My life is a mess. I don't say this melodramaticly. I think most people's lives are a mess. Entropy is a principle of physics, after all. Who can keep his life from disintegrating into a tangled mass of details, to do lists, and minutiae? That person is a mutant or a recluse or both. If you are willing to participate in society and its pressures, you've probably felt the pull to count your dollars, your minutes, your undone chores, and tally it all up to calculate the quality of your life. Our whole society is one giant vortex sweeping us up in this maelstrom of modernity. A hundred years ago, no one worried about being on time to the minute for an appointment, needed a Blackberry to keep their project lists, nor had to keep their personal finances straight with a spread sheet. It seems like modern life is sentiently designed to keep us confused about what matters. So if the messiness of life is close kin to physical law, why not embrace it? Case in point: you should see my kitchen countertops.
Why am I waxing philosophical about this? Not merely to annoy you, although that is a bonus. I introspect a lot without telling anyone about it. Most recently, I asked myself, "Why am I driven by certain things?" Why am I driven by laundry and dishes in the middle of the night? Okay, well, that's easy to answer: it's difficult to cook and dress when you can't find anything clean. But why am I driven by ad copy and flourescent store lighting to dislike my physique? When I look in the mirror at home, I usually feel well enough.
And why am I driven by unseen forces to think that I have to accomplish something other than keeping my family healthy and whole with my life? Why do I think I will have failed somehow if I never write a book, or publish some poems, or get my name printed next to the title "Ed?" When I look in my mental mirror, I'm content being a sometimes-crafting, house-keeping, kid-chasing, naturalist-dabbling, amateur-philosophizing, blogging library lacky. 
The upshot of all this is that I realized that what drives me most is the contrary philosophical urge to resist all this other stuff that's driving me. It's why I will stop at the side of any road anytime to take pictures of flowers and bugs, and it's partially why I have set aside Wednesday of every week for the boys' and my Once-A-Week Adventures. Because really, who cares about laundry, and editing, and looking bad in a bathing suit when you can take a few bucks and a few hours and create delight in small boys? If my life is going to be a mess, then I'd rather it be a mess somewhat like a Van Gogh painting, with lots of little bits of chicory-flower blue, Abraham-strawberry blonde, and Charlie-freckle brown.
Parky's Pirate Cove at Miami Whitewater Forest
If I get really close, my days look like a mess. But when I back up and gaze at my life, a picture resolves out of it. It's a picture I'm painting of lives, learning, and priorities; mine and hopefully theirs. I hope that my boys, when they're men, look back on days spent chasing butterflies and going to the wet playground, and see that they were not days spent in hedonism, but rather days spent with them. 
Water. See, it's wet!
No, I don't know why he's letting that cannon spray him in the head, either.
Abraham finds some shade.
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