Sports And Swine

 This is where I found myself at 10 this morning. A basketball gym in downtown Tallahassee where Levon plays on a team called The Lakers. 
Great name, huh? Maybe some pro team should adopt it. 
Anyway, it was of course a completely different Saturday morning than I usually have but I was way overdue at going to one of his games. I don't think Levon is actually in that picture. 
But here he is.

Pretty sure that was during drills. 
Do you notice that he tucks his shirt in? No one else but Levon does that. As we all know, he has his own style.

Y'all- That boy plays so well and so smart and so fast that I actually came to tears watching him. I was so proud. He is INTO IT! He's not fooling around. When he's on the court, his head is constantly pivoting, checking out where the ball is, where the other players are, planning his next move with the information he's gleaning. I forget how many points he made but it was a lot. There are some other really good players on the team but Levon and one other guy were definitely the most kick-ass and of course, they're the shortest kids on the team. 

An excellent example of size not mattering. I was so impressed with how good all the kids were. They were like tiny pros. 

Here's Vergil watching one boy while the other is studying the back cover of a book he's reading. 

Vergil is not that loud dad shouting instructions to his child from the bleachers. That guy was sitting right next to me but he knew he was getting over-amped and took a break to calm down. I respected that. 
Jessie is an enthusiastic cheerer and positive reinforcer. Any kid that needs a cheer or deserves one is going to get it from Jessie. Either team. Doesn't matter.

After the basketball game, both boys had a soccer game at another location, thus August's shin guards. So when the game was over and the buzzer buzzed, and all the boys had shaken hands and all the stuff was said and arms were draped over team members' shoulders and pictures taken, off we went to the soccer game location. 

Both boys are on the same team and Levon generally plays offensive, August defensive. 

Although Levon was pretty wiped out from the basketball game where he gave 110% effort, he still managed to make at least one goal I remember. August is far less assertive than his brother. I am thinking he got the reading gene from me while Levon got the sports gene from his grandfather and his father. And his mother. Jessie was no slouch at sports. 
The goalie on their team is the granddaughter of two folks we've known for many, many years. From old Tallahassee days. They were there too.

One of the best parts of the soccer experience for me today was the team right behind us which consisted of really young kids. They were so adorable! I wanted to squish them all with my love. 

After the soccer game we went to lunch at May's restaurant but she wasn't there! She'd taken the day off to go up to Bainbridge for a music fest. I think her other Daddy was playing. I bet May doesn't miss five days of work a year for any reason but although we missed seeing her, we were glad to know she was having a good time on a beautiful day. 

I dropped by Publix on my way home to pick up two prescriptions and while I was there, I ran into my old yoga teacher. I asked her what she's been up to and she said that she and her husband were currently doing a lot of prison ministry in Jefferson County. 
Hoo boy. Those two are quite religious. 
So that was interesting. 

While I was at Publix I took a picture of the new handles on the refrigerator and freezer cases. 

I know, I know. They just look like regular handles but they are not. They fit the hand like they were custom made for that purpose.
Oh wait. They were. But someone did a really good job on design. 

To top the day off, Vergil and Mr. Moon got right to work after all of that, finishing the processing of some wild hogs that were culled last week. Due to the destruction these animals wreak on sensitive environmental areas like wetlands, and their incredible ability to procreate, there has to be some control of their numbers. The Spaniards brought over domestic pigs when they started colonizing over here. The wild, non-native swine are descendants of those pigs and have turned into very large, invasive, and feral animals. I have heard that running into a wild boar in the woods is far more dangerous than running into a bear. 
Anyway, these hogs were shot and instead of just leaving them where they dropped, people were allowed to come in and take some as food for the table. Vergil, who does not like to buy factory farmed meat, gladly took two pigs and has spent the past week turning them into meat. He and Glen did this some years ago and that was the best pork I've ever eaten. And that is saying something. 

So today they got to work finishing up the cutting of the meat and also grinding a lot of it for plain old ground pork AND sausage. They used my new garden table sink which worked perfectly for this purpose and kept them out of my kitchen. 

Now what I haven't mentioned is that Glen got up at a stupid hour before dawn to take Gibson to a youth duck hunt and took him home afterwards before he met us at the basketball game. 
He was exhausted and finally told Vergil that he just couldn't stand up for one more minute and so now he's sitting in his chair and Vergil is on his way home. 
Jessie and I were texting back and forth and she said, "Both of those men are some hardworking humans. I love them both so much."
I wrote her back, "Yep. Their off buttons are hard to find and even harder to push." 
I think that's a very apt description. 

Love...Ms. Moon