🆒 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.

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🌐 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.

✍🏽🧠 The Write-Brain Workbook I | Squeaky Wheel

That’ll be fun. 

I won a book called The Write-Brain Workbook for dominating a bowling tournament of writers. (It was in doubles, and David threw hard and wild and I was the finesse. Also yes: It’s not even a little bit difficult to dominate most writers in a bowling tournament.)

Instead of a pair of plane tickets or at least a sweet new Red Ventures T-shirt, David and I won these books – and I’m pretty sure they were second-hand.

So when you’re given a janky book to celebrate your sporting supremacy, you make chicken soup. Or, lemonade. Well, you know what I mean. I’ve held onto this thing a while and just now started to make some use of it.

💉 Go Ask Daddy About needle pain, baking tips and sites for the big game

Know what’d be cool?

It’d be cool if our president and the World Cup MVP would meet. If one of them – doesn’t matter who – put politics aside, for a day. Closed door. Player and President.

When I watched the World Cup final, I didn’t see gay players or straight. There was no distinction between conservative or liberal. All that mattered was the white shirt.

It’s kind of the cool thing about sports.

🧿 #IBelieve IX: On enchilada sauce, life, and timeless cravings

You gotta believe.

It’s an essential part of being a parent. Or a blogger. Especially a Colorado Rockies fan. There isn’t much in this world that doesn’t get a bit sweeter with belief. In fact, the lack of it is grotesque, like those Poptarts without frosting.

Blech.

In the course of my discourse and my writing, I say stuff. Sometimes, it’s about Ingrid Michaelson or enchiladas. Other times, it’s about beliefs. Not just in Jesus or Buddha or the power of the changeup pitch, but sometimes.

😕 Go Ask Daddy About Plant Eaters, Color Collections and What Happens if You Cross the Border for College

The questions have begun to dwindle.

The girls just don’t ask as many questions. They have answers. Or, they don’t look to me for them as they once did. This is okay. Seasons change in fatherhood. If they change back, I’ll be ready for that, too.

The list that once pushed 400 is down to 213.

That’s still a lot of Go Ask Daddy. Want to know something? Every single question I’ve answered in this space has genuinely come from my children’s’ mouths. If they never ask another, I’ll have enough for 42 more Go Ask Daddy posts.

🎥 Go Ask Daddy About Movie Casting, Data Blasting, and Bald Britney

That’s me in that picture, getting ready to take on the short-track at Hickory Motor Speedway, back in the day.

I’ve fallen behind on all the Star Wars movies.

It pains me to say that but also doesn’t. Camdyn didn’t give the most glowing review of Solo: A Star Wars Story. What we have feared for years seems to have come true: Disney might just be stinking up our story.

I didn’t ask for details.

We’ll see, though. When Disney first got ahold of Star Wars, I was apprehensive. I ended up crying in the theater! (My girls noted that all the other old dudes in there also cried.) I don’t want to cry sad tears again for the loss of the story I grew up with.

👴🏽 5 Reasons You Should Fall In Love With Aging

Writing’s been a bit of a struggle of late.

Not the writing that pays the bills. Although, that’s been a slough too, to be honest. I read lots of cool newsletters and emails about writing newsletters and emails. They help. They add skills or ideas or just gumption.

You can do stuff with gumption.

I have a secret writing process I’ll never fully disclose. It involved random choices and brainstorming and generally thinking within rules I set for myself so that I can think outside the box. Well, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to describe anyway.

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.