Subject: Fall Date: Friday, October 28, 1994 9:38AM "Fall," as John says, "Is the time when things fall down. That's why it's called Fall." On the ride home from work, last night, his words were well proven true. The streets are full of the falling leaves, the falling rain, and the branches blown down by the storm's winds. Everything is falling down. Nice thing about all the falling is being indoors, safe from it all and just listening to it. Fezzik, on the other hand, wants to be right in the middle of it all, and he loves the weather and chasing the storms. Since the end of the summer, we've gone on a one-week river rafting trip down the Rogue River. John's coached his soccer team to their first win with his ex-boss. We released the next version of Synario. I've given two promises to spin cobweb yarns and, in one case, knit some lace. I scored my third goal ever, and work has gone to a more sane and steady level. Fezzik has found out just how much he loves the Marymoore off-leash area for dogs. I finally figured out why I really loved baseball, and both John and I are kinda peeved that there's no hockey. We managed to get the harvest in this year and preserve most of it. I still have to do a canning of peach jam and shall be done with the Bounty of our fall. The Rogue River trip deserves its own Write-up. Suffice it to say we had an amazing time with amazing people amid amazing scenery (those who have seen The River Wild will have seen some of that scenery on the Big Screen), and I not only survived four days of camping, but caught myself actually *enjoying* it. Chuckle. The Release is part of the Rogue River story as the Release was in full swing when we took off for the River and finished two weeks afterward. The River trip went from Sunday morning 'til Friday night, and we were at work both Saturdays before and after the trip. As Karen in our group said, "This getting five days off when you take five days vacation is really bogus. When you take five days of vacation, you really *SHOULD* get nine days away from work." I kinda agree with her, but the sheer accomplishment of what we did for the Release still astonishes and pleases me. I think that the fact that everyone in the group worked at least as hard as I did is one of the reasons I'm really, really glad to be in this group and part of this team. John's soccer team, this year, was made up of most of the kids from last year and a few new ones. Every week, there were practices and every weekend a game on Saturday at 8:15am (ugh). He and Dave Kohlmeyer split the coaching duties and I would wander through sometimes and help. The very first practice, a new family shows up with their son, Nick. They'd arrived the night before from California and wanted to make sure that their son was on a soccer team, and the mother approached me and asked which kid was mine on the team. One of the fathers grinned, pointed at John and said, "The big one, with the really colorful shorts." "Yeah." I said. She blinked, squinted a bit at the kids, didn't see any colorful shorts and shook her head in bewilderment. "John... the other coach... he's my husband." I said with a grin and she went "Oh. You don't have kids??" I shook my head, "He's kid enough for me..." Nick's dad used to be the coach of Nick's team, and he's been helping both Dave and John out, which is really cool, 'cause that means I don't have to play ballgirl as much. The neatest thing, though, was that he knew a whole bunch of exercises that I could practice at home to get my ball handling skills better. THAT was really cool. The Saturday morning games really weren't *that* bad for all the early hour, especially when John would get me a mocha to set me up for the morning. Chuckle. And the kids really, really try *hard*. Marymoore park is always beautiful in the fall, too, what with all the deciduous trees turning all the colors of flame, the Slough slowly winding its way through, the waist high grasses turning golden, and the early morning fog turning everything mysterious and leaving a sparkling trail of water on the shorter soccer field grass. It's surprisingly nervewracking watching the kids play, too, 'cause I really, really want 'em to do well, and I know how good they can play and it's always fun watching them play when they play at their full potential. Afterwards, we have sometimes taken Fezzik to the off-leash area in the Park, it's a big area about the end of the Slough, just as it dumps into Lake Sammamish where you can just let your dogs off their leashes and they get to play with each other and in the water. Fezzik always goes for the full-body PLUNGE and ends up looking like a skinny, drowned rat with a sloppy tail. Grin... O.K. AND a dog-sized grin with flopping tongue and panting happiness. He has a great time there, and is just *SO* happy to play with other dogs it's really cool to watch him running here and there and everywhere, foolishly thinking he can keep up with the retired greyhound racer, or swimming after a Retriver. Fezzik doesn't play fetch-the-stick/frisbee/dumbell/inanimate-object. He only plays catch-the-dog. Which is sometimes embarrassing for us, as he pays no attention to other people, objects, or the like, and will just, literally, HOUND one dog until they're tired of him. It's really cool having a single place to bring Fezzik where we *know* he'll get so much exercise he'll just be a sleepy head for the rest of the day. Hmmm.... third score story time... I still had my cold. One that I picked up, for a little bit, just before the River trip, and then re-caught immediately after Release. It had moved down to my