In which I talk about the summer and the fall

It was a weird summer. Not having a job was tough, but it did give me time with my family that I wouldn't have had otherwise. We were able to take a nice trip to the mountains to visit Darlene's parents and another one to Tennessee to visit my parents. We wouldn't have been able to take those trips if I had been working. Still, I know I didn't enjoy those trips as much as I should have because I was constantly worrying that we were going to spend too much money, or that someone might call with a job offer while we were gone, or something else.

I spent a lot of time this summer stressing over the fact that I wasn't having a lot of success with my job search. I didn't always handle the stress very well and there were times that I took my frustrations out on my family by being cranky and irritable and (occasionally) downright rude. I just want to take this opportunity to let my wife and kids know that I love you very much, and if I have been less of a family man than I should have this summer, I am sorry. I didn't handle the stress of the job search as well as I hoped I would and you guys caught the bad side of that more than you should have. Again, I am sorry.

I'm looking forward to going back to work, but I will miss being home when the kids get home from school. I'll miss being here when my wife gets home from work. We've had a little time to ourselves the last couple of weeks in that 20 minutes between when she gets home and when the girls get home. It's been nice. It's been nice being able to help with homework and sign forms and all the other things that a parent has to do to for school. I miss out on that with Sage since she lives with her mom, so I make sure to do what I can for the other kids.

This fall is shaping up to be a good one. We're going to get caught up on the financial side of things, and we'll hopefully be going to lots of Chattahoochee football games, since Darlene's buddy from work usually works one of the admissions gates (hi, Robin!). I'm looking forward to September 5, when Hooch travels to Lilburn to play Parkview. My wife's work school vs. my alma mater. We'll be going, I hope, and I'll be wearing my Parkview orange. Everyone else in the family will likely be in the blue and yellow of Hooch. I'll let you know how that goes.

Of course, I'll get back into posting about fantasy football once the season gets underway. The UFFL draft is a week from tomorrow. You may recall that last year I had the third highest-scoring team in UFFL history but flamed out in the playoffs. What will happen this year? Come back and find out! Support your local bloggers!