All praise the Hockey Mom

I know I've talked about it before but being a Hockey Mom can be kind of a pain in the ass at times. Not just the travelling and never having a free weekend or even the stinky gear. No, what gets me is the mandatory volunteering we're required to do. If you're lucky you can snag one of the easy positions at the first parent meeting, like time/scorebox coordinator (basically, just pairing up parents to work the box at home games) or parent liaison (anyone having a beef with the coach goes to that person first; if you have a good coach its basically a nothing job). The next job that is almost as easy but requires a bit more actual work is to be the jersey coordinator, which is basically just someone who is responsible for washing the jerseys and bringing them to games. Because there are two separate batches of jerseys, white home jerseys and black away ones, two people usually share that job.

I was lucky enough during that first parent meeting to snag the job of Home Jersey Coordinator (like how I capitalize that? Makes me feel important, lol). In my mind I was thinking that home jerseys would be so much easier than away, because home jerseys can be kept in the storage closets at the arena. So if you can't make it to a home game, but you've washed the jerseys and put them back in storage, the coach can get the jerseys without you having to bring them in person. Whereas with the away jerseys, you have to actually bring them with you to that game, wherever it may be. So it seems like home jerseys is the way to go, right?

Wrong.

I realized this after I brought them home last week for their first washing. When I'd gathered them up after the game and stuffed them in the bag, I didn't really take a close look. When I divided them into two piles to be washed in two loads, and even when I threw them in the wash, I didn't see anything. It wasn't until I took them out to hang dry, that I noticed almost every jersey had black marks and smudges all over them, almost like scuff marks. What the heck? Were those marks there before I washed them? They must have been, because how could a washing machine make marks like that? I called Ardan into the laundry room to ask his opinion, if that was normal for jerseys to have scuff marks on them, and he said yes, they were from the hockey sticks. Okay, that makes sense. Phew, it wasn't my machine's fault.

So out came the Shout stain remover. Sprayed all the stains liberally and let them sit for half an hour. Threw them back in the wash and waited with bated breath to see the outcome. Awwww, crap!! Same as before. Did the stain-remover-routine again, this time used an old toothbrush to scrub the stains. Washed jerseys again. Same result. Okay, by this time, I'm pulling out my hair and seriously stressed. I thought I'd heard someone say these jerseys were brand new this season, so that meant the stains were new. So if I couldn't get them out there might be a possibility that when we returned the jerseys at the end of the season, we wouldn't get our deposit back (almost $400, which is a fair amount).

Then, THEN, I noticed that on one jersey in particular the material across the butt was all scrunched up and ripply, like it had been stuck to super-strong Velcro and ripped off really fast. So then I was frantic. When the hell had that happened? I definitely hadn't noticed that before. I couldn't even let myself deal with it until I'd gotten the stain situation resolved. I blocked it from my mind.

By this time, I'd used up all the Shout. Made a run to Walmart for OxyClean, raced back to do yet another load, but this time I was sure that the OxyClean would be the difference. I pre-treated the stains with it and added some to the load. And it actually did work on a good majority of the jerseys, but there were still a few with very resistant stains.

I hit a wall (metaphorically, not literally). I was done. I'd put those damn jerseys through the wash like six times, used up about $10 worth of stain-remover, probably grew a few gray hairs, and I had a nightmare that night about washing machines that actually make the laundry dirtier, a definite first for me. I mean, who dreams about laundry?? So the next morning I bit the bullet and sent an email to Deb, the team manager. You're probably thinking, Why didn't she just do that in the first place? Because I didn't want to admit defeat! Plus, I wanted to be able to honestly say I'd done everything humanly possible to fix the problem.

So there I was, waiting anxiously for her reply email, to hear the verdict on the situation. Was it somehow my fault and now we probably wouldn't get our deposit back? Did she know about some magic solution to the stains and/or the bunchy-fabric situation? Was she laughing hilariously at me because I allowed myself to get so stressed out over the situation, when most people would've just been like 'Meh' after the first wash?

Finally, there was her reply in the inbox. As I read it, I could practically feel the weight and worry and stress just lifting off my shoulders. Phew! The jerseys are three years old, not new, so most likely some of those stains were there before. Scuff marks are indeed from hockey sticks and are extremely common. Expect them every time. She already knew about the velcro-like situation, the jersey was like that before, in fact there was another like it in the away jerseys. So all in all, I was told to stop worrying but that I was a sweetheart for caring so much.

At Ardan's Novice tournament in Rocky yesterday, I brought the jersey bag into the change room and as I was hanging it up one of the dad's commented to me, "Its the jersey girl, what would we do without you?". My eyes slid to Deb's and we both snorted.