a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dinner-table biology

this is my third wednesday of eating lunch up at bella's school. now feeling chummy with the crew, i asked if anyone knew what they would be dressing up for on halloween. this question was met with a resounding yes followed by an inventory of characters. i then asked if they knew what joke they would be telling while trick or treating (a definitively saint louis thing). this culminated in a barrage of impromptu knock-knock jokes most of which punch-lined with the word 'dumb-head' or 'poop-head' and as best i could tell i was always the one in the simple/fecal-headed seat. the melee climaxed with this final knock-knock joke which i was actually pretty excited about in the early stages.

VICTOR
knock-knock

TROY
who's there?

VICTOR
for real, you've got spaghetti on your pants.

TROY
for real, you've got spaghetti on your pants who?

VICTOR
no. you really do have spaghetti on your pants. look. (he points under table where i see a smallish pile of meaty pasta resting on my knee)

TROY
oh, dang. i thought that was your knock, knock joke.

VICTOR
i said 'for real'.

TROY
yes you did victor. you did say 'for real'. sorry i didn't pick up on that.

if these youngsters don't get a little more precise in their consumption of food, these wednesday lunches may be short-lived.

bella's single complaint about kindergarten, to date, is that it is too long. when marty consoled her by saying it would get easier and she would get used to it, she replied ... "but it's just too hard to go all day without loving you or father." those are called 'mad skills'.

days later, a teacher told me that parents are welcome to come and eat lunch with their children. curious about h...

the kids and i biked to a nearby park last weekend and i bumped into an ex-colleague. we were close enough to the playground that bella and alex continued on while i stopped to chat with my friend and his family. after bella got off her bike, removed her helmet and was ready to proceed she started calling for me. i was busy bringing my pal up to speed on my life; bragging on how well things were going with the new job and even newer baby. he asked how the kids were adjusting to anthony. i explained, honestly, that they were great. bella is doting and alex impressively gentle. overall things were very warm and loving. i should mention that the whole time i was talking bella was thirty feet away yelling at me, bike helmet in hand.

dad, we're ready to play.

dad!

dad get over here.

dad get over here right now!

dad git!

father. if you don't come here right now, you're going to be fired.

dad!

DAD! you're fired.

(alex was standing there sucking his thumb and looking elsewhere through this whole lambasting until that last line at which point he removed his thumb just long enough to say in his soft, partially interested voice)

yeah dad. you're fired dad.

i was specific in directing the warm and loving sentiments of my children towards their new brother, not their old father.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dad has to go

bella starts kindergarten today.

as if i'm not already enough of a mess with this looming milestone, i've had a number of veteran parents tell me that the period before your oldest child starts full-day school is the golden era of parenthood. the rationale claims that once a child enters school-proper, parenting becomes more challenging given the child's exposure to people you haven't liked enough to personally invite into your home. the theory does seem sound. the theory also does seem to suck a whole lot. on the positive side though, while some of the folks bella will be forced to interact with will be evil, the process is sure to bring some experience-rich personalities to the table she/we would not have otherwise met.

and as proof of the universe's incontrovertible balancing act, the same weekend our golden era ends, bookpimp's journey begins. congratulations michael and christine on the birth of your first child.

wish me luck. wish bookpimp luck. wish anyone responsible for tiny heart-absconding humans luck.

04.30am		put my computer to sleep after working on a site design for 7 straight hours
04.35am		get undressed in the dark and fall into bed only to learn alex is sleeping in my spot. i yank my pillow from under his head and drag it behind me to his bed.
04.40am		listen to bella grind her teeth for five minutes and do some unqualified projections on what orthodontic expenses will look like in ten years.
04.45am		fall asleep
06.18am		roll over and smash my face into a metal thomas the tank engine toy. attempt to throw it across the room but send it into the wall next to the bed. fall back asleep.
07.30am		get pushed in the head by alex's foot and told to get out of his bed. i push him away telling him to go ask mom.
07.34am		get shoved again by alex, this time with a hand, and told more emphatically to remove myself from his bed. i repeat the instruction to take it up with his mother. he leaves.
07.50am		pushed in the back by marty and told to get up for work.
07.53am		bowl of grapes spilled on my head and chest as alex roughly climbs over me for the thomas train that accosted my cheek and nose earlier.
08.00am		pushed harder in the back by marty and told she's not telling me again to get up.
08.06am		tickled by bella and excitedly told 'first one to the tv room gets to pick first show'. i tell her i hate the formulaic brainwashing that happens on modern broadcasting and am fifteen hours into a boycott. moments later i hear her shout her first-show victory through the house.
08.10am		again shoved in the back by marty and told i am ruining her morning.
08.32am		i wake, naturally, and stumble to the bathroom feeling surprisingly refreshed and have a notion it is going to be a good day.
08.35am		i find my electric toothbrush lying behind the toilet. it seems the good day hunch was a tad premature.

