Puljos and Cordero Hate Cats!

Albert Puljos hits two homeruns tonight against the Braves after Francisco Cordero blew another game for the Reds earlier today. Nani goes to the bonus treat bag and the poor little kitties get none. How mean are those guys?

I actually like Puljos. I think he has whiny teammates that won’t let a future Hall-of-Famer have his due accolades. Puljos hit his two homers with no one on base. Left to Albert, as it should have been, the Braves would have won. Albert cares about the Reds fans. He’s a decent man.

David knows that Cordero is my least favorite Red. He’s the closer. Closers are my least favorite players period. That role is severely overrated and overpaid, even amongst the overpaid, they are overpaid. I’ll give a tip of the hat to Mariano Rivera, but I think half of his power comes from the hype. The image has successfully gotten into hitters’ heads. Cordero is NOT Rivera. Not in image, not in the ability to get three outs without loading the bases and/or killing the game.

Tomorrow is another day.

I’d like to see the Reds look into the crystal ball of the post season and imagine Aroldis Chapman as the playoff closer. The smoke he throws blows batters away in a manner that could possibly rival the Rivera mystique.

I didn’t deny the kids all their treats because it was a bad baseball day, either! They get two of the soft treats I call Stinky Treats at 10:30, like always. Just, for instance, last night they got a crunchy treat after the Cardinals lost and then another one when the Reds won. Today, no extras, except the standard morning or bedtime treats.

Vacation

Last week was vacation time for us! We left Indy after family brunch the day after the girls’ party and motored towards Iowa. We saw The Field of Dreams movie site, 3 baseball games, one rain-out and had some great chases with the gorgeous Iowa Interstate, especially on Saturday, when the Rock Island 513 was in the lead of a train around Iowa City.

Field of Dreams, Dyersville, Iowa

The highlight for me was visiting the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville. That was cool! I took lots of pictures and David got a couple looking at the field from inside the corn field. That was my biggest souvenir haul! I got a t-shirt, a sweatshirt and a mug that has a dark cornfield with ghost players that appear when hot liquid is in the cup!

Car Shopping

This weekend, Saturday was car shopping day for us. David had been debating whether or not he wanted to rent a car for our trip. The Escape was a year old and already had a lot of miles on it. Well, we drove it out west for our honeymoon last summer when it was new and then when we went to Florida in the spring.

The Sunday before we left for Iowa, I got one of those phone calls you never want. David’s voice was obviously shaken. “I need you to come get me. I was T-boned at a light downtown.”

I was glad it was David’s voice because if someone else was calling to tell me that my husband was “t-boned,” I’d have been a mess!

When I got there, the Escape was on the wrecker to be towed away already and David had collected some of his things in a pile on the sidewalk. We put them in my car as we watched the wrecker move off. I thought I could see how bad the damage was because the front of the passenger’s side was pretty crumpled.

But he was hit on the driver’s side!

We went to the ER to have his scraped up knees looked at. He also had some other bruising and scrapes. He went home with a note to stay home and rest for two days.

He recounted the accident to me, best as he could. There is a shock effect that you see it all in slow motion, but see none of it at all. The man who hit him ran a red light, hit him at speed in the front of the Escape. The damage I saw on the passenger’s side was from how hard he got hit. When we went to the impound lot to get the rest of David’s things during the week, this is what I saw:

I just looked at it and said, “Thank God.” I was a few feet away from becoming a long-term nurse or a widow! Thankfully, David recovered well. The aches and pains from the day after a serious accident rested away while he was home and the last of the scabbing from his poor scraped knees is wearing off now.

Saturday we found a new Escape with a manual transmission! He’d wanted a manual, but had to go with what was on the lot in the Cash for Clunkers deal. He did all the paperwork and it’s getting the one thing that the new car didn’t have that he fell in love with on the old Escape – a moon roof, installed before he picks it up.

We have been very fortunate for sure!