Tag: #ParkTime

  • SPRING BREAK with THE KID

    The kid is off from school, and I had it in my mind that somehow this might be a little vacation for me as well. That was very inaccurate. When there is no school, I become chief entertainer. Now, what can I come up with for this week?

    The park is an easy go-to, and we’ll be doing lots of that, weather permitting.

    Then, I have been putting off a home project of hanging a spice rack in the kitchen. That I think is something that we can do together. You know, a 44-year-old dad and his six-year-old daughter hanging something on the wall; can they do it without one of them getting angry, crying, or saying, “You can help dad by getting him a beer.”

    I also have a family picture project, which is getting up on the wall of the pictures of our family; Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and all. We have boxes of framed family pictures that for whatever reason we never get around to putting up. In fact, as I look at the living room, we don’t have any pictures of the kid. We have like twenty pieces of her artwork up on the wall, but not an actual photograph. Does that say something about us as a family?

    The big project that I want to tackle with the kid is to make a puppet show out of a story she told me about a girl and three friendly ghosts. There is a very fine line I walk with this stuff and her. I would love for us to make a puppet show together, but at the same time, I don’t want to force her to do it. She knows that her dad has worked as a puppeteer before the Covid times, and has every now and then asked me about it, but she doesn’t asked to make a show. And I also don’t want to take her story and make something out of it without her. So, I want to see if I can encourage her to do this with me.

    Either way, we gotta pass the time.

  • Wait, Is It Spring?

    Wait, Is It Spring?

    It will be sixty degrees in New York City today, and the kid is over the moon to get out to the park and just play! We had a fifty degree day about a week ago, but it was a little cloudy and windy, and it didn’t count. I say that because, it is a blue sky today, and it’s March, and it is just enough of a tease that will make you think this is the start of Spring!

    I know it’s not, because we have had a snow storm in April, so at any moment this early Spring can crumple back into Winter.

    I love this day because people will be out! Out and sweating in their Winter coats and scarves. And then there will be the people who will treat this day as if it’s eighty degrees, with tee-shirts and shorts on.

    I always find it amazing that this Spring preview always seems to find a way to happen right at the moment that I start thinking in my head, “You know, I’m looking forward to Spring. And Summer isn’t that bad, either.” The Spring preview hits, and then my thoughts change to, “Yeah, I need it to be Spring. I can’t take Winter anymore.”

    Also, maybe, just maybe, there just might be a little hope along with this Spring as well.

  • SLEDDING!!!

    We went sledding yesterday. Me and the kid, that is. The wife and I bought a two-person sled on Sunday, when we saw that we were gun’na get a real heavy snow storm for the next 48 hours. Yesterday, Tuesday, the snow let up so we were able to make it to the local park which had a nice gentle hill kids could sled down.

    The kid was beside herself, bubbling over in excitement with the opportunity to experience sledding. She was full of courage marching up the hill, as I followed behind her with the sled. When she got to the top, her determination did not waver, but she wanted to make sure that I would go down with her. She rode in front as I pushed us off very slowly, and then used my feet as brakes to make sure we didn’t go too fast for her. Her response at the end of the ride was, “I want to do it again. This time by myself.”

    And she was off.

    Though she did grab me a few times to ride down with her, she pretty much was off on her own adventure of sledding the hill, trying to go faster and faster, and dodging people and trees. The squeals of joy, and that deep belly laugh of nervous energy of having survived the fastest sledding, only to see if she could go even faster, pretending that she was flying in her spaceship.

    It did feel like the world was “normal” for an hour. Just some kids having fun in the snow.

  • A Place in the Woods, Reading and Writing Stories

    This morning, when I was journaling in the park, as I was running through some ideas and desires, I had a thought that, “I wish I had a place in the woods to read books and write.”

    Then my mind jumped right to an interview I had for a theatre conservatory in San Francisco back in January 2019. The interview was going really well, and then the woman asking me questions shot out, “If money wasn’t an object, what would you being doing right now?” And without missing a beat, I blurted, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” She smiled a disappointed smile at me, and that pretty much ended the interview. It was clearly not the answer she wanted, as I didn’t get the job.

    Then I was reminded of an interview I had in February of this year for a rather prestigious theatre company. I had made it to the final round, and the managing director of the company asked me pretty much the same question, and again I said, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” I think there were other issues with my candidacy, but again, I didn’t get the job.

    It reminded me of Maya Angelou’s quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    I think sentiment cuts both ways.

    When I show people who I really am, I should believe it myself, the first time.

  • Journaling at the Park

    Yesterday, it rained in the morning, which meant that we didn’t get to have our early park time. No running around for the kid, and making new friends. And no sitting on a bench and writing in my journal. Over the course of this pandemic, park time has become a very essential, and needed outlet for the kid and me. She gets to burn off energy and have social interactions with other kids, and I get to start my day with organizing my thoughts.

    It was a slight monkey wrench to our day, but the sun did come out later, so we were able to make a late day park visit. The later time allowed us to discovered a whole different group of kids that my daughter loved playing with, and I got to have the introspection from the end of a day, rather than the beginning.

    I have been writing in a journal since I was 18, and I have over 30 notebooks filled. I like to think of myself like Thoreau when it comes to writing in a journal, but do sometimes wonder if I’m not the crazy recluse guy in the neighborhood, jotting down meaningless things in his notebooks. (It’s a fine line.) I have been journaling so long, that it is an engrained habit. But they aren’t reference books. Only rarely do I pick one up and go through it to see what I was thinking way back when. And I don’t use them to work out “story ideas” or anything like a creative workbook/sketchbook. It’s just a catching place of ideas, thoughts, sketches, and feelings… maybe a little documentation of events, but not very often. Journaling for me is a cathartic exercise. It is immediate, spontaneous, and in the moment, which again and again, I seem to discover is a theme for me when it comes to the art I enjoy. With everything going on in the world right now, I need to have an outlet for all of these pent-up emotions, and hopefully, I can find a constructive use for them.