i've previously commented on the totally schizophrenic nature of children but have never really exposed the same trait in the keepers of those children. the below three shots represent a sub-sixty second block of time during last week's spiritual outing. i like this series because it does much to illuminate the dramatic shifts possible in one's state when little humans are constantly in your grill.

additionally, twenty minutes before these snaps, i was asleep in the ultra-bed. when i stirred naturally from my slumber and opened my eyes, i found bella's round face inches from my own, studying me intently. her expression changed slightly when my eyes opened. we silently looked at one another for a few seconds before she raised her arm, patted me on the head and brightly said "your hair is crunchy dad". she then rolled out of bed and marched off. i share this incident because i feel understanding how my day began may help to explain my impressively alert and welcoming glances below.

as you may have noticed from my unintentionally, unannounced absence last week, i pulled the car off the highway (the car being my mind and the highway being my life ... cliff note for my closer friends). and not only did i pull the car onto an onramp, i actually removed the key from the ignition, tossing the small ring onto the dashboard where it sat all week, with one notable exception.

the hiatus was medicinal. and i'm not talking about your three-aspirin variety but a count backwards from ten caliber of narcotic. the topper ... i slept outside all week. have you ever slept outside? and i don't mean tent-outside. i mean outside-outside. my naked feet poked between the slats and over the edge of our beach house's second-story deck, the ocean winds massaging my triple-E soles. only one night did i sleep alone. all other nights, i had bella or alex or both nestled in an armpit or sprawled across my chest (marty and sassafras slept indoors, enjoying the bountiful real estate their bed offered).

one night after reading books on the porch-bed alex was drawing on a piece of paper with a bic pen. he set the page down and the wind lifted it off the deck sweeping it away. he immediately pointed at the lost parchment and sent me packing.

ALEX
daddy, my paper.

TROY
yeah, your paper blew away alex. you should have held onto it better.

ALEX
you get it.

TROY
no, me not get it. i'm in bed and it's probably a mile away by now.

ALEX
get my paper daddy.

TROY
alex it's gone. i can't get it. here, finish your picture on my hand.

he looked at the the back of the hand i set in his lap, shrugged indifferently and resumed his artwork. thirty minutes later my hand, arm, chest and stomach looked like a drunk tattoo artist was pissed at me. i mostly didn't mind serving as little man's canvass but alex became obsessed with fully covering my nipples with the blue ink of the pen. do you know how hard you have to press a ball point pen against a flaccid male-nipple to actually color it? allow me to answer; hard enough to make the full-grown owner of that male-nipple wince ... repeatedly.

i was eating breakfast, marty was making lunches, bella was elsewhere and alex was sitting on a portable mini-toilet in the corner of the kitchen. an impressive burst of gas reverberated in the plastic compartment beneath alex's bum breaking the morning still of the room. he smiled widely at the echoing noise, marty grinned and i chuckled. we are a house of innocent pleasures.

ten seconds later alex made a face, pinched his nose and asked 'what's THAT smell?'. marty, never even looking away from her cut orange, naturally and medically responded 'that's your gas alex'. at this news his body slumped incredulously in the chair 'noooohhhhhh mom ... ' and then he pointed to me saying ' ... daddy gas'.

having my children associate all foul and wafting odors in the home back to me is not exactly how i envisioned my fatherhood. i cannot say why i position myself above such stereotypical unfairness, especially since 19 times out of 20 they'd be right in their aromatic hunch. this admitted, i still find the notion that i must quietly accept blame for every bout of flatulence that happens between my bouts of flatulence quite unjust.

