October is referred to as “Annual Sleep Deprivation Month” in our house. Why? Post-Season baseball. We also try to go camping a lot since October’s great weather makes it prime time for Shenandoah. I love October. October is pumpkin spice lattes, and scarves, and fall colors, and boots. More importantly, life and October is not always perfect. In an ode to life and all of its wonderful imperfection, I’m hoping to make a “blooper reel round up” to share the funniest misfortunes of each month.

October has been weird, crazy, and unexpected. The first weekend in October, we drove to Boston to celebrate my Brother-In-Law’s 30^th Birthday. It was an awesome weekend. We watched baseball (the ALDS & NLDS series). We drank beer. We made chili. We hung out & had a really great time.

The first of October’s featured blooper reel highlights was when we stopped in at Yankee Stadium for ALDS Game 3 on the way home from Boston.

Here’s a thing to know when leaving Boston for the Bronx: it will take you SEVEN WHOLE HOURS to get to the Parking Garage at Yankee Stadium. Yes, the GPS will charisma you into thinking it won’t be that bad by promising you it is only a three hour and forty-five minute drive, but it lies. The GPS cannot truly forecast the horrors of Connecticut traffic. There is also the fact EVERY street in New York is blocked near the stadium on game day.

Once there, we walked to Yankee Stadium only to find we couldn’t download the StubHub mobile tickets to my phone because of Network Overload (seriously, StubHub, WHY with the Mobile Tickets ONLY option??? #hate). Luckily, my job means I know how Wireless Networks are built, meaning… we walked a block DIRECTLY AWAY from the stadium & voila. Quick fix. I could even see those brilliant antennas that made the ticket download possible.

We missed the first inning, got some food, then found our seats in the grandstands.

The Good: We only sat in the grandstands through the fourth inning at which point we got a few hundred dollars worth of seat upgrades free!

The Bad: Our upgrades were courtesy of the spectacular 10-1 lead the Yankees allowed the Red Sox.

The Ugly: The part of the blooper reel that is a shout out to Aaron Boone, who is the only person in all of NY (who wasn’t a Red Sox fan) who thought Lance Lynn was a good choice out of the Bull Pen.

So Charlie, die-hard Yankee fan, experiencing his FIRST EVER game at Yankee Stadium, against the Sox no less, met ultimate disappointment. Those post-season vibes that make October baseball so fun? Shut down, just like the poor Yankees. By the sixth inning the stadium was empty and by the last out of the game, it was a ghost town. I have NEVER seen a stadium that empty and certainly not during a post-season game. I’m going to call this the curse of the rally towel. Why, Yankees, why? Why do you NOT gift rally towels? Literally every other stadium does this. No wonder the fans get peeved and crowd the 4 Train when games go south.

The rest of the month was relatively blooper-less until last Friday. It had been business as usual: watch baseball, start back up with graduate school, get back into a routine. Normal adult life stuff.

Friday morning, I went to let Lily out just like always. She did her business leisure like, checked the perimeter, and then (dun dun dun)… she rolled in cat poop. Then she tried to roll it into the carpet and flaunt her new perfume like Pepe Le Pew. Gross beast. Sweet, loving, wonderful, amazing, but still gross beast.

Do you know what sheep dog fur is like? Ugh. It is terrible. It’s a double coat of thick wool with fine, waxy, water-sheding hairs on top. It holds the scents that are rubbed into it for months (like shampoo after a bath, or I’m sure cat poo that isn’t washed out properly). Don’t worry – she got a bath & is now taking auditions to star shampoo commercials.

In retrospect, this is not really a funny tale to tell. It is funny that she did this, that rolling in gross smells is a thing dogs do. No really, do some research. It’s a thing they do. It’s how they brag about their cool discoveries when they’re off adventuring solo. They roll in it to acquire the scent and bring it back to their pack. So my dog? She lovingly tried to flatter us with shit.

I’m gonna let that sit right there until Next Month’s Blooper Reel, which will hopefully be slightly more hilarious.