When my son was little, our lives followed a certain arc.

When his life became chaotic and he needed more from me, I cut my work to the bone and gripped tight the steering wheel until it calmed again.

1/
And then I would let up on the wheel and hammer the gas pedal working as much as I could for as long as I could to make up for lost time.

There was a certain cadence to it.

Each year, I would end up spending early summer absolutely grinding away to work as much as I could.

2/
And then August would arrive and we would have spent little of it together.

There would have been camps and weeks away and highlights of summer - and none would be mine.

3/
So, we made up a thing:

Operation Summer Squeeze.

It was our code for the final weeks of summer - the weeks when the days were growing shorter and there was a clock ticking down and so much to do and so much we hadn’t done.

4/
In those last weeks, we would squeeze the very marrow from summer.

We would wrest from my depleted checking account enough to have fun on the beach and then the boardwalk.

I would find the money for a last meal of summer. We would eat at a place overlooking a bay.

5/
My son would order for us. Grilled octopus and shrimp cocktail and ceviche.

The waitress’ eyes would go wide and her eyebrows would rise as she took in the 10- and 11- and 12- year old ordering for the table.

6/
And I would sit, first in pride and then in joy, just awash in the sheer happiness as the very last sunset of a summer almost missed was instead ushered out together.

I love my son. I adore him.

7/
This year has been the first in a grueling run of many years when I haven’t been pressed to rescue a semblance of summer from the last of its embers.

For the first time in many years, I spent summer knowing our time together was planned rather than hoped for but uncertain.

8/
We are fresh back from a two-week trip I will carry with me woven deep into the fabric of my soul for as long as my walk on.

Tomorrow, we leave to squeeze one last ounce of summer from an August to remember.

9/
We’re headed up to see family in New Hampshire near the lake where I spent my own childhood summers.

It will be a modest visit of simplest means. Cookouts on the grill beside a simple cabin. Pancakes made on a hot plate. Maple syrup drizzled on vanilla ice cream.

10/
And the luxury of it will not be lost on me.

For the first year in a decade, there is no “squeeze” to this summer. No last minute hurried effort to wrest an ounce of vacation from a pound of work.

We have banked a great joy these past two weeks.

11/
And now I get to marinate in the rdays spent, memories made, and things done and recorded and treasured.

Now I get to put my feet up on a porch rail my grandfather once painted - a grandfather I adored who taught me to play golf and who died too young - and just soak it in.

12/
I have been invested with the most blessed of summers this year.

After a decade of the lowest lows in the hardest of years, we have stepped out from darkness into light.

13/
My son is 13 going on 14. The countdown of his childhood inches ever closer to midnight.

But for this one summer, this one month, these few weeks, there is only us: father and son, front seat and passenger seat, at ease, happy, filled with the surfeit of life at its most kind.
This year - for once - summer isn’t “the smell of hospitals in winter, and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls.”

It isn’t A Long December.

It is a short August.

15/
I have loved this month.

It has been among the happiest of my life.

We’re in the car again tomorrow.

And then we will squeeze one last week from this special summer. I have loved few more.

//

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More from @TheRealHoarse

16 Sep
So, my quest for a fantastic cheesesteak in Philly yest was an adventure.

Made it to only one place on the way into town. The cheesesteak was… not great.

I wanted to take it aside and have a conversation with it.

“Your mother and I aren’t mad. We’re just disappointed.”

1/
I’m not going to cheesesteak shame. It isn’t important where that fair-to-middling sandwich came from. I’m not going to point fingers.

Tony Luke’s. It came from Tony Luke’s.

This place is overrated. Don’t @ me. I tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear.

2/ ImageImage
Then catastrophe struck: I ran out of time to even get a Second Lunch.

And I had a concert to get to.

Would there even be a dinner?

One mediocre sandwich? Could this really be all I’d eat in Philly?

Reality said “Yes.”

My steely resolve said “No, sir or madam. No.”

3/
Read 10 tweets
9 Sep
This morning, my friend, @MuellerSheWrote, posted something about Merrick Garland taking action against Texas’ abortion ban and added something along the lines of ‘pressure works’.

Apparently, an array of dumbfucks gave her shit.

This has me saltier than a bar pretzel.

1/
The root of the dumbfuckery appears to be the reference to pressure having an impact.

Listen, if you are such a clueless pollyanna that you still believe in the Year 2021 that *anyone* in government is walled off from influence, wake up.

You’re hopelessly naive.

2/
Merrick Freaking Garland doesn’t need to check Twitter to be influenced.

He doesn’t need to know @MuellerSheWrote exists or know I exist or know you exist.

He doesn’t need to have a Twitter account or even have internet access.

3/
Read 15 tweets
4 Sep
This is like Deja Vu Wrongness.

Didn’t we go through why this is all kinds of wrongheaded a year or two ago?
Reducing women to at-will providers of sexual pleasure to men is not empowering.

Treating providing sex as a service that can be bartered in exchange for other considerations, also terrible.

This trope gets a lot of “Hell yeah’s!”

It’s not good. It’s diminishing of women.
Why should men be aligned with women in defending their reproductive rights?

Because they respect women and their autonomy.

Not because they won’t fuck them otherwise.
Read 4 tweets
4 Sep
We’ve reached the “I am not leaving until you give me my money back or give me the product I paid for” phase of my relationship with this camera store.

I should have packed a lunch.
So, we had a bit of a standoff.

Service person said they had no information for me, no resolution, and no ability to do a thing for me.

So, I said “The two acceptable out outcomea are ‘Here is your product.’ Or ‘Here is your money back.’ I’m not leaving without one of them.”
So, the service person says “Those are over my head. I’m going to get the manager.”

So it should be noted that I didn’t demand to speak to the manager.

I merely refused to take a shitty non-answer.

A manager was summoned. More shortly.
Read 8 tweets
3 Sep
Eating a sandwich.

Guy complaining to the bartender about masks and vaccinations and boosters and Biden and on and on.

And then he launches into this one… swear to god, straight transcription here…

1/
Guy: I had to hire a labor lawyer this week to deal with an employee.

Bartender: Why?

Guy: She doesn’t want to come back to the office.

Bartender: 😶

Guy: I’m playing hardball. I’m not fucking around.

2/
Bartender: Why doesn’t she want to come back?

Guy: She’s pregnant.

Bartender: 😳

3/
Read 8 tweets
2 Sep
One of the most frustrating thing about having this platform is constantly butting up against people who cannot comprehend that a required part of politics is “working the refs” - agitating for what you want.

There is zero - ZERO - to be gained by being quiet. Zee. Ro.

1/
Yet, whenever I am being pushy - BECAUSE SOMETHING IS VERY IMPORTANT AND WE NEED THE VERY FULLEST EFFORT FROM OUR REPS - I catch a ton of stupid pushback from people who think sitting on their hands fixes problems.

It. Does. Not.

2/
If you think…

1) it is rude to push elected officials hard

2) we can only support them by praising them

3) they’ll do everything we need if we just sit silently and wait

…you are invariably a white person unaccustomed to having the most to lose.

3/
Read 5 tweets

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