before having two mobile and ever-curious children a productive evening for me might entail reading 100 pages of my book.

now that i have these two humans living in my home, i define a productive evening by simply finding my book.

a guy i know listed me as a reference for a job he is applying for. when talking with his potential employer on the phone yesterday, this memory kept creeping into the room making me neurotic about all of my word selections.

TROY
so i think i may have hit the wall yesterday.

MARTY
what? you? you mean you call falling asleep in the middle of a party with 10 people in the room and the super bowl blaring on the tv, hitting the wall? no, that's totally normal behavior.

alex has left the lump stage. for any who've not yet had the pleasure of living with small children, the lump stage can be defined by the three CCC's; crying, crapping and caterwauling in the night. for the most part these three behaviors represent the full extent of their meager abilities.

when i leave for work in the morning i say goodbye to bella and alex. for the last few months while...

how the apple switch campaign works in our home.

TROY
i'm replacing your computer.

MARTY
what!? why!? i just got this computer.

TROY
i don't like it.

MARTY
what!? why!? it's my computer, you don't have to like it.

TROY
as long as i'm the one expected to fix it when it has issues you're wrong, i do have to like it and i don't like it so i'm replacing it.

MARTY
why do i care? whatever!

and that's what i call another satisfied customer.

in college when i dated girls, i only went dutch. this was not so much out of principle as out of necessity. as my rusted out 76 volvo attested, i was not a man of leisure or privilege. barely equipped to take myself to burger king once a week, i was in no way prepared or willing to take on another's culinary appetites.

so in these early days of romance, as relationships flourished i would suggest a date. if accepted, i would immediately ask if they minded going dutch. only one did mind but as it turned out, she was a direct descendent of satan so i learned my system had hidden benefits. for added uniquity, at some point on the first date, i would announce that they, the girl, had an astoundingly generous and guilt-free endowment of $15 which they could use in any way they desired; 3 trips to fast food, fifteen shows at the dollar movie house, i was even amenable to putting these funds towards a larger item, the balance of course to be covered by them.

with marty, our first dating encounter was so brief that she didn't exhaust her stipend. the year following our slight flirtation marty spent dating half the ivy league and i passed those days sitting/living in a friend's basement. during a lull in my male-heavy social life, i called marty to notify her that my records indicated she still had six dollars credit with me and that it was about to expire and would she like to exercise her rights to those funds or let them default? laughingly she agreed to use this line of credit and we went out for a second time.

that subsequent date happened 15 years ago today.

we married 8 years later on this same day.

and on this day, today, i consider those fifteen dollars to be the most significant and well-invested to ever pass through my wallet.

happy anniversary walt.

i wore the same pair of pants 12 days in a row.

that's just another way of saying, the break was good.

last week i received the worst haircut i've had in over 10 years.

this was my second haircut PL (post-Larry).

and, this was my first.

be thankful for...

your opportunities.
people who like you.
indoor plumbing.
and an underwear optional lifestyle.

if you recall, marty and bella were in nyc last weekend. marty went there for two reasons:

1. so bella could see her long time friend, grace, who moved there earlier this year and,
2. to get the hell away from alex.

marty had been commenting on how clingy he'd been since she started the weaning process. i didn't notice it, but then again i'm at work for 3 hours a day so i'm not the fixture in the house walt is. with marty gone and me on little man duty, allow me summarize the weekend as such:

alex's attention requirements make the needs of my third girlfriend look like care instructions for a pet rock.

on a positive note, at least i didn't wake up to find him attempting to draw milk from my itty-bitty, one-haired, man-nipple, as i did with his sister.

before i sold my soul to the corporate devil this is the kind of gift you could expect from me come the holidays or other such anniversary. as i start drafting this season's list of 'things to purchase for christmas' i look at this aged piece of paper hanging on our fridge and fondly recall those leaner, simpler days.


click for larger image

the key to my happiness has always been tied to gross ignorance about anything of consequence.

i think i need to go back there now.

there is a light blue box in the butter tray of my refrigerator that has the words 'vaginal ring' on it. it had some other stuff on there too but i was pretty lost in determining if having this item on my dairy shelf is a good or bad thing for me.

i've been waffling on whether or not to address a question i get every six months or so. it deals with what most refer to as my bifurcated chest.

to a newcomer, it appears my nipple lives below my pectoral muscle. those posing this question admit they find the nipple's placement odd. i'm not squeamish about fielding such queries because it is akin to asking jeffrey dahmer if he knows he doesn't fit in well at dinner parties. and to address this and many other questions asked or even thought, let me put it all on the table for you to digest and come to terms with.

i have ...
the hair of a 70's era diana ross,
the face of many people,
the upper body of E.T.,
an ass more voluminous (and voluptuous) than jennifer lopez,
the thighs of larry csonka,
the calves of stephen hawking,
and the feet of one fred flintstone.

