Jolly hockey sticks

We've attended an ice hockey game! It was very lucrative. Eldest child won a sports bag easily worth the price of the tickets. We did hockey 'lite' and attended the university men's team game, rather than foregoing a month's groceries and buying tickets to Toronto's NHL side, the Maple Leafs. Husband refuses on principal as well as on price: 'Why are they not called the Maple Leaves?' he rants. He's got a point, I admit. In any case, the kids had a blast. We went with friends who also have three children and then by pure good luck we happened to run into a birthday party full of children from middle one's school and year (remote enough that there was no awkwardness about my child's not having been invited-- just barely). Kids ran riot around the nearly-empty arena. Apparently it's considered good spectator sport to amass as many pieces of broken hockey stick as possible, so the gang of 10-year-olds were nearly fully armed by the end. Youngest was given the game puck, I know not how or why. Heavy things, those pucks. Scary, if you stop to think about it. *

And then to make life truly scary, an oil-filled electric radiator given to us for use in one of the children's rooms leaked and none of us noticed. It filled the top floor bedroom with smoke and fumes. I couldn't smell anything because I've got a stonking cold, but youngest child noticed when she went upstairs, and eventually I tracked down the problem. It was really horrifying. I shouted at everyone to leave the house because at first I thought the carpet was on fire, then plunged into this cloud of haze to unplug the device. In the end we were able to get in contact with the maintenance man (I've dubbed him Prince Valiant) and he brought over a giant fan. This got rid of most of the smell. He also wandered the house assiduously checking carbon monoxide levels, though from eldest child's online research (aka googling) CO is not one of the constituents of the oil or the radiator. So though the CO won't get us, we may succumb to some chemical for which Prince V has no handy dandy detector. We dragged the upstairs mattresses downstairs and all the kids are sleeping (well at least *are*) in one room. It was either that or move to a vacant university apartment in the next street, which would have been so complicated. Of course if we wake up dead I'll be sorry we were so lazy.

* We won the game 5-3. I think.