As is customary in many parts of larger cities in the US. Or maybe areas where municipalities can charge a huge amount of taxes. Here in Fairview Park, they have leaf collection days.

Back in good old Haslett, Michigan when fall rolled around leaf collection consisted of the following:

1. Get a rake and a paper bag
2. Get your fat butt outside and rake the yard and shove the leaves in the paper bags. Usually that meant that I would have to pay for the giant leaf bags from the store.
3. Take bags filled with leaves to the local “transfer” station and pay $1.50 per bag for them to deal with.
4. What happens then? I don’t know. That’s why I pay the $1.50 a bag, so that I don’t have worry about what happens to them. They go to a magical land where I’ll assume all happy leaves go. Now stop asking these weird questions. This was only a 3 step process and now I’m already wasting time.

Back to Fairview Park and leaf collection days. I had spent last Tuesday night after the Cavs game out raking leaves until midnight. Mostly getting the front yard cleaned. They “collect” 4 times a year and Wednesday and Thursday are our days.  After all that work I had some massive piles by the street. When the city shows up, they have this giant vacuum cleaner machine that just sucks up the leaves and takes them to the magical land. It’s awesome! No more bags, no more trips to the transfer station. I’m getting quite spoiled. That is, except for the taxes, but that’s a different discussion.

So, 2 days go by and no vacuum machine. I’m working from home on Friday and sure enough. Here they come. However, how this works is they run down the other side of the street, then come back down my side. Which means that from the time I see them, I’ve got an hour to drag the rest of my leaves to the street.

Think of this as high stakes lawn maintenance meets the ice cream truck. You know it’s coming, you just aren’t sure when. So, you’re running around like crazy getting ready cause you are NOT gonna miss this opportunity to get a king sized rocket pop from some weird dude in a painted truck. As it’s my lunch break, I dash outside and just start dragging leaves from every corner of my yard to the street. My neighbor Mark is doing the same. Poor guy has a yard the size of a football field.

As I’m dragging 90% of my leaves to the street I say to myself, “It’s too bad Mira isn’t here today. Cause she would have so much fun in these leaves.” And it’s true, she would have. But they were long gone before she got home from school. Its funny, we call it school. But really its daycare. Let’s be honest here, she’s 3. Its not like they are teaching her latin or trig. eh?

What’s the point of this ridiculous story about raking leaves? I’m glad you asked. This afternoon, we went outside to go play with the neighbor kids, Wyatt and Macy. My daughter thinks they are about the best thing since sliced bread. Strange really, because they spend more time trying to convince each other that what they want to do is the funnest. Which means that I eventually get roped into decided what’s fun and what isn’t.

Tonight I decided to go on one of our worm expeditions. These involve going into our backyard and pulling up bricks to find worms. It’s great because the two girls are terrified of worms and won’t even touch them. It is really more about the hunt than the worms.

While we were looking over some exceptional specimens of rolly-pollies and  snails, I had a great idea. There were still enough leaves in the backyard to make a pretty substantial pile. I called Erika out of the house and Wyatt and Macy’s mom over. And we chatted whilst the kids played for close to an hour in the pile of leaves. It was great fall fun. I’m glad my frantic dash to relieve our yard of leaves didn’t spoil Mira’s fall fun. Here’s some pics I snuck in of the madness!

Mira, Macy and Wyatt

Remember when fun looked like this?

Mira, Macy and Wyatt jumping in the leaves!

Mira in the leaves

You are probably also looking for an update on Erika and the baby. All good news there. Her blood pressure has been down all weekend, she has already lost the weight she gained whilst enroute last week (which means she can wear her ring and shoes again) and the headache is gone. All fantastic signs. We’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning. So, I’ll send out an update tomorrow night to keep you plugged in.

Erika was lucky enough to have some visitors stop by from work. Fellow medical professionals at the cancer center: Rory and Lauren stopped in for a visit. Lauren brought some yummy tuna noodle casserole and Rory brought Mira a toy dog that barks and snores and makes all kinds of wonderful noises. If you ask me, that dog looks mighty sick. I may need to put him down…

Rory, Erika, Lauren and Mira

Until tomorrow!