Down the Road

Yeah, just hearing Mick belt out that lyric toward the end of the epic “Moonlight Mile,” gave me title to a story about getting there. Man, what a song. I’ll find it for you on the youtube.

My road of life’s beautiful faces and landscapes, steep, but brief, inclines, and long, wonderful drives is nearing 52. (Jeez, the guy next to me on the plane is working on a PowerPoint featuring a freakin’ fighter helicopter and shit blowing up. No, wait. One of mine just had a computer server blowing up AND sharks! Nevermind…) Anyway, before we were interrupted by my ADD, we were rag-top cruising down the ro-oo-oad with Sir Mick. Yesterday we held our now annual Maddy-Day party where friends and family come to celebrate the little blond’s party and sort of acknowledge it’s my birthday too by gifting us at a ratio of about 15 to 1. In fact, yesterday it was one, but the one was a cool Kindle from Megan! Maddy got a bunch of pink stuff including a Dora backpack, wonderful books, and a sweet farting dog! What’s best about it is that it farts in several different styles. Among other “air boofs,” there’s a short, quick, “oops, I didn’t mean for that one to slip out,” and a long, “lift one ass cheek and smile triumphantly” ripper.

Now where was I? Oh, on Saturday, Joyce and I burned some road during 3 great walks along pavement, beach sand and dirt. Somewhere across the morning hard-top I asked her to push me. No, not a literal shove, but more like the “behind every successful man is a woman” push. In 2010, that’s really kind of sexist, but it fits. Besides, she acknowledged needing to be pushed as well in spite of all her successes, so maybe it’s more like the U2 song. “We get to carry each other.” Oh, how I love irony and it showed up a few hours later when my girl gave me the gift of a writer’s workshop at Grub Street in Boston! I guess I didn’t have to request the push…

Last night as I searched for Kindle titles while next to me, Megan giggled while uploading about 400 of the day’s images to Facebook, I also remembered the one audible.com credit I had, so the search widened from written to spoken word. “On Writing” by Stephen King was highly recommended by nearly 400 audible listeners, but not being a King fan, I was a bit skeptical. I browsed the comments, and read Stephen King’s simple advice, “If you want to be a writer, read a lot and write a lot. There aren’t any shortcuts I’m aware of.” I thought about how one gift would help me read more and one would help me write more, and hopefully better. I clicked the download button.

Thanks girls, for your help carrying me down the road and making it stunning.