Yard Work, Romano-Style

Ah, I love the fall. Seriously, everything about the fall. I love football and stews and oversized sweatshirts. I love the fact that temperature has fallen below the “Holy Shit It’s Hot” level where it has been since Easter. I love the rich colors and the fact that I finally get to over-indulge in Halloween candy again since I’m now a parent (because let’s face it, if you’re single and childless and eating fun-size candy bars out of a plastic jack-o-lantern, you should probably seek some sort of counseling).

But, what I think I love most about fall is the turning of the leaves. There’s just something about all the rich, warm colors that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. And as a kid, I always loved raking the leaves, because that meant spending the better part of the afternoon jumping in them, throwing them, piling them up at the bottom of the swing set so my friends and I could run through our very own Funhouse-style gauntlet and dive into the ginormous leaf pile at the finish line.

At some point in adulthood, yard work tends to lose a little bit of its luster. Instead of wasting away an entire day building obstacle courses and then raking and re-raking piles of leaves with Energizer Bunny-like energy, the only race is really just the race to get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible so you can tackle some of the other chores on the weekend To Do List–do the laundry, grocery shop, watch some football. I think spending a couple years living in the Arizona desert made us forget just how many leaves actually fall in the Fall.

Thousands.

Seriously, several thousand have already fallen in our backyard alone. We just might reach a million by the end of the weekend. Oh, and a thunderstorm is supposed to blow through, so we’re likely to get most of our own leaves and a large share of our neighbors’. Thank goodness we managed to get quite a bit of the clean up done already.

I gotta say, working with Cadence made it fun again. I mean, seriously, how can yard work be a chore with this kid around? And yeah, it helps that her Daddy was having just as much fun as she was. So, this is how we do some yard work, Romano-style…

First, you need some bubbles and some swordplay. Cadence was trying out some of her Jedi Mind Tricks…

Then, you better run, because Daddy’s got the leaf blower…

Ahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Time to get a little serious…

And a little dramatic…

And then dive right back in…

Now that’s what I call a good day of work…