Here’s my kokeshi for the upcoming show at the Japanese American National Museum put on by the Los Angeles Toy, Doll & Amusement Museum. Like the last one I made, I found it pretty hard to part with her. Next time I’m making one for myself!

So we’re out of the playoffs, and to add insult to injury we lost to the team with the 55 points in 19 games gal (who scored 8 goals in 2 games against us), in spite of our best efforts to shut her down. I have to admit that almost team-wide we were off. I don’t know if it was nerves or missing our Kessler or just simply, an off night. The worst part is that I don’t take losing very well, and the madder I get the more intent I am in rubbing someone out in the boards, shoulder to shoulder. I always feel a bit ashamed afterwards, even though I always maintain that there has to be and always will be a physical element to the game, women or not. In fact they should allow it a tiny bit more and every woman should play one season just to recognize their own physical strength.

But the best part about it was that as bad as we all felt after losing (and we’d gone about 8 games without losing – I was beginning to think we were invincible – turns out we’re vincible), hanging around with my teammates and having a good laugh afterwards was the best thing imaginable, and made everything alright in the end. Seriously, I like my team so much I’m taking up golfing this summer just so I can see them.

There’s a team in my hockey division that have been rivals with us for years ( and I say they’ve been rivals, because most of the bad feelings have been on their side) and I’ve just come home from a playoff win against them. It’s been on again/off again (mostly on) for our near-6-year history, and seems to have returned with our last two regulation wins against them.

The new twist in this story is our goalie is involved with their goalie, so we get the privilege of hearing repeatedly how much they hate us. I really don’t want to hear about it, because if someone is going to criticize me and my teammates it’s going to get my back up. We’re obnoxious and lippy – probably true – but it isn’t because we mostly win. Maybe it’s a good thing for the playoffs because I’ll feel the rivalry more keenly. I don’t, however, like how it makes me argumentative with the person telling me about it. So in our next matchup we’re going to try and do a little damage control, as well as kick their asses.

I do talk a lot about hockey, don’t I ? I’m sorry……..but Go Canucks Go!

I’m still trying to get used to the fact that I have a girly girl for a daughter – she’s obsessed with princesses, barbie, pink and makeup, the result of her one day in daycare with 3 or 4 other little girls. I can tolerate the first 3 (okay, I kind of like pink myself) but I’m not sure what to think about the makeup. I caved in this morning and bought her some nail polish (the formaldehyde and toluene free kind but still full of a long list of chemicals) because I was getting tired of her coloring the ends of her fingers with my gel pens (which does not wash off, let me tell you). I did find a special, chemical free kid formula called piggy paint that I’m going to get her next week when I’m in the area.

Still, I have some misgivings about the whole thing because I don’t approve of it, and yet, I really don’t want to turn every small thing into something too serious, and end up being a drag. I always want to encourage my kids’ interests (whether I agree with them or not) so that they will grow up thinking the world is full off interesting and fun things. God knows I’ve indulged my son’s mania for lego so much that I’m constantly stepping on it and sucking it up in the vaccuum cleaner (he very quickly learned what the phrase “bane of my existence” means) . On the other hand, I worry she will end up like my friend’s niece, embarassed to be seen with her hairy, non-makeup wearing mom. I’m kind of betting on indulging her now so that she won’t be interested in it when she’s a little older.

At any rate, my caving in this morning meant that I had to apply the nail polish, which I found to be a pretty bizarre thing, not having done it much in my own life. At least it was like painting a very tiny area with pink sparkly paint.

Speaking of painting, I absolutely love Susan Bennerstrom’s work, especially her stairways. There’s something so haunting about them, like they’re hinting at all the mysteries and complexities and multiple paths a life could take. And they’re done in oil pastel!

Black Stairs by Susan Bennerstrom

So you may have noticed from my twitter update that we won the international tourney out in Delta last weekend (which just goes to show you, we WILL drive an hour for 19 minutes of ice time). It’s taken until today to start feeling slightly like myself again, to get over the exhaustion and the aches and pains that left me largely immobile yesterday. It was worth every minute of it.

Highlights included meeting some fine new hockey players (our team was two teams combined, as neither could get enough players out), bonding with my Kaos team-mates (have I mentioned lately how great they are?) and playing alongside one of the best defencepersons I have met in awhile. And there was a hot tub in there too – the only down-side was two days of greasy pub food.

But most of all, it was pretty satisfying to beat 3 American teams (we faced off against Canadians in the final), one of them being a university team, the USC Trojans. Are there divisions in university hockey? I was slightly confused by our beating them, although they gave us the best game. I was also surprised at how apologetic they were on the ice – not the kind of behaviour one expects from Americans, and this was true for all three teams we faced – they kept saying sorry at the slightest bump. And the more they apologized the more I was like:

So much for the unapologetic Americans and the nice but boring Canadians!

About one hour before the realtor called to tell us our house was sold, we were offered a 3 bedroom in a co-op one block from our house. Can you imagine any better timing? We got a bit of help from my friend Vanessa who put in a good word for us (and now tells me to bloody go to church already, because someone sure is looking out for me – I think it’s just her, so I’m going to make sure I have lots of extra sugar), and the best thing (aside from living next door to our best friends) is that we won’t have to leave our neighborhood. Our son gets to stay in his school AND there’s a secure playground outside where he can go play with a bunch of kids AND we won’t get kicked out yet again because someone wants to sell AND we get a whole month to move…….phew.

Honestly though, how wrong were we in thinking that the place wouldn’t sell quickly? 589,900 for a 3 bedroom duplex (better make sure you have a cat for the small rodent problem) when there’s a 9 bedroom 5 bathroom house for sale about 4 blocks away for less that. We thought that the real value is in developing the lot (its huge) and the economy is rotten and it’s a bad time to develop blah blah blah….but people are buying even if they barely look at the place, and Canada’s economy is hanging in there and for that reason yesterday the Globe and Mail called us a nice but boring nation.

We’ll see if we’re that boring. Tonight is our women’s hockey tourney where we get to face off against some Americans, and trust me, we take our hockey very very seriously, over here.