alex has two toys of choice at the moment. one of them is a six foot inflatable alligator and the other is a three-inch high space-cowboy he calls 'cool guy'.

let's begin with the object that inflicts the most physical pain upon me, the life-sized gator. to date i've walked my groin into its upright tail four times. sure you'd think something this large would be easy to spot but it's a sn...

you know those small decals some people, usually high school or college-age women, put on their bodies while tanning? it often seems to be spring-break related and of a playboy bunny or rose or pot leaf. i currently have one of those, although it is not of a rabbit or prom-flower or infamous herb. it is the perfect profile of a three year old child in fetal position, sucking his thumb.

yes, my pale and hairless torso is emblazoned with this life-sized outline because my youngest child took a four-hour nap on my chest while i took a two-hour nap on a lounge chair while at the pool. i woke up slightly before him to find myself awash in sweat from his head, drool from his slightly open mouth and urine from his seemingly pointless swim diaper. while there are many tragic points to this gaffe, the most damning seems to be that this not-modest collection of body fluids acted as an accelerant to my tan which succinctly outlined his curled up frame on my concave chest and soft belly.

in the days since, i've studied this skin-art in the mirror after my morning shower. i contemplate the significance of the young women's choice of symbology comparing it to the message my branding will send to onlookers at my next visit to the pool. i'm going to go out on a limb and say my mark doesn't scream 'spontaneous hook-up' like a frisky feline on my inner thigh, also hairless, might. damn the luck of it all.

question. do you know the two words most used by a three year old? they are 'no' and 'why'. another question. do you know how demoralizing it is to get whittled down in an argument by an opponent who refuses to say anything other than 'why'? it is the equivalent of losing a chess game to someone who moves nothing but pawns, which for those who don't play chess is pretty sucky.

another que...

our bathroom door doesn't lock. come to think of it, our bathroom door doesn't even latch. it stands wide open much of the time, occupied or not. casting a glance that way while walking down the hall often results with spying bella sitting on the john chin resting on her bracing arm and her legs dangling from the seat.

you may think that given the state of our door hardware, people would respect that when the door is swung closed, the room is occupied. we're not quite there yet. five minutes before the writing of this thought i was attending to my late afternoon constitution when the door pushed open enough for bella's head to pop through. "oh!" she exclaimed. "sorry dad, i just need one of these." her arm reached to the back of the door and pulled a bath towel off a hook and she and it disappeared. she called a "thank you dad" out as she quickly ran down the hall.

i'm not a math guy but this equation is one which i'm all over. that is, if bella is hurriedly after a full size bath towel, something pretty bad just went down. there was a time i'd try to figure out if it was one of my valuables or another's but parental experience has shown me that it is always my stuff. the kids have yet to be employed and therefore haven't acquired anything of merit or value. the last thing marty voluntarily purchased out of need or desire was back in 98 and that item fell when bella was just three. so what is left is a house chock full of dad-stuff. and it's not like i prefer delicate and costly electronics or anything. and certainly not stuff that couldn't withstand being doused with a bowl full of milk that got upended during a scuffle between bella and alex for the remote while yelling "my show, no my show, no my show, NO, MY SHOW".

many more of those sorts of battles and that argument will become a moot point because marty and i are in agreement that we're not replacing any more broken household items until the children leave for college. if you could see some of the antics that go on in our miniscule tv room, you'd know the tele is already living on some serious borrowed time.

i'm reasonably certain there's a game afoot in my home called 'hide dad's shit'. there are simply too many of my possessions that go missing at any given time for any other explanation to be plausible.

distrustful of my hunch? when i find my favorite tie rolled up in the bottom of marty's twelve-year old moon boot in the back of the coat closet ... downstairs ... i'm feeling rather convinced.

