This week it was my turn. I headed out this morning, picked up by a right wing chatterbox from the car service who spent the entire drive to the airport blaming most of the country’s problems on ‘narrow-minded professorial types’. To his credit, the discovery that his passenger was a university lecturer didn’t alter the tone of his monologue or the target of his contempt.  An hour on a shimmying, shaking puddle jumper and we were skidding to a stop outside what appeared to be a modified cattle shed – Mt Gambier Airport.

If for anything, Mt. Gambier is famous for its volcanic lake(s). But I can’t tell you whether or not it/they are worthy of fame. A taxi whisked me from the airport, on the outskirts of town, to the university ‘campus’, also on the outskirts of town. The only site worth seeing on the way was the local weather station. Woo. Hoo. In fact, I came with kind of a bad attitude. I didn’t see the point of flying people around when we’ve got the technology to set up video links with the remote campuses.*

I’m waiting around in the optimistically christened ‘airport’ for the flight home watching a mother, her two tween girls and baby boy waiting anxiously for their husband/father to arrive. I remember that feeling of anticipation. My dad used to travel a lot for business. Long trips to exotic places – Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Grand Junction. I remember the excitement on the day he was scheduled to return. I was always a little bit proud of him, working under the assumption that only the really important people at the company would be sent to the Colorado mining country. Of course, I’m now faced with the reality – the really important people send the significantly less important people off on business travel. Especially a day trip from Adelaide to Mt. Gambier.

The husband/father has just turned up. It is a bit odd. The girls’ obvious glee and cries of “there he is Mum” as he came off the plane changed to a subdued nervousness as he came into the ‘terminal’. He’s a man’s man, with the sharp cut musculature of one who does physical labour. There’s a darkness in his eyes that I’ve noticed in a lot of working class Australia men. A taut and minacious look. He strides over to his family without cracking a smile. He acknowledges his wife with a nod, ignores his girls and takes his baby boy to him. The girls fade away in the glare of his neglect as he heads for the car park. He’s a man’s man and his only son is the only child worth his attention.

The tide of superior parenting receded rapidly however, with the realisation that despite my smug and vaguely classist sense of being a vastly better parent than this patriarchal neanderthal, I’m not any better. I’ve got an obvious and unapologetic preference for my older son. For Boy Z I have all the time and patience in the world. More than five minutes of whinging from Not Max brings a lightning bolt of fury and intolerance. In fact, if Dr. O’C, Not Max and Boy Z were meeting me at the Adelaide airport, the scene would be little different than the one I witnessed here. So, it’s my Mt. Gambier Resolution to rectify this inequity, to find, somewhere, a reserve of patience and time for my second son.

I know this has been a bit of faff and ramble, but what else would you expect from a man in a converted cow shed with a laptop on his lap?

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*This trip has changed my mind. The two dozen students in Mt. Gambier were keen, bright and engaging. And there’s absolutely a difference between watching a lecture on a TV screen and being in the classroom with a teacher. I’ve got the utmost respect for nursing students in general. They’re training to do what I reckon is one of the toughest jobs around. They’re not going to get paid much and they’re going to deal with a lot of shit. Literally. It’s one of those careers that requires a selflessness that I’ve never been able to summon up myself. The least we can give them is to show up once a week to help them along in their studies.

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Image credits:

Mt. Gambier

Regional Express

Capital Airlines

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This live version of The White Stripes’ “The Nurse” comes from the performance at Glastonbury 2005. The original is from the brilliant “Get Behind Me Satan”, available from .

We had a great time rambling the city with my surprisingly resilient family. We had a fabulous dinner with the Florida Girl in Sydney and her clan. We even had a blessedly brief and efficient visit to the American consulate. (As an aside, can I just say how happy I am not to have to see George Bush’s smirking mug every time I walk into an American government building?) In short, 48 hours in Syndey was fantastic.

But I’m glad it was only 48 hours. Glad that I don’t live there. Visits to big cities always make me grateful that I don’t live in one. I like my life at a slower pace and small cities like Athens, Georgia and Columbia, Missouri and Oxford, England have always been perfect for me. They are small enough to allow some room to stretch, but have enough going on to keep one entertained. And as we stepped off the plane in sleepy little Adelaide, I was bathed in a satisfying feeling of being home.

Here are some more photos from the big city…

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Talking Mountain released their debut long player, “Old Gold, Ancient Jamz” earlier this year and like their fellow Omahans are making delightfully upbeat indie pop. Check out Talking Mountain at .

