My Love/Hate Relationship With the Lockout

As of Monday afternoon, The Lockout ended. The emotions we've been feeling have definitely been mixed. As bad as it was that the players got locked out, The Lockout has become like a family member or old friend. We talked about it on a daily basis, and towards the end of it the phone was ringing every other minute with a player calling to discuss the different scenarios for when it would be over. If one more person asked me "when will the lockout be over?" or better yet, "when will the STRIKE be over?" I was sure I was going to have a meltdown in public, kick my feet and scream, "IT IS NOT A STRIKE! IT IS A LOCKOUT. GOOGLE THE DEFINITION."

Thankfully it never had to come to that, but when it quickly ended on Monday I began to panic. Thomas had to report to the facility at 7am the next morning and OUR.TIME.WAS.UP. We've really been able to take it easy the past 6 months and our schedules were only constricted by my work and Thomas' rehab schedule for his ankle.  So the fact that my husband is now living in a hotel with 89 other players for the next 3 weeks is making me feel a little sorry for myself. But, look on the bright side! Our grocery bill will be slashed by more than half and my house will be spotless. And we got to do some really fun things in the week leading up to the end of our friend The Lockout.

At the recommendation of folks from church, we visited East Beach in Rhode Island one afternoon last week with our friends Danny and Stacia. It was a perfect day, but the water was really rough. You can barely see Thomas and Danny in that big splash in the wave. The waves were tossing them around like children. Well, mostly tossing Danny around like a child while Thomas laughed. 

Stacia forbid me to post a picture of her in a bathing suit since she is almost 9 months pregnant (she looks awesome) so I will oblige even though it restricts me to posting two boring photos. But you can see the salt pond in the distance of this picture that runs along behind the ocean. It made me want to kayak. Too bad our life isn't conducive to carrying around a kayak. 

We also helped Danny and Stacia move into their new house which is only a mile away (hooray!) Thomas and Danny decided to try to mount their TV onto the wall above the fireplace. The previous tenants had their TV in the same place, so it seemed logical to assume we could hang another. Thomas and Danny spent about 2 hours trying to hang the darn thing. At one point I heard Danny say "Dude, Thomas, to be honest with you, I have no clue how to find the stud in the wall." Thomas said "Dude, that's easy. You just beat your fist along the wall like this, and it makes different noises." 

Let's just say their TV is sitting on a table in front of the fireplace.