📅 Calendar convergences and driving Ms. Hayden (and Mr. Allistair)

Even when you ain’t writing, you’re writing.

Kinda like the Rockies’ bats lately, my words have ground to a crawl. When this happens, you churn on. There are no timeouts in soccer or life. Your life GPS won’t direct you around it. No, the only way is through.

So when the calendar ambles along for an intersection for your kid to move to college and it’s also the 19th anniversary of the day your dad died, well, there are stories.

Even if you don’t have time right away to write them. Or maybe you try and get seven graphs in and realize you’re so not doing the feelings justice. It’s like getting Frosted Flakes but pouring them into skim milk. WHO DOES THAT?

Advertisements

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.

#GirlsRock: ☀️ An interview with Life Learner, Truth Seeker, and Health Nut Amber McCrea

My interview with Amber McCrea started and ended in the same afternoon.

It didn’t feel that way. We exchanged questions over Facebook messenger with such mindfulness that time didn’t weigh in much. Before I knew it, we’d wrapped it up. Her insights and observations could’ve filled another post.

I’m unsure who to credit or blame, but this stuff is intentional, somehow.

Rather than try to explain it, I’m just thankful for the opportunity. She’s embarked on missions to make further connections and create magic elsewhere, too. I have a feeling that magic will do some kickass things out there.

👨‍🍳 Daddy in the Kitchen: Leftish Meat-Free Minestrone

I play right into the stereotype.

All this burger-pizza-taco talk gives a boy a reputation. There are worse reps, yes. Like, kale-edamame-tofu. Blech. But even we hardcore enchilada chompers veer off script.

It’s like Metallica doing a cover of The Carpenters – strange, but you can’t look away.

Recently, I wiped the graham cracker crumbs off my shirt and made minestrone. That’s a soup, for all you less-refined. I guess you can call it minestrone soup.

💉 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.

🌰 10 Things Grateful – plus possums who somehow make it #gratitudeandshit

It’s been a good weekend.

I’m writing this somewhere over what looks like Arizonewmexitexas. I’d know for sure if I could see if those are Cardinals or Cowboys car flags attached to cars down there. But honestly, Cowboys fans are everywhere like a bad itch.

I’m grateful for what this weekend past became.

A crew of colleagues in new roles for nearly everyone pulled off the improbable. We delivered a seamless international training event, somehow, someway. I likened it to watching a possum cross eight lanes of highway traffic unscathed. 

😕 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.

💛 A Father’s Day post written after Father’s Day (and posted way after Father’s Day)

I keep a foot in happy and sad each Father’s Day.

The happy is easy: I have three wonderful daughters who enrich my life beyond measure. I also miss my dad. He died of leukemia three months before Hayden was born. This Father’s Day I again considered visiting his grave.

It’s in a beautiful spot, just under a mimosa tree that since has grown incredibly.

But it’s not where he is. It’s not where I feel him. I felt him so much more in the years just after his death. I’ve written about things I can’t explain. I feel as if my dad had to expend a lot of cosmic energy after death just to keep me from self-destructing.