#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.

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👨‍🍳 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.

#GirlsRock: 👩‍⚕️ An interview with nurse Anne Sullivan

Cats.

I read a blog about cats. Since I was a teenager, I’ve usually had at least one. Cybill (named for Cybill Shephard.) Pumpkin (the kids named her – she was a calico and fit the name to a whisker.) Brownie, Cubbie, Baby, and Leo.

They were siblings I rescued.

I met Anne through a post on Katzenworld. She spun a beautiful tale of a cat she’d taken lots of adventures with. We began a correspondence. I discovered her adventures with cats were only part of her story.

🎡 5 Small But Important Things To Observe In Parenting

Celebrating a day-after Father’s Day gift from Camdyn.

Parenting has a ton of nuances.

You’re doing it even when you’re not doing it. You’re doing it, especially when you’re not doing it because little eyes are watching you. And also, you’re practicing those characteristics you’ll call on later when you are parenting.

It’s not the big moments, but the incremental tangles and triumphs that lead to what you become as a parent – and what direction your child takes as a result.

This list could have been 55 things, but I kept it to five. Let’s talk about it. Feel free to add to these five, or bring up an observable aspect of your own. Parenting has changed my life and shaped what I’ve become as a coach and a writer and so much more.

📔 10 things grateful, plus a beat up journal | #gratitudeandshit

I’m on the last page of my first gratitude journal.

The thing’s destroyed. The back cover? Gone with the wind. If it wasn’t Star Wars themed, it might look like something a general in the Korean War might have kept. Or a messenger in the Spanish-American War.

Or just a dad with a messy bag and penchant for kettle chips.

It’s served me well. Not just physically. A completed journal means something to me. It means I had what it took to stick with something. I spent my childhood hearing I couldn’t stick with anything. It wasn’t false. But I’d have picked a different narrative.