A Mission Farewell, a Brick Wall, and a Cow from Hell

...not in that order.

Yesterday was pretty decently eventful day. It started off, like every Saturday, with me trying to sleep in, only to be disturbed by the morning activities of my family and our two overly noisy dogs. Eventually my dad comes into my room and tells me to get up and do some odd job. This morning it was to help clean out the garage of all our family's piles of worthless junk that seem to gather every summer.
Lucky for me, my buddy Robert came to pick me up at ten so we (Robert, Jack, and I, along with Robert's special guests, his cousin and her fiance) could go tail-gate at our final BYU game together... Robert leaves on his mish in about a week and a half and gave his farewell talk today. He gave a great talk: funny, inspiring, and just plain good.

BYU easily laid waste to SDSU at the game. After Robert dropped me off we met up again to play basketball at his friend James' church. I swear, whenever we play with James, he ends up bringing along at least one idiot. I never know which person it is until we start ballin. The way you can tell this person apart from the others is that he believes the very survival of the team depends entirely on him. Yesterday this person thought that he was JJ Redick in the sense that he would try to shoot the ball from about 6 feet behind the 3-point line. It didn't really matter that any of his 4 team mates were open. If he didn't take that shot - We wouldn't stand a chance! What a freaker.

Later that night I went to Rachel Smith's house to hang out with her while she was visiting from Logan. We talked for awhile before going to Smith's to get some candy for her and egg nogg for me. At Smith's we decided to buy caramels and make caramel apples. As we searched for the best apples to use in our little activity, we stumbled upon the "Grapple." Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape! Needless to say we bought some of those as well.

Our caramel apples didn't look very impressive but tasted pretty good. Mike called and came over with three other guys and partook of the caramely fruits of mine and Rachel's labors. It was at this time that Rachel causally informed us that she had a long horned cow in her back yard. We were a little skeptical so she grabbed a flashlight took us outside to show us. It turned out that it was actually on the other side of the fence of her back yard. We shone the flashlight into the darkness on the otherside of the fence but the yard was too large and we couldn't see anything. Mike and I decided to hop the fence and look for this cow. We slowly moved into the darkness, flashlight in hand. We got close to a small shed-like structure and I shone the flashlight into it. That's when we saw it's eyes looking at us. They glowed green in the light. It started to slowly walk out of it's shelter and that's when we saw the massive horns on it's head. In the darkness it seriously looked like something straight from Hell. I don't remember all that was said and done, but about two seconds after it started out of the shed towards us, it turned its walk into a run straight at us.

Running from a charging Hell cow is just as intense as it sounds.

Luckily, with some difficulty on my part, we made it over the fence. The next hour consisted of Mike and I telling our story about 25 times, making it sound better every time.

Eventually we were joined by Tim, Tyler, and Chris. We all went to Cascade park to play steal the flag with Tim's brother Sam and a bunch of his friends. Mike and I volunteered to be on defense of the flag and the jail. Now, how I managed to break my arm by running as fast as I could into a wall is hard to explain but I will try my best. The "jail" was a bench that runs along a wall on the East side of the school. About a half hour into the game a couple people were trying to free their team mates from the jail and I was trying to block on in particular. He tried to run around me in a curl route to the jail. Trying to beat him there, I ran fast as I could straight at the jail to try and cut him off. About two feet before the jail I tagged him but I guess that since I was so focused on him, I didn't realize that I was headed straight for the brick wall and when I finally did realize this, I had a split second to put out my hands to stop myself. I hit pretty hard and fell to my knees holding my right arm in pain. Fortunately that pain wore off and I kept on playing.

Later at Tyler's house I realized that I couldn't straighten my arm all the way, and it hurt to bend it too far, but didn't really think about it. It wasn't till I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping in pain because I had rolled over onto it, that I realized that something was a little messed up. It looked like I had a very obese elbow. I really don't know why, but I decided to tough it out till morning and then told my parents I needed to go see a doctor, but only after Robert's farewell! So that's what we did! They took some x-rays, during which I felt some of the worst pain of my life as I tryed to position my arm how they wanted it. They told me later that i had a Radial Head Fracture. I can't have a cast for it because it would make my elbow stiffen up so all I've got is a sling and some Pain Killers. It's not all bad though, my parents tie my shoes for me and plus, I've always wanted to break a bone. I can still use my fingers, I just can't put my hand in positions that make them useful. However, there are certain things that I've found to be difficult without the use of my right hand.:

1.Taking off / putting on shirts - This has to be the worst part. I don't have a cast to stabalize my elbow from bending so getting in and out of t-shirts makes me want to scream.

2.Peeing - It's rough, and potentially messy.

3.Tying shoes - I feel like a little child asking my mom to tie my shoes.

4.Scratching - Some places are inaccessible to my left hand and will forever itch.

5.Sports - I'm in a volleyball class at BYU. That's a no-go now.

6. The Trapese - It's hard to hold on with one hand