I loved seeing them. My sister and I flew up to northern Ontario for a couple of weeks every summer. Those were the best of times – long northern summer days in the woods with my cousins and my grandparents. There was a freedom and a light heartedness up there that we couldn’t conjure up at home. There was a chance to spend time with my grandparents, to get to know them, to have them shower us with grandpaternal affection. It was awesome.

But I was always a little jealous of my cousins. They lived in the same town as my grandparents and saw them a couple of times a week. My grandparents were a part of their lives in a way that they could never be a part of ours. It is the minutiae of day to day live that drags a family closer together.  In the back of my mind during those halcyon summer days of childhood was a niggling insecurity that my cousins were closer to my grandparents than I was. Because no matter how close we got during the weeks we spent together, we never built the relationship that goes along with a daily interaction.

I know there was a difference because when I was a teenager, my father’s parents moved to our small town in Florida. Now as a teenager, I didn’t take as much advantage as I should have of this proximity. But I know that in the few years before he died, I was able to build a special kind of relationship with my paternal grandfather, one that I wish I had a chance to build with my maternal grandfather.

I wish I was in a position to offer my sons that kind of relationship with all of their grandparents. But one of the adverse effects of an international relationship is that  there is no conceivable way that Dr. O’C and I can live in the same country as both sides of our family, never mind the same city.

My boys will grow up with one local grandparent. Dr. O’C’s mum lives in the southern suburbs and comes up to dote on her grandsons at least a couple of times a week. They adore her and I’m grateful that they are going to have her in their lives on a daily basis.

Dr. O’C’s Dad is in Queensland, which is about as far from us as New York is from New Orleans. Thus, he’s been an infrequent presence in my sons’ lives so far.

And my parents? Well, my parents are in Florida – 16,000 km away. Not conducive to that daily interaction with their Grandkids. And this is a fact that pains me. I’ve gone through all the permutations, but there just isn’t any way that there can be more unless we move back to the States (not going to happen) or they move down here (ditto). So, we’ll have to look forward to the too infrequent visits and make the most of them when they come around.

Like now, for example. Right now they’re probably about 8,000 km or so away – on a flight somewhere over the Pacific.  They are on their way here – my Mom and Dad and my maternal Grandmother. They arrive in Sydney tomorrow and Adelaide on Sunday. We’re headed off on a barnstorm trip to Sydney to meet up with them and get Not Max his U.S. citizenship.

At just shy of three weeks, they will be here for too short a time. And who knows when the next trip will be. But I’m glad that my parents are going to have a chance to get to know their grandsons and that my sons will have a chance to begin to get to know their grandparents. I’m grateful that we have a chance to be together and am going to make the best of the time we have.

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Eels’ “Blinking Lights and Other Revelations” is available from 

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Image credit:

Covington cemetery from the very talented Chad Purser.

Buy R.E.M.’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” from Amazon.

Our trip to Kangaroo Island, for me, was one of impressions. Driving south from Adelaide through the Flerieu Peninsula, I was struck again by the vast emptiness and subtle beauty of my adopted homeland. On the cusp of Autumn, before the rains start in earnest, it’s almost monotone – the olive green of the gum trees and the expansive blonde of sun bleached grasses. But then round a gasping turn and you’re dazzled by the azure Southern Ocean which melts at some indeterminate point into the Antipodean sky. I don’t know whether the blues are really more vivid here or if it’s a trick of the brain, but the glistening sea and rich blue sky never fail to overwhelm me.

Kangaroo Island was as advertised – quiet, isolated and stunningly beautiful. The separation from the ‘outside world’ from the clanging, banging, ringing information age was an opiate delivered at a perfect time. It’s amazing how much noise – digital, audio, visual – we’re subjected to on a daily basis and there was no painful withdrawal, just a slowly, soothing sense of calm. It took a couple of days to unwind from the crippling, crisis-ridden crap of the daily grind, but once it hit, our isle of isolation was bliss.

