World Cup on Bougyman's Ramblings

Formation Lap

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 12:30:50 -0500

World Cup anticipation
isn’t a quiet condition.
It sits in the chest
like a countdown
pretending to be a reasonable way
to spend a Sunday.
So Orca and I
did what we could
with the morning:
Yeppa,
F1 Belgium,
something loud enough
to borrow the edge off the wait.
Amazing start.
Then,
eventually,
the kind of ending that makes a person
check the lap counter for evidence
that time is still legal.
Kimi again, as usual.
Some good midfield drama,
at least,
which is what we say
when the front
has stopped negotiating with entertainment.
Not much thread
this morning,
but that was no scandal.
You aren’t much
of an early riser,
and the sun doesn’t get extra credit
for being first.
King Ron, Kitty Mike, and Apex
kept the group chat alive,
doing their part
to make the wait less dignified,
which is usually the correct amount.
After the race,
Orca and I
made our way to Irby’s…
for much-needed patio time.
Gabe’s kiddos were there.
Orca did _not_ approve.
Not in a cruel way,
exactly.
More in the way
a small queen
might notice several new claimants
to the attention throne
and begin quietly reviewing the succession laws.
I think children
may currently be her rivals.
So,
as Irby’s started filling in,
I took her home for a nap…
because even suspicion requires rest.
Then I came back,
grabbed our corner,
pulled a few extra seats into the orbit,
and even held a parking spot,
just in case y’all decided to drive.
The plan was clean:
if you came here,
I could do the Irby’s parking shuffle,
move Nero across the street
to the spot with his name already on it,
and leave you the easy landing.
That was the formation.
Or at least,
that was the formation
I had in my head.
Then the day changed circuits.
Piedmont Park became your watch party.
Irby’s became mine.
Not wrong,
just different.
The kind of adjustment Sunday makes
without asking whether the pit wall
has finished its math.
So the formation changed.
You at Piedmont.
Me at Irby’s.
Friends on the way,
my corner still useful,
seats still becoming
a joyful afternoon.
Orca home,
sleeping off
her diplomatic failure
with children.
The spot held,
then not needed the way I pictured.
The wait,
still very much the wait.
That’s the thing
about a formation lap:
it isn’t the race.
It’s just the slow roll
before everything gets loud,
all the little corrections,
all the tires warming,
all the cars
finding their places
before the lights finally go out.
Today’s doing that.
Not the grid I pictured,
but still a grid.
Not the corner
I thought I was saving for you,
but still a corner
pointed toward the same whistle.
You there.
Me here.
Sunday,
rearranging us
without quite separating us,
lining up the whole bright mess…
one adjustment at a time.

Halfway to Halfway

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:32:58 -0500

The conference ended
the way good conferences
are allowed to end:
full,
tired,
a little talked-out,
and still somehow
glad for one more table.
Aaron and I did Vegas
at a reasonable human scale,
eating,
watching Nine Fine Irishmen
do Nine Fine Irishmen things…
the kind of place
where the room seems convinced
the night can be solved
with enough dark wood and noise.
You know Aaron,
so you know that worked for us.
Or worked enough.
Then morning showed up
with absolutely no manners.
Up at 4 a.m.,
flight at 6,
Vegas still blinking
like it hadn’t been told
the night was over.
I got to DFW,
scooped Orca,
and we pointed ourselves toward Atlanta
with the kind of confidence
only a fresh tank,
a reunited dog,
and poor memory can provide.
Forty minutes later,
the road corrected us.
Two hours of slowdown,
because apparently
making good time
is one of those phrases
the universe considers a dare.
Fine.
We were only planning on Jackson today anyway.
The road didn’t need
to be conquered.
It only needed
to be handled
in pieces.
So we let it get smaller.
DFW to Jackson.
Then less than that.
Then this:
a rest stop,
somewhere along the line,
because Orca noticed
it was past dinner time
and made the executive decision
that whatever _I_ thought the schedule was…
the schedule had failed to consult management.
Hard to argue.
She’s eating.
I sit here—
with the road noise moving behind us,
not stopped, exactly…
just held for a minute
in the kind of nowhere
a trip sometimes gives you
so the day can catch up to the body.
Halfway to halfway.
Not home,
not Jackson,
not even that useful middle
of the whole damn thing.
Just the middle of the day’s smaller promise.
There are days when “enough”
has to become the official unit of measurement.
Enough sleep to make the flight.
Enough coffee to forgive 4 a.m.
Enough patience for the slowdown.
Enough road to say we moved.
Enough stopping
to keep Orca
from filing a formal complaint.
And enough thread running back to you
that even the rest stop
feels less like nowhere
than a place I can set down
one more proof:
we are on our way.
Slowly, maybe.
But on our way.
Sunday is waiting
with its own little flag
in the ground:
your half-birthday,
the World Cup final,
whatever fun the day decides
it can responsibly hold.
All roads point there first.
Then Monday,
still Monday,
still ours,
still doing that thing
where the whole map
pretends to be logistics…
when really it’s just practicing
how to bring me back within reach.
For now,
Orca’s eatin’,
Nero’s waitin’,
Jackson’s still out there
pretending to be tonight’s finish line,
and I’m here,
halfway to halfway,
learning again that coming home
isn’t one motion.
It’s a series
of smaller arrivals,
each one pointed
in the same direction:
toward Sunday,
toward Monday,
toward you.

