Murphy's Law

I feel like I've been living under a black cloud lately. You know that feeling -- like anything that can go wrong, will. It's been hanging on for close to three weeks now. And no matter what I do to wake up with a good attitude toward the day, something goes wrong.

Now I'm at the point where I have a sour stomach every day with the left overs from what has been going on. It seems I'm coming out of it, but I have some emotional baggage left still to deal with.

It first started with our local hockey team. We're very dysfunctional up here, and we always start out the season with a lot of drama. No big deal, as by about Thanksgiving the drama has resolved. This year, it hasn't. Our team manager is usually the instigator of this drama. She's into "image", and the "image" usually revolves around her son when it comes to hockey. He has to be the "star". Well, he didn't make the state team again this year, but my son, Derek, did -- again. This has always been a bone of contention for her, and so the drama begins. This year, though, the drama was/is at the insane crazy level. There's another ice rink/team down in Albuquerque who is rather cliquish, and most people just poo-poo them off as "that's the Outpost". Well, this year several of their kids also tried out for the State team and most of them did not make it. The people/association who put together the state team didn't want these kids to be left out and wanted to help develop them, so they were going to go with a "B" competetive team for them. Well, our manager and these other parents refused to let their kids play unless they could play for the "A" team, thus not having enough kids to make up a "B" team so that was abandoned.

So what happened? These parents got together under the direction of our manager and decided to make their OWN "B" team! Our manager invited all of our best players off of our local rec team, and then invited the kids from this other rink to join us. Well, okay, fine. EXCEPT that the first games scheduled were during our local team's first games -- which I didn't know. The email was sent out that our first games for our local team were in Durango. Anyway *I* thought it was our local team. I send out our calendars for our team, and sent out the scheduled games for that weekend, noting that our manager's email did not include all of our parents on our roster, so corrected it, and sent the calendar out to EVERYone on our team. Big unknown mistake on my part as I found out later. It was NOT for our local team, but this "new" team put together from our manager! She also told me just to leave off the games scheduled here in town, that it was only Durango for that weekend. On hind sight, I see what happened. Because our entire team was not invited, the kids that were not invited were just dropped from having games that weekend. But the parents who did not get the invite were furious that this was going on, that their kids' games were canceled because only half of our team was invited to go to Durango leaving not enough kids to have a game here! Yikes!

Okay, so that's going on -- still. Our local hockey board is furious with our manager; many parents are furious with our manager; and I feel like I'm between everyone because I'm listening to the woes of our manager AND the parents. In the meantime, our manager is absolutely ballistic about her son not making the state team and keeps directing her anger at me and Derek, trying to find absolutely everything wrong with Derek to try to get him banned from the rink. Which means, Derek has to be absolutely PERFECT in everything he does. Have you ever seen a kid who is absolutely perfect???? Makes it really hard and stressful on both of us... and she's been blaming Derek for absolutely every wrong that is happening, and so far he hasn't been involved in any of it, but once did have to applogize along with the other kids that were involved. I don't think he even has to be at the rink to be blamed, either. He's just automatically on the list of kids to blame now. *sigh*

Now, to continue on with our dysfunctional local hockey team...

We have an assistant coach who is... well, "odd", for lack of a better word. He's the kind of guy who comes across as really nice, cooperative, knowledgeable, etc. But behind the scenes, he's a bully to the kids. Now, I don't mean the kind of bullying that you would associate with the image of a coach, either; I do mean bully. And it's done so only the kids know it's happening, and the parents kind of ignore what their kids are telling their parents about him because he seems so nice and cooperative. He's virtually on a power trip, trying to be dictator. Never has a kind word for the kids; is known to slam the kids against the boards, or physically grab them by the neck or jersey, all because they didn't sit down when told, or because they tried to explain to him why they did what they did ("don't smart mouth me!") -- things like that. But this is all done where adults rarely see it.