The house was a fantasy, built at the beginning of the decade by a couple of hippies who wanted to ‘live light on the land’, it tries to blend in with the surrounding environment. Inside it’s all native wood and curves and colors, an absolute wonderland for kids. But it was at its best after dark. Maybe it was because the house melts into its surroundings, maybe because the sparse human population of Kangaroo Island allows for a dense animal population, or maybe because we left fruit and veg scraps on the porch every night. Whatever the reason, as soon as the sun set the native fauna turned our hippy holiday house into a nocturnal playground. Dr. O’C didn’t get much sleep the first night because we hadn’t identified the loud grunts and shrieks the ripped through the night as koala calls, hadn’t figured out that the thumps and scrapes coming from above were wallabies (yes, wallabies) wandering around the roof, hadn’t determined that the shadowy forms outside the sliding glass door were just pudgy possums (cute Australian possums, not the scraggly North American opossum). Being a nature lover, I was in heaven. I even got the boy out of bed one night to show him a cheeky little Tamar wallaby that had hopped his way up into the courtyard. It took Boy Z ages to go to sleep after that, but that snaggletoothed smile was absolutely worth it.

We did things, you have to do things with a wee one in tow. But for me, it wasn’t what we did that mattered as much as the doing – the time spent with expecting partner and expected son. Barreling along narrow island highways at 110 km per hour with the two people I love most in the world in close proximity. The scattered and unforced words between us. The music, for me it’s always the music. Whether rattling down a rusty washboard road to Sun Kil Moon, dancing around the hippy house with my son to Bob Marley, or singing along to The Shins while winding through the Flinders Chase National Park.

The things we did weren’t things that I would have chosen to do. I wouldn’t have toured a sheep dairy or paid money to be brought down onto a beach full of sea lions. But the pure and awesome joy and wonder of a child encountering a sheep or a seal for the first time is absolutely worth any amount of time or money.

And that’s why it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t relaxing. Travel with an 18 month old boy is, by definition, not relaxing. There’s not much sleeping in, little time for reading in the hammock and walking on the beach just isn’t an option. Neither Dr. O’C nor I are used to 24-7 child care and we each lost our temper more than once. But a few days in, I began to recognize the gift that this holiday provided. I take a day off a week to spend with the boy and try to keep my weekends open for family time. Beyond that, I get a half hour or so in the morning and a couple of hours at night with the boy – and that offers just freeze frames of his development. A new word, out of context. A new physical trick without the process that helped to form it. During this week together, along with the agony of a whinging toddler, was the opportunity to see him grow in real time. To see the mighty mental leaps that are required to understand that a finch, a kookaburra, a pelican and an emu are all ‘birrs’. To watch the lingual gymnastics required to be able to point out ‘kawawoos’. Slightly disturbingly, to observe the beginnings of deceit – when asked if he’s pooed his nappy, he now responds with the sweetest little ‘no, no’ and an earnest shake of the head.

These are the moments, these are why I went on holiday. Isolation is a damn fine thing when you’re isolated with those you love.

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The Shins’ “Chutes Too Narrow” is available from Amazon.

But it is fun.

After a long day to get home, I need a good night’s sleep. But here are a bunch of photos to tide you over.

Many thanks to Agnes, Rassles and Mickey for holding down the fort.

I’ll leave you with one of the tracks that best defines this vacation, from Luna’s “The Days of Our Nights” – available from Amazon.

A Free Family’s vacation continues and so do the guest posts. Today, I’ve got the pleasure of welcoming Mickey from The Prettiest Denny’s Waitress aboard. Mickey’s got the uncanny knack of making my laugh my ass off on a regular basis, so I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have captain the ship for a day. Without further ado, here’s Mickey…

I hope A Free Man is out there earning his moniker right now, gallivanting barefoot on those white sands he was telling us all about, frolicking in the surf and enjoying the waning days of the southern summer. Watch out for the sharks, dude. They bite.

I was thinking about some of my childhood family vacations, random scenes bouncing around in my head. My memories of them are just that, individual scenes I recall out of context, flashes of fun that I have to concentrate on to recall which particular trip they were a part of. In doing so, I’ve quickly come to the conclusion that my kids (should I ever have any) are never going to Disney World. I went to Orlando and its surrounding attractions when I was five or six years old, and, for the same reasons kids frequently enjoy the cardboard boxes more than the toys that came in them, I think that kind of thing is lost on a kid. Or at least it was lost on me.

Here’s why: River Country. Yeah, I thought Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad were a blast and I recall the thrill of the water slides at nearby Wet ‘n’ Wild water park, but far and away the most fun I ever had in Florida (and that counts several trips to that armpit of a state as an adult), was at Disney’s River Country, a collection of rope ladders and tire swings in a natural-water lagoon. In other words, amidst all the high-tech put-on splendor of the Magic Kingdom, the most fun I had was in their approximation of a redneck backwoods swimmin’ hole. (It has since closed, in part due to laws against water parks in natural bodies of water, but also because of the high-tech put-on splendor of Disney’s other, newer water attractions.)

