Still a coach. Still a daddy. Just not Coach Daddy anymore.
Things I want to do this summer
Everyone loves summer.
We count down the days ‘til it starts. We long for it in the depths of winter. Give us sun and sand, sleeping in and summer vacation. I’ve never been on board. Cooling autumn winds, short days and chilly nights sustain my soul the way the sun does others’.
Summer’s nearly here, though.
Continue reading “My Essential Summer list * (*-Excludes NASCAR, sunburn, and lake swimming)”
I wasn’t bragging, but I said it.
“Writer’s block? Never heard of it,” I might have mentioned to a fellow blogger. Well, that is bragging, isn’t it?
You might not know that I don’t believe in jinxes.
To prove that, I once declared on our way into a rural Walmart between soccer matches that we’d win the rest of our games that season. “Dad!” the kids protested. “You just jinxed us!”
Continue reading “Go Ask Daddy About Awful Sequels, Organic Thuggery and the REAL Computer Age”
Back in the day, your dad could move, girls.
By move, I don’t mean walk downstairs without groaning. (Although I could do that too.) In football, I played on the kickoff team normal for a sixth-string linebacker/fullback.) Sometimes, I’d even make a tackle on one of the three plays a game I got into.
I thought I’d lost the blaze – until the day, as a grown-ass dad, I saw fins sticking up out of the ocean.
While my kids played in the water.
All this talk about beauty in women lately … it’s knocked things like pizza and baseball right off the radar lately here on the CD.
Today is more of the beautiful same. I”m at Home on Deranged today. Melissa Swedoski asked me right after the Super Bowl about those #LikeAGirl ads. Heady stuff. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.
Then go to Home on Deranged and check out my guest post. Stick around, too. If you haven’t read Melissa’s blog yet, you should. She’s like me, a survivor of the newspaper industry, and always has kick-ass giveaways going on.
See you there! [Here’s the link]
Cubs fans, this isn’t for you.
For the rest of the universe? Spring means hope.
Sure, baby birds are born and flowers bloom, yadda yadda. But it’s about baseball. It’s a time when your team – except for the Cubs and Astros – are still in the thick of the race. Or close enough to pretend.
Even my Rockies find themselves in that no-man’s land of “we don’t suck – right now.” It might be better than that. I’ll let you know July 4. And maybe again in October. Your baseball team not sucking makes you feel good.
Continue reading “I Could Have Been an All-Star. It Was the Hitting I Had a Problem With.”
I’ve gone to preach it on the mountain, y’all.
Coach Daddy is on the road, and on the pulpit. Can I get a witness? Sandy Ramsey asked me to guest post this week on Mother of Imperfection. I proposed the topic “How I Quit Yoga, and Still Manage to (Mostly) Manage Stress.”
I tried yoga at work, but from the window, I looked like armadillo roadkill among a troop of foxes. So I had to find another way.
Hint: My solutions are heavy on Krispy Kremes and disc golf. It’s like I’m the lovechild of Deepak Chopra and the Cake Boss. Go read the gospel – after you’ve seen what the kids had on their mind this week.
He’s Boise State’s Jay Ajayi, and his pickle-juice guzzling ways have made him a YouTube sensation. Jay had just rambled off two touchdowns against Air Force and unwound with a Costco-sized jar of Mt. Olives.
Pickle juice has electrolytes and combats leg cramps. A quick check of the nutrition label reveals one pickle contains 210 milligrams of sodium. That’s 70 milligrams more than a suggested serving.
Still, it’s better than some dumb Seahawks player who celebrates touchdowns with Skittles. Pass the pickle juice, Jay.
What, the jar of pickles?
This isn’t a great conversation to have with an experimental third grader. Because microwave pizza comes with that metal-ish box you nuke with the pie, right? It’s aluminum lined, and designed to soak up microwaves. These turn your crust brown just like in a pizzeria. Ish.
You know how you can have one beta fish and everything’s cool. But, if you add one, there’s a fight? It’s like that with metal in a microwave. Your spoon disrupts the distribution of electrons.
Reflected electrons lead to an electrical potential that exceeds the dielectric breakdown of air.
That could blow a hole in your microwave, or break it. Then you’re in a pickle.
Boy, do they.
