I had to pull out my skull this week.

Distance/endurance running came naturally to me as a kid and into high school. I even competed with some success before discovering cigarettes, girls, cars and beer… But I can still remember the ‘runners high’ you can get from a good paced run. Feeling the blood pumping through your limbs and your heart pumping so fast you can almost hear it - it was invigorating!

When the race day came, however, it was a different animal altogether. The pace was inevitably quicker than you had anticipated and it was hard to stick to any sort of game plan you may have had in your mind. For the first little while, the focus was keeping up with the pack and/or not letting yourself fall too far behind. But about half way through, a shift begins and your focus becomes the finish line. You stop concerning yourself as much with the people around you and start thinking about what you need to do to get to where you need to be. With any luck, you manage to make it across the finish line in respectable form, in a decent position and without vomiting and/or passing out. And more often than not, you have skipped clearly passed ‘runners high’ and landed firmly on ‘my lungs are on fire and it is entirely possible my bowels are about to release’.

That is the best comparison I can come up with now that both of our kids will be starting school this fall… Please know that I love my children dearly but the last 6 years have had their fair share of ups and downs. It hasn’t been easy balancing my ambitions with an attempt at the responsibilities of good parenting - and I just hope my successes outnumber my failures.

But I am only a week away from a pretty significant finish line and/or transition now; and I just hope I can cross it with some semblance of dignity. I am sooo looking forward to my bittersweet 'parenting high' and just hope I can enjoy my victory dance on the front lawn of the school without getting arrested.

-

On the work front: it has been a difficult week. I am balancing the kids last few weeks of summer with a bike job where the masking tape has over-adhered to the parts. It has been an exhausting combination of rambunctious behavior, Chef-Boyardee and bent back fingernails from trying to remove the tape in tiny little pieces.

I was going to use my free time to color my ’Mad Hatter’ pin-up but decided to put it on hold and do a test-piece first. I will be using the same process on this Chief skull as I will on the pin-up and I figure it will give me a better idea of how the paint will act over the pencil lines.

Thanks for reading! I hope you’ve had a good week.

Rod