So I realized I have been kind of hating winter.  Winter is so long here that even for fans like me, the thrill of the cold crisp air and the beauty of ice crystals and snow flakes fades after awhile, and then you need things like broomball and snowshoeing to see you through.  Well we haven’t gotten any good snow for like 2 months, and el tonsillectomy caused me to remove myself from the Grim Sweepers for the season.  Everybody wants to be a Sweeper (duh), and I didn’t want to take up a spot on the team just in the hopes of getting well enough in time to get a few games in. 

However, once I started experiencing serious dread every day at dog-walking time just because I SOOOOO didn’t want to go outside, I realized I was in desperate need of some winter fun.  So I decided to go to broomball practice and see how it went.  I had been working on getting myself back in shape, riding our elliptical, jogging little bits with Bruno, so I felt ready.  I thought, I’ll just play goalie, take it easy, it’ll be fun.  It wasn’t fun.  It was terrible. 

I should have seen it coming when I was flooded with sheer terror just walking from the car to the ice.  But at that point I was already committed.  I let 3 goals in a row go past me, and I felt like I just stood there and watched them.  Tears welled up in my eyes and it was all I could do to not have a total meltdown.  Nate, having knocked in 2 of those goals, came up to me to see how I was doing, saw the tears, heard me say "Idon’tlikethisI’mnothavingfunIwannagohome!" and realized he needed to switch teams.  Smart boy.  I took a moment to breathe and reflect, and realized that if I let 3 goals go in, started crying, and went home, I would be THE BIGGEST LOSER EVER.  So I rallied.  Second half was better, and finally we got to go home.  And then I cried. 

I realized with shock that I was terrified of blood shooting out of my throat.  I logically know that I’m out of that window and no longer at risk of that happening again.  But the illogical part of me can’t stop seeing it and thinking it’s happening.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spit into a sink or on the sidewalk, just to check.  But it wasn’t until that practice that I realized it.  So Nate and I talked about it a bunch, and I did a good bit of thinking on it, because I was pretty freaked out about being that freaked out.

And then Tuesday’s Sweepers game came.  They were going to be short girls, so they had asked a girl from our buddy team, the Skraelings, to play, and Nate had asked a girl from his Walker team.  But that afternoon she told him stuff had come up and she’d rather not play.  Meanwhile, the temperature was dropping, the wind was increasing, and we were heading for a roughly -10 degree, windy night, with windchills at about -35. 

Sierra had been frantically chatting Nate and I throughout the day, saying things like, "They’re totally going to cancel it, right?  I mean this is insane!", and " I don’t understand why I am the only one freaking out about this!!!"  It was suddenly very clear to me.  Either Sierra was going to bail and the Sweepers would be really short on girls, or she was going to go and face one of her greatest fears (being outside in subzero weather), and the Sweepers would still be a little short.  Either way, how could I not go? 

Sierra did not bail, and her courage gave me the inspiration I needed to face my own fears.  I had to get out there too.  So we went, we froze, we lost.  My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest the whole time, but that probably just helped me stay warm!  In spite of letting in a few goals, I felt like I did ok overall, and was absolutely ecstatic at the end of it, because I DID IT.  I felt like myself again. 

I’ve had a few frighteningly realistic nightmares over the last few weeks involving lots of blood in my mouth, most recently Friday night.  So Saturday morning I went to broomball practice again, and made it a point to only spend about half my time in the goal, and the other half running around on the ice.  I needed to drill it into my brain that I am physically fine, not in quite as good of shape as I was pre-tonsillectomy, but fine.  Now I just need my mind to catch up with my body. 

(If you haven’t already, you HAVE to click on that picture of Cody.  It’s amazing!  Everyone looked some version of that by the end of the game, it was pretty crazy.)