Ocean sunfish win the award for the sea’s biggest bony fish. They’re about 2,000 pounds each.
They like to float on the water surface and flap their dorsal fins. Why?
In reverence to air travelers, is one theory. Or, they might bask in the sun a bit after deep dives in cool water to hunt for jellyfish.
Another theory is that they wave their dorsal fin to attract seabirds to eat parasites off their skin.
Or maybe it’s just a marine form of the yoga pose sun salutation.
The only difference is there’s tobacco juice and not pickle juice.
Baseball is more situational than football. Plays for third-and-9 and second-and-1 differ, of course. But baseball follows conventions that dictate what you should do in certain situations.
With a man on first base and three-run lead late in a game, defense won’t hold the runner because his run doesn’t matter.
You’ll hear infielders call out “the play’s at any bag!” or “infield back!” to prevent an extra-base hit. The score, the inning and even whether a batter is lefty or righty can impact convention.
Or, in the case of my poor Colorado Rockies, the game plan is to swing hard – just in case you hit it.
In the U.S., you must be 18 to vote in a primary election.
That’s just a suggestion, because some people feel you shouldn’t have to show an ID at the polling place. Somehow, it’s un-American. So, Elise, at 16, if you want to, you should vote. Twice, if you’d like.
And to vote on American Idol, there’s no age limit!
At age 18, you can get a tattoo, work full-time, buy liquid white-out, get married (or divorced), go on a cruise, skydive, get a Blockbuster membership (what’s that??), donate blood, get a non-prepaid mobile phone, smoke a cigarette, become an undercover cop, buy Nicorette gum, work in a place that serves alcohol, work at Wal-mart, pay a utility bill, get a credit card, get licensed to buy a monkey, order something on QVC, operate machinery at work, work at a convenience store, rent a port-a-potty (or a house), deliver newspapers for the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, start a business, drive a company car, and make many of your own decisions, such as whether to put a spoon in the microwave.
But if you’re smart enough at 18 to read my posts … you’ll know better.
A cool thing that happens when I collect for 6 Words posts is that I get to hear from a lot of bloggers. Some are old favorites. Others are destined to become new favorites. Some come with some pretty cool ideas.
NJ from A Cookie Before Dinner invited me to take part in a question swap I’d read on other blogs, called #AskAwayFriday.
Friday is normally sacred ground for the kids’ questions. But I decided to give this one a shot. I’m usually the one who fires the questions at people, in line at Wal-mart, in emails to bloggers or even to embattled NFL head coaches.
Here are the questions NJ sent to me for the swap. Make sure you check out her answers to my questions, too.
Continue reading “Ask Away Friday with NJ of A Cookie Before Dinner”
I wore a jersey today to work. I know. That goes against my rule of not wearing one past age 40.
I don’t feel like a superstar, but I do feel like a player.
I’m cutting through my work today with skill and precision. Or, at least, clarity and hope. I will probably spill something on this jersey. It’s a soccer shirt, for Newcastle United, with my name and Elise’s old number on the back.
Despite the cool gray piping and official colors, I don’t feel any more like a champion while wearing it as I would if I were in a blue T-shirt and olive green vest – like I probably will be tomorrow.
The questions never cease.
The girls are on to me, and know that I’m busy jotting down what they ask.
So sometimes, I don’t jot. I just answer.
Other times, I jot, and I research, and I answer. Maybe it’s no coincidence that this happens to happen with the coolest of questions, such as …
Continue reading “5 for Friday: Have a question, kids? Just go ask daddy”
I’ll buy chips for my kids on the way home from soccer practice.
Allow them to wrestle and chase each other. In the grocery store. Look the other way when they throw a little swagger in their soccer game. I’m a little funny, though, when it comes to movies. My oldest is 14. She can watch PG-13 movies. But I cringe.
Not the language or violence, necessarily. But the themes. The innuendo. The … I dunno, sultry stuff.
Makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth and pee myself a little. I’d rather her see a car chase with a smash-up ending, hear more applications of the F-word, or get startled by a killer, zombie, or politician in the court room than to hear locker-room talk.
Continue reading “Five for Friday: Movies to watch with your kids when mom isn’t lookin’”
Just a dad ... 