Dear Lord! Is It Already 2012?

Now that my baby girl is old enough to take care of herself (she’s almost three), I’ve been given back some of my evening time. It’s nice when they’re potty-trained. No more diapers. They tell you when they need to go potty. This means no diaper bags packed with pull-ups and wipes. This means you can do fun things like family bike-rides, visits to the basketball court to play some round ball, and little trips out into the channel in the boat.

I also have a lot more personal time as well. Not that I spend it locked up in an office or anything. In fact, I don’t even have an office. Hmm. I guess I need to remedy that. But my personal time is spent in my reading chair, or on the couch solving my cubes. Or sketching or writing. I actually resolved this year to read more books than I’ve ever read in a year. Now that I’m very rapidly approaching “the hill”, I have finally been able to slow down a little and start reading a lot more – just like I’ve always wanted to do.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re a reader but don’t get as much time to read as you want – let me turn you on to something I just recently really discovered. Audible.com, friends. Pay your 16 bucks a month and get your monthly credit. You can download one book per month with that credit and listen to it while you drive. If you have a long commute to and from work like me, this is valuable time you could be reading. You can, of course, buy more books than that at a discount. But I’m happy for now to get my one per month. It’s been awesome listening to something worthwhile instead of the drivel on the radio. Maybe if you find a good one, we can trade.

In other news, as I mentioned earlier about the family bike-rides, we all have bikes now. A family of cruisers. Plus one. Well, two. Or one-and-a-half. Whatever. It’s a tandem. The dude at the bike shop practically gave it to me, he wanted so badly to get rid of it. Really, who has a tandem anymore? We do. That’s who, bitches.

I also had to build a trailer for my bike so I can cart a bunch of kick assery down to the lake for Family Day at the Beach, as I call them. Some might call these “picnics” but I refuse to use that word. I’m a man. So we load up the trailer with footballs, kites, ball gloves, chairs, coolers, grills and hot dogs for afternoons by the water. And of course we could drive there, but then how much fun would that be? I will tell you though, pulling a trailer full of all that is gonna make my legs look like the Hulk’s.

I found this old ratty trashed-out bike trailer – exactly the one I wanted to find on Craig’s List and refurbish – in someone’s bulk pickup pile the other day. The day of our first Family Day at the Beach. How providence speaks. So my boy and I set out to tearing all the nasty mud-dobber-nest-covered nylon off of it, then building a frame for a floorboard. I had a little silver spray paint left so I touched it up with that for a pretty good finished product. Total cost of the refurb: $7.74.

So in closing, this may be the first year in my life that I’ve actually made New Year’s Resolutions. Like real ones. Ones that I actually want to stick to. Ones that I actually am sticking to. Riding bikes, spending every waking moment with the kids and reading a lot more books. Those are my resolutions this year. And so far, I’m doing a kick-ass job of all three.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Vincent

    I stole your story idea. Go look: (link removed)

  2. Space

    Congratulations on being an idiot and admitting it on a public forum. :what:

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