I love fall. Football is back. The weather changes. It makes me want to hunker down in front of the fire with a nice cup of cocoa. There’s a certain smell to the air. The leaves fall.
Stupid leaves. We spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon mulching and clearing leaves. It looked nice when we were done. And this morning it looks like we didn’t do a thing. Every year we try to do two runs of leaf cleanup. The first run gets the initial dropping of leaves. Before the rain comes back for good we tackle that first volley. Once it rains, the other leaves fall. This time they are usually too wet to mulch so we wait. And wait. And wait for a dry day. A few years ago I counted eleven trees around the yard that spew leaves at us. Yesterday I considered chopping down all of them. Maybe just the big ones.
As Lion said, we also watched some college football. He told me just the other day that he wasn’t much of a football fan before he met me. He’d watch the Giants and that was it. I always wondered why he’d turn the TV off after the Giants game. There’s more football to watch. What’s the deal? Didn’t he know that watching Dallas or Philadelphia lose is important too? In the 70s and 80s I’d watch every game I could. On Saturdays I’d watch Michigan games with a passion. No idea why I liked Michigan. I just did. And UCLA. And Washington. On Sundays I liked the Giants, the Bills, the Rams (before they defected to St. Louis), and the Seahawks. The truth is, I didn’t care who was playing. I could usually find someone to root for. Or sometimes it was just someone to root against.
So Lion introduced me to kink and I introduced him to football. Well, more football. I don’t think anyone understands all 7000 pages of the NFL rule book, but Lion knew fewer rules than I did. He didn’t realize that college has different rules from the NFL. Recently, I got him watching college football by wondering if we’d see players who would later move on to the pros. He never seems to root for the “right” team (aka the team I’m rooting for) but that’s okay. At least we’re having fun.
It occurred to me the other day that when we converse in emails, we usually end with KISS and we seem to have a sort of a lively banter back and forth. When we’re together we rarely say I love you or even kiss. We do hold hands. But I wondered why we don’t follow our email rituals in real life. Lion says just being together is all we need. We’re concentrating on getting things done. But we’re together and that’s what matters. I guess that’s true. You don’t need to say much when you can reach out and take someone’s hand.
