🚧 Here’s What No One Tells You About Reconstruction

There’s some serious reconstruction happening, friends. It started right around the time I left for Detroit and it’s happening now. It hits me when I step back into this blog and realize it’ll be more than a month since my last post.

A month. I remember times when I’d shun a plate of tacos to get a post posted. Like anything, nothing stays the same. Sometimes there’s work to be done and walls to demolish and structure to save, and sometimes the work feels tedious and pointless.

And sometimes the light breaks through at just the right angle. It illuminates something just well enough to show you a way, to demonstrate what’s possible. Even when you feel like you’re in the middle of the impossible.

The slow demolition of the small, old arena attached to the former Cobo Center stopped me in my tracks during my stay in Detroit. When you freeze a moment on the decomposition of one element for another? It gives you incredible insight.

⛰️ I went on walkabout in Gatlinburg to pay for donuts. Here’s what happened next.

Just a ‘trooper canning Js. On a bridge. In Gatlinburg.

I love to walk.

If it’s within a mile or so, I’m so hoofing it. Unless I’m pressed for time. Or it’s all highway with no sidewalks. Or it’s too cold. Or too hot. Also, only if I have one of my miles-walking pairs of shoes on like I wear to Target.

Last fall, Camdyn had a tournament in beautiful Gatlinburg, Tenn.

I love that place. The forecast was for snow and a low of zero. But it would get up near freezing during the day. Other parents moaned. I secretly wanted to see how Camdyn would play as a block of Camdyn ice.

🆒 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.

🌐 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.)

📅 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?

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.