Fathers Day!

Today was fathers day, so I was wearing my father hat a lot. Rae made pictures and a card for me, then hid them and made me search for them. Lucky for me she gives very helpful clues, like "Daddy, maybe you should look here in the play kitchen", or "There is one hidden on this shelf. No, wait, I mean this shelf." Cain and I played soccer at the park - he is going to a sports camp this summer, and will be spending a couple days playing soccer and baseball (he got to choose two sports). Anyway, between watching the Brazil-Ivory Coast match (shame on them for fighting) and kicking around the ball with Cain, I guess I also dusted off my soccer-player hat for a while today.

We watched Alice in Wonderland after dinner as a family, minus Ethan who mostly ran around, jumped off of things into my arms, and teased his kiki (security blanket) by sneaking cuddles with other blankets.

On the more difficult side of Fathers Day, I talked to my dad, who is facing the imminent death of his father. In talking on the phone with dad, as he has worked through his back surgery and watched his father sink further and further away, my task has generally been to distract him with humorous brainstorming, poke fun at each other, and generally be silly and happy. Today he spoke of his father fighting everything, stubbornly refusing to shake loose his personal mortal coil. Poppa hasn't made any effort to conduct his final years highlighting gracefulness, and I don't think he is looking for a graceful exit. In my head I keep composing sentences that belong in a memorium post, but that isn't what I'm looking for here - i just want, I guess, to explain to myself why my dad's voice was so full of grief and pain.

So anyway, there was good and bad, and there was also fun and inconsequential (put on geek hat): Audrey got me the lego evolution t-shirt i've been raving to her about, and I got my hands on the rules for an rpg that completely new to me, Coyote Trail - a wild west/frontier system. The rules at first glance promise to be as easy and flexible as claimed in the reviews i read. I picked this one, besides being interested in learning a new system, because I think it will be a fun setting for 1:1 gaming with Audrey. She has an idea of making a Madame character who owns a frontier-town brothel.

So, there was an attempt at self-exploration under the polyhatism convention.