Kasie Savage: (almost) Mother of the Year

315 long, cold, endless, bum-numbing hours.   From September to March, each year, it's the same routine, every day of the week and most weekends: load up the gear, get in the car, drive, drive some more, keep driving, arrive at arena early, sit, wait, watch, freeze, cheer, freeze some more, load up gear, get in car, drive, drive and drive some more.  Then repeat. Yes, this is life in Canada as a rep hockey parent, and I am not alone.  If you add up the parents of kids in house league hockey, rep hockey, figure skating, speed skating, skating lessons, curling and other ice sports, hundreds of thousands of Canadian parents are doing much of the same - essentially freezing their baguettes off for what can amount to (in my case) 315 hours, 13 entire days of one's life spent in an arena (not including playoffs and tryouts and summer camps).  And it is awesome!!! If you're spending approximately 11.25 passive hours per week in a vast, steel, fluorescent-lit meat-loc...

Along with a lifetime of stress, worry, stretch-marks and that abdominal pooch that won't go away, becoming a Mom entitles you to everlasting appreciation by each and every one of your offspring, to be celebrated in uber-thoughtful ways on Mother's Day!  Or at least that's the fantastic ideal.  In reality, most mothers of underage kids spend Mother's Day doing everything that they did the day before Mother's Day...but often in larger doses:  more cleaning because the whole fam-damily is coming over, more shopping because now we need to feed a crowd, more cleaning because there are more people we need to prove we aren't slobs to....ugh.  I'm not proclaiming to be a Mom's Day clairvoyant here, but even though there are millions of different Canadian Moms across this vast land, I can tell you with unfaltering, 100% certainty what NO MOM WANTS for Mother's Day: More cooking, cleaning and food shopping A packag...