Comedic Relief

 

Super Dad

It's a humbling thing, this fatherhood gig. Because it doesn't take long to realize your son thinks you can do anything and everything.

The Olympics never fail to inspire, as previously mentioned. But the kid doesn't know what an anti-jock he has for a dad. We watch taekwondo. "I wanna see you do that Papa." We watch the extreme kayaking. "I wanna do that with you Papa." Tonight's the pole vault. "Look, he made it over!! It's because of his big muscles. Maybe you could do that, Papa."

And so what does a father do? Go with it? Tell him the truth? Try, but disappoint?

Ignorance is bliss, I suppose, for the both of us. Give him another 10 or 15 years and he'll only be able to see all the things I can't do, all the things I do wrong.

Summer Break (Not a bad gig.)

Haven't been writing much this summer. Lack of inspiration maybe, muddied thinking, bigger fish to fry. So instead, and since you have another 8 or 9 months of waiting for these to appear elsewhere, I'm going to let my wife's photography do the talking...

 After a visit to this museum, the kid is obsessed with bones.

Stopped to take a photo of the sunset. Photos of wheat--which farmers have had a hard time harvesting because of wet fields--turned out more interesting.

Found a new forest to walk through. Trees just about everywhere lately have been making me want to watch Tree of Life again.

 Fairly certain the Tour de France raced past these hay bails the day after we drove past them.

Those fountains I was telling you about. Not only did I allow my 1 year old to break the rules and play in them, but he isn't wearing safe foot attire either. If the Promenade Moms knew they would surely be gossiping about me over their half caf skinny soy latte frappes. 

 

One of my new favorite parks in Paris is the underrated Parc Georges Brassens. OK, so half the reason I like the park is because it's named after a singer I like more all the time, but the tiny vineyard, bee hives, flower gardens, wandering paths, giant climbing rocks, and fun playground equipment help. On Saturdays and Sundays the book market is open right next door, and that helps too.

We walked through the Paris Plage and because we never really have opportunity to just walk through Paris we kept going until we got to this pedestrian bridge. People in love write their names on a lock, attach it to the fence, and throw the key in the Seine. After explaining that to him, the kid asked, "What is love?" I had a hard time responding. The other kid just fell in love with all the locks. Can't blame him.

We drove past this on the way to our new town. Made me kind of happy to be moving to the country. I find sunflower fields to be incredibly mesmerizing.