lungs, like usual, as a kinda signal that it was slowly dying and trying to choke me with it. Grumble. So I pulled out the inhaler I haven't used since last year about the same time, and I do the inhaler thang. Of course, about two mintues later I *remember* why I haven't used the *#$#@$!! thing for a year as I start shaking. I hate drugs. For the LIFE of me I cannot understand why ANYONE would want to feel like that for any amount of time for any reason other than having to breath. I nearly bite John's head off in the car, because I try to get in twice and kick a water bottle under the van as I'm trying to get in because it's on the floor. Finally, I get out, pick up the water bottle, THROW it and all my gear into the very back of the Van, and then throw myself in as well and hit the chair. I slam the door. Both Fezzik and John just kinda look at me, and I sit very, very quietly for the trip to the field as I buzz... The evening was really nice and clear and cold. We had one woman sub and one man sub. Ten minutes into the game Laurie, our strongest wing, on the right side, gets taken down from behind and she sprains her knee. Ouch. So no subs. So I go in as half back on the left side, because Jo-Anne, a new lady to the team, hasn't played much before, and she's most comfortable at wing because she can do the least amount of damage to *us* while playing there. You know... I remember when I used to play there for exactly the same reason. Anyway... it's the Grasskickers, who are a pretty good, pretty friendly team, with physical players. They don't pass too good, eventhough they're pretty darned fast, and their women are good. They have a few assholes on the team. One of which was dangerous; but the last time we played them Mackey took HIM out so hard it had taken him five minutes just to see straight again. The guy was on the sideline this time, too drunk to play, but, sadly, alive enough to ride the ref to the point where the ref wasn't makin' ANY calls for the 'Kickers. Sigh. It was fun, it was fast, and their offense is TOUGH and fast and good. So for most of the game I was playing back in the halfback position, and holding the left half of the defense up. Cheryl's good, and I'm good, but two girls against three guys is NOT easy. Luckily, the sweeper and the mid-full would help us out as, usually, it was his guy that would be coming out on our side. So we held 'em pretty good for the first three quarters of the game. They got one goal. We got three by halfway through the second half; but I was getting really tired. Mostly 'cause I was running all the way back on their every attack, to cover the guy I was playing against and then nearly all the way back up when we counter attacked. But with a score of 3:1 I felt that there was enough leeway that I could rest a bit, so I switched with Jo Anne, and had her play half back in front of Cheryl. Jo Anne and Cheryl are on the same softball team, so I thought they'd communicate just fine, and they did. I went on wing and rested for a while. Then I started playing. The usual way things happened was that the 'Kickers were on the offense for most of it, keeping it in our end of the field. Occassionally, one of the fullbacks would get a good foot on it and clear it out, or get it to one of the midfielders, who would carry it just a little bit before kicking it up and far. The ball would bounce out of the far end, their goalie would put it back into our end of the field. Neither Jo-Anne nor Diane were particularly fast or aggressive and weren't able to get to the ball before it went out of bounds. Matt, our striker, was the only person their defense was concentrating on, so he would get tripped, banged up, and/or the goalie would home in on just him, so he wasn't able to really do anything unless Mackey, the middle half, came up to help him. Mackey and Matt were the ones that got the three goals up to this point. Two of them were Mackey breakaways; but Mackey was getting tired, and had moved back to fullback and John had moved from center full to mid-half. Well, they thought I was the same as Jo-Anne... and left me wide, wide open. Totally, completely and absolutely and marvelously open. I chased down two of Nordsby's incredible end to end kicks. One I turned and centered it to John, who touched it to Matt, who missed. The other I turned and shot it across the mouth of the goal. Then my team started really trying to hit me. Got one that I lobbed up to Matt's header, and the goalie got that. Another clean pass on the ground to John's foot, which he put over the goal. It was *FUN* being up there... just doin' my thing, and making the attacks possible because they were leaving me so wide, wide open. Finally, someone sent Matt with a clean pass up the middle. I ran up on a line that headed for the left goal post to support him as he'd gone right. About five yards back from the 18, Matt shot and shot HARD and went down in a heap as the fullback took him out. The goalie was only able to deflect it away from Matt, he couldn't catch it. Thing is that since he deflected it away from Matt it came straight at me. A lovely thing. I looked up, saw the goalie to the right and he started heading for me. All the other fullbacks were all on Matt, hurrah! so I had a clear shot. I only had to avoid the goalie. So I thought, upper left corner, watched the ball all the way to me, cocked my leg, hit the ground with the left foot just right, and hit the oncoming ball flat on my right instep. It felt so *sweet*. I still can't believe how good kicking that ball felt... The ball did this lovely arch thing, where it curved away from the