Month: September 2007

My family has a number of summer birthdays and we had a family get-together at the house to celebrate everyone’s birthday.

The scene.

Thea.

Marilea, Blake and Dad.

Saralyn, Darius and Dad.

Grace, Darius and Jensen (hiding behind the cup).

Dad, Saralyn and Ryan.

Blake, Thea and Mom.

Jensen, Grace and Dad.

Thea and Marilea.

Dad, Blake, Ryan Mom and Saralyn.

Saralyn, Mom, Grace, Darius, and TJ.

Sweet Sweet, Dad, Thea, Marilea, Blake, Ryan and Saralyn.

Last summer a fairly large tree died, chalk it up to the drought last year or the tree just being old, but about a month ago a large branch (diameter 8″ to 9″) fall on our neighbor’s fence. I rounded up a crew of Sweet Sweet’s father, brother, Stephen and Todd to help get that sucker down.

Here’s the tree in question.

Blurry picture of me.

Stephen taking a chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

Loading up the debris.

The tree itself was somewhat unwieldy and difficult to pull down.

This part was the scariest part because it could have fallen on the neighbor’s house.

Randy taking the chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

We also had a tree in the front of our yard. Strike that. It wasn’t much of a tree as it was really a totem pole. As you can see the roots were completely rotted and there wasn’t much to pulling it down.

Justin taking the chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

I’m sure that we all have something that we hold onto for much longer than we should. I have a number of those things, consider this a character flaw if you wish, but for me it’s all about comfort.

At some point during my high school career, I purchased a pair of Adidas slip-on soccer style shoes. I think this was my sophomore year, but I can’t be sure as that was almost 2 decades ago. Bygones.

I had kept those shoes through thick and thin and they had become a staple of my casual summer wardrobe. Without implicating my wife too much, Sweet Sweet had grown to hate these shoes and I could certainly understand why. They were dirty and quite frankly a little gross, but they were damn comfortable, they had stood up to the test of time and I’m of the school of thought of why should you get rid of something if nothing is wrong with it?

Well, at some point during the summer I promised Sweet Sweet that I would throw them away and this post is in remembrance of those shoes. Cue the sad piano music.