The length of a carrot

On Saturday, I started my 21st week of pregnancy. With Baby Fox the length of a carrot, it was appropriately time for us to don head-to-toe orange for opening weekend of University of Tennessee football. Fox and I actually met during freshman orientation at UT over twelve years ago. Last year, I gave in and we became proud season ticket holders. Making seven trips from Atlanta to Knoxville and effectively taking up my entire fall is a small price to pay for Fox to fulfill his life-long dream of seasonticketdom.

Though I love the old alma mater, orange isn't my favorite color. I realized how little I liked it last year when I discovered I had nothing orange to wear to games. I made an effort to get some orange items, and my dear friend Sarah Gilliam actually gave me a great vintage orange dress when she came to visit for the Peach Bowl over New Years. I was excited to wear it to games this year, then I realized that it might not fit over Baby Fox. Luckily, it did. However, I did notice several double takes of "is she pregnant, or gaining weight in an unfortunate manner?" I did try to puff out Baby Fox for photographic evidence of her attendance at her first UT game.

Before the game, we met up with some old friends for tailgating and learned a new game called "washers." It is similar to cornhole, only you throw large washers at a box with a pipe in it (like skee-ball). Three points are awarded for landing in the pipe and one point for landing in the box. On the tailgating front, I have traded in beer for cookies.

I'm pleased to report that for Baby Fox's first game we beat UT Martin handily (50-0), with our first shut-out since 2003. It was Derek Dooley's first game as head coach and also the first meeting of UT and UT Martin, so the game was monumental for several reasons. Baby Fox kicked a lot, which I want to believe means she had fun. Fox even got to feel a series of kicks -- she seems pretty strong.

To the right is Coach Dooley running through his first Power T. The weather was just wonderful, but even still it isn't great to sit in direct sunlight for several hours. You may also notice that our season tickets were in the shade! This was an unexpected and very welcome discovery. I know we won't be so lucky for 3:30 games, but it's good to know that at least at 6:00 and later games, we won't fry. We stayed until the fourth quarter, then headed back to Atlanta and listened to the call-in show for as long as we got the station. It was glorious. As usual, most callers had "a comment, not a question" with some very astute observations, mostly involving the classiness of Coach Dooley and the difficulty of beating Oregon next week.

I hope all of you out there in blogland had a great Labor Day. Check in next week when Baby Fox is the size of a spaghetti squash!