the latest installment of my weekly regiment. the fall 2012 schedule has more change than any update in the past. the factors inducing this include:

• marty's return to work
• bella's starting middle school
• my commitment to addressing some long-tabled house work.
• because i have to get up earlier, i had to move the lion-share of my workouts to earlier in the day.
• my enjoyment of swimming has grown to where i'm now doing it twice a week.
• a new friend recently turned me on to a high intensity strength program called tabata.

another factor not entirely evident on the schedule is my new commitment to sleep. i've hit some point in my adult life where proper sleep has a profound impact on my productivity and effectiveness. of course it's possible this has always held true but i'm just now paying attention enough to realize its effects. either way, i ravenously protect my seven hour sleep window, giving it priority over virtually all else.




or view the five year evolution...



click to enlarge

do you remember when i posted my family countdown back in july?.

well, today the countdown reads 100 days less than the day i posted it, even though it seems like i posted it seven minutes ago.

25 more stretches like that--from when i posted it in july until this moment in early october--and my daughter no longer lives in my home.

twenty five.

that's it.

twenty five more blocks of time like this recent block and she's gone.

100 days from now it will be twenty four.

i want to say a string of really bad words.

but, instead i'm going to go read shel silverstien with my six year old ...

then play monopoly with my nine year old ...

and then watch some music videos with my eleven year old.

25!

shit.

a year or two back i was in a large bathroom stall of a public toilet with all three of my kids. one of them had just gone to the rest room and i leaned over to flush the toilet. bella put her hand on my arm and said in an alarmed tone:

BELLA
whoa! what are you doing?

TROY
what? i'm flushing the toilet.

BELLA
you can't do it like that.

TROY
like what?

BELLA
standing like that.

TROY
why not?

BELLA
don't you know that a toilet can shoot spray from the bowl, like, twenty five feet into the air when it is flushed.

TROY (straightening back up)
uh. no. i didn't know that.

BELLA
uhhh. yeah.

TROY
where'd you hear that?

BELLA
at school.

TROY
oh.

BELLA
and just think if there is pee or pooh in there.

some things:

1. what bella doesn't know is that while i'm surely fearful of pee or pooh being jettisoned at me in the form of a fine mist, clean water from a public bowl disturbs me almost to the same degree.
2. since that day, i have never flushed a public toilet without thinking of that moment with bella (not to mention using an outstretched foot and turning away as soon as the flush begins).
3. also since then, i've come to believe that she (and her teachers) are right in that a few times after flushing the toilet in my office, thanks to a bright frosted window in the stall, i can see small droplets flying through the air in volcanic-like antics.
4. and, by the way, where the hell was that lesson in my sixteen years of schooling?
5. i will confess that, as a grown man, it sucks to have your eight year old child so effortlessly place more obstacles for your neurotic mind to navigate. she's exerted more energy asking to have the potatoes passed her way.

i was working on my computer one night during last month's sabbatical. the software updates notifier appeared. i'd been putting these off the last few weeks so decided to finally install the updates and restart my computer. i ran the updates and after the reboot continued to work for several more hours before going to bed. when i awoke in the morning, i went to my office, lifted the laptop screen...

i went to my doctor yesterday. it was my first post 40 visit. i told marty i'd go. i told myself i'd go. i made the appointment in a moment of conviction. i steeled myself for the day. i promised myself i wouldn't balk. or argue. my doctor of sixteen years walked in and sat down. he asked lots of questions about the last three plus years since he'd seen me. he reviewed my bloodwork in detail. he had me take my shirt off and lie back on the waxy paper. he poked and prodded me above the waist for a bit. he then handed me my shirt back, said everything looked good and to keep doing what i was doing. then he shook my hand and left.

i think it's fair to say that worrying about a digital prostate exam has probably taken more days off my life than an unhealthy prostate ever would. it looks like i can breathe easy for one more year. i'm sure you're as relieved as i am.

between the ages of 25 and 35 i was a full-on hypochondriac. any persistent discomfiture would send me to my doctor complaining of shortness of breath, bloated lymph nodes or persistent fatigue. my doc was a patient and kind listener to my woes until one day, visibly frustrated at my ongoing-angst, he told me that the human body is an amazing structure, the most amazing thing any of us will ever see, and it can shoulder the most ridiculous sorts of abuse for many years before it begins to show signs of wear. he said at my rate of malfeasance i wouldn't experience overt signs of physical debilitation until i was forty and that before turning forty all my pieces and parts would continue to operate as advertised. you know what ... he was right. and seeing what has happened in just the last few months, i've constructed the below model for your own benefit and edification.

