Okay, I have accepted that my life is a very loud one, with things always happening all around me, whether I want them to or not. But this past weekend was dramatic, even for me.
As I told you in my last post, my uncle recently passed away. Also in that post, I mentioned that Thing 1 had made it to the California State Ice Hockey championships. As it turns out, both were in San Diego. I had two radio interviews for my upcoming show, so I wasn't able to leave until Friday afternoon, so Thing 1 had to ride down with another family (their first game was Friday).
Game one was against the Southern California Champs, the Bakersfield Dragons. Our team, the Santa Rosa Flyers, won 3-2 in overtime. A very exciting match, by all accounts. While the boys were on the ice, Denise and I were on the road. Recently, there several police officers were tragically (and fatally) shot in the Bay Area. What I did not know was that the services for those officers were on Friday afternoon, and the powers-that-be had shut down one of the main arteries of traffic in the area. The freeway was at a crawl--so bad, in fact, that Denise and I exited to have dinner, and when we got back on an hour and a half later, it wasn't much better. We did not get in to the hotel in San Diego until nearly 2am.
I was up four hours later to get my son, and we had a quick breakfast before heading to the ice. He had an 8:30am game against the other SOCAL finalists, the Anaheim Jr. Ducks. We lost in the last three minutes of the game, 3-2. After the game, we headed back to the hotel. I called one of my uncles to see if it was okay if I just showed up at the memorial service for my uncle, and they welcomed both Denise and I to come. We changed and headed out, after handing Thing 1 off to the head coach for a few hours.
The service was nice--two of my cousins and one of my aunts spoke, sharing great stories and messages. There was a slide show of my uncle's life, and quite a few pictures included my (then very young) father. Afterward, my aunt invited the family and closest friends to her house for a meal. My uncle and she had run a restaurant for a while, so there was quite a spread of authentic Korean food (she is Korean; my family is Chinese). We had some food, saw many of my cousins, and had a Coors (my uncle was fond of that brand).
Denise and I went back to the hotel. She took a nap while Thing 1 and I went to get him some food. After watching him eat most of a Subway meatball hero, we went back to the hotel to collect his gear and Denise, and headed off to the next game. This one was against the team that the Flyers lost to in the final game of the NORCAL playoffs--the Fresno Jr. Falcons.
To make things even more exciting, the other games in the finals thus far were all close as well. All four teams had won one game, so the point spread was even. Now it was down to this final game--whoever won the game between Anaheim and Bakersfield would face whoever won our game against Fresno on Sunday morning for the championship. I told the guys on our team that Thing 1's birthday was Sunday, and a championship trophy would be a wonderful gift. ;o)
The boys fought hard for the first half of the game, but then their legs just seemed to give out and Fresno's seemed to kick in. It was as if they were energy vampires of some sort. The Flyers ended up getting steamrolled, 5-1, and were knocked out. It was a very tough way to go out (not that there is ever an easy way), and Thing 1 was pretty emotional. I asked what he would like, and he said most of all he wanted to just go back to the hotel and chill--he didn't want to hang out with the team or really celebrate his birthday that night. We grabbed some pizza and pay-per-viewed The Tale of Desperaux (which was an AWESOME movie, btw). I packed up all his stuff, and all of mine, and was in bed almost by midnight.
The following morning, I got up at 5am, got showered and woke Thing 1 and Denise, and packed up the car. I had us checked out of the hotel by 6:20, we stopped at Denny's for birthday breakfast, and hit the road. We arrived back home at 2:45pm (I was breaking land speed records--I probably would have been double-ticketed for driving under the influence, I had so much caffeine in my system). I dropped Denise off at my house so she could zip home before our rehearsal that evening, dropped Thing 1 off at his mom's so they could celebrate his birthday, and stopped to pick him up a gift I had seen days earlier but didn't have the time to purchase.
I was at a grueling cue-to-cue rehearsal from 4:15-7:45pm, stopped by the head coach's house to get the backpack Thing 1 forgot in San Diego, and went home. I am still not sure how or when I will get to deal with all this. Probably in a week when the show is open. Oy.
