We kick off the first full week of school today. Which means we can begin setting some routines around here.
M. was the first to show signs of being tired last week. She had a meltdown one night about doing her homework. It was an easy assignment based on her summer activities and she decided she’d rather have a meltdown than take two minutes to do it. It wasn’t just about being tired, though. There were some hormones in there, too. The really fun times with her are not too far down the road.
Sunday’s American Top 40 replay was from August 1984. As I’ve shared before, nothing triggers the nostalgic part of my brain more than music from that summer. While listening, I thought of a fine way to describe it. When I hear Prince, Bruce, Tina, Cyndi, etc. it’s like when you scratch a dog’s belly and its leg begins twitching uncontrollably. I can try to do other things, try to put my focus elsewhere. But those songs are going to cut through everything and make me sit around and think for awhile.
Freaking old man.
There has to be a story idea in there somewhere that I can turn into a project, right?
After twelve years away, I’ve been talked into joining a fantasy football league with a few neighbors and their buddies. I get the impression it’s not a hard-core league. I think a couple guys take it fairly seriously. But for the most part it’s pretty casual and chances are just about everyone in the league will forget to set their roster at least once.
Back when I played fantasy sports more often, I was pretty solid at coming up with fun names for my teams. But in my retirement, that touch went away. As I sat in front of the screen last week, creating my team, I froze when it came time to change “Team 8” into something more creative. I racked my brain for ideas that were equal parts creative, funny, and could serve as a way of introducing myself to a group of guys I don’t know very well.
I tried to come up with some Charlie Weis-related name, but each option was either too wordy (The Pronounced Strategic Advantages) or gross (Charlie Weis’ Panis. Nothing there worked.
I figured my old standby, The Phogtown Phunksters, wouldn’t make sense to a bunch of Hoosiers (and one Denver transplant).
So I settled on the Torn ACLs. Nothing very creative or fun about it. But it wasn’t Team 8 either.
And then I read the article I’ll discuss in the next section. It provided a great name and an image that can be found all over the Internet that can serve as my logo. And even if people don’t know the backstory, it’s funny and gets funnier as they learn more about it.
That’s right. My team is the Baby Manginos!
Which gives me a chance to link to this story about what Mark Mangino is up to these days. As I mentioned last week, I’m in the midst of some site changes. Part of that includes building a more extensive, complete archives section. Over the weekend I was reading through my 2007 and 2008 posts. Man, the days when Reesing was flinging the ball around to Fields, Meier, Briscoe, and Henry and handing it off to Cornish, McAnderson, and Sharp seems like 20 years ago.
But props to Mangino for finally making an effort to improve his health. He still, clearly, has a long way to go before he looks normal again. But the effort is what counts.
It is kind of funny how everyone gets rehabilitated, though. Mangino wasn't just an intense coach who grabbed some facemasks and yelled. He said terrible, borderline racist, things to many of his players. He went beyond the normal <em>tear them down to build them up</em> levels of verbal abuse. I hope he's in a better place now, but you can't just blame KU letting him go on he and Lew Perkins not getting along.
One night last week I rolled over in the middle of the night and half-awoke. I must have heard her running full-tilt into our room, because half a second later, L. came flying into our bed. Literally flying. I think she got her foot on the frame of our bed and leaped across S. to land between us. I let out a little yell and then helped her settle in. She wasn’t crying but something had obviously disturbed her sleep. A little later she was thrashing around and yelling, “NO M.!” in her sleep. Even in dreams the big sister is bossy.
Which, finally, brings me to another old blog post I came across over the weekend. Four years ago we took the girls to a local water park and, after M. refused to go down a kiddie water slide, apparently S. shoved her down. That night, while she was sleeping, we heard M. yelling, “NO MOM! DON’T PUSH ME!” That’s our big, brave girl!
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