i would liken a pre-thirty year old body to silly putty. you can do the stupidest of things to that flesh colored nubbin and it bounces back each and every time proving just as resilient as the day you first took it out of its two-tone egg.

i would like a thirties body to play-doh. still lots of fun and able to do plenty of neat tricks but not quite the gamer the silly putty was. play-doh isn't going to recover from being run over by mom's car tire in the driveway nearly as well as its near cousin, putty, is.

now a forties body, and i'm quite new at this, but a forties body i would liken to day-old play-doh. you know the play-doh that got left on the kitchen table overnight, taken for granted, forgotten. we all know, too well, no matter how much you re-work it in the palms of your hands or how many drops of water you secret into its folds, the stiff cudgel of doh is never as pliable, moist or sweet smelling as it was before the trespass.

the moral of the story is, take care of your play-doh today because you do reach a point where there's no getting it back tomorrow. and if that hasn't got your attention, i'm noticing i suddenly have a lazy nipple. did you even know such a thing was possible? one droopy nipple! i gotta admit, it wasn't anywhere on my radar.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. multi-purpose

our home's sick policy:

if i can't see it, you can't sell it.

obviously, this is marty's sick policy because mine is a little more like:

if i can smell it, hear it or sense it you're staying home, and far enough from me that you can't touch me. if i can actually see your illness, you're going to the emergency room ... in a car that is not mine.

the people i live with are sick. the whole lot of them. it started weeks ago and has been evolving through the ranks with great alacrity. when this happens i possess great skill at avoiding the funk my people carry. i wash my hands with greater frequency, interact with people using more care, pop echinacea like tic-tacs and sleep in remote parts of the house. last night while slumbering on my futon/couch something stirred me from sleep. i opened my eyes to find alex's awake face inches from my own. he had curled up next to me on the small futon space.

hey aleo.

hi dad.

what's up?

i had a bad dream.

i'm sorry to hear that.

then he quick-sneezed, dotting my face with phlegmy shrapnel. and just like that i joined the infected masses. in the future i'm going to start sleeping in the car ... and with it parked in a neighboring zip code.

i was in a conversation with someone who expressed shock that i didn't have my work-shirts professionally laundered and pressed. i expressed equal disbelief they could. when asked why i would ever bother with such a pedestrian task when an affordable option was available my response was quick and short; i have no interest in a bunch of random humans touching my shit.

and let's say that through years of counseling we were able to bring about a total re-alignment of my thinking so the mere notion no longer made the back of my throat itch, another problem exist. i have no interest in other peoples' stuff even touching my stuff, especially when the other peoples' stuff is sometimes their bacon-stained, tighty-whiteys. i know what goes on at the dry cleaners. i've seen the leased bmw's slice into the saturday morning parking lots. people aren't just dropping off their pinstriped oxfords and starched khakis. i see bursting santa-claus like nylon sacks getting hoisted onto the counter with a grunt, the drawstring straining to keep the soured garments (and stench) contained. while i don't claim to know exactly what is in those bags i can claim to know i want nothing to do with any of it.

bella has this funny habit when she finishes a roll of toilet paper she takes the cardboard tube off the holder and drops it into the bathtub. seems minor but when i shower in the morning i just reach in past the curtain and turn on the hot water to let it warm up. then moments later when i step in, i see this water-logged spool soaking in the middle of the tub. from this i've come to learn i don't like touching wet cardboard (probably the most predictable thing i've ever learned about myself) which means i leave it there for someone else, which in our house can also be pronounced 'marty', to deal with later in the day/week.

i asked bella why she threw the roll in the tub and not in the waste basket. she shrugged her shoulders and said 'no reason'. i asked her if she would stop doing this and she unaffectedly said 'sure'. a week or two would go by sans shower surprise when one morning there it is, again rolling around against the spray of the shower jets. after thinking on it some, it occurred to me that i just assumed bella was the one doing it and that i've never actually seen her make the maneuver. this may explain why they keep showing up. with my luck marty is the one doing it in protest of our decade-long battle over wether the toilet paper should come out from the top or bottom of the hanging roll. she and i have persevered through children, financial crises and other significant life changes yet an agreement on how to hang the toilet paper in our home's only bathroom eludes us. looking at this in print, i'm seeing how petty the matter is, but what are you going to do when you're married to someone as stubborn and convicted as marty. i will confess though, if she is behind this secret and this is her tactic of choice in settling our feud, she just may come out on top this time.

what the associated press had to say about this happening: and what troy had to say:

i was in the breakfast room reading the paper. bella was in the living room pretend-reading a nancy drew. she called from the couch asking if i would bring her a glass of water. i walked a plastic cup into her, she took it, raised it and then paused before drinking:

BELLA
dad, did you get this water from the sink or the fridge?

