Suzy Sunshine on Vacation

This blog has had many different births and rebirths.  It started as a way to help me improve my hockey photography.  It then morphed into a way to help me stay focused on my weight loss.  Eventually, it changed again, into an outlet for my conversations about running and weight maintenance.

Though all that, I’ve done my best to keep things upbeat and cheerful.  In real life, I am known as being almost annoyingly positive…if there is a silver lining, I will find it.  If someone needs encouraging, I feel it is my personal duty to offer them the inspiration they’re looking for.  More than once in my life, I have been dubbed “Suzy Sunshine” (and not always in a complimentary way 😉 ).

Well, this week, Suzy Sunshine packed her bags, grabbed a Lucky Strike and a bottle of single malt Scotch, and then proceeded to hitch-hike her way down I-75 and out of my life. So be prepared, because this post is about to go downhill very fast.

In the last two months, our household has been dealt with the following blows:

• 10% cut to my husband’s pay
• 100% increase in healthcare premium costs for our family of 4
• 12-hours of work NOT paid to my husband on not one but TWO paychecks in a row! (We are still waiting to see if the idiots in payroll will correct the error on his next paycheck, much less if they will ever give pay him back that 24 hours of pay!)
• dropped my iPad and cracked the screen
• got my cell phone wet and it no longer works
• ports on my laptop are not working, thus ensuring I cannot download or upload pictures from my camera, and the battery has died, so it MUST be plugged in to work

And the mother of them all…

• water pump (or something) went out on my husband’s truck

So, in a nutshell, while we are struggling to balance our budget with 10% less, we’ve been hit with all these unexpected expenses and salary errors. 🙁  This is why my posts are few and far between lately.  I swear, I sat at my laptop last Sunday night, looking at my bank account and budget, and nearly had a nervous breakdown.

In addition to all that (just because I feel like I might as well take the whiny-ness to the extreme), this weekend is the weekend I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to for months.  Yesterday, my husband left with DS#1 to attend a hockey tournament in Traverse City.  This is the first hockey tournament I have missed in the four years since we became a hockey family. 🙁  To say that I love hockey tournaments is an immense understatement.  The truth is, I live for them.  They are so much fun because it’s a bunch of like-minded families with kids the same age getting together and having fun.  The hockey is just kind of a side thing in between the partying. 😉

Last night I had to sit at home and get texts to keep me updated on what turned out to be an extremely exciting game in which our boys were down by 2 goals but came back to tie it, scoring the last goal with just 13 seconds left.  And I missed it!!  I had to see all the fun updates and pictures on Facebook while I just sat here feeling sorry for myself and drinking wine. 😛

There has been a bright side, though.  As I had mentioned earlier in the year, DS#1’s former team fell apart at the end of last fall/winter season.  This was a team that he had been on (and I had managed) for two years; some of those kids we had been with since DS#1 started playing in 2006! I loved all of those boys like they were my own.  That was hard enough on us, but then, it took us three try(out)s in the spring before we finally found a team that accepted DS#1.  It was hard for me, as the mom, to watch my son go through all that disappointment.

I was very reserved in the spring (not normally me) when it came to hockey.  I just didn’t want to get too close after what happened in the previous season.  We were blessed enough to stay with this team for the fall/winter season, and at that point, I felt like I could open up a little and become more involved.  And, well…once I do something, I rarely do it halfway. 😉 Truly, though, it just goes to prove the old saying, you get what you give.  I have discovered that the new team is filled with fantastic families, and it has been so much fun to get to know them.  They have been great about keeping me updated with texts during the games this weekend (since my husband is not quite so adept, lol!), and just in general they are making me feel very missed.  🙂

A bunch of team moms got together last weekend and had a “sign-making” party (has the kids’ names on them to hang on the hotel room doors), and what a great time it was!  Not to mention, I think the signs turned out pretty awesome.  I’d show you a picture, but I left that SD card at my sister’s, so I’ll show them off later, with a hockey-themed post. 🙂  I can, however, show you a few of the composites I put together for the signs.  These are three kids whose moms were okay with me using their sons’ pictures on my blog. (I haven’t actually had a chance to ask any of the other moms for their permission to use pictures yet, but I’m hopeful that I’ll have more that agree to it so I can really show off some of the pictures I’ve been taking this season. )

They look even better in their original form, with the kids’ full first names, the team name, and the team logo.  (I removed all those for privacy, of course.)

It has been great fun to get to know these families and have fun with them, and although I am truly bummed to miss this tournament, I do have a very good reason for it.

No, not the full marathon, lol!  I’m one of five members of a team that is doing the marathon relay, and tomorrow morning, I will be getting up at dark f’ing o’clock (lol!) to meet up with my teammates to run in downtown Detroit. Here is a shot of me with my bib at the Expo tonight. (I really wanted to include all five of us, but I cropped out the other ladies because I don’t know that they’d want to be on my blog!)

We all went to dinner after the Expo at Andiamos in the Ren Cen.  I didn’t carb load, because I just didn’t feel like pasta tonight, but I did have a yummy salmon and plenty of bread.  Oh, and four of us split this beauty for dessert…

I’m very excited to be running the final leg of the relay, 4.4 miles from Belle Isle to the finish line.  It’s going to be awesome!!!   I can’t wait to come back on Monday and give you all the details. 🙂

So, although I’m sad to miss a hockey tournament with my new (as well as some old!) friends, I know there will be others, and if there was ever a reason to miss a tournament, I think this would be it. 😀  And, besides that, while my husband is up in Traverse City dealing with a gazillion kids aged ten and under, DS#2 and I are back at home, having a little fun with his soon-to-be new toy…

Guess what came in yesterday after he left? 😉

Thanks for reading my rather whiny post.  Next one will be better, I promise!!