"Because you love each other so deeply, you are able to hurt each other so deeply."

It sucks, but it's true.

But, we're working on our own shit, as well as learning about the other. It ain't fun, but we're learning.

Okay, now I'm done whining about my love life.

My thanks to all of you that have not only suffered through my interminably long entries about this shit, but especially those of you that took the time to contact me.

I appreciate you very much.

---

In an apparent burst of nostalgia for my pre-school years on the ranch, I decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches last night. I forgot the tomato soup and applesauce, but I dipped them in ketchup just like the old RanchMom taught me.

Then I lay down for a nap, as I had a late hockey game (10:30) and needed to stockpile as much sleep as I could.

During my slumber, the Rocky Mountains and Mother Nature decided to get together again in order to remind us puny humans just how insignificant we are. This is something they do a few times a year, whether it's a mountain's worth of snow in 3 days, or an ocean's worth of water in a few hours, they seem to enjoy the power of unleashing in excess.

I woke up to the Girl, staring at her new car, fretting about hail-damage, and a white-noise that filled the house.

Do you remember the days before all-night programming on television, where a station would sign off with the National Anthem, and then go to static? Remember falling asleep to a late-night talkshow, then waking up at 3 a.m. to the white-noise of that static, and it's disorienting effects? This was similar, but had engulfed the entire outside world. I was a bit freaked.

I briefly believed that the world may be coming to an end or, at the very least, the sky was falling, until I threw the blanket off of me and realized that, while napping, I'd become quite gassy.

This doesn't mean that the sky was no longer falling, I just decided that some serious stinky ass is to be enjoyed, especially if the world is ending.

Even though the gas was sure to be a good time in a locker-room with 15 sweaty, nasty dudes with gaseous problems of their own, the noises in my stomach were somewhat comparable to a conductor tapping his baton on his stand in order to gain everyone's attention.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

The orchestra that occasionally is my stomach began to tighten in anticipation. I started realizing why it had been so long since I'd had just grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup for dinner.

I paid it no mind though, because I'm a stubborn idiot like that, and left for my game.

Still rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I loaded my goalie bag, I had a brief moment of post-nap retardness when I started to shout out to the Girl that her fears of hail-damage were indeed valid.

"Hey honey, look at this! There was hail alright, Golf-ball sized hai... Oh. Nevermind."

Apparently, I forgot to zip the pocket on my golf bag last Sunday. The white spheres in the back of my truck were golf balls.

Idiot.

I pulled onto the street, whose previously sun-baked asphalt looked alive with it's smoky tendrils of steam from the freshly fallen rain. Combined with the construction a few blocks away, with the majority of it's bare dirt now blowing about in the air, it was a very surreal scene.

For a moment, I wondered if I was really awake and not still prone on the couch.

That's when the stomach conductor tapped again. Then he started counting time as the orchestra began a slow and measured pace.

I was thankful that it was still only the woodwinds ("winds" get it, like breaking wi... nevermind), but it was the lower woodwinds and the quickening of their pace was foretelling of the rest of the orchestra joining in relatively soon.

I was trying to get to the rink early to stretch my ever-complaining back and realized that the Forces of Nature had also combined with the Forces of Stupidity to measurably slow traffic. This was not slowing the Orchestra's pace however, and I was weaving in and out of the sheeplike drivers like a madman.

I cursed them and they only seemed to say, "Don't you understand JuddHole?!? Water! It fell from the sky!"

The fact that there was no longer this supernatural occurrence of water falling from the sky, everyone around me still felt the need to go a good 5 miles under the speed limit.

It eventually opened into a stretch of highway with no stoplights and I felt like I could speed enough to at least match the Orchestra's tempo.

I had a two-door Ford Speck (about 8 feet long, 4 feet high, gets 243 miles to the gallon, you've seen 'em) in front of me that was zipping along fairly well until we went under the Evans Underpass or, as it is referred to after a hard rain, Lake Evans.

The SpeckDriver apparently paid no attention in Driver's Ed Class to the part about "Not hitting your brakes when hydroplaning" and locked 'em up after blasting into the 3-feet of standing water.

I knew not to brake but could either do that and risk control of the truck, or blast right into, and probably over, SpeckBoy. Enticing as that idea was, I struggled the truck into a mild crawl and we both began fording the Highway River.

I was feeling calm again and went to flick ash off my cigarette when I saw the 18-wheeler.

