Go Ask Daddy About Cinematic Symbolism, Steve Martin Stunts and Retail/Dining options for Dec. 31

Do you know where that water’s been, brother?

NPR just made rain kind of gross.

A show promo pointed out that water we drink today has passed through the kidneys of a brontosaurus. Japanese freestyle swimmer Shigeo Arai probably swam through it in the 1936 Olympics.

It might have lived in a water pitcher on the set of the Dominican telenovela Tropico, too. I try not to think of that, but it’s true. Water’s the original repurposed thing.

Sure, rain’s kind of nasty, but it’s also beautifully poetic. It made up puddles my girls stomped in walking into the grocery store with dad. It helped soil uniforms – school and soccer – and locked in stories and memories and history.

No Guest Post Here. How’s About 10 More Random Smartphone Photos?

Who just went 2.7 seconds on a parrot named Fumanchu?

Another week, another guest post lost.

My inbox contains buried treasure. In it, correspondence from friends far and near. Agreements to guest post. Inquiries into soccer teams. Catch-ups, and rundowns. It’s tons better than anything found in Al Capone’s vault, even.

I’m getting closer to taking up shovels and those little whisky brushes like Indiana Jones.

I hope when I return to emails I’ve yet to return, you haven’t given up on me. I’m coming around, I promise. It’s not a brushoff – rather, you’re swept up in a convex twister than relies on randomality and the universe to sit you front and center.

Here’s Hoping My Girls Have Friends Like This

Sisterhood can be a twisty thing. But it’s mostly illuminating.

I have three daughters.

I want much for them. Peace, not a pampered path. Purpose, not existence in pretend. Experiences, not empty days when the moon rises and sets without peace and purpose. I want to drive them places they want me to take them.

I want also for them to venture into places I am not.

The influence and support they’ll have from their parents will never cease. What of those times when she’s chosen to play on a new team, in a far-off park? When she’s on a stage somewhere I am not, rehearsing and projecting?

🧳 Travel Light. Wear Simple Clothes. Just Watch.

“Travel the world and the seven seas/ Everybody’s looking for something.” – Annie Lennox

Eloquent people seem to travel lots. Or maybe travel breeds eloquence. What do you think?

I don’t travel much. Unless you count drives to Mooresville or the trips I’ll take to the mountains for Elise’s games. There’s my annual work trip to someplace tropical every winter. When you travel, you pick up stories, whether it’s in Madrid or Marshville.

My friend Brittany tells stories of travel abroad and also to the junkyard in the blog Girl Interrupted, and its superb reading. The clarity of the scenes she sets? Downright Hemmingwayesque in its delivery.

My friend Britta writes It’s a Britta Bottle. She undertook a life shift to teach in Thailand. Her stories began when she made the choice and influence her writing today. Her adventures inspired this post.

3 Life Lessons I Learned From Pat Summitt

 

Dreaming of Lady Vols hoops. Photo by Grace.

Chick hoops.

That’s what sports departments I worked in called women’s basketball. Labels banter about safely in the presumed safety of like minds. Women’s athletics’ best chance at appreciation didn’t come through regard, admiration or respect.

More likely, it’d come from a news editor so enamored with tennis player Mary Pierce that he locked in every image the Associated Press moved on the wire of her.

The late Pat Summitt, the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach, couldn’t have cared less what close-minded editors thought of her. Or what they thought of her program or gender or sport or place in a game they considered a man’s.

🤠 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.

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.

🎨 Photo a Day Challenge: June 22 – Paint

I hadn’t noticed it had gotten this bad.

On a Taco Bell/Dollar Tree run for two bean burritos (no onions), triple-layer nachos, earbuds, deodorant, and peanut butter wafers, I noticed the damage to Gabi’s hood. Dings, that grew. Dings, that, with miles and sun and more miles, started to peel.

Gabi’s Stormtrooper-white finish, pocked with primer and rust spots.

She’s not the only one. I once could claim months, years, even, of sick-free existence. Lately, germs and conditions seem to be parading on my doctor’s file. It happens without notice. One day, you’re motoring down the highway. Next, you’re on cinder blocks.