🤠 Go Ask Daddy About Adventurous Couples, Early Mornings, and Pleasant Pachyderms

Checking out the floral action outside the Smithsonian in Washington. – EP photo

Ever just … shut down your brain?

It can be done in many ways. Meditation’s my favorite. I’m stellar at switching off my brain, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me as a man, a father, or a Colorado Rockies fan. Once, I came to after a mediation session to find my friends staring at me.

“I want a brownie,” I muttered. [Watch Reese on Malcolm in the Middle zone out below]

Yeah, I get all enlightened, go Zen AF to my eyebrows, and what do I ask for? Not world peace, not eternal life or immortal knowledge – I want baked goods. I’m also prolific at powering down the gray matter at bedtime. Today’s worries can wait until tomorrow.

Finding Common Ground: It’s Only (Big) Steps Away

photo credit: DSC01779 via photopin (license)

I’ve been writing in fear, guys.

The Photo a Day Challenge helped. I could write about happy faces in frying pans and display sweet pics my kid took of clouds and not tread near to the hell breaking loose around the world. Unintentionally, I dealt with fear of speaking up by looking down.

It involved sticking my head in the sand when it comes to the Denver Broncos’ offseason woes or the perennial quandary my Colorado Rockies put their fans in by sucking but not sucking enough to justify giving in on a season and trading off all your tradable players.

I bottled up thoughts and reactions to pertinent things in the universe, such as shootings and coups and attacks on the innocent and a contentious election season brewing.

Photo a Day Challenge: June 13 – Frame

We just wrapped up a weekend of joy.

We watched Elise cross the stage with friends on Saturday, turn her tassel, and set her eyes on college. Spirited and memorable speeches. Friends and family and fried chicken. A day to recognize a 13-year race finally won. And a new one to begin.

Friends and family dropped by for fellowship and fruit and cheese and frames.

The word for today, frame, took up two tables on Sunday. Grandparents and aunts and uncles got their pick of photos of Elise. Soccer Elise, prom dress Elise, Elise in a burgundy dress in the falling leaves at Frank Liske Park.

My Essential Summer list * (*-Excludes NASCAR, sunburn, and lake swimming)

photo credit: DSC01779 via photopin (license)

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.

🎥 Go Ask Daddy About Noisy Inventions, Diana Prince’s Movie and the Daddy’s Radio Dial

photo credit: Toy Ride via photopin (license)

Interstate 95 and I got to know each other a bit last weekend.

Madison and I fought through massive downpours from Charlotte to the Georgia-Florida line. Hurricane Joaquin churned well off the East Coast, but his thuggy thunderstorm friends decided to bust out a few windows in the Carolinas all the same. We turned off onto 95 and heard this from the GPS:

“Next turn, 542 miles.” Interstate 95 lasts a while.

It changes, from the stretch in South Carolina where you see pickups with lots of mud and deer stickers and South Carolina Gamecocks logos, to the stretch in Georgia where you see pickups with lots of mud and deer stickers and Georgia Bulldogs logos.

Go Ask Daddy About Awful Sequels, Organic Thuggery and the REAL Computer Age

photo credit: #003 Stormtrooper with a camera – Nature photographer via photopin (license)

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!”

🐟 Go Ask Daddy About Fish Food, Amphibious Ambles and the Value of a Kickoff Field Goal

photo credit: Hunting Easter bunny. via photopin (license)

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.

🐛 Go Ask Daddy About Petty Theft, Gigantic Bugs and Space Smugglers on Ice

By William Tung from USA (SWCA – Samurai Stormtrooper) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

All kids have a bit of a thief in them. Right?

Oh, just mine? Figures. I didn’t have the best examples in the family as a child, but everyone knows right from wrong. Still, it’s not like I haven’t ordered water at Taco Bell and “accidentally” let some lemonade fall into the cup while I poured my water.

Okay okay … so maybe I’ve also let a little bit of Pepsi Max spill into the cup. But only as far as where the lid goes.

One kid of mine snagged a soccer ball off a field where a team I coached suffered a brutal loss. Retribution, I guess? Another kid of mine loaded her purse with hot cocoa packets during a stay at a Hampton Inn.

Go Ask Daddy About the Slammer, Fire Physics and Wally’s Little Brother

The place where I work is a lot like college.

Not just because of the age of most of my co-workers. I’m not sure exactly, but I’d estimate 88% of my colleagues are young enough to be my little brothers and sisters. And that’s fine with me. A campus with a bowling alley, two food courts, bier garden and pool tables shouldn’t be only for the young.

Grace spent time with me recently at Red Ventures, and asked at least 11 questions.

She did the same on a visit to Wake Forest University for a soccer tournament. She dug the fact that you could live, eat, sleep, learn, and play all, right there. Just like at daddy’s work. She asked about everything, from “do college kids have bed time?” to … well …

A to Z Challenge: R is for Rockies

EP

For me Rockies is a baseball team. Not a place to ski.

For the A to Z Challenge today, R is for Rockies. My beloved baseball team, yes, who got off to a rip-roaring start this season (7-2!) only to lose three straight (they’re losing 5-0 in the first inning as I type this and try to ignore it). My Colorado Rockies cap is well-worn and well-loved. But also the western foreground to the most spectacular sunsets I ever saw as a kid. A nod to the majestic mountains that never let me forget which way was home.

Corporal Max Klinger would fist-fight with a dude who dared insult his Toledo Mud Hens.

I’m not that kind of fan. I can’t really, because 93% of insults to my baseball team come from my kids.