all of this and i still found some girl to walk down the aisle with me.

granted her navel resides about two and a half inches above her pubic bone.

and to answer your next question, yes, we are selling tickets but sadly you can't afford one.

since adolescence, the girls i found most attractive were always strong and independent girls/women, a la marta.

the problem though was the very thing drawing me to them unfortunately made them not only not need me, but in many cases, better off without me.

people do all kinds of kooky things to lose weight. my favorite, by far, never to beaten, is this one:

eating every meal in front of the mirror ... naked.

awesome in its simplicity, this plan rules. and, i figure if such a routine can help your dietary choices, imagine what it could do for other facets of your life. would you have ever guessed that as i'm typing these words to you i'm looking at myself, naked, in a mirror i hung over my desk. can you see a difference? i can.

a couple of very nice mormon fellas stopped by the house to chat the other day. after some polite conversation and realizing the purpose of their visit, i decided to save them some time. i asked if their organization was the one that disallowed caffeine. in a surprisingly unabashed manner, they said they were.

i took a moment to describe my daily regimen, in regards to caffeine, to their dropped jaws. i then explained, in a very succinct manner, that i'd sooner give up my rights of reproduction as well as the body parts responsible for that reproduction before i would forfeit a single swig of my luscious and legal narcotic. it was here that they bid me a good day and went on their white-shirted way.

we got us a school-age child. she starts today.

if you run into me and think i'm crying, i am.

regarding any thoughts of strength, peace and love you were going to wish my way, please direct them to her teachers instead for they need the help far more than me.

those poor and unsuspecting souls.

puberty punched me in the face so hard i was nearly unrecognizable on the other side. the greatest victim to this unprovoked mauling was my hair, which is certainly no secret to anyone who has met me since the age of thirteen. before this adolescent milestone, i had silky strands just like the other kids, but as a teenager i was the sole member of a yet-to-be-established support-group for people w...

is it butt-naked, buck-naked or are both acceptable?

you wouldn't believe how much i haven't got done for thinking about that damn question.

and if you read that previous sentence out loud in my house you would have bella tell you that DAMN is one of the two words on the CAN'T SAY list.

the other word is STUPID.

and, everytime i hear the 'stupid'-word-rule i can't help but think of the uphill battle we're going to have in front of us if we're drawing the line in the sand at the word STUPID. if i were expected to live by this standard there are people in my world who'd think i'd turned mime or gone mute.

at the beginning of the month marty and i each get an allowance. mine is $140. hers is $40. this money goes towards any impulse and/or frivilous spending like eating out, going to the movies, buying candy or coffees, etc.

somewhere between the second and third weeks, i'm broke, always, and hitting the atm to pull funds out of my savings to supplement my monthly expenses.

if at the end of the month marty doesn't have $40, she has $35, always.

i don't even get that. what she does should not even be possible. the girl is a serious freak.

a guy and i were talking at work about what it would be like to go to jail, like for-real jail. this guy is a pretty normal looking dude. normal height, normal weight, has to shave everyday, beginning to lose his hair. you know normal dude. additionally, he doesn't have a feminine thread in him. given all of this, i had to set the boy straight. now oddly enough, after defending my standing as the more appealing prison bitch, i swear this guy didn't look at me the same the rest of the day. is there such a thing as a corporate cube bitch? if so, i'm afraid i may already be spoken for.

remember the story i told a week or two ago about the 4-yr old kid in my neighborhood who peed funny and how i thought i would become a legend if i urinated like him in my office commode . i've had more than one person tell me to stone-up and just go ahead and whiz funny in the john, becoming said legend. something about how i'm always preaching memorable moments and all.

my response to them is that i would but when the legend was retold by the guys i work with it would begin like this: the up-side is they would remember me, perhaps not by name, but they would remember me, and hence the legendary status.

alex is walking. aside from the fact that in perambulation little man most closely resembles the orangutan that starred opposite eastwood in the the Every Which Way But Loose series, everything is good. and good except for we now have doubled the number of people padding about the house at any given hour.

really not a problem if you remove the intimate requirements of marriage. yea...

i am starting a business. i'm going to be a Nula. to answer your next question, a Nula is a naked doula. and, if you don't know what a doula is, it is someone who helps a woman have a baby.

why does the doula have to be naked? well, simply because the woman having the baby is naked, or should be naked at least. and why should this naked woman have to be surrounded by a bunch of folks who are dressed. i strongly believe everyone in a delivery room should be naked and this is my contribution to this missive. i will show up at anyone's delivery, undress in the bathroom, walk out and say "now let's have us a baby" while rubbing my hands together excitedly. this is the service i will provide.

and lucky for me i have two friends days from having a baby. guess that do-it-yourself brazilian waxing kit isn't going to go to waste after all. only question is will jenn or tracy get to see the goods first.