yesterday i had two at-home jobs. the first was making dinner. after toiling to prepare wholesome and tasty sustenance for mi familia, bella sang a song through the meal, chin on palms, annie the orphan style that partially went something like this:

i hate being a kid
because everyone is mean
i hate being a kid
i wish i were a kitten
because everyone loves kittens
and father is so mean
father is so mean

we received this ten-minute, off-the-cuff serenade because i didn't serve her milk to her in a bowl. unbeknownst to me she was playing kittens and kittens don't drink milk out of cups, they drink milk out of bowls and fathers who don't know this are stupid-heads (child speak for priggish asses) and deserve, yep you guessed it, to be fired.

my second job was washing towels and rugs (because i didn't complete my chores on sunday). so i finished them and brought our fluffy yellow bathroom rug up. the kids were the first to get the benefit of the dryer-warm carpet, alex in particular. the second i pulled his diaper off for his bath he loosed a ten-inch long torrent of urine diagonally across the rug, smiling broadly at the arcing stream. not a drop hit the tile which could have been easily dealt with. all of it was perfectly placed and then absorbed into my freshly laundered mat.

but to be comprehensive about the day, while i was making dinner bella and i were playing prison-break. how prison-break works is she sneaks up behind me and bear hugs the bottom half of my legs together so i can't move. this is the prison part. then i have to use the keys, my tickle fingers, to try to get out of prison. this is the break part. when bella was three prison was fun. now that bella is five and quite strong, having her lock on unannounced is akin to someone duct-taping my feet together, hanging a fifty pound weight around my neck and giving me a hearty shove at the top of a stairwell. alex has watched this production a number of times, thumb-in-mouth and always standing a safe distance away. tonight he decided to step up and while bella was gigglingly bear-hugging my calves from behind and i was trying to tickle her loose i heard a quick, sharp crack, immediately followed by bella wailing. i turned to find alex with the biggest, proudest smile, resting a wiffle ball bat on his shoulder as if he's between walk-the-batter pitches. bella is holding the crown of her head with both hands screaming childs' curses towards him. this is one of those parental moments where the best you can do is simply not laugh out loud.

so obviously for a guy who gets heckled through the dinner he prepared AND has someone piss all over his day's labor moments after its completion, it's not shocking to learn the highlight of my march 14 was when my two-year old brained my five-year old with a long, yellow club. i mean, at least it was a plastic club and to be fair we were playing a game named prison-break.

bella fires more people than trump. this started a few months back. not sure what seeded it or even where she heard or understood the meaning. just one day people, meaning marty, started getting dismissed whenever bella became annoyed. earlier this week marty and alex were a few minutes late picking bella up from school. as marty approached, the door opened and bella's teachers walked her out.

MARTY
sorry i'm late.

MISS JUDY
oh, what's the bother? someone has to be first and someone has to be last.

BELLA (pushing her way through everyone towards the stroller)
mom, you're fired!

but, similar to the adoption trend, marty is the first to feel the brunt, but whatever hell she is catching is sure to be ultimately spread throughout the family. last night when i announced i had to walk the babysitter home, i was immediately "fired 50 times". don't get me started on this escalation-bullshit. upgrading my penalty by such magnitude is a complete abuse of one's power, and i for one take exception.

and forget the minor detail that we have children who don't wail and scream when we leave them with a sitter but instead when we return and send the sitter home. i always thought kids cried when parents left and rejoiced upon their return. we have to literally peel our children off the help just so they can get out the door. like my two year old son bear hugging the leg of our 20-something babysitter. which puts me in the awkward position of kneeling behind her prying his fingers off the back of her lithe thigh, pleading with him and apologizing to her simultaneously.

TROY
he really doesn't hate us. nor is he afraid of us. he just doesn't see outsiders too much because his mother is a bit of a shut-in and i'm a bit of germ-phobe. so, again, they don't get to see new people a whole lot. now dammit alex! let go of the maria's leg so she can go home! i'm really sorry about this.

in my distracted state alex leans forward and bites my hand which causes me to lurch forward head-butting the girl's ass (also lithe) which makes her fall in my lap and inadvertently pulls alex into her groin. this would of course be the moment marty chooses to enter the foyer finding the two men in her life rolling around on the floor with the one coed in the neighborhood who has not yet been warned to not babysit at THAT house.

i sense more firings on the horizon.

