Reasons I Need Caffeine: Third Edition

It’s amazing what a break will do for the soul. When the boys were younger, I would work through the Christmas holidays, or at least some of them. If daycare was closed, we could choose to send them to a camp for the week. Or grandparents willing to watch small people for a couple of days. As they got older, I figured things would get easier and going to work wouldn’t be such a logistical nightmare.

Boy I was wrong. The truth of it is, even without work, the holiday period is busy for us. Which shouldn’t be the case because around our area, the hockey schedule takes a break at the same time as school. Granted, it amounts to one full weekend off, but even so, that’s one more weekend than we usually have. But there are three different households to visit, two different Christmas dinners to attend as well as four birthdays to be celebrated within the same week as Christmas. This doesn’t take into account the full month of Christmas baking, parties and school things that happen before we get to the day itself.

I enjoy every single one of the holiday events but come Christmas Day, I am very much looking forward to sitting on my couch with a book and a tea (or a glass of wine, depending on the time of day).

In order to maximize the time off hockey, I started taking the full Christmas school break off. Thankfully most of our family lives in the area, so we don’t have to travel out of town. I force myself to rest. I take advantage by clearing the schedule as much as possible so I can do things like organize my life and catch up on laundry. Just enough so that I finish the hockey season without feeling like I’m drowning in chaos and dirty boy socks.

So while I have my wits about me, I present the latest weekly recap. Or as I like to call it:

Reasons I Need Caffeine, Third Edition.

1. This weekend we are out of town for our first of two away tournaments, this time with Boy #1’s Atom team. I love out of town tournaments for the experience they are. But over the last two years I’ve learned that they are as exhausting as they are fun. I need time to recover afterwards and I rarely have that time. The week following this tournament is no exception, two days of training at work followed by a second, in-town tournament the following weekend. The hockey break is over effective January 4th.
2. The no-vomit streak has ended. We made it through last winter without any gastro virus descending on the house. This year we were not so lucky. Each boy took a turn talking to the porcelain throne last week. I’m still washing and disinfecting all surfaces in an attempt to eradicate this bug. Keep your fingers crossed that this is it for us for the winter. Kind of a one and done thing. That’s what I’m hoping for.
3. I made the mistake of watching The Birdbox on Netflix. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic movie, but it is way out of my usual genre. Like way out of my usual. I don’t watch scary movies. I like to be able to sleep at night. HockeyDad pulled this one up and I spent the next two hours on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what exactly I had agreed to. Three days later, I’m still not entirely sure and I’m still struggling to fall asleep.

All that said, I am looking forward to the back half of the season. Maybe it’s the extra naps I took during the break, but 2019 has the potential to be a wonderful year.

See you at the rink,