Gathering goods, Smiling Andy, Empty doorstep

So my plan is to try to make my own birthday cake this year, specifically the famous chocolate cake recipe that came from my mom.  I have never tried to make a cake from scratch before so this should be an interesting experiment.  I figure the old saying applies with a twist “Give a man a chocolate cake and he enjoys it for a few days.  Teach a man how to make chocolate cake and he eats it forever (and turns into a fat ass)”

Hey I won the first round of my fantasy football playoffs despite having Bryce Brown put up a big goose egg on the scoreboard, I was lucky to win since I only scored 85 points.  If I can manage to secure two more wins I could take a home a fat cash prize.  I made it to the finals once before and came up short.

I had a funny dream last night among the various thunderstorms that woke me up multiple times.

I was out running in the Gouglersville area, where I grew up.  For some reason I was pushing a walker with wheels as I was running.  I was trudging up the hill where Jeremy Nelson (a childhood friend) used to live where I spot Andy Reid sitting by the side of the road in a fold up lawn chair.

This wasn’t odd to me because I always saw Andy sitting by the side of the road when I ran but he never said anything to me, instead he would just sit there staring blankly ahead with a scowl on his face, kind of the same look he has at most press conferences.

Well I almost tripped over my walker when this time as I passed Andy he had a big smile on his face and said “Hey, how are you doing? Great game on Sunday huh?” referring to the Eagles big comeback win against the Buccaneers.  I barely was able to spit out “Yea man, way to go” as I kept on running.  End of dream.

When I got home last night I glanced at the front doorstep and saw it was empty.  The sight gave me a moment of pause.  You see, since moving to Florida, December typically means that almost every day there would be a package waiting on the doorstep, either a gift sent to Ali or myself or something we bought for someone else.

I don’t know what it is about seeing a box in front of the door but it definitely injects a little shot of joy juice into the brain.  Well here  I am a mere two weeks from Christmas and the doorstep has remained barren.   This is not something unexpected, I just didn’t really think about it until last night. Just another thing that punctuates just how different life is nowadays.