TROY
i got it from the sink.

BELLA
oh good. that means i won't get diarrhea.

it was at this precise moment that i stopped asking questions about things in my home. questions like why is our brita pitcher disassembled on the kitchen counter in more pieces than i even knew it had. or why did my daughter just say that our purified water supply would induce diarrhea? i didn't ask because i've learned, slowly and finally, that i'm simply not prepared for the answers that will come.

walt and i went to a bbq last summer. while surveying the food spread, i saw a stack of plates, quartered heads of iceberg lettuce, a small bowl of white dressing and a large plate of ribs and chicken. it all looked great and i was anxious to get started but was stymied in that there wasn't a sign of any silverware.

the male host walked up behind me and invited me to dig in. i said i was looking for the silverware and he gaped at me like i was mad. "SiLvErWaRe? SILVERWARE!?! THIS IS A BBQ AND I'M FROM TEXAS AND WE DON'T ALLOW NO STINKIN' SILVERWARE!!!" so i did what any scolded and denied adult would do. when he turned away, i walked into his house, uninvited, and went through his kitchen looking for cutlery. no silverware my ass, there were piles of it inside. so i helped myself to a place setting and for my trouble, also took a wacky straw i happened upon (that was just to make a point).

now appropriately equipped, i returned to the food table and prepared my plate. i neatly cut my lettuce, dripped some of the white stuff on it and took my seat. i looked across the table as the sticky-fingered heathen held his iceberg wedge like a football, raked it through the chunky white sauce and raised the full dripping mass to his already smeared mouth. he made an exuberant-scrunched face as his mouth bore down on the roughage. i quietly shook my head at the scene, stabbed a small piece of the lettuce on my plate, dabbed it in the dressing and carefully placed it in my mouth. two minutes later the fork was in the grass and i was cramming the lettuce/sauce mixture into my mouth as rapidly as my two hands could scoop it from the plate. and when the concoction was done i licked the residuals from the folds and crevices of my fingers and palms contorting my wrist and hand as needed to access it all.

texas blue cheese dressing is pretty dang good.

if we are at someone's home and bella has to use the restroom she employs the best of manners. she seeks out the host(ess), asks them where their restroom is and if she may use it. after receiving consent and directions she turns and hurriedly moves towards it. if what she has to do is poop, she will pause, turn and ask if they have father wipes<...

the family went camping this last weekend. one of the mornings i passed another fella in our party and commented on how impressed i was that he'd already showered. he said he hadn't and asked what made me think he had. my eyes drifted to his hair in that it looked wet and shiny. he noticed my gaze and ran his hand through it telling me that it was just oily and he needed to go wash it.

sorry dude. my bad.

this mis-speak seemed to make its way back to the camp because later his wife engaged me:

HER
so troy, how long does it take for your hair to look un-showered?

ME
as long as it takes for mcdonalds fries to start looking as if they're rotting.

HER
and, how long is that?

ME
i don't know, they're still watching them.

marty told me of a story where a twelve year old science-fair participant did a study on five of the restaurants in her home town. she analyzed their ice cubes and toilet water, and she found that the toilet water was cleaner.

can somebody older than twelve and with a little juice call foul here and take some corrective action?

and while i support this youngster's obvious giftedness, i don't think i want to follow her success because at twelve she's already given me the perpetual shakes. there's no doubt that this girl's future thoughts and studies will work to fully incapacitate me.

i've previously mentioned how marty treats ziploc baggies in our home. they get the same respect and delicate care as our finest dinnerware. this has always been her fight, never mine. anytime i would see a soiled and stained baggie on the counter, i'd leave it for her. this was understood.

last night i washed my first ziploc baggie.

