The Perks of Being a Dad-Blogger
oops I accidentally cherished my memories
Hey! I'm a day late on this week's first newsletter. Granted, I don't have an official publishing schedule, but I certainly intended to have something in your inboxes yesterday, and I couldn't quite pull it off.
It's been a crazy-busy week already (obligatory: "Lemon, it's Wednesday"), and it doesn't show any sign of slowing down. After a brief and much-needed lull in our household schedule over the holidays, the obligations have come roaring back with a vengeance in the new year: practices, Scout meetings, doctors' appointments, school activities, PTA meetings, birthday parties... it's like we never stopped at all!
Initially, I was tempted to write something on that, but then I realized that I already wrote it three years ago, and it remains one of my most simultaneously beloved and despised pieces of writing to date:
Scott Hines
(No, seriously, though. After this week, things should settle down.
(Next week at the latest.)
It's tempting to complain about it all (fun, too!), but I have to resist the urge. These times are hectic, but they're also moving faster than I want to admit. To that end: Monday evening, I had to take my son to a Cub Scout meeting. I groused about having to do so, because it had slipped off my calendar and I'd briefly fooled myself into believing I'd have one night with nothing going on this week. I was tired from work, fighting off a headache, and by the end of the meeting things had devolved to their usual state: fifteen boys screaming and wrestling in a pile.
(In my "things to have named after you" ranking last week, I cited a folksy law near the top, and so I'll propose Hines's Law: any collection of grade-school boys greater than three is functionally indistinguishable from a dog park.)
As I strained to hear the pack leader's schedule updates over the din of the boys, and I looked over with the intent of offering one of my usual "GUYS!" admonitions, when I saw my son giggling at the bottom of the scrum and suddenly became wistful.
He's in fifth grade now, one of the oldest boys in the group. We spent much of the weekend working on his middle school applications, and though I swear we're not the kind of parents to push this kind of thing at this age, he's already planning out where he wants to go to high school and college. The days of him being willing to roll around on the floor of a church basement pummeling his buddies with foam blocks are numbered, and as much as it hurts my ears to be around it, I damn well better enjoy it, because it'll be over in a flash.
I've been careful, these past seven years or so, to avoid oversharing as best I can. My kids' lives are their own, and they deserve to forge their own path. I've never shared photos or names on here, nor any story that I think would be embarrassing for anyone other than myself. As they've grown older, this means that I've started to veer away from writing about my experiences as a parent; as important as it is to me, I'm their father first and a writer somewhere well behind that.
That said, I'm glad that I have written about the little things over the years, because it's so easy to lose them. Yesterday, I was fighting off writer's block by thumbing through my own archives, and I stumbled across a handful of pieces that I'd completely forgotten about. I got a good laugh out of a few of them–my writerly amnesia allows me to approach them as a neutral observer–but I was also genuinely grateful for the little tidbits of daily life that would be gone forever if I hadn't written them down.
It turns out I've been accidentally journaling for years, and there's some good stuff in there.
Wait, was this just a 700-word intro to a clip show?
I mean... a little, yeah?
Still, I work off the assumption that if I've forgotten these pieces, you probably have too. ("If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!")
With that in mind, here's a few that I liked upon re-discovery:
A Dispatch from the Great Outdoors
Some families are outdoors families, and some families are indoor families. We are firmly the latter, but I can be talked into camping... so long as we're still in range of the house's WiFi:
Scott Hines
"I have a question..."
A more-or-less true-to-life transcript of the conversation that takes place on the drive to school:
Scott Hines
"Who wants to go to the grocery store?"
I never thought I would miss the car-cart at the grocery store. This piece kinda made me miss it. (That thing steers like an aircraft carrier, though. IYKYK.)
Scott Hines
The Morning Dance
Another slice-of-life ten-minute play, this one chronicling my descent into madness over the weekday breakfast table:
Scott Hines
The Geography of Childhood
Fair warning, this one's from May 2020 and I'm as In My Feelings in it as everyone one was then. Still, it's a lovely reminder of when my kids were small and a quarter-mile walk around the neighborhood felt like an epic journey.
Scott Hines
Anyways, I hope you take a chance to read some of these–and I hope you take a chance to slow down and remember the little things too. As Ferris Bueller said: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
I'll be back here on Friday–I never miss that part of my schedule–with everything you've come to expect from an ACBN Friday Newsletter.
That means food, drink, music, books, pets, and more–but those are for paying subscribers only. If you're not one, please consider upgrading today!
If you're already a paying subscriber–first of all, thank you, I couldn't do this without you–but second, please spread the word about the ACBN!
I left Substack's ecosystem last year, and while I don't have any regrets about that decision–I still fully believe in the reasons I did it for–I'm now removed from their discovery network. I've also trying to limit my social media usage for my own personal sanity. What this all means is that pretty much the only way to get new readers right now is by word of mouth.
Long story short: if you're enjoying The Action Cookbook Newsletter, please: tell a friend!
(If you're not, tell an enemy.)
–@actioncookbook (Scott Hines)