Wrapped Around Monday

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:26:05 -0500

Argentina beat England,
which means
you won the match
and I had to be
the exact amount
of gracious
required by law.
Harry lost,
Messi advanced,
and my anti-Messi position
remains morally intact…
if competitively useless.
You said,
“Can’t win by hate,”
which is rude,
accurate,
and almost certainly not admissible
in any court where I’m allowed
to choose the judge.
So fine,
you got Argentina,
got the final,
and the little victory lap
in the thread.
But the real score
was somewhere else,
not on the screen,
in the bracket,
not even in Harry’s sad,
noble,
extremely English face,
but in the missing—
The way yours came through
with weight on it.
The way mine answered
without needing
to act surprised.
Vegas is doing
_everything_
Vegas knows how to do:
lights,
noise,
carpet,
cold rooms,
bad odds,
expensive drinks pretending to be decisions.
The whole city
keeps throwing color at the walls
like volume might eventually become feeling.
And still,
under all of it,
there you are—
not quietly, exactly,
more like the one clear sound
the rest of the noise
keeps failing to cover.
I’m here,
RubyConf badge,
hotel key,
elevator banks,
conversations I’m happy to have
with people I’m happy to see.
It’s not a bad place to be,
which isn’t the problem.
The problem is,
every good thing
keeps arriving
with a second shape
around it:
how I’d tell you,
how you’d laugh,
where your hand would be,
what face you’d make
at whatever strange casino nonsense
just tried to call itself decor.
I keep wanting
to get back there,
not back home,
exactly,
though, yes,
that too.
Back to the version of the room
where the sentence
doesn’t have to travel through glass
before it reaches you.
Back to the lazy,
ridiculous privilege
of looking over…
instead of typing.
But there’s no shortcut,
not one that matters.
Even if the flights behaved,
even if the map folded itself
like it wanted to help,
Monday is still Monday.
The first real place
the two of us
can put arms
around all of this
and mean it.
Which makes everything else
feel wrapped around it:
the conference,
city,
match,
thread,
the missing
coming in stronger than I expected,
yeah, even stronger than that.
Wrapped around Monday,
not because Monday is soon.
It isn’t,
not from here,
not from a hotel room
that keeps making
its little appliance noises
like it has something useful to add.
But Monday is ours,
and that’s the part
everything else keeps turning toward.
Mondays have always known
what to do with us.
They know Irby’s,
they know 325,
they know the way
one ordinary night
can stop pretending it’s ordinary
the moment our eyes find each other's.
So what do I do,
what do we do
with this much missing
and nowhere useful to put it yet?
I think we keep wrapping,
not tighter,
not in the desperate way,
tighter in the honest way:
text by text,
song by song,
bad joke by bad joke,
Argentina gloating,
England sulking,
you being right about hate
in a way I will deny
under light questioning,
me letting Vegas be Vegas
without asking it to become enough.
Because it won’t,
it can’t.
This city was built
for wanting,
but not this kind.
This kind already has a destination,
this kind knows the day of the week.
So I’ll do the conference,
I’ll answer the thread,
I’ll let the missing
keep saying what it's saying
without trying to make it smaller
just because it won’t fit neatly in my pocket.
And Monday,
when it finally gets here,
can unwrap
whatever we’ve been carrying
across all this !*#@&&%@((!%?>< distance.

GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:02:46 -0500

Some goals arrive with witnesses—
a ball breaks the line
and a whole room becomes
one looooooong vowel.
I know.
When Egypt scored Tuesday,
I stretched the word as far as breath allowed:
GOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL—
the kind of call that believes
volume might make the moment more true.
But the best goal of the week
already happened on Monday,
and nobody at Irby’s saw it.
I had napped for USA–Belgium,
saving myself for the full ninety.
You napped, too,
but somehow woke first.
While my phone held your unanswered text,
ya did the least Mari thing imaginable:
went on without me,
walked into Irby’s alone,
and saved the last remaining seat
in our corner.
By the time I arrived,
_full_ had become a technicality.
Standing room only,
wall against wall,
breath against breath…
all of us trying to will
the same ball in the same direction.
Belgium had other ideas.
At 2–0 in the fiftieth,
hope had been reduced to arithmetic…
somewhere between
“_aw, shucks_” and “_that’ll do_,”
you were _ready_.
So we gave Belgium the rest of the pitch
and took the night home.
Orca received the greeting she was owed,
the walk she required,
and then—
no whistle,
replay,
or breathless announcer
searching for the call.
Just a door closing,
sheets losing their shape,
and the two of us
slipping past regulation,
past extra time,
past what I thought
the body could keep asking for.
Some goals don’t need witnesses.
Afterward,
_Skywalkers_ climbed above the city
while we folded into the couch,
two daredevils reaching for rooftops,
while we did the much easier thing:
falling—
asleep in each other’s arms.
We woke around 3:30 a.m.
You left the way Mari always leaves—
direct,
without drama,
then, when ya made it home,
shot the sweetest goodnight
back across the dark.
I carried it into four more hours of sleep.
By Tuesday,
separate had returned…
apart had not.
Coal and Orca needed us.
The weekend had left its usual evidence.
And between all the tending,
the catching up,
the business of being responsible,
our thread kept moving—
steady as a match clock,
alive with Argentina–Egypt
and that Mari certainty
that I somehow won the game for Argentina. (I probably did)
Egypt went up 1–0, then 2–0.
I offered the universe one joke:
“Queue the Messi tears.”
Fifty-nine minutes
(and several seriously questionable calls) later,
Messi _was_ crying…
over a 3–2 comeback
that had looked impossible
until the scoreboard insisted otherwise.
Maybe I did win it—
I did exactly
what you're always cautioning me
not
to
do:
_said something_.
Which, as we both know,
is enough to make The Universe take note…
and immediately move to intervene against me.
So—
we spent the whole day in different rooms,
passing the same match between us,
missing each other
without ever quite losing touch.
Tonight should bring us back to Irby’s—
trivia,
maybe a bite before,
maybe 325 after?
Nothing firm.
Nothing needed.
Whatever tonight becomes,
this week crossed the line on Monday
and it’s been running up the score
ever since.

Hard to Miss

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 09:34:50 -0500

It’s been a while
since the last rambling.
Not because there wasn’t anything to say.
The week simply kept moving
faster than I could stop
and turn any of it
into lines.
Tuesday carried Mari and me
from Cardinals at Braves
to Mexico at Live!
without ever really becoming two separate nights.
St. Louis took the first one.
Mexico took the second.
By the time Nero and I dropped her home,
it was late enough
that simple had become beautiful:
a good game,
another good game,
a bite of Taco Mac,
one clean ride home,
with no need to ask the night for anything else.
Wednesday found us at Irby’s
for the USA game,
then back at 325…
for just enough couch
to make an ordinary evening
feel like ours.
Not too much.
Not too late.
Just right,
which may be harder to nail
than any penalty kick
I’ve seen this World Cup.
Thursday brought Ava to Atlanta,
one more Cardinals win for Mari,
St. Louis taking that series
before the week changed crews.
Friday,
Mari delivered Coal
into a weekend of deliberate spoiling
and Orca’s _extremely_ aggressive
interpretation of hospitality.
Then the days folded together.
Ava learning to code
while I remembered
how strange teaching feels…
when it’s about things
my hands stopped having to explain years ago.
Nintendo and cooking.
Mets at Braves,
an Atlanta win on The 4th,
with fireworks loud enough
to put a proper ending on Saturday.
And always,
somewhere under our feet,
four-legged negotiations
over couches,
attention,
and who exactly
was spoiling whom.
Now Sunday is already here.
The dogs and I are taking F1 to Yeppa,
keeping Coal surrounded by noise,
motion,
Orca,
and every available reason
not to notice that Mari isn’t here.
Ava leaves this evening—
the weekend will get quieter,
Coal may finally have enough room
to start missing Mari.
I know I will.
Monday waits on the other side of that—
USA against Belgium at eight,
and maybe,
if the universe doesn’t get clever,
another one of our glorious Mondays.
No guarantees.
For now,
there are engines at Yeppa,
Ava for a few more hours,
two dogs being kept
impressively busy,
and me,
learning that filling every minute
is a pretty effective way
to make the missing
hard to miss.