Dinner with Mom was a success. Fresh sushi. Plum wine. Good conversation. Hmmm, better than most first dates I've been on.

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Went to two hockey games yesterday. Cute bf is quite the athlete. What a dreamboat. *sigh* I love hockey rinks. It's in my blood. It's 90 degrees outside but push open two sets of double doors and you're instantly transported to winter. I pulled on a heavy sweatshirt over my tank top and glanced down at my flip-flop feet hoping I'd leave the rink the same way I arrived, with ten toes.

Hockey rinks are otherworldly. There's a camaraderie unlike other sports. There's a barbarism, and a brotherhood. There's beer drinking in the halls, the stands, the parking lots. Wounds are compared, tales of heroism on the ice are embellished, and when a fight breaks out, well there's this inner cave woman that comes alive in me. Secretly I like a good 15 second brawl. No one really gets hurt and I marvel every time at how at the end of the game all of the guys shake hands, laugh it off, and move on. What a gift to be a man at times. To let emotional wounds heal as fast as the physical.

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On the way to hockey we were merging onto 95, it's an odd left side merge and causes trouble for those not used to high speeds and sharing. So there we were behind an incredibly slow car, hesitant to merge, causing our car to seemingly block traffic in the fast lane. I turned to wave at the minivan behind us as if to say, "Sorry!" when they pull up frantically next to us and an irate woman in the passenger seat screams "BITCH!!!" at me all the while slapping the dashboard. I wasn't even driving. I must have looked perplexed because the man with her winced, hunched his shoulders and went past us. I said a silent prayer that she find some kindness within her, and he? A new woman.