Where to begin? Friday evening. We were getting ready for our Garage sale on Saturday. Pretty much getting rid of everything. It turns out that people around here are kind of weird about Garage Sales, maybe it’s like that everywhere, but people here obviously don’t regard our listed time very much. We were pretty clear in both newspapers that the garage sale was Saturday morning from 6am-2pm. And the big pink signs all over town said so as well. We had plenty of people stopping by as we were still setting up, some got out, some just made a u-turn and took off. We decided to let the ones who got out come and look around even though we weren’t done pricing and setting up. I suppose that was a good thing because we made about $500 before the sale even started!

Saturday morning we got up at around 5:30 to get ready. There were a couple cars outside already. That’s an eerie feeling having people outside when all are asleep and *knowing* when you wake as signs of life appear and lights go on. I didn’t really like that, but as I said, Garage Sale people are a bit odd…

Our neighbour had actually been up since 4:30 (they’re very early risers) and had been baking Pecan rolls for the sale. Another set of friends arrived at 6 to help, they had a couple things to sell as well as having two boys to keep our two boys occupied. Winners all round. We brewed coffee, ate pecan rolls and offered them to all who showed up. I helped out until about 8:30 as I had to leave for a Softball Tournament. It wasn’t a popular decision but I had them calling me so much begging me to come as they were short players, had paid $250 entrance fee, blah bah blah. What was I to do?

We were in the tough and long bracket in the tournament. Out of 17 mens teams, we were one of two who had to play an extra game early to define where we placed for the rest of the tournament. That means that immediately we were playing one extra game than everyone else. I’ll spare all the details but we played 3 games on Saturday, won all 3 but never comfortably to stay in the winners bracket. I was batting very well, hitting two homers in the first game and two in the second. Batting was feeling good. The third game is where it got interesting.

The field was a bit smaller so the fence was always going to be a worry. One play had me running backwards and as I thought I had the catch I went for it. Problem was as I had my eye on the ball I lost track of where the fence was. I not only ploughed into it, but through it as the wire attaching the chain link to a pole at the bottom gave way. Somehow I cut under my left eye and got snagged in the fence, unable to get free. It turns out I was never going to catch it because the hit went out of reach over the fence. A team mate freed me from the fence and we played on, my eye feeling puffy and a bit blurry. Not 20 minutes later a similar hit, but this time it was even more catchable as it was a flatter hit. And this time I ran at full speed into the fence which caused me to be lifted from my feet in a pretty sickening blow. I now had a gash on my forehead, a knot in my head and laceration marks on my left shoulder. I thought I got up immediately, but was told I didn’t. I guess that means I lost consciousness. No one is certain. And I continued now nicknamed "Dizzy" by our fans, which is remarkable as that’s my nickname in cricket. I look a lot like a player on the Australian team who goes by "Dizzy". Weird. Today I earned the right to the name.

Banged up twice, feeling nice and sore. Sunday we go on to lose the first game to the eventual winners, which puts us in the losers bracket. We went on to win good games against everyone else to get to the Championship game against that same team we lost to. This was a ringer team from Denver, apparently an "invite only" team who found their way into the relatively small Tournament by chance that one of the players grew up here or something. You wouldn’t usually see such higher class teams in these smaller tournaments. We gave them everything but lost, finishing second overall after 8 games in two days.

Dead tired we all went to bed pretty early last night. At around 11pm Nevan was talking in his sleep about having kittens in his bed. Or so we thought. Jenifer got up to find our pregnant cat had decided to get up on the top bunk and have 5 kittens up there! Nevan really did have absolutely new-born kittens in his bed! We all got up and found them in all parts of his bed sheets and blankets and got Tule (the mother) comfortable in a hamper with her 5 new babies. The boys were all exited and energetic, Nevan decided to sleep on the floor beside our bed to watch over our cat and kittens. I think he’s proud that Tule chose to have kittens in his bed!

We figured we’d have to help her through her first delivery of kittens, turns out she handled it all. We just had to find them all and get them all together. Thankfully none fell off the top bunk!

What a bizarre weekend eh?

Listening to Bartender by Dave Matthews Band on Busted Stuff.