i'm sure you've all deduced by now that last week bookguy and i went on our annual ski trip, now seven years strong. the trips are always rejuvenating but they are also always melancholy at the end. the gloom begins when we part ways in the airport concourse exchanging a clap-on-the-back farewell hug.

after that comes the quiet and lonely walk to the gate. once there, i slouch in a chair waiting for the boarding call, sound-bites from the week playing through my mind. many make me grin. when the saint louis flight was announced i took my place in line. the guy in front of me was wearing a t-shirt that read across the back 'GET DRUNK, BE SOMEBODY' and the truthful reality of my itinerary sank in.

more melancholy feelings.

upon arriving home, my spirits lifted knowing i'd have different kinds of hugs awaiting me there. from marty, i got a thankful, re-enforcements have arrived sort of hug. from alex, a tiny-armed bear hug around the neck. but from bella i got a turned shoulder. i sat down next to her and asked what was wrong. she told me i was a bad father for leaving for so long and she was no longer going to be my friend. i explained that this was unfortunate because i had been away becoming an armpit doctor and was anxious to check hers to make sure they were alright. she turned towards me inquisitively.

BELLA (6)
are you being for real?

TROY
of course i am. do you think i could make something like that up?

BELLA
well, what do you do? how do you tell if armpits are ok?

TROY
like this ... (and i grab her tickling her madly)

and just like that we were again fast friends, for real. now i'm astute enough to know it won't always be that easy which is part of the reason she will start being invited on the annual ski trips very, very soon. i reckon the hard part will then be explaining what 'GET DRUNK, BE SOMEBODY' means and why she doesn't want to be that somebody.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. things that are yellow

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. marcher

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. be a warrior

i get asked to write referrals for this or that every now and again. i reckon we all do. recently i was asked to do a new sort of one though. these guys were trying to be a host family for a child coming from another country to receive a medical procedure. the child would stay with them through the operation and recovery which would last almost two months. the reference, obviously, was going to the agency placing the child. i found this an extra-challenging item to write because it was not about some dude i went to college with or used to work with nor was it whether they would make a good programmer or college student, it was an assessment of a whole family and at stake was the well-being of a young and ill child.

fortunately i like this family. i like them a lot. this is what i wrote: while thinking about what to write i had a memory of a moment i shared with jack many years ago. some of his college buddies invited him to a week in a cabin on a lake. when jack asked about accommodations for his family the friend laughed at him stating that the whole point of the vacation was so everyone could get away from their families.

i didn't have kids yet so didn't think too much about the implications of the classmate's remark. i do remember though being totally transfixed on jack's disgust towards the comment. his emotion was so visceral that i knew there was a great amount i didn't understand about being a parent or even husband for that matter (a good one at least). he and his wife have totally given themselves to the life they have chosen. now that i have kids, i understand how hard this is to do. and now that i do understand this, my respect for how they live their life is ten-fold what it was.

and for those who know me well enough to ask about jack and jill's true identity, don't bother. i'm not sharing my alpha-family with any of you wannabes because i need all the help and one-on-one attention i can get.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you rang

i'm starting to feel like my father-in-law, in certain regards at least. he had seven kids. when they were older, the phone in his home rang thirty plus times a day. over a month we're talking about almost a thousand calls. for sure, i've worked at help desks that got less traffic than this. and of all those calls, you know how many of them were for him? not a one.

legend goes that on the rare occasions when he was the only one home, he'd be sitting in the living room watching a sunday tv movie or the like, eating a sandwich. if the phone rang, he'd pick it up and simply say "they're not here right now" and hang up. when the family returned they would ask if anyone called. yes. who was it? i don't know. what do you mean you don't know? i don't know, i didn't ask. the girls would go and complain to their mother who would come in and ask why he couldn't take a message. his response; i couldn't reach a pen.

now i'm certainly not there yet and i don't plan on ever having seven kids but when you consider the fact that bella is four and already gets more calls than me, this more resembles my future than it does not.

i'm laying face-down in bed being woken, prematurely, from a strong sleep by a relentless alarm clock.

through the stupor i realize the object on my back is my sleeping two-year old, himself unmoved by the grate of the alarm clock.

it was at this exact moment that my mind experienced its most lucid thought ever.

the sensation lasted less than a second but in this blip, ...