Once, when I was around four years old, my family arrived from out somewhere I have absolutely no idea where. I was in the back seat of the car when my mom opened the car door and hopped out. She immediately turned, and shut the car door, turning back to the house. As she turned, she heard a high pitch muffled little "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

A moment later, she realized that I had reached up on the door jam when she opened the car door, and she had closed the door on my fingers. She opened the door quickly and released my fingers.

I ended up losing a couple fingernails, but gained an entertaining story.

When Kris and I leave in the morning for Velocity Sports, having switched to the 7am class for the "convenient" time and the personalized training with group rate prices, the car is often covered in dew. I've taken to wiping off the passenger side window before opening the car door, so that Kris can see outside my side of the car.

This morning, I forgot to wipe the window before entering the car, so I rolled the window down slightly. Kris hates when I roll the window all way, believing the water will roll into to inside of the door and rust it out. I stuck my hand out the window and started wiping off the window so that Kris could see.

Kris looked left, looked right, rolled the window down slightly so that he could see, looked left again, and, as he pulled out of our street turning left, reache down and pulled on the passenger window switch to roll it up.

With my entire hand still out the window.

Clearly my vocabulary has increased in the intervening decades. Instead of a high pitched muffled little "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Kris heard a very succinct, "OOOOOOOOOoooooooooWwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Today at practice I worked on my low release backhand throws: I'm determined to make that throw on Beth well before the end of the season. Tyler also worked with me on catching before practice. He doesn't like the claw catch, but it works for me, so I won't be changing that one any time soon. He did, however, recommend than I attack the disc on any catch, pull it closer to me on impact, always have my hands moving aggressively towards the disc. Lessons to practice.

After practice, it was clear Andy wasn't doing much to minimize his disc charm. After most everyone had packed up and headed off, Kris, Andy and I wandered to the cars. Instead of just heading straight over, each step was practically a moment in a playful game of "What can I do with this disc now?"

As we approached the batting cage, I asked Andy if Kris had told him about his 30th birthday party, where we recorded various disc throwing speeds. Andy said yes, and, after sliding under the netting into the cage, threw a disc fairly hard at the far end of the cage.

The netting, of course, caught the disc, and gently dropped it to the ground. Andy went, picked it up, and threw it straight at us. I flinched. Kris laughed, and tried to catch it. And tried, and tried again. The net kept deflecting the discs Andy threw. After about ten tries, Kris finally caught one and Andy crawled back out of the cage.

We made it all of maybe 10 yards closer to the cars when Andy threw his disc into the open shelf of a file cabinet on the side of the shot put field. He missed, but Kris immediately followed by trying to throw his disc onto the shelf. A few seconds later, another disc came flying in from Tyler, as he tried his hand. The three of them spent a few minutes playing with discs and the file cabinet, seeing who could both hit the target opening and have his disc stay put.

Normally, the walk from the fields to the cars is uneventful. Today, it was entertaining and fun.

I blame Andy.

Andy showed us his Pulgas Ridge hike, with an off-leash dog park in the middle.

Andy told us about a hill in the park that he and the dogs run up. It's an insane hill. They run up, rest, walk down and run up again. Last week was a slow week, they managed only two sprints up the hill. Their record is five.

I'd be happy with one.

Shadow and Kris

Bella and Blue

Blue and his indestructo disc

As I exited the shower this morning, Kris looked at me and asked, "Did I do that?" pointing to the quarter-dollar sized bruise on my back side where I couldn't really see it.

After some amazing acrobatic maneuvering, I finally saw what he was talking about. "Probably not, they're all over the place. Here, look here. And here." I showed him my slew of bruises.

"Back to that again, are we?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

I wish I knew why things like this happened. I have times when it seems I'm nearly covered in bruises, where touching something makes me bruise, and other periods when I can practically break ribs and not have a mark on me.

I wonder if it's diet related.

Given the amount of yard work Kris and I have, I decided to host a Tom Sawyer event of sorts: less trick our friends into helping us with the yard, and more bribe them into helping us. We sent out an email inviting everyone over for $20 an hour to help us with our yard.

Only Crystal and Shirley took us up on that bribe.

They were the only two we needed. They rocked.

Recalling the front and back yards are all foot high grasses and weeds, and that we needed to remove the rocks we put into the parkway last year at our toil of tears (references to which are oddly missing here and in my photo album), because car doors open into them when parked next to our curb. The weeks were certainly the biggest task.

I went with James to a composting workshop, so, as Crystal said, I was the smartest woman ever: I organized a work party, then left before I had to do any work. I brought back a compost bin, which we used at the end of the day. Shirley and Crystal pulled weeds from the front yard, the back yard, the garden and the side yard. They pulled up so much green material, we had enough for two compost bin and two ginormous compost piles. Well, maybe three.

The highlight of the day was when I asked Shirley to help me turn the compost pile. I explained what we were doing, rotating a bin that's been going for two weeks, and building a new one. When we rotated, however, we were going to remove the grubs that were in the middle of the pile. After I had pulled out three, Crystal came over to help us with the rotation. A few moments last, Kris came over to watch, and help with the grubs.

We collected a lot:

Shirley and Crystal were good humoured about it:

Kris commented that the mass of squirming grubs was alternating a vision of the apocalypse and a train wreck. In neither case, could we really take our eyes off of the mass.

It was gross.