Last Night's Note Post

As I half-heartedly watched the Reds lose last night and as I whole-heartedly engaged myself in some serious dad blogger tomfoolery,  I made some notes for today's post.

Here's the note.  I'll do my damnedest to stay on task:

  

"Autumn Windows"

The Ohio Valley where I come from and where I live my life now is not a majestic landscape; no purple mountains nor roaring sea.  It is the solemn September march toward Autumn.  The deciduous woods and forests of my suburban  hometown come to life, quietly, respectfully, intensely, heroically, and outshine, for a brief forever moment, the most rough-hewn snow-capped mountain or the rock-strewn surf-smashed coast.  The colors are astounding, the smokey scents and apple tastes of fall are imperative, but...  Autumn goes beyond all that and sits, heavy and happy, on your heart.  We Midwesterners don't like to talk too much about it, it's is ours alone, a private glory savored one soul at a time.

I washed the windows yesterday.  It was cool and clear, that clarity in the air that hints of winter, fall's first whispering chords humbly beginning to swell.  I've washed windows a lot in my fifty-plus years here and, as I look back, I've done it a lot in the fall.  You might remember I have been thinking about advice I'd like to give the boys and this comes to mind:  It is very rewarding to wash windows on a perfect Autumn afternoon.

"Where to start"

I never, ever, ever know what to start with here.  I guess that sounds silly, but, I treat the words I write here pretty seriously.  (I know, you wouldn't know it, wouldya?)  I want to do it right.  I wish to engage you, whomever and whenever you are, but, that's the problem.  I am not sure who you are.  Are you Nick next week, Zachary a couple decades out, a guy in New Zealand who lives, like twenty hours ahead in the future, I fellow blogger I'd like to impress?  Are you my wife, a distant cousin an old, dear pal?  Do you know me from church or through the boys or from coaching or any of the bars and taverns I've worked in or haunted over the years?

When are you?  Are you today, a few hours from now?  Are you ahead on the timeline, looking back at a scrapbook of memories?  Are you... me?

Imagine how many ways I might begin - "start" - the conversation I want to have with you.

"TACOS"

I mentioned in the post called Bio Poem that Zack's love for tacos was a story for another post.  So, here is what the table looks like before dinner on Taco Tuesday (or any other day of the week, actually, but we just seem to have them on Tuesdays frequently, and it's fun to scream Taco Tuesday):

That's one-and-a-half pounds of taco meat and a good fourteen to sixteen ounces of cheese, about six small ripe capri tomatoes, a medium onion, half a head of iceberg and sour cream which I thin with milk so it slides off the spoon easier and neater and the requisite taco sauce.

This is what it looks like after the boys - myself included - and Marci, have happily feasted:

There's more I had to say about this, about the memories that meals can give us, the hope that these images may, in the future, fill the heart of a grown man with the melancholy that is childhood.  There's more I'd like to say about how much more involved a child can be when they make what they are eating, the ownership that is your own taco, or sloppy slider, or ice cream sundae... however.

"Time is beating me down"

It sure is.

I wish I knew how to attack the feeling that time is winning.  Or at least accept it.  But, there's no time for that.

"Use This!"

Done.

"what #beejone slownr"

I got nothing, I do not know what that says, but, I will make this promise:  that is the first, and last, hastag you will ever see on IHIWAT.


I really do know what that last one says, now that I think about it, but, it is a difficult and sensitive subject and it might call for some tact and lack of the forthrightedness I so often employ here.  It's a post for a different day.

I sort of did this once before in this post about the curious notes I sometimes write on my phone.

I'm stalling because I can't seem to decide on a good backseat quote:

"God, please invent the salami tree."

That'll do.


Thanks for coming around again, take a look back at some older posts, if you feel like it; I may have written one for you.