#MicroblogMondays: An emotional weekend

This was a very emotional weekend, for several different reasons:

• Aunt Flo returned to haunt me over the weekend, after a 41-day absence. :p   Boo, hiss... :p 
• Guess that explains the recent zits...! :p   
• But -- better this weekend than next...!! 
• Just before we went to bed Friday night, we heard that a bus carrying a junior hockey team -- the Humboldt Broncos -- had crashed in northeastern Saskatchewan, and that there were fatalities involved  When we woke up the next morning, CNN (CNN!!) was saying that 14 young hockey players and others on the bus -- half of those aboard -- had died.  (The toll has sadly since risen to 15.) Most of the survivors were injured, some critically. Horrific. I lost it when I saw the now-famous photo of three surviving players, side by side in hospital beds. Holding hands. 
• The crash occurred just a few miles north of one of the small towns where I spent part of my childhood.  It is both a bleak and beautiful area of the country, especially in the winter. I just read two first-person articles that got me teary all over again with homesickness for the Prairies. Thank you, Sharon Butala and Lorna Dueck.
• I've been through Humboldt many times as a kid, travelling en route to Saskatoon for medical appointments, to shop and to visit family friends. 
• The players were all between the ages of about 16 to 20. I scrolled down a list of the team members' names and birthdates and saw over & over again "1998" "1999" "2000"... in other words, they were all around the same age that my Katie would have been. :( 
• I have never played hockey.  But as a Canadian, it's all around us -- it's part of the culture, part of our collective heritage. In the small Prairie towns where I grew up, the rink was and is is the heart of the community and the focal point of much of its social life. I spent hours & hours hanging around them, taking figure skating lessons, skating with my friends during "free skate" hours, watching the boys practice and play hockey (it was mostly boys in those days), eating stale potato chips and sour gumballs from the concession stand, playing hide and seek with my friends underneath the wooden bleachers.  There was always hockey at the rink, and on Saturday nights on TV (and when I was growing up, we only had ONE channel, so we had no other choice but to watch!).  
• As communities have shrunk and teams have folded, remaining teams must travel further and further to play each other -- often on a bus like the one that crashed. The Prairies are vast, and thinly populated.  Humboldt to Nipawin is about 2.5 hours one way, which is not unusual for a road trip. Depending on where you're going the roads might not be that great, especially during the winter, and bad weather is always something to watch out for. As one NHL player said this weekend, "We've all been on that bus."  
• One of my online friends is the mom of four now-grownup kids, two of whom got married last year. One couple is now expecting their first child and they had a "gender reveal" party this past weekend. So not only did I get to witness the photos & videos of the party on social media, but the gleeful grandma-to-be's triumphant posting "My first grandchild is a GIRL!"
• I have dutifully liked so many of her mom-brag posts about her kids and their accomplishments.  It wouldn't have taken much effort to just click on the damn "like" icon one more time, & move on. 
• But this time, I just. couldn't. do it. :(  
• And of course, Younger Nephew's wedding is fast approaching. Despite my eye-rolling over SIL & Fiancee's mom getting teary over the kids cleaning out their closets ;) I have to admit I am a pretty sentimental sap myself, especially when it comes to weddings, nevermind when my nephew (whom I still think of as an adorable toddler with a soother permanently stuck in his mouth) is the groom. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara!  ;)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.