This is very belated, but still needs to be written about.  I’m a fan of winter.  I’m a big fan of spring, summer, and fall too, but it seems like a lot of people either whine all winter long about the cold and the snow, or just kind of quietly suffer through it.  Not me.  I love it.  There are so many fun things you can only do during winter!  Broomball for example, snowshoeing, ice skating, sledding, skiing, snowball fights… 

So imagine my surprise when this year I found myself hating winter!  Before we left for Ghana and Scotland it was too warm so there was no ice for us to play broomball on – major bummer.  Then when we got back it was like a million below zero and we had to just jump in to broomball games, no fun practices with our awesome team to get us all excited.  And I had a cold.  So I kind of went to the games and froze my butt off and was miserable and whiny the whole time.  But then we had a great fun weekend session of play-till-you-can-physically-play-no-more broomball, and things started looking up. 

And then it snowed.  Heaps and heaps of snow!  FINALLY!  Nate and I took Bruno snowshoeing at Powderhorn Park and the little buddy got pretty tuckered out.  He had been getting pretty short walks when it was way below zero, so he may not have been in primo shape.  And then it snowed heaps and heaps more just a few days later!  So I got to go snowshoeing two more days that weekend!  And it was the most perfect weather, all sunshine!

I took Nicole with me on the first day, her first time snowshoeing, awww.  We went to explore some trails along the Mississippi where I will be spending quite a bit of time this spring and summer.  There’s a small but wonderful oak savanna there that volunteers have worked really hard to restore and maintain, and even in the winter it was a sight to see.  I took this totally ridiculous picture of us.  I’m such a friggin genius that I thought I was wisely blocking the sun from my eyes. 

Sierra went with me the next day, and we went to Fort Snelling State Park.  We took Bruno with us because I realized from the previous day that the trails would be packed down enough for him.  There are so many people here who love to play in the snow and it’s amazing how fast they get out in it!  It can make it hard to find some nice deep fresh stuff, which is what I prefer to snowshoe in, but it’s so great to know so many people are getting out there, getting exercise, enjoying the snow, the sun, the fresh air.  We went on a long hike around Pike Island, and there were so many people out walking, skiing, snowshoeing, so many dogs, so many deer!  Bruno was completely overstimulated.

So I completely fell in love with winter again, and just in the nick of time.  It’s all melting now, and I would have been worried if I hadn’t enjoyed any of the season.  But now I am getting excited about shedding some layers, digging in the dirt, planting things, and getting to actually do some of the events I’ve been planning at work!

This weekend Coach Kastler and sidekick Mad-dog organized a little Grim Sweepers retreat at his family’s cabin near Webster, WI. Nate and I weren’t able to make it up there until late Saturday night, but when we finally arrived at almost midnight, we found the majority of the Sweepers – where else? Out on the ice of course! Peter had cleared snow from the ice on the lake to make a nice sized rink for us to play on, and they were out there with tiki torches, playing a modified game of broomball they were calling "Swarm", which sounded like it basically amounted to "everyone attack the guy with the ball". Nate and I joined in the action, and I gave Nate this: Well, actually only the top one. Wendy was responsible for the bottom one.

After one of the worst nights of sleep in my life because of a certain overstimulated puppy, and a hearty breakfast cooked by Chef Pedro, Nate and I headed out to the ice on our skates for our version of the Winter Olympics: ice dancing and pairs skating. It was truly inspiring. While we were perfecting triple toe loops, spin sequences, and lifts, some others cross country skied, snowshoed, and hiked. Our little dog-friend/canine-devil did very well with his first off-leash experience. He played with the other dogs, accompanied friends on trips around and across the lake, and overall got completely tuckered out. He’s been passed out for like the past 5 hours.

And then of course, there was more broomball. We finished with Peter’s new version of broomball, Zombie, where one person walks around like a zombie, and touches other people to turn them into zombies, who then do the same. They can be turned back either by a teammate hitting them with the ball, or by a goal being scored. It was awwwwwesome.

And so another Grim Sweepers season draws to a close, and what a wonderful way to go out. And now we’re sad. It is such a joy to spend time with each and every one of our teammates, and yet some of them we barely see during the rest of the year. Broomball is the glue that maintains those friendships. It’s also our reason for being insanely excited about freezing temperatures, and our means of fending off seasonal depression. Granted, there are a few things I won’t exactly miss:

And I did just this week get quite the urge to trade in the SmartWool socks for some flip flops. But I once again feel like the season went by way too fast, and I can’t help but wish we had more games, more practices, and more times like these:

So I’m sure you’ve been on the edge of your seat all day, dying to know how the Grim Sweepers fared in the first game of the broomball tournament last night. Well, let me give you a little re-cap.

