🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Obviously Not Over🎶
Hermit 👴
Confused Parenting 👨👦
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Things I’m Grateful For Today:
- Family Easter dinner in my old hometown of Tipton.
- That my in-law family is much less drama-filled than those who birthed me.
- Watching the stars and the moon and feeling small.
Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: THREE. Use it, yo.
Wordle 1,015 3/6
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Six. It wasn’t good, but getting the purples first makes me happy.
Connections
Puzzle #293
🟪🟦🟪🟪
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟦🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
The song in my head when I woke up: OK, brain … what are you trying to tell me? This is, like, the fourth time this song has been my Waker. What’s that about? “It’s Not Over,” by Daughtry. WHAT’S not over?
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: I’ll try to do it right this time around
Commute Tunes: No commute today. But yesterday’s drive to and from St. Louis consisted of some good tunes from John’s Ultimate Chill Song Compendium, which you should really listen to because it’s, like, 13 hours of great music.
- Run-Around, Blues Traveler
- As Long As It Matters, Gin Blossoms
- The Way It Is, Bruce Hornsby & The Range
- If I Didn’t Have You, Banners
- Beautiful Stranger, Marcus King
- Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen
- Landslide, Fleetwood Mac
- Colder Weather, Zac Brown Band
- With Or Without You, U2
- When You’re Gone, Gavyn Right, Avril Lavigne
- You Were Meant For Me, Jewel
- Painters, Jewel
- Lean On Me, Bill Withers
- Not Even The Trees, Hootie And The Blowfish
- Lullabye, Billy Joel
- There You Are, Martina McBride
- Stay, Lisa Loeb
- Complicated, Avril Lavigne
- It Was Almost Like A Song, Johnny Hartman
- I Won’t Give Up, Jason Mraz
- Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O’Connor
- Tell Her This, Del Amitri
- Crash Into Me, Dave Matthews Band
- Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, iOtis Redding
- A Long December, Counting Crows
Something I’m looking forward to today: Seeing my in-law family.
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: First baseball tourney of the season starts next Friday!
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Being there with Boy The Elder and his groomsman (including Boy The Younger) as we tried on our suits for his wedding.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved writing a letter I’ll likely never send. Again.
What I’ve written: The Hermit of Budelli — and the Hermit in Me.
Today’s Stoic Though of the Day: “To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.” — Seneca
John’s translation of Today’s STD: “Bad shit is gonna happen. Chill. Stay strong. Give that shit a big middle finger and keep going. It, not you, is the weak-ass bitch.”
The St. Louis Suit Co. has been incredible in fitting Boy The Elder’s groomsmen and his father with new suits for his upcoming wedding. Yesterday, we retuned en masse to try on what we were fitted for a month or so ago.
First, the woman helping us looks like Lisa Loeb, and that makes me smile.
Second, if you haven’t ever been in a situation in which the little boy you remember holding as a one-day-old baby is trying on a suit for his wedding, you probably can’t fully relate to the emotions that a father feels. Here’s this kid — and though he’s nearly 22, yes, he’s still a kid — who has done everything you’ve raised him to do and is everything you’ve raised him to be and, because of that, he’s making the incredibly mature and wise decision to marry the girl who is quite literally his person. So you’re happy for him and you’re supportive of him and you’re also immensely sad that there’s a stage of life that is ending.
So you want to say something as nonsensical as “I am so, so happy for you, son, and please stop everything you’re doing right now.”
And then you look over at your other son, Boy The Younger, who is trying on his suit as a groomsman, which in and of itself shows you accomplished what you wanted in helping break the cycle of dysfunction you grew up with regarding your own “sister”). And he looks way too much like you did when you were a high school freshman and you’re thinking, “When the hell did you start following so closely in your brother’s footsteps? For God’s sake, kid, there’s seven fucking years between you two, so how come it looks like you belong right where you are today? When did everything start speeding up so goddamn fast?”
Later in the afternoon, Wifey Poo went on a date. We grabbed some Chipotle and went to the park where exactly 27 years and one week before, we had some of our own wedding photos taken. We ate, then we walked around the lake and talked about this amazingly confusing stage of life we’re living in.
We are both so proud of our boys and we would like for this whole growing-up thing to slow down just a bit while not slowing down at all because they’re doing exactly what we wanted for them — finding their strength and independence and moving gracefully into the next part of their lives.
I told Wifey Poo … it seems like things are going faster and faster these days, that ever since I came out the other side of an incredibly long and incredibly dark tunnel and got well, time seems to be accelerating. Wasn’t BTE just that kid I was teaching how to parallel park? Wasn’t BTY just his baby brother?
Very soon, BTE will be graduated and married and fully on his own. BTY is following so closely behind into adulthood. When BTE turned 16, we saw vastly less of him as he spread his wings — working, college classes, friends. BTY is nearly 15. We have maybe a year left before his need of his dad diminishes, before he is less of a constant presence in our home.
This is exactly what we wanted and hoped for and worked so hard for as parents to have happen and it’s the thing I don’t want to happen. Yes, that makes no sense. Which explains much of parenting quite well, I think.
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