were stopped in the semi-finals for the state championship in shootouts. Logan made his saves, but not one of our three shooters even hit their net. Probably due to the fact they were 11-12 years old, but the other team had a goalie that stood about 6’2” and 200lbs and I’m not exaggerating. Logan finished the season with 6 shut outs and a couple of big tournament wins. He worked his butt off over the summer, but still landed on a B team again last year. The team he played for last year was a completely different animal. Through our very flawed evaluation process we had kids at wildly different skill levels and experience. Logan lost nearly every game and a lot of times by double digits. His shots per game averaged in the 30s and I think his record for one game was 48ish.
What no one could get him to see was that he was actually having a breakout year stat wise. He was making more saves in that season than all the others combined. His defense I will say…struggled often. A lot of the goals he let in were on 2nd or 3rd tries from a rebound, breakaways, and 2-3 on 1s. There isn’t a whole lot a goalie can do in those situations. However, it very nearly broke him I think. He talked about quitting hockey altogether after that season and I saw him give up in games as his teammates would start to leave him hanging in the 3rd period. I’d never heard him speak or play like a quitter.
I had a hard time blaming him. It was frustrating to us too. The club should never have fielded the teams they did that year. It wasn’t just ours. It was like they built their AA and A1 teams with the handpicked and deserving skilled players and for the rest just threw names in a hat or something. We had kids up and down levels just haphazardly put together. God help you if you complain about it or try to get them or MO Hockey to fix it. Sorry inside hockey whining again. His friends/our friends we’d been with for the past three years all went up a level or two which is disheartening to Logan and his mom and dad because all of our friends were all over the place, but we still got to see each other that’s just how hockey is. Bonus is you do make new friends.
Over the Spring there was a lot of talk of quitting hockey altogether. We never force them to play a sport. We have forced them to finish a sport (baseball, soccer, and gymnastics?) once they started and decided they hated it. Once you make a commitment you are committed.
Luke was ready to go to work. He wanted to go to camps and he skated quite a bit. Logan agreed to go to one camp and then asked for another which was up in Michigan and may have made things worse. Up there he was facing AA and AAA players from Michigan and Canada. Most days were pretty rough for him and the one other goalie who was a local. Even though these kids would light him up three hours a day he’d come off the ice laughing, made some friends, and begged me to bring him back next year which mystified me. It did show that he just loved the game. He told me one day he noticed some of the better shooters were laying off a little feeling sorry for him and he skated out of the net over to them and told them to knock it off. He said he told them, “if you lay off I won’t learn anything and neither will you.” I have to say I was pretty proud of him for that. In Luke’s case he came back from just that week a way improved skater. He was making moves he was not ever capable of making before. Didn’t help him at his evaluations though. They just want to see goals. That’s how we end up with entire teams of defenseman and a team of wingers.
Next Logan signed up for a high school camp for kids from 7th-10th grade. There Logan saw a whole different speed of shots. I about had an anxiety attack watching these 16 year old man-beasts shooting pucks at 90mph (not really but it looks like it) at my little goalie. Again their hardest shooter started laying off and again Logan told him to let him have it. Which he did hurting Logan a couple of times. Then we had preskates which are like pre tryouts. On the last night a big goon fired a slap shot at nearly point blank range. Somehow through all of his pads it found bare skin on his collar bone. The skin tore and bruised immediately. They took him off the ice. I thought that was it and evaluations started the day after. We got his gear off and I thought his collar bone was broken. One of our closest friends there who just happens be a D1 college hockey coach and former pro goalie himself tested him out and he thought it was just really bruised. We threw some ice on it and I started to pack him up to go home. Logan said, “Dad I gotta go back out there.” I told him no. He said, “I have to finish the practice because they saw me cry. I can’t quit. If I do I might be afraid of the next hard shot.” It was against my better judgement I think, but I suited him back up and he went out there.
I can’t say I’ve ever been prouder. Not at the state championship, shootout wins, tournament wins, none of that. What he said and suiting up and going back out there even though he couldn’t lift his glove arm up at all, was a majorly gutsy move for anyone much less a 12 year old kid that was one of the smallest kids out there. The second smallest kid in goal. If you’re still with me, I am sure you’re dying to know how his evaluation went with a bruised collar bone and not being able to lift his glove arm. Well they went not great. We’re on a good old B team again. This time I think we are much better off than last year. We have some really big and really fast kids. Logan’s reunited with two of his friends and us with their parents. Unfortunately, Logan seems a little shell shocked and is struggling with the harder shots.
His first few practices were not great. I have been cranking up the pep talks and got one myself from his head coach who also happens to be a goalie. He told me what Logan was doing wrong which I will keep to myself, but it wasn’t what a goalie or goalie parent wants to hear. I let Logan know what coach said and what he could do about it. He’s been working in the basement with Luke and last night after practice they had a breakaway/shootout competition and he shut out the whole team for the first time. I am hoping this will improve his confidence and his attitude towards school. It took me a minute to figure out the correlation, but it’s pretty obvious for both of them. They were working hard and politely at school and after evaluations became two little bears. Not the cute kind but the teenage kind that tear all the trash out of your trashcans or try to eat you.