Other team: Crying and whining about how we were playing too rough, only to turn around and tackle our players multiple times.

Ref: Gives one of our players who was going for the ball a 2-minute penalty for tripping, gives their team no penalties.

Me: "Get out of the crease please." (2 minutes later, to the same girl) "Get out of the crease please."
Other girl: "I’M NOT IN THE CREASE!!!" SNARL GROWL
Me: "YOUR FOOT IS IN THE GOAL!!!" SNARL GROWL PUNCH KICK DECIMATE
(Ok that last part is really just what I wanted to do)

One of our girls has a collision with one of their guys and tries to make a friendly joke. Guy then freaks out something about her being a girl, a tirade he then continues for the rest of the game. Basically, the guy has some deep-seeded issues with women athletes and should really go play in a mens-only league. Not to mention that he was playing with an illegal stick.

Our team: Scores two gorgeous goals.

Their team: Scores one very pretty goal.

Their team: Scores a super lame goal that bounced in off of one of our own players.

Our team: Scores another beautiful goal.

Our team: Scores a goal that bounces around in the net and a member of the other team even acknowledges it went in.

Ref: Calls no goal and says it didn’t go in. It’s now 3-2, Sweepers.

Their team: Big whiner guy wants to fight Peter because he thinks Peter was too rough, whine, whine. Nate gets in between them and tries to calm the guy down. Guy then wants to fight Nate. Nate wants to destroy him. Much shirt grabbing.

Ref: Somehow doesn’t see fit to stop play, even though there is shirt grabbing and near-fighting and everyone has stopped playing and is watching the about-to-be fight. (Somehow he didn’t seem to think it was his job to get the game under control. )

Other team: Takes a cheap shot while no one is looking and scores. It counts.

It’s now 3-3. We then had a variety of awesome opportunities but our shots were just off the mark or blocked. Our team is playing tentatively because they are simultaneously trying to kill us and whining about us playing too rough. I still can’t make sense out of that.

Game ends. Since it’s a tournament we go into overtime. 2 minutes, 4 on 4, 2 girls and 2 guys, no goalies. Dumb. All I can say about this is that we were completely thrown off. It was just too weird. I don’t even know what the score was, but we lost.

It wasn’t so much the losing that sucked. But to lose to such shady, slimy, whiny jerks, people that you can tell even off the ice you would hate because they’re just crappy people, that sucks. And what’s more, to lose when YOU ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE WON if you had had a decent ref!

Needless to say, we were all angry little balls of rage after the game. What to do? Drink beer! We headed to the Chatterbox, our friendly neighborhood pub, and after a pint (or 2) and some quality time with the teammates I so adore, the greatest teammates you could ever ask for and some of the greatest people I have ever known, I was feeling like no matter what we still always come out on top, we always win. Because even now that we’ve gotten good and the game has gotten more intense because we’re actually competitive, we still have the most fun and we still enjoy each other’s company more than any other team, guaranteed. Oh how I love my Grim Sweepers.

So as to not go out on that ugly note, we are going to keep on playing on our own and throwing scrimmages together for as long as the ice will hold. I already can’t wait to get out there and put last night’s game out of my mind forever. And I also think my lengthy message of complaint that I left today for the director of the broomball league about the world’s worst ref was a good step towards releasing a little more rage.

I just realized that we left out one amaaaaazing thing from our game. By far my favorite play ever. Someone popped the ball up, and Scott unexpectedly jumped up and did the most wonderful soccer header, perfectly centering the ball to Peter L., who then smacked it in for a goal. Definitely the first assist of its kind for the Grim Sweepers. I’m glad this guy’s on our team. For anyone who doesn’t know Scott, he’s the ninja-looking fellow in this picture, duh, like he could be anyone else.