I wasn't kissing. I was sucking.

Costco sells a snack I love called "Peanut Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets". I love these things but I know they can't be good for me. They're far too tasty to be healthy. I try to limit how many I eat at any one time but it's difficult. As any Costco shopper knows, there is only one size at the store: large. I estimate the peanut butter pretzel jar holds roughly 500 nuggets. It's so easy to just reach in and grab a handful. Or two.

In an effort to limit my snacking, I've taken to trying to savor each individual nugget. I reason that the longer it takes me to finish one of these guys, the fewer I'll be able to eat overall. It's a reasonable strategy and I've had some success with it. Each nugget consists of a salty hard pretzel exterior with a soft peanut butter like substance inside. Sometimes, I like to pop one in my mouth and suck on it until the salt is gone and the shell softens up such that I can crush it with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. This takes awhile and if you rush the process, you'll rip up your palate so it's pretty effective at limiting the rate of consumption.

A few days ago, I was rushing out of the house to pick up my oldest son from school. As I grabbed my coat, I passed by the pretzel nugget jar and instinctively grabbed a handful. I was just a couple of blocks from the house when I popped the first one into my mouth. Now, as I was driving, I happened to notice something out of the corner of my eye - movement in someone's yard. I turned to look and, sure enough, a man was out mowing his yard. Unfortunately, at the same moment I made eye contact with him, I absenting sucked on the pretzel nugget in an attempt to crush it. To anyone who didn't know about the nugget (basically everyone but me) I'm pretty sure it looked like I caught this fellow's eye and blew him a kiss. He gave me a sheepish wave, keeping his hands on the mower handle.

It all happened so quickly. I was down the street before I fully realized how my nugget sucking may have looked. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I considered what my next course of action should be. I came up with four possibilities:

1. Stop at his house, explain the whole pretzel sucking thing and assure him that I was not blowing him a kiss. This could get weird if it turns out he couldn't see me clearly or he didn't think I was puckering at him in the first place.
2. Begin randomly blowing kisses whenever I am out and about in the neighborhood. Become known as the guy with the awkward muscle tic that looks like I'm blowing kisses.
3. Avoid that particular street for the foreseeable future.
4. Act like nothing happened. If I happen to run into the guy and he mentions the whole "air kiss" episode, explain the pretzel nuggets and the sucking. Maybe offer to share some with him so he can appreciate the process.

For now, I'm rolling with number 4 with a little bit of number 3 thrown in there for good measure.

Raking

On a cool, brisk, sunny fall day there are few things more pleasant than raking leaves. I can honestly say that for the first five or ten minutes, I enjoy raking. After that, the thrill fades a bit. Our yard isn't very large and it doesn't take long to rake it but, even so, my enthusiasm for raking disappears long before the leaves do. This past Saturday, my wife and I and my youngest son raked. We started with the back yard, which is the largest of the two. We have no deciduous trees in our back yard but the neighbor's maple provides plenty of leaves for both them and us.

Even though the back yard is larger, I find raking it less annoying than the front. The back yard has two attributes that are helpful when raking: gardens and a fence. Gardens are handy when raking because, in my mind, the worst thing about raking is trying to figure out what to do with the leaves. I've convinced myself that it's beneficial to cover the plants in the garden. I don't know nor do I care to know if this is actually true. I just know that things go pretty fast when you can just rake everything to the edge of the grass and into the garden. Now, it is true that come spring I'll have to contend with these leaves again. But, that's an issue for then, not now. For now, I will rake as many leaves onto our gardens as seems reasonable. And then I'll add a few more.

A chain-link fence marks the perimeter of our yard and provides an effective barrier against yard to yard leaf travel. There's nothing worse than raking your yard clean only to have the wind deposit new ones from down the street.

Our front yard only has a couple of small gardens and no fence. Early in October, I set the lawn mower to a very low setting and gave the grass a buzz cut. I do this every year in a feeble attempt to provide a few less places for leaves to latch onto. Maybe, just maybe, most of them will blow on by and find more comfortable accommodations in my neighbor's yard. Lately, I've noticed my closest neighbors also cutting their grass shorter. We've convinced ourselves that it is helping, if only a little, mostly during the early part of the season. When the trees really start shedding their leaves there isn't much you can do but wait and rake.

As we moved from the back yard to the front, I took a moment to appreciate the array of colors strewn around the yard. It was quite beautiful - a mix of red, yellow, green, brown, and gold. It was a beautiful day and I felt a renewed enthusiasm. As I began raking, I noticed that the leaves were different in this yard - more variety. In particular, there were small golden leaves that refused to go with the others. With each sweep of the rake, these little guys would jump over the tines and propel themselves in the opposite direction. Like a stubborn three-year-old, they would not be coerced into playing with the others. As my frustration grew, I took a moment to study one of these leaves. I scanned the neighborhood, trying to ascertain this fellow's origins. Finally, my eyes rested on the culprit, across the street and two houses down. About half of this leaf's siblings were still precariously dangling from the tree. I glared at the tree and then briefly at the house behind it.

By noon, we had raked both yards. Our lawn stood in stark contrast to my neighbors on each side, where leaves abounded. It was windy and by two, our front yard was once again covered. On Sunday, my neighbors cleaned their yards. I just didn't have it in me to re-rake and since the leaves weren't too thick I fired up the lawn mower and mulched them this time. There are still a couple of trees in our neighborhood that have not dropped their leaves and I know my lawn will not stay leaf-free but I don't really care. In my mind, I made a good faith attempt - if the leaves aren't going to cooperate I can't be blamed.