i didn't want to do it. the whole time i was asking myself, aloud, why are you doing this troy? problem was i had just cleaned the kitchen and it was immaculate, save for this one sad-ass, large-size freezer bag on the counter. i couldn't leave it. i tried. i've left them hundreds of times before without the slightest of pangs. i even started walking out of the kitchen but made the mistake of looking back only to see this crumpled blight on my pristine countertop's landscape. it was here that i slowly turned and walked back to the sink. i held it up by a corner examining it before gingerly turning it inside out so i could wash my first ziploc baggie.

this is a sad day in the world of troy. sad because troy has begun washing his garbage.

several years ago, marty and i were lounging on the futon watching tv. i had an abdominal pain and kept massaging the side of my gut, groaning painfully.

what's wrong?

i have this damn stitch in my side. it hurts like hell.

it's probably just stuck poop. push on it, it will help work it loose.

she never even looked away from the tv nor did she stop popp...

a curiosity about my family; they've all got impulse control issues. wether it is marty straightening the counter in your home's kitchen or alex eating your six month supply of potato chips in a single sitting or bella arranging the books on your bookshelf by size (and then color), they've, collectively, got some real and identifiable problems.

you'll notice my name missing from the above inventory. this is because i'm the only member of the clan without such an affliction. of course, i'm also the one responsible for repeatedly clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth so the universe doesn't collapse upon itself.

no need to thank me, i'm doing it to save my ass, not yours.

something difficult to do in my home; keep the roll of toilet paper hanging next to the commode dry.

and, it's wet for different reasons than the roll at the shell gas station down the street is wet ... or at least that's what i'm repeatedly saying aloud as i'm sitting on the john delicately pulling the moist plies of paper apart so i can use them.

as for why i haven't engaged the issue more aggressively; i've never felt more fresh or pampered.

if someone chooses to not use their sick days and comes to work ill, jettisoning their poisoned dna throughout the office, other presently healthy employees should have the right to use the diseased individual's sick-days (since they seem disinclined to). i mean why shouldn't the un-sick folks get to stay that way, un-sick? as for who should get first dibs on these confiscated privileges, a neurosis-based pecking order seems to make sense. what's one more bulleted list to corporate america?

granted, such an intelligent selection process would more than guarantee myself first rights to any neglected sick day. and don't think i'd only take honors in my current office because i'd win this lottery in your office, your partner's office, the office of every person you've ever known or done business with. you're reading the words of a man who can see germs as easily as i can see if you flushed the toilet in my home. and i'm not talking about detecting your day-after-the-super-bowl bowel movement, but your near-clear, post-bally's workout urine. hell, on a good day i could tell you the score without even walking into the john.

and, if i hear one more person tell me they're beyond the point of contagion i'm going to hack a spittle-laden sneeze on their keyboard and say "yeah, me too."

the teachers at bella's pre-school send a note home in her backpack every school day. these notes typically share what was done that day or plans for the next day.

earlier this week the note home read ... if you think anyone in our home was checked before me, you'd be horrifically mistaken. fact of the matter is marty had to pick through my hair while the letter laid at my feet with me repeatedly saying "do you see any? are there any? what is a nit? what do they look like? what do they do? oh my gawd, have you found any!!!!!?"

during my tremble-voiced questions bella stood in front of me, innocently looking up, saying ...

BELLA
dad, they're just like white ants and if we find some then we look for the mother or father and try to get them first so they stop making more babies in your hair.

TROY
white ants! babies! bella please stop talking while mommy checks daddy. and this is different than how mommy checks daddy on saturday mornings but all the same you got to give us a minute. marty are they really like white ants? please tell me they aren't really white ants! marty! have you found anything?

MARTY
just a little bit of dandruff. but i think you're lice-free.

TROY
dandruff! oh great. so instead of live ants i just got a bunch of dead debris living on my head. this is great. i'm going to go take a shower. and no more notes from school! i don't want to know!

BELLA
what's dandruff?

i've been showering daily (mostly) since i've been old enough to stand under a spray of water. it wasn't until LEVER soap's 1000 parts ad campaign came out that i realized what a suck job i was doing at bathing myself. when i first saw the commercial i'm sure i took it in with a wide-open mouth. 1000 body parts! frick! i counted out on fingers my known body pieces, bathing-wise, and came up about ...

it is my personal goal to be the last information technology guy in america who doesn't own a cell phone. as it stands, it's between me and 18 other folks.

i still haven't even seen titantic. i cannot be beaten. this is a fact.