Logan’s team won their first declaration game which was a huge boost from the hangover from last year. He didn’t see a whole lot of shots which in this case I think is a good thing. He made all the saves he should have. The two goals he let in were good goals. Luke’s team has lost two so they really need a win today as we head to the shining metropolis of East Alton, IL. He’s really got to get some muscle into that pretty skating. I’m sure my pep talks will continue for both of them.
Enough hockey? This Judge Kavanaugh thing is driving me up the wall. Whatever your stance is on it, it is amazing to me and sad how divided we are about it. Like I said in my last post I think it’s possible this happened, but after watching Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh testify I’m having a really hard time believing her. She lied about something so simple to disprove with her fear of flying. That was her reason for not coming to D.C. Then it turns out she flies all of the time. Not to mention she seemed to be the only person in the room unaware that committee members offered to fly to her. Then she flip flops and says she didn’t want them going through the trouble. Ok still doesn’t mean the guy didn’t jump on top of her. Except everyone she said was there has stated under oath they have no idea what she’s talking about. She can’t remember where it was or how she got home. Her BFF was there and she left her alone there seemingly with two rapists in training, but they never discussed it? You don’t find that odd? “Hey buddy why did you disappear from that party leaving me behind?” I will give her not remembering a date or an address it was 35 years ago. But running out of a house 8miles away from your own leaving your BFF with a bunch of drunk predators and not remembering who picked you up or if anyone picked you up? Ok that’s a crappy thing to do to a friend, and it’s weird the friend wouldn’t remember being left at a party alone with a bunch of drunk degenerate dudes.
Dr. Ford took a polygraph test. It is being reported she was asked only two questions and neither one of them named Judge Kavanaugh. Nor did she name him in her therapy sessions. She didn’t want to name him until he was about to become a Justice. Ok I can give her that except why wasn’t she outraged enough to come forward weeks ago and cut his nomination off at the very beginning? Why wait till the last minute that could only delay the confirmation. If she scored an FBI investigation it might get delayed until the Democrats took power back over which they seem so desperate to do. Again doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it begins to really unravel her credibility I think. She stated she had only everything to lose and nothing to gain by coming forward. However, over $600,000 has been raised in her name on GoFundMe pages. She has no idea who paid for her polygraph or her travel. Uhhh What? Her lawyer said “lawyers paid for it.” What lawyers? Whose lawyers? Who is paying for these lawyers?
Then her physical demeanor at the hearing. I’m sorry, but she comes off as a bit unstable. Could this be from being traumatized by Judge Kavanaugh? Sure. After watching Judge Kavanaugh speak I find it even harder to believe. He appears to be the victim in this whole thing. People are coming out of the wood work accusing him of gang rapes and drunken sexual debauchery with no proof or names behind the accusers. You can just tweet “I was raped by this judge,” and they put it in the NY Times and on CNN. How is that right? IF he did these things ok burn him at the stake, but it can’t be by anonymous sources. That’s insanity yet we are accepting it.
I know a lot of my female friends are against me on this just because she is a woman and we men (especially white ones according the geniuses at the View) have a heinous history of ignoring the abuse of women. They want me to believe the woman no matter what. To them, it’s just impossible she’s been put up to this even though she is blatantly getting paid for it and has zero evidence or even a convincing story. I just ask that you for one moment imagine that you are Judge Kavanaugh and this never happened. This will follow him and his family for the rest of their lives. Conservative politicians and pundits are already being assaulted and harassed in public for no reason. This guy will forever be the “Rapist judge/justice” no matter what happens. He’ll have to have plastic surgery to go anywhere.
Let’s talk about the FBI. Is it reasonable to have the FBI take a week to investigate this? I guess except for the following; the FBI still can’t find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, their own missing emails, the classified data transmitted to the unclassified laptops of Hillary, Huma, and Anthony Weiner. They never found anyone who attacked our black site, I mean consulate in Benghazi. They vowed to track down the people who murdered and mutilated a US State Department Ambassador…nothing…
The FBI provided six…SIX reports on Judge Kavanaugh over several weeks of background interviews. I can tell you from personal experience when you get a Top Secret Clearance they go back to your Kindergarten teachers and neighbors and that’s just to be around airplanes and Intelligence information. This guy will be a Supreme Court Justice. This FBI has already been proven to lean to the left. You don’t think they would have scraped up one of these now numerous accusations that he was a sex craved drunk frat boy? Really? Well if he was, and they didn’t, is that who you want investigating him again for a week?? Who does that make sense to? If it does than you and I are just wired differently. I love you though.
Jacked Up Dad 