That theme of enjoying the low-brow and inexpensive continued in my life. A family reunion in upstate New York saw us kids spending the whole day trying to avoid getting impaled on the six-inch valve stems of old inner tubes while we splashed euphorically in a muddy little pond. Absolute heaven. I barely remember the nearby kitsch of Niagara Falls.

But why go all the way to Florida or New York? Outside of those two trips, we really didn’t travel far when I was a kid, and it’s a good thing. One of the best times I ever had as a kid was in my own backyard. For reasons now forgotten there was a pile of railroad ties in our yard. There never was, before or after, any landscaping in the yard utilizing railroad ties. Regardless of their intended purpose, my brother and I did what all kids eventually do with anything not tied down: we built a fort. Putting it up like giant Lincoln logs, we had a sturdy fort you could get inside of or on top of, held together by nothing but gravity and faith, and a child’s faith is no small thing. A stack of rough, splintery wood kept us perfectly happy for several days of summer vacation without even having to leave the yard.

Shoot, the most memorable part of a week-long summer camp was flinging lumps of wet clay at each other at a clay pit on the banks of the Chester River in Maryland. That still sounds like fun to me. I guess I’m just a dirtbag at my core.

To this day I cast a wary eye toward any diversion that costs a lot of money. It’s not that I haven’t had good times spending far too much money in a bar or enjoyed the hell out of an overpriced concert, but even as an adult most of my fond memories have more to do with the company than the extravagance of the event. That’s why I’ll trade a noisy bar for a bunch of friends around a campfire with a cooler full of beer any day.

And that’s why my kids are never going to Disney World. Besides, they won’t know the difference if I instead take them to that spot far back in the woods in Tennessee with the big ol’ tree with a rope swing hanging out over deep, still water. If they ask, I’ll just tell them the water moccasins are animatronic.

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Image credits:

Live Rattlesnakes

River Country

Fort

A lot of you are probably already familiar with Rassles from Sometimes I Make Lists as we seem to lurk around the same cyber neighborhoods, but I’m a recent convert. Rassles signed on to the interview project I was running and made me a permanent fan with this post about a trip to the Creation Museum. I’m thrilled to have her aboard to hold keep things interesting around here for me while I’m lazing away in the Antipodean sunshine…

“Where are you from in America?”

“Chicago.  Technically a suburb, but yeah.  Chicago.”

Audrey starts chattering in incomprehensible French to Antoine, who widens his eyes and grins like he just got free candy, and he interrupts her and cracks back with some more French fireballs, and I have no idea what’s going on.

“He would like to know if you have a gun.”

I smile, and look at Antoine, shaking my head. “No, sorry.”  A little golden Cocker Spaniel is rubbing herself all over my shoes, which have walked through nine countries in the past couple of months and are covered with all sorts of scented goodness and foot sweat.

More French.  They rapid fire, back and forth, and I try to coax the dog over to me.

“Her name is Esme.”

Of course it is.

Audrey looks at me, puzzled.

Shit, I said that out loud.  I beam up at her, and then at the dog.  “She’s a beautiful dog.”

Antoine starts yammering again, and Audrey sighs.  “Have you seen a man shot before?”

“No.  I don’t really live in that part of Chicago.”

“But you have been to le Bronx?”

“Le Bronx, oui?” Antione looks hopeful.

“Uh-uh, sorry.  The Bronx is in New York.  I’m kinda far from there.”

She answers him, and he squints at me and leans forward, and this heavy ass gold chain falls out of his jersey. “I no…ummm…agree.”  And then he’s speaking French again, his volume rising, and he keeps saying, “le Bronx le Bronx le Bronx.”

“Do you know a person in the Bronx?” Audrey is getting impatient.  She’s a real fucking trooper, you know, letting a strange girl stay at her apartment.  She works at the airport for Ryanair in Beauvais, and after Ryanair denied me entrance onto a plane, she offered to give me a place to stay, which was completely fine with me, considering the fact that I was broke, and I needed to get to Ireland.  I’d left my friends in Paris so I could meet up with Leyden, who’d been playing rugby in the UK all summer.  I look at her clock.  If I’d made that flight, I would be in Dublin right now, hanging out with him and getting good and drunk.  He’s probably waiting for me at the airport.  Crap.

