Warning: this post contains lots of non sequiturs, I’m tired, and non sequiturs make me chuckle when I’m tired.  I’d ask if you follow what I”m saying except that that’s what a non sequitur is.  Elephants wander through the African planes and such.

Both girls have been in a mild to extreme melt-down mode since coming home from Indiana. I’m pretty sure this is due to the fact that Jessica and I have also been in punt mode. We’ve had a lot going on and when that happens we end up punting a lot. If you’re not familiar with the punt analogy it ties in with the popular American sport called American Football. Its called American Football because the rest of the world calls it American Football because they had a sport called football long before the Americans who took Rugby, Football, Sumo Wrestling and the Civil War and combined them together so that only very fast, large men (and now, apparently fast, large women) can mash into one another like two over-loaded sports cars while one smaller, but still huge man attempts to throw the ball to another smaller, not as huge man who runs even faster than the other fast runners in an attempt to not be killed by oncoming fast, large men. This is, in short, American Football.

In American Football there’s a really nice thing that happens: the teams share the ball and take turns having ‘possession’ of the ball. Possession is a loose term because each team could find themselves running with the ball, in fear of being creamed by the other team, lose the ball and then do what’s called fumbling the ball and then recovering the dropped ball, which means that they might still have possession even though they temporarily did not have possession. After enough time lapses where the team who had possession didn’t do anything useful with the ball, they might have what’s called a fourth down. The fourth down follows the first through third down. The number of downs you have depends on the number of severely injured fowl you have as well as fouls that may have been committed by players added together with the number of yards the football has traveled in a subjectively positive direction. Upon the fourth down, if the team who has possession of the ball decides that they’re too close to the scoring end-zone of the opposing team they can do what’s called punting. Punting is to kick the ball to the other end of the field but not into the scoring end-zone, just up close to it. The returning, opposing team then catches the ball and the player who catches the ball hopefully runs a long, long way so that they get back closer to the original end-zone so that they can get a touchdown. A touchdown has nothing to do with the downs mentioned earlier. So the punt is a scrambled maneuver that is only done to prevent the other team from scoring and is generally looked at as a last resort maneuver.

Since Jessica and I have been resorting to the punt for the last couple weeks due to some unforeseen circumstances, work, and a general sense of being whelmed (not over or under, but relatively pegged) the girls have probably felt like the football being kicked from one end of the field as we play American Football with each day.  This is why Evelyn threw a screaming temper tantrum as we were entering the fine Costco store this evening to collect small, specific bits of food for Father’s Day this weekend. Food that will keep us going in our punting, punting that will keep us from scoring, but keep the other team from scoring. Scoring which makes us like John Williams, who does not play American Football.