diving goalie and hit the net in the upper left corner while it was still going up. I still can't believe *I* did that... I mean, I see those kinds of shots on TV... and I remember when I still couldn't pass the ball more than about five yards 'cause I didn't know how to kick worth a darn... and... It was amazing to me.... John promptly tackled me. Grin. Hugged me until I couldn't breath and rapsodized about it all the next week. He's fun... So that was my third goal in my life. Both John and I have talked about soccer a lot, lately, mostly because of the kid's team. One of the things we decided was that we really, really liked soccer because no one can blame a *SINGLE* person for 'screwing up' a game. Not anyone that really knows the game. Sure, the goalie might let a goal by, or the front line might miss a shot, but in the case of the goalie, the *entire* team had to have let the goalie down on the defense, before the attacker could get that far and the front line *has* to take chances and shots or they'll never score. Completely unliked baseball, where every swing of the bat, every pitch, every catch is dependent on one and only one person. I mean, Little League parents have the worst reps of *ALL* the sports parents in the world, and there are reasons why. For all that baseball says that it's a team sport, the team stuff is all emotional. When folks *execute* pretty much everything except a double play or a relay, they're on their own, maybe with advice and support from others, but the action itself is theirs and theirs alone. After that particular conclusion I wondered why the heck do I love baseball? And why do I really feel like the cancelling of the World Series is such a tremendous tragedy??? I mean, I shouldn't even *like* the game with that as the foundation of it, right? I really, really thought hard about it. Tells you my brain was mostly mush after the Release. Then, one evening I was watching the PBS nine-part special on Baseball, and they were talking about one player (grin... I forget the name) and Bob Costas said something about the fact that you could *SEE* everytime this guy came up to the plate in high pressure situations that he *wanted* to be there. That normal people hate being in that kind of situation, where everything hinges on them, but that this particular player loved it, that he wanted to be there, wanted to be the difference, and wanted to have the shot at winning the game even if he failed. It all clicked. THAT was why I loved baseball, because it really did give everyone the chance to be the one and only hero. Whether or not the chance bloomed and flowered wasn't really the point, it was that the chance to make a difference existed, and the glory wasn't in hitting the home run, it was in the courage to simply walk up to the plate and try to make a difference. O.K. so it's 'only a game'... and while the physical difference a single game makes is nearly nothing, the emotional difference... that's very real. The courage it takes to step up to the plate might be the seed, later on, for someone to take the step up to making a difference elsewhere. Grin. All right, all right, away from the theoretical... The Italian prune trees bore well this year, as did the King Apple tree, and we used the dryer to good affect for both and now have bags of sweet, meaty prunes and apple slices that will probably be good for an apple pie with the distinctive tart-sweetness of the Kings. The peach tree? Don't know who remembers the peach tree, but when we first moved to our house... uhm... five years ago? Well, it was TALL. Too tall. WAY too tall, nearly 40 feet tall. We lopped it off at chest level, leaving nothing but a trunk and decided that if it didn't grow back, oh well, if it did, it would be a really cool miracle and we'd actually be able to *pick* the fruit. The first spring it put out branches. The second it put out a HUGE bush of branches, almost all of which I lopped back. The third year it tried to do more branches, and two peaches, which dropped off while they were still green, and I lopped back all the branches but two. The four year, it had about a dozen peaches, but a really wet summer, and they kinda rotted on the tree. This year, I forgot to prune it back, and the branches multipled insanely, and *everything* was covered wtih peaches. Dozens and dozens of peaches. Little green orbs that became big green orbs that slowly, oh, so slowly, turned into big yellow orbs, and then we went to the Rogue River. When we came back, after a pretty bad wind storm, one of the branches of the peach tree had bowed until it rested on the ground. We picked those peachs, but they were still really green. The air turned chill, the leaves started turning, and the peaches still weren't ripe. The tree doesn't get quite enough sunlight to make the ripening process sure. So we waited and waited and waited until they finally started falling, and now we have three bags of peaches waiting to get jammed into wide mouth mason jars. So that was our harvest for the year. Well, other than two more baby spider plants from our big spider plant and two baby African Violets from the African Violet Mom gave me in April that has pink flowers with purple spots... THAT was kinda cool. Floating the leaves in water for forever (O.K. so I forgot about 'em) brought up baby a.v.'s with tiny leaves. Waited (o.k. forgot about 'em) until they had pretty *large* leaves and then planted them. They're doing much better than I thought they would, So that's our fall, or most of it. The River trip is still in the works and I'll get that to folks when it's done. hugs, Liralen