“Ummm…I have a friend in Brooklyn.  But that’s not really the same-” I glance at Antoine, and he looks super bummed.  He wanted some straight up gangstah story about guns and the Bronx, but seriously?  I’m from the suburbs.

More French.  “Is J-Lo really from the Bronx?”

I have no idea.  “I have no idea.”

Antoine laughs and pulls Audrey onto his lap, being all fast-talking and French and slapping her ass, squeezing.  She squeals, giggling, and explains through gasps, “He says…ahahaha!  French le poisson! He says, J-Lo looks veree veree hahaha Francais!  Je m’appelle! Amour! veree tough, and he wishes my behind could more like her.”

I have no idea what she was saying, by the way.  Those are just random sporatic French words.  Obviously.

Antoine looks sly.  “Ass,” he states, triumphant, and takes another handful of it, in proof of ownership. Then there’s another giggle fit, and more flirting en Francais, and the Cocker Spaniel starts barking.

“Esme, haha! Francaisfrancaisfrancais.”

I do not like it when the attention is not on me.  I am an interesting American, here, with adventurous tales of thieving urchins and mountain climbing and dueling with Spanish gypsies, and all they care about is le fucking Bronx.

“I am sorree.  HaHA! Francais!  Sometimes we play.”

All I can do is grin.  “It’s alright.”

There’s another short monologue from Antoine, where he jumps up and tries to act something out for me, complete with sound effects and apparent hilarity (to Audrey), and all I can do is smile and nod.  It ends Antoine faking a machine gun and a maniacal laugh.

“I don’t know what just happened,” I whisper to Audrey, who says simply, “It is a veree long storee.  So you really have never been to le Bronx?”

“Well, no,” seriously, just lie, “but, well…my brother moved there a couple years ago.  I haven’t really seen him.”  I have no brother.

Audrey relays this to Antoine, now fucking ecstatic, who points at me and says more French things.

“He knew it.”

“Yeah, I guess it makes me kind of uncomfortable, because I never hear from him anymore, you know?” Frown.  Look downcast and forlorn, do it, there you go.  “He and my parents don’t get along.”  Audrey is interpreting for Antoine again, who grins.  This is what he wants, you know?  America.

“He kind of gambled a lot, you know?  And he kept on borrowing money from this loan shark.  Some mob guy.  I sent him my savings a couple years ago, to get him out of debt, but he just spent it all on who knows what.  Probably horse racing,” I wipe my nose with my sleeve, “Drugs.”

She’s talking quietly in French as I speak and try to remember the plot to Pope from Greenwich Village and morph it into my own, because I’m sure they’ve never seen it, and Antoine listens, all kinds of giddy.

“Well, one day he thought he had a sure bet on a horse, some two-year-old that had good genes, I guess.  He was always talking about good genes.”  I’m dating myself here, but I’m sure this guy’s seen A Bronx Tale, and who really knows about horseracing anymore?  “This mob guy who’d lent him money was really pushing him to pay him back.  So I sent him everything I had.  I couldn’t tell my parents.”  Cry, dammit.  Cry.  I can’t cry.  I can barely stop giggling.  Sniff.

“A couple of days later I got an email from him.  He said thanks for the cash, but his sure bet fell through, and he was going to have to disappear for awhile.”  Sniff.  “I haven’t talked to him since.”

“Francais francais francais,” Antoine rambles, excited.  “Francais francais?”

“Is this really true?”

“Well, yeah, it’s true.  Sorry, can I use your washroom?”

“Oh, of course.”

I run into there and start cracking up, after telling the worst story in the history of stories. Leyden is probably hanging out in an airport, waiting for me.  Sucker.  Muffy and Sean are in Paris, starting a secret relationship, glad I’m not around anymore, but I didn’t know it at the time.

Eventually, I exit the bathroom, crying from laughing so hard, and Audrey and Antoine say goodnight.  I pass out on their couch, cuddling with Esme and reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, because I totally bought it in Barcelona the week before, despite low funds.  I’d been seeing it on the international bookshelves for nearly a month, and I just couldn’t wait.  Perfect thing to take my mind off of how I was going to find a way to Dublin.

Thanks, Freeman, for letting me write over here.  Just so you guys know, if you made it to the end of this lengthy story, I made it to Dublin.  Everyone was freaking out because I was lost for two days.  It was super rad.

