🤠 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.

Photo a Day Challenge: June 30 – You, Excited for June

Austin Light photo

They invited me to a photo shoot.

Seven-hundred-fifty employees here – mostly young, wholly beautiful – and they invited the Gen Xer in dire need of a haircut. They’re for a campaign for our wonderful company. I took my place at the end of the couch, blending in with the Beautiful Six.

Blending in like an armadillo in a fox parade.

I folded my arms, fussed with my hair. I worried about my graying mop. Did I trim my nose hair? This can’t end well. Under bright lights, I told a joke when photographers asked us to “look natural.”

Go Ask Daddy About Ancient Sports, Front Range Stores and Brain Training

photo credit: “SIIIIIR… why…” via photopin (license)

There’s not a lot of Bo in my girls’ games.

By Bo, I mean Bo Jackson, the super athlete who got dudes started on two sports back in the 1990s. For my girls, the year’s split into two seasons: Soccer season, and count-your-wounds-and-fight-with-each-other-until-soccer-season-starts-again season.

That’s fine with me.

Other families transition into basketball after fall soccer. Can you imagine? After tournament drama, come sit in a gym and listen to sneaker squeak hell. Marie played an intramural basketball game once. I’d pay anything to be able to go back and see it.

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 28 – Routine

EJP

I face a test every morning.

It involves a finger prick and a reading. How’d I do with that late-night snack? My glucose monitor doesn’t lie. I know what to expect mornings after three bowls of Frosted Flakes the night before. I know what to expect when it’s been an English muffin and sun butter.

I try to start my mornings with a tall glass of water and stretching.

They replace a swig of Coke Zero and bleary-eyed checks of the mobile phone and blog comments. I crack eggs to eat over medium with a warm tortilla, or scrambled, wrapped in tortillas or mixed in with strips of corn tortilla, fried in olive oil.

Go Ask Daddy About Punctuation, Cartoon Commerce and Nuances in Advertising

photo credit: J13 087 via photopin (license)

Grace has fired the questions at me fast and furious this week.

That’s what happens when you spend more than an hour a day in the car together. That, plus the hour or two she’s been at my side at work after I pick her up from theater camp. The final performance of Robin Hood happens today at 3. I can’t wait.

We’ve covered everything from politics to an OCD diagnosis (for me). As if.

Go Ask Daddy questions nearly reached 450 as a result. Not that I mind. I’m working on a new feature called Dadding in the Kitchen, to document my considerable struggles over the stove – and delicious consequences despite them. Also, look for more How To posts from me, an unlikely source.

Guest post: Diana Tierney of Creating Herstory, on Women We Wish Could Have Blogged

photo credit: Carrie Fisher cracking up between takes via photopin (license)

Somewhere between A and Z, I found Diana Tierney.

In the random road map of discovering new blogs through the A to Z Challenge, I clicked on Diana’s blog, Creating Herstory. Diana discusses and celebrates women who make history. As father to three who might someday, I have an interest.

With a book in the works, Diana writes a blog about women you don’t know and a few you do. Diana reviews books and also connects to any of us who write with a section called My Writing Journal.

Diana’s here today to highlight five women in history she wish had blogs. Can you imagine? I also picked the lead art today of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. For me, she was the first kick-ass diva I’d encountered. And then there’s Rey (below).

Photo a Day Challenge: June 27 – Silhouette

EJP

My kids won’t give my camera phone a chance.

HMP

The moment they notice me bumbling around to find the camera app, they gently (but firmly) push down my forearm, like a dirty trick against a goalkeeper on a corner kick. “No, dad,” the kid will say. “I’ll take the picture on my phone and send it to you.

“Your phone sucks.”

It’s especially challenging to snap a quality shot of a silhouette. We played Rat-a-tat Cat on a well-place gazebo bench and waited for fireworks. I waited for the sun to set to the west and frame my perfect silhouette of one of my girls or possibly all of them.

I captured the photo above.

Marie, though, asked about the theme. “I have some silhouette shots.” She scrolled through her better-than-my-android iPhone at three beautiful shots – all of her little sister on the lake. Marie’s shot appears to the right.

Go Ask Daddy About Spiritual Coverups, Jerk Propulsion and Some Stats Behind Coach Daddy

photo credit: _DSF1395 via photopin (license)

This one time, mighty Amazin’ Grace backed out.

I hate putting it that way. I feel like a kid – especially a girl – isn’t bound to compete at every turn. I don’t want any of my girls to feel obligated to take up the fight, for themselves, their families, their race, their gender … their anything.

I learned a ton when Grace took the high road before.

So she didn’t sign up for the LEGO Ninjango Obstacle Course a few weeks ago. I wrote about it here on the CD. She’d even picked out a friend to sign up with. She’d planned it all out, which parts she’s excel and which were better suited for her friend. We’ll call her Jaylen.

Photo a Day Challenge: June 24 – Happiness in a Cup (and Also the ‘Who I am’ Project)

It’s another convergence of challenges.

Today’s words are Happiness in a Cup. Now that I’ve effectively quit Coke Zero (did I mention that?), the easy out on this no longer exists. I can’t even quit soda at the right time. Neither Pippa Middleton nor pizza fit in a cup, you see.

A heart-felt, homemade jewelry item from a kid you’re bonkers about? Put that in a cup as it waits for her to repair it, and, well, if that’s not happiness in a cup, I don’t know what is.

This isn’t easy to decipher. No, it’s not three chunks of beef caught in chicken coop wire. It’s three gems. It’s a homemade wire bracelet, with gemstones attached. Grace made it for me. She implored me to pick out gems from her stash.