Smack upside the head

Well, I knew it was coming and I've been waiting for one for years...Sam's got a concussion.
#1 is 26 and began sports at 4, just a couple of broken bones and some various sprains, bruises and lumps. #2 began playing sports at 4 and had some broken bones, avulsions, weird calcifying things, sprains, etc. # 3 began playing sports at 5 and has had some similar experiences until his last game of his last year in high school...CONCUSSION, brain smack, crack on the noggin.

We were joking in the stands, "wow, someone got lit up, you can hear the helmets cracking up here." Little did I know it was my own #3 getting "lit up". He then proceeded to play the rest of that quarter and the second quarter too. Finally, the score was too high and all the starters were pulled. He was the joker that kept getting the offsides call - he forgot what the count was. He tried to run out with the kick-off team - didn't do that all season. He ran out to the field to play his position but - someone was already out there taking his place. If he wasn't so peculiar in the first place maybe someone would have noticed a change in his behavior but he's such a great, big goof...didn't notice.

He kept getting weirder as the evening wore on and I took him to the "bump and bruise" clinic and sure enough concussion.

Now he sprawls out on the couch and sleeps - wait a minute, that's what he usually does. So he gets dizzy when he tries to do a physics problem, who doesn't. So, he's really, really tired, who isn't? And he has a real bad headache...all I can say, get used to it, real life can be a real live headache.

So, he's a bit loopy. I feel kinda bad because the first thing I thought when I heard it was a concussion was, "shoot, he got a "B" in physics and pre-cal; this isn't going to help the next quarter grades." He'll be smarting off before long so I'm going to enjoy while it lasts.

Lots of Lovely Leaves

Everyone agrees; autumn is beautiful. The colors are extraordinary, the temperatures delightful, the color of the sky clear and true and the smell of leaf smoke tantalizing. Why, oh why then can't we just leave the fallen leaves where they land?

Heaped up lovely lumps of gold, mounding in my front yard. They look just perfect but...when they are wet I slip and bust my rear, when they are wet they destroy my lawn, when the are wet they make mold and make my allergies scream. But when they are dry...they just blow on down the road. This is the American, rural way of life. Take care of it if it stays in your yard longer than a couple of days. Otherwise, just let the wind carry it on down the road, literally.

I have 3 large maples in my front yard, lots, and lots, and lots of leaves. In about a week we will have a Butler family whine-a-thon when I demand the leaves come up. As lazy as we are we will spend about an hour trying to figure out an easier way to move the leaves from the front lawn to the back field. Seems like just raking them up would suffice but, NO, we have to have a tarp and the lawn mower mowing over little hedgerows to make leave mulch which is so thick we have to rake it anyway. After about 3 hours of leaf wrangling we give up, rake it along the fence "to keep down the weeds next spring" and call it a day. We are pathetic and I have the pathetic lawn to prove it.

Oh well, I still love autum and maybe just maybe the wind will come up and blow all on down the road.