someday we'll look back at these as the golden days, the good old days; i'm sure we will, especially the boys, who are ten and six, and are not obliged to worry about anything really, but just spend time with their new toys and particularly with their dad when he's free and not working for just a small window. so we went for a walk, and when we came to the concrete bridge over the creek we went under that bridge, where there's graffiti and soft wet mud with animal prints in it, and lots of rocks, and i have to keep ducking my head to get around. and then later we drive out to the river, which is actually a park, about a half-hour drive but really only about fifteen miles as the crow flies, but we have the place virtually to ourselves, and the river flows on down from the north, and once again, lots of mud, and sand, and it's no problem skipping rocks.

this park by the river, biggest river in the world (depending on how you measure), is actually hard to get to, a sign is missing, and the back roads aren't that clear, you kind of have to know it's there. there's a little opening in the cliffs there and you fit through the opening, and you can climb the cliffs if you want which we did, and get a better view.

the holiday can be a bit rancorous; i'd decided that they named boxing day after the general fighting that goes on over toys after christmas, and generally the weather coops us up and keeps us indoors. but this year the weather is a little better, and there's no excuse for staying indoors cooped up by materialism and the false hope that somehow this stuff, whether it's tops, or games, or tracks, is going to do it for us. i exercise at night, but i referee all day, calling fouls, ejecting kids from the game, ripping them off each other flesh and all, relegating them to their rooms where only the television is there to help them regain their composure. i decided to try to direct them outdoors, where fresh air would do some of my work for me. this was my hope.

it took a while, but finally this huge boat came tugging up the river, pushing sn enormous barge with it and some white flag in front that i couldn't distinguish, don't know what country it was from. the river is wide there, comes around a bend at the pilot's house and flattens out around grand tower, and somebody was shooting guns or something over on the missouri side and you could hear it all up the valley. the boys played in the park a bit after climbing the cliffs and i stopped for a moment, watched the boat going upstream, the water coming down. this break might not change much, but it changed me; it gave me a fresh renewal that helped me be a better referee.

as for them, it's back to the usual: ripping and tearing at each other, pointless fights over meaningless use of toys (they both have plenty of time, plenty of toys), etc. it's almost like, fighting for the sake of fighting, or, fighting for the sake of getting my attention, which is getting harder to crowbar out of me. could be trouble...batten down the hatches! happy new year!