He was in the lane to the right of me, but wasn't stopping, wasn't even slowing down. He hit the Amazonian puddle going about 45.

GOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH!

I expected the water to go sheeting over my truck, but there was such a quantity of it that, for a moment, I was in a mid-sized blue submarine, navigating my way through the muddy Nile, looking at bits of leaves and confused aquatic life.

Then the water found the 3-inch gap in my driver's side window. All I could do was fight to keep the vehicle straight as the entire left side of my body was drenched in cold, muddy, rainwater. For a moment, I could only imagine that I looked like Cruella DeVille after the Dalmations had knocked a storm drain loose above her head. My face was frozen in shock and my soggy cigarette hung limply from my fingers.

I laughed out loud at this thought until the Orchestra picked up it's tempo yet again, and this time the horn section was featured. Occasionally the flutes, and even the piccolo, were playing quite loudly, but the brass was definitely more insistent.

The guy on the radio advised me to avoid the interstate, at least for a few on-ramps, so I thought I could just take the parallel highway a little further North. There are no gas stations, or other places offering shittery, but still I retardedly figured I could make it to the rink.

I was making good time when the railroad arms started coming down in front of me.

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*

Not wanting to get hit by a train because I knew that any part of me they DID find would be coated in ass-syrup, I stopped and waited.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

4 and a half minutes passed (you bet yer ass I was counting) and no train came. It was then that I realized that this is the section of track that always thinks a train is coming when it rains.

Super.

Luckily, the guy behind me knew this and reversed the 100 feet to the last intersection, then took off on yet another side street. I followed, pleased that the Orchestra had backed down to a moderate Clarinet solo.

I made it onto the Interstate where, yet again, everyone thought that such phenomena as water, was falling from the sky meant "drive like a stoned old lady."

I was about 3 miles from the rink, isolated on the Interstate, when the conductor snapped his baton sharply to the left, and cued the Percussion section.

It would start slowly, with the bass drums and the snares, and then it would back off. Then, it would come back stronger, with some Timpani thrown in, then it would back off.

There was something vaguely familiar about it, almost like it was the theme from 2010: A Space Odyssey:

daaa, Daaaa, DAAAAA, DA-DAAAAAAA

Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum

I made my exit, clutching the wheel with both hands and gritting my teeth so hard I thought they would explode, sending enamel shrapnel through my cheeks. Naturally, there is nothing resembling a place for crapping anywhere on my short, but excruciatingly painful, drive to the rink.

The Timpani came back with a vengeance, only this time, the rest of the Orchestra began to crescendo as well. All of them together, growing increasingly louder, holding their notes long and high, waiting impatiently for the conductor to signal the end.

I was about a half-mile away from the rink now and, even though it was a residential area, I strongly considered just pulling over and risking a court-date for Public Indecency.

I didn't though. I knew that the gravel road through the construction site to the rink wouldn't have any other cars on it, and I could drive so fast that my wheels may leave the ground occasionally.

I forgot that a gravel road also means rough travel, especially at high speeds.

The Orchestra played on, louder and louder, keeping time with the rutted gravel road, ignoring my pleading cries and the tears welling up in my eyes.

I spotted breaks in the chain link fence lining the road, but I was always too late to make the turn into them and finally get the Orchestra to finish their Concerto from Hell. I vowed to take the next turn into the giant dirt piles and then realized that, simply by noticing them, there would be no more of these options. There weren't, of course.

I would still have to go for the rink.

Parking at the rink always sucks, especially with the construction, and I knew that if I had to park more than 25 feet from the entrance, there was no way that the Orchestra would hit a refrain and spare me the indignity of a pants-full of something I had foolishly tried to ignore.

I slid to a stop directly in front of the main entrance, half-on, half-off the sidewalk, in the clearly labeled "Fire Zone," left my equipment, the truck running, and made my way inside with the grace of an 80 year-old man, wrestling with early rigor mortis, fleeing a burning building.

I made it, and all parts of the symphony were very clearly heard and given equal amounts of time. It was the opus of their lives.

When they were done, I went out, parked my truck, got my equipment, came back in, and took a bow for the bemused front desk staff as well as a couple of my teammates who were wondering why my truck was left so haphazardly on the front steps.

Thank Dog there wasn't an Encore, because I was already late for my game.

That 12 miles was the longest drive of my life.