Mrs. Ottawacker’s birthday turns out… “meh”

It probably, in hindsight, wasn’t the birthday she wishes she had, but it was the one she was stuck with, so what can you do? It started off with an 8am kick off at the RA Centre, as Ottawacker Jr.’s U13 team was slated to play against West Ottawa SC Red for the third-pace position in the league. For some unfathomable reason, I checked the web site before leaving the house at 7:15 and discovered that there had been maintenance on the dome overnight, and the electrics were not going to be switched back on fully till 7:30am. This meant, there would be a two-hour delay in all games: so, our 8am kick-off had become a 10am kick-off, and our 9:15 breakfast reservation had to be cancelled.
 
Having sat around the house for two hours trying to be festive, we arrived at the dome, and I duly looked after the warm up for Ottawacker Jr. The game kicked off on time, and within 10 minutes, Ottawacker Jr.’s team was 2-0 down and Ottawacker Jr. was on the way to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario with a suspected broken wrist. Not wishing to have my wife spend her birthday in casualty, she dropped us off and, rather unreluctantly, I thought, went home to wait for our news. Two hours later, we had been triaged and x-rayed and placed in a waiting room of coughing, spluttering, and crying children; then, two hours after that, he was discharged with a sling and a diagnosis of a bad sprain. Always one to pull the maximum drama out of any situation, he asked whether he should write with his bad wrist – as he had tests coming up that week and didn’t want to be disadvantaged. The doctor looked at me and said it would probably be quite painful to write, so she could give me a doctor’s note if required. I told her not to worry. The injury was to his left hand and, as Ottawacker Jr. knew full well, he is right-handed. But good try.
 
Mrs. Ottawacker came to pick us up and we were home by 3pm, which is a result in Doug Ford’s Ontario. I said I wasn’t up to preparing the meal I had promised – so would she like something easier to prepare? Looking rather wistfully at me, she said she could forego the home-made beef pie – but really wanted the gratin dauphinois à la Ottawacker… Out she went to buy a store-made pie, and I settled down to a couple of hours’ peeling and slicing and cooking. Ottawacker Jr., who seemed to have made an excellent recovery from the near amputation of this hand (as story was growing in the telling), and she played Scrabble and watched crappy TV while I did it.
 
After the food, we played a couple of games of Hearts, in which the younger members of the family were roundly thrashed. In between phone calls and Skype calls, we watched a couple of DVDs, and then crashed pretty much in unison. A birthday “redo” is, I think, called for. Mind you, I’m still waiting for my birthday redo from the beginning of February…