Getting Our Feet Wet

How many times can I write about how great it is to be back in Austin before everybody gets sick of it and tells me to shut up already?

Many more times, I imagine, than if I had more than two or three readers.

I took the booter to Pease Park today. She enjoyed the playscape, I enjoyed the scattered groups of people with guitars & harmonicas; we swung on the swings and climbed on the playscape, and in yet another "yay Austin" moment, I reveled in noticing that one dad (or dad-adjunct) just happened to be wearing a kilt. Not a formal one, just a casual black one with hip pockets - kind of the kilt equivalent of Bermuda shorts, I guess - but unmistakably a kilt. Do you think you'd see that in Corpus? Well, you wouldn't. (And before you ask, no, I didn't get a chance to see if he had on anything underneath.)

She liked Shoal Creek the best. We clambered down the bank - neither one of us really appropriately shod for the excursion - and splashed around among the rocks for an hour or so. Groups of Frisbee golfers passed across the creekbed now and again, but for the most part we had it to ourselves. It's a gorgeous day and the park was full of people, so it was pretty cool to be all alone in an isolated little world of trees, rocks, and barely more than a trickle of stream. On a day like today it's hard to imagine that peaceful little creek bursting its banks and flooding Lamar Blvd.

She'd happily have stayed down there much longer, splunking the biggest rocks she could pick up into the water; but once I urged her homeward, Miss Boundless Energy was suddenly much too tired to walk under her own power. Lugging 45 pounds of limp kid halfway down the length of Pease Park really lets you know your day is about over.

It's so nice to be back in Austin. Did I mention that already?