Carnival For Two

Are you an official college student for signing up or when grades are handed down at the end of a quarter/trimester?  While I failed to rush a decent frat or school classmates on the finer points of beer pong after a night of downing a half handle of Captain Morgan, my first of 14 quarters towards graduation is in the books.  Like most people working two jobs and going to school is a tad stressful and in dire need of stretching the day to about 32 hours so tired bodies can do more than complain about being tired.  My senior moments have come in more frequently, suddenly snapping awake after standing with the fridge door open handling a carton of eggs staring blankly at Sportscenter as they replay the missed World Cup call by Koman Coulibaly who replaced Jim Joyce as the goat of officiating in the United States.

The eggs were returned safely to the upper shelf to become a Ham/Sausage/Bacon omelette at a future time after the drool was mopped up from the sides of my face.  No one mentioned that pushing yourself to become more would ever be difficult, but sitting on my ass and watching potential seep thru my cubical chair would have left me with regret.  Facing my family daily knowing that I did not put up a fight would allowed the specter of depression to unlock the front doors and close the genuine smiles found every morning, unlike the fake ones seeing in the pictures hanging throughout the house from years past. 

For Father's Day, I'll focus on the weekend spent alone with the boy as we both got to indulge a bit with daddy not having to work or type up a paper until Sunday.  He already has an eye for video games much like his dad as bad weather found him inside playing on the Cartoon Network's site while I completed DragonAge on the PS3 for the second time.  When the sun came out the garage door was opened for heading up to the community pool to cannonball dive off some steam.  Well, for him, I found two towels, one lounge chair and drifted off while MILFs paraded in front my view point (best time of day for seeing cougars is around noon to two).  After a little time at the gym, which is a bitch to motivate yourself to go during the summer, it is time to hit up the Hennepin Country Fair.    Sadly, I've seen larger "fairs" put in the parking lot of our city's string of mini-malls.  Regardless of size, the agri-magician provided free laughs and a petting zoo highlighted by a Texan Longhorn not named Vince Young as Wyatt needed some coaxing to feed the rather rabid bunch of goats in the middle cages.  But after one chocolate and vanilla striped animal licked his hand clean of the grains, he didn't want to leave.

I should have stopped at the $1 cup of goat food. 

Instead I overspent on pop, cheese curds, and god-forsaken plastic swords in the run-down carnival section.  Thankfully exploding a Bombay gin bottle gave me a wide smile at the cost of $5 for nine balls, even the boy managed to throw one thru a used Budweiser and earned himself a Twitter-like stuffed bird which dominated the conversation for the balance of the car ride home.  While the "prizes" certainly were not worth the forty bucks spread amongst the well-worn games of chance but surprisingly good squeeky cheese curds, his smile over-shadowed the lost Jacksons very quickly.  

Money can always be replaced, those brief moments of a child's joy cannot.