🆒 10 Things Grateful, plus meager efforts to write again

Just a stormtrooper trying to steal Tim Tebow’s thunder.

I’m in a spot with not enough time to finish this, but also not so little time I can’t start.

And that’s sort of been the calling card in my life lately. Again, were this blog a goldfish in a bowl, it’d be floating belly-up. Interestingly, I feel better equipped to handle a hectic life than ever. And life is still keeping me away from this space.

Not entirely.

I’ve kept up (mostly) every day with the gratitude journal, so there’s plenty of material. Hopefully, that’ll get finished tonight after my boys’ soccer training and Camdyn’s teams’, when that Monster Energy drink kicks in somewhere between here and the Lowe’s Y.

🌐 Go Ask Daddy about foreign language, breakfast nutrition, and omens your ticker’s at risk

I’ve been doing these surveys online.

You can earn money on them. I’ve probably gathered $10 toward my stupendous PayPal balance by revealing my spending habits, taking quizzes about commercials that air during Live PD, and disclosing just how Hispanic I am.

Not overly, it turns out.

I mean, I rock the cuisine and will always retain my honey-roasted complexion. But these surveys ask if we speak Spanish in the home or watch Spanish-language programming. No and no. (Those words, luckily, are the same in English and Spanish.)

6 words: 🥶 If you could freeze time for 5 minutes but still move, what would you do?

This one’s been on ice for a while.

Six Words posts sprung up on here every month. I had one with triple-digit entries! How in the name of Harry and Helen is going on here? 

Like a lot of stuff I could do younger, I can do this – you’ll have to wait longer for it, that’s all.

I ask friends, strangers, bloggers, and strange blogger friends to respond to a prompt in six words. Ernest Hemingway inspired it with his assertion you could tell any story in six words. Exactly.

10 things grateful, plus a coupla graduations 🎓 | #gratitudeandshit

We’ve got two graduations in three days.

I’m not talking those horseshit half-graduations for third graders, either. Full-blown, leaving this school, taking my game to the next level graduations. Hayden’s done with high school and on to college at Piedmont International University.

Camdyn’s coming to Queen’s Grant High, where I can’t wait to get her on the field.

They’ve both overcome adversity and adverse conditions but found ways to shine in big ways. There’ve been tests of will and tests of character and just a butt load of tests – like, on subjects. We’re ready to get this summer on.

Mindful Monday | My first baseball mitt

CGP

We’re excavating our garage like it’s King Tut’s tomb.

Not finding golden statues or mummified cats, if that’s what you’re thinking. Yet. I found my first baseball mitt, though. Even as I revere the beginning of baseball season, I felt a wave of emotion as I put on my glove.

Most of it was awful.

This cheap chunk of leather – real leather? I’m not sure – represents my introduction to a game I love today. It harkens a loyalty to a team and a reliance on hope. For what better an example of hope? A sport that lasts all summer and breaks nearly every heart.

Where We’d Build a Tunnel to, in 6 Words

Sometimes you get to storm a castle at the church yard sale. #truecrusaders

I’m all for being in the moment.

But sometimes, you just want to tunnel your butt someplace else. Not always even to a churro factory after hours, although … well, we all have aspirations. And I’ve asked several strangers, bloggers, friends, and a few strange blogger friends this question:

If you could build a tunnel from your house directly to anywhere in the world, where would it go? And why?

That’s a lot to get into six words, but it’s possible.

7 days, 7 photos – Day 5

“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”

Thanks, Sandra, for the challenge 🙂.

Today, I’d like to nominate Ritu, of But I Smile Anyway.

The other entries:

7 days, 7 photos – Day 1

7 days, 7 photos – Day 2

7 days, 7 photos – Day 3

7 days, 7 photos – Day 4

# # #

 

Always Enough Happy to Tell You Something Good, Guaranteed

I can make my famous brown and white sugar pancakes by heart now.

I save time. And a great way to avoid leaving out key ingredients – such as baking soda – or doubling key ingredients – such as baking soda. I’ve flipped these classics – this same recipe – for years, probably since the Milwaukee Brewers (or Jewel) were any good.

I looked Saturday at the dry ingredients in the bowl, mostly white even with the brown sugar integrated, and it started the wheels turning.

Not of Hispanic America’s integration or dispersion into modern caucasian culture. I thought of how sugar – brown and white – mixes with salt, baking soda and flour, to become greater than the sum of parts. To become something delicious.

And if you were forced to choose a single grain of that to eat, you’d wish for sugar, right?

Where We’d Take an Alien, in 6 Words

When I was a kid, I wanted to be friends with Elliott.

He’s the boy who befriended E.T. in the movie. He just seemed like the kind of kid I would like to hang out with. Looking back, I believe I probably admired his loyalty and courage in all that happened when E.T. came to town.

Every month, I collect responses for a post I call 6 Words.

If you’ve been around here a while you know Ernest Hemingway inspired this idea when he said all stories could be told in six words. I ask friends, strangers, bloggers, and strange blogger friends to respond to a prompt, in six words.

#AtoZChallenge: F is for Foods That Bring Me Comfort

photo credit: DocChewbacca Gluttony via photopin (license)

Some days, a dude’s gotta eat. You know what I’m saying?

You just can’t wait to get home, soak in a hot shower, pull on some Avengers pajama pants and eat. Not just anything. Not a fist full of Saltines or – yuck – kale chips. You need scrumptious, on a day getting your arse handed to you on the soccer pitch or you forget to wear a belt all day long.

It’s not just after a rough ride that you’d like a plate of mouth-stuffing goodness.

Hell, when the Rockies bullpen holds a lead, or I get to work in less than an hour, or I see tons of commercials with Erica Piccininni in them, or your scrappy soccer team gives the conference champs all sortsa hell and high water, well, that makes you hungry, too.