This coach declined being the assistant coach this year for our local team because he volunteered to be assistant to our state team. The kids here cheered. The kids on the state team are getting a taste of him now. Now, I'm the kind of person who, after an incident has happened, tell myself that it can't be as bad as I thought. Because we both had kids on the state team this year, I agreed to share rides, and even agreed to share a hotel room for a weekend. What a mistake! After finding out that Derek was being bullied the whole way home from high school team practice in the mornings, and after being bullied myself on our shared weekend, I called it quits. I do not care to be bullied, intimitated and yelled at. And it really hit home what Derek was going through on those rides home from the rink in the mornings.

Okay, so on to his coaching on the state team. Because he knows Derek, he benched Derek over Thanksgiving. And because Derek's friend on the state team stayed with us that weekend, he benched Derek's friend. I never thought that he would do that, but he did. It's also obvious that he's talking to our head coach because I watched as the dynamics of our team changed to what we see going on here with our local team in Taos. It was chaos on the ice, with a lot of kids upset and angry. I don't think anyone else knows how our team here in Taos is, but it was obvious to me and Derek. It was this coach's team, not our head coach's. So our head coach was actually doing what this coach suggested. Our great state team has now turned to Dysfunctional Taos.

Derek says he has quit the state team. He refuses to play as long as this coach is on the bench. I really can't blame him, but this coach has our team over a barrel because his daughter is the back-up goalie. We can't even register for Nationals if we don't have two goalies rostered, and this coach's daughter will make it so we can go. She's on the team so that we can go to Nationals. If he pulls her, we can't go, simple as that. But if our head coach continues to do what our Taos coach tells him, we haven't got a chance in Nationals. We WERE a great team; now we're a joke.

So we've got that going on. I still have to call the manager of our state team and officially resign. In the meantime, if we want to play for the travel team that our local team manager put together, the rules are that Derek has to officially resign from this state team. Which leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because the other parents from the other rink absolutely hate the state team because their kids didn't make the team. So I feel that's manipulation.

So as Derek says, "hockey has really soured this year." We're looking at moving in with Mom in California and trying out for the Jr. Ducks for next year. I, for one, am tired of the drama, so have not ruled out that option. Mom, on the other hand, seems to sound thrilled at the prospect...

Okay, so that's hockey.

And then I lost my bonus at work and blew up. I guess I have a reputation for speaking my mind at work. November was the month I had several scheduled days off for hockey tournaments, so it was going to be a short paycheck month for me. I went home sick one day at the beginning of November when flu was really going around, and the supervisor on duty I guess didn't like me that day and "deviated" me. So I lost my bonus that I was counting on. All the other supervisors were shocked that she did that, so I wasn't alone in my feelings. When she told me sternly, "we have to talk about this or you're insubordinate", I just told her, "then I'm insubordinate." I thought she was going to fire me -- which, in my state of mind at the moment, was fine with me.

And then I got jury duty. On the first day I reported, when I came back to work, I couldn't park in the parking lot and had to park across the street. When I went home from work that day, I got in the truck, went to pull out, and realized that my driver's side mirror on my truck was stolen! $800. And that after I had just replaced my back bumper from some girl who "just had to see what was going on across the street" instead of looking at the cars stopped in front of her and rammed into me.

And Derek, who got flu in September, just has not fully recuperated. He's had ear infections, and this last one a couple of weeks ago, he had two ear infections, severe bronchitis, and fluid in his lungs. The doctor grounded him from ice time for a WEEK. "I'm FINE!!!" he kept proclaiming to both me and the doctor. *sigh* So I had to deal with nebulizers, inhalers, meds and keeping an active kid resting. Yeah, like asking for the moon!

And my tires are bald, and my major service on the truck is due (approximately $2,000 service every 60,000 miles -- I now have close to 70,000 miles on this new truck!!!).

Got the tires last week -- wrote a check (if I have checks, I have money, right??? lol)

So that's my black cloud. Seems to me there's more, but I can't remember what all it is. Oh, yeah -- Derek grew another two inches, and so we had to buy more hockey equipment. And the zipper on his hockey bag just broke. *sigh*