Have a blast on vacation.  Don’t get lost.

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Get Plastic Bertrand’s self-titled greatest hits and and other great music from eMusic. Sign up for a trial membership and get 25 free songs. Best of all, you can cancel at any time and pay nothing. It’s a sweet deal.

Image credits:

The Bronx 1

The Bronx 2

The Bronx 3

The lack of internet aspect is looking pretty good right now as well. Before I started blogging I pretty much used the internet to check the news and weather, to do research for work and to keep track of sports scores – and maybe the occasional ‘recreational film screening’. These days, with the discovery of the therapeutic benefits of blogging and the odd relationships that one develops, I spend far more time on the internet than a lover, a father, a holder of two jobs should. Put simply, it won’t do me any harm to be without the internet for a week.

I also feel that, of late, I’ve been running out of things to say – losing my voice. There’s only so much that goes on in the day-to-day life of A Free Man and dredging through the archives, so to speak, can be a bit unpleasant sometimes. I’m hoping that a week away from the self-induced pressure of trying to write an entertaining post every other day or so will free up my mind and, as those funky ‘divas‘ said, the rest will follow.

The good news is that A Free Man the site will carry on in the absence of A Free Man the man. I’ve lined up an outstanding team of guest bloggers to keep things going while I laze away the days on the Southern Ocean. Fact is that they’ll probably put me to shame.

Catch y’all later.

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“A Blessing and a Curse” as well as the rest of the Drive-by Truckers back catalog is available from eMusic. Sign up for a trial membership and get 25 free songs. Best of all, you can cancel at any time and pay nothing. It’s a sweet deal.

Image credit:

Desert island

Over in SA, the heat wave broke at long last on Sunday. After a change in the wind direction and a fierce but too brief rain, we woke to a cool dewy morning – an euphoric feeling after a couple of weeks of crushing heat. The pleasure of a pleasant summer morning was short-lived, however, as we had to jump in the car and head for Adelaide’s airport to deposit Dr. O’C onto a flight for Sydney and, ultimately, Florida. She’s headed for a week long conference in Disney country – leaving Boy Z and A Free Man to fend for ourselves. That’s right, gentle readers, for the first time I’ll be parenting solo for ten days.*

Late in the afternoon I lay, bone weary, on the parched grass of the back yard with a husky dog panting in my face keeping half an eye on Boy Z as he spun and babbled about. Watching him, seeing myself and his mother in his face, I had a fleeting feeling of panic – just what the hell am I doing here? I am woefully underqualified to look after a seventeen month old child, am completely incompetent as a parent. I only learned to take care of myself a couple of years ago. It’s always been touch and go with the dog. Now I have a totally vulnerable – despite appearances to the contrary as he charged the dog with cricket bat flailing for the 473rd time – little human who is dependent entirely on me.

This gripping insecurity is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. On bad days I feel woefully inadequate to deal with a lot of things – work, social situations, human interaction of any kind. It’s rarer these days, but with the onset of fatherhood I found a whole new bog of insecurities. What am I going to do the first time Boy Z fails a test? What am I going to do the first time he gets in a fight? (Actually, he gets in fights all the time at day care. They seem to be running some sort of toddler cage match down there. The answer to my question is ‘nothing’.) What am I going to do the first time he struggles in a sport? What am I going to tell him when he asks about girls? What about the first time he comes home drunk? On a day like Sunday, all of these questions and more can race through my head – rendering my brain into a Formula 1 track. And I can become nearly paralyzed with the noise and rumbles.

That’s what was happening as I laid on the grass on Sunday afternoon. But the good thing about having a toddler boy around is that what is going on in my head is completely irrelevant to him. My paralysis was cured reasonably quickly with a whack in the head from a tiny cricket bat. Along with the sharp pain came the relief of a realization that I just had to get on with this one day, just had to play with my son today. And I got up. And I got on with it.

A little boy, a piece of willow – that’s all it takes? Should have done this years ago.

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* This isn’t exclusively true. Dr. O’C’s Mum is around and is remarkably helpful. In fact, she’s both dropping Boy Z off and picking him up from day care today. But still…

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This track from the fantastic Okkervil River comes from the free “Golden Opportunities Mixtape” that the band released on their website in December 2007. Pitchfork still has an active link if you would like to download the album of rarities.

Image credit:

Firefighter