Now that the kids are older and either moved out or are often out, Marty and I are edging our way into those scary waters where a couple has just one another to talk to. When I was younger, I thought this period would resemble life before having kids. Light. Carefree. Easy. In some ways, it is, but when you have sent children you love more than you thought possible into the world, I think my mind ...

MARTY
This is Marty's tenth year back in the classroom, after taking a nine year hiatus to stay home with our kids. This year she returned to peak form. She would have gotten there sooner, but the covid-disruption set everyone's plans back. She is a marvel in the classroom and is someone who connects with young people far better than most. I see this every time we go to a school event in the w...

I had a dream. In it, I was playing hide and seek with a little girl. I have the sense she was a grandchild. She had a frilly dress and thick pigtails both of which flowed behind her when she ran. Her melodic giggle bounced off the walls and brought life to the whole house. I was hiding behind a french door in the nest (where Marty and I sleep). I heard the small voice running from room to room, c...

Before Marty leaves the house she usually stops by to let me know. Lots of times I'm at my desk working (as she will be leaving for work). When I spin in my chair, sometimes she looks like she does in the above picture because she knows I am going to react to what I see.

TROY
Ohhh. I love that [sweater/pants/haircut].

MARTY
I know you do dear.

TROY
I don't t ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. make marty happy

i'm pretty sure this is why we don't live in wyoming, or colorado, or utah, or, and especially, montana.

one of the most often told origin stories of the marty/troy relationship deals with where we live. when people learn that i grew up in colorado, the first thing they ask is why we don't live in colorado now (versus st. louis).

of all the couples that live in st. louis, 90% of ...

i recently took my annual friends and family tour back east. this is a solo trip i've been making the last few years, or put differently, since the kids have been old enough to not overwhelm a single parent. i am fortunate that a few of my closest friends and a portion of my family are clustered in a remarkably small area, an area i did not grow up in (but did finish college in) which makes it all ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. have you seen my manhood

MARTY'S BROTHER
did you see something in troy when you first met him that told you he would be successful?

MARTY
no.

MARTY'S BROTHER
really? well how did you know he would be successful? that it would work out?

MARTY
i didn't know. how could i?

MARTY'S BROTHER
so you didn't know something the rest of us didn't?

MARTY
no. not rea...

i was headed out the door to play tennis. marty came down the stairs wrapped only in, wonkily so, one of the kids winter coats. she said she wanted to tell me something. the something was sweet and loving and made me feel 17 instead of 47. she had to get the coat because she wasn't dressed and saw i had the front door open and my bike was sitting outside so she knew i wouldn't want to close the door. as she ran back up the stairs she pulled the coat aside and flashed me her nakedness, her playful laugh ringing through the foyer before snapping it closed and rounding out of site. more 17 year old tingles.

boy am i glad i'm not at the front-end of dating. it probably wasn't until my thirties before i felt like i had any kind of proper sense regarding everything i was asking for in a partner AND how to competently determine everything that was being asked of me. in recently talking to a young person (who wasn't my child) who was dejected, sad, and hurting my mind raced with where to even begin.
...

marty and i went out on a date night. this might be the second one of these we've been on in the last five years. i took her to a new eatery i recently discovered and then we went to see kathleen madigan at one of our cities swankier venues (the peabody). after the show marty and i remained in our chairs as the other patrons streamed out. they seemed as intrigued by us keeping our seats as we were with their immediate need to vacate the premises (and willingness to fight the throngs of people). as we watched the parade before us, marty commented at the age of the crowd in they seemed a lot older than we expected. as we did our accounting marty leaned in adding, "or maybe we look like them and are old too". huh? what? when exactly did that happen?

and, it seems we are not alone in experiencing this odd phenemenon.

at dinner bella launched into a marty love-fest that went something like this.

BELLA
you're so awesome mom. i mean, you wake up super early in the morning. then you go work all day. then you pick the boys up from school. take them to playdates. then come home and make dinner. and then sit and grade papers every night.

MARTY
well, i don't grade papers every night. i maybe ...

this is a picture of marty taken just weeks before i met her.

my biggest problem in knowing and dating her in those early years was my belief that every man who met her would become as deliriously struck by her presence as i had been. while she claims this was not her life, i've seen and heard enough examples to the contrary that i only half believe her. all i can claim first hand is mee ...

we've had some great dinner table questions as of late. things like:

• if the kids were here home alone, and one of you, let's say anthony or alex, were reaching onto the counter for something and cut the underside of the forearm deeply--like deep where blood was pulsing out of the cut--what would you do?
• what do you think makes someone a good conversationalist? ...
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to follow up marty's bit of life knowledge (here), the advice i always give to struggling folks who approach me: in the name of full disclosure, marty is the person who taught me this lesson. she taught it to me when i wasn't making our early dating years as easy as she believed they should oughta be. so in some regards i guess everyone who has ever benefitted from marty's advice has me to thank because if i didn't spend a part of our early relationship being a crotch-face, then she would have never come to this bit of inspiration.

so you're welcome.

the single piece of advice marty has dispensed more than any other: people's response to marty's counsel has varied.

marty's accuracy in her counsel has not.

another question my friend, the same from yesterday, asked me about in our last outing was why i worked so hard to lose weight and get in shape. his question, obvious as it was, took me a little off-guard and without much thought i told him, generically, so i could make sure i'm able to keep playing with my kids as i get older and don't have to be the dad that sits on the park bench reading the paper, shooing them back to play on their own when they call me in to share in their climbing and chasing games. later in the week, my sub-conscious, certainly un-enamored with my wanting response, pushed forth the real answer by replaying one of lester burnham's many great lines from american beauty. this particular exchange came when he caught up with the male couple from next door during one of their morning runs. if i were honest with my friend, and myself, this is the core reason i'm working as hard as i am. first and foremost i believe that if i achieve that goal, of looking good naked, many other pertinent and meaningful dominoes will fall, like looking good at the pool, having clothes fit me better, feeling energetic, avoiding doctors/hospitals (!!!), walking into speaking engagements with greater confidence, sleeping more soundly, biking a hundred miles with my daughter, getting out of a chair or off the floor without accompanying groans and moans, and yes, all that and being able to rawk the park with my youngins.

the biggest and most unanticipated benefit of getting my body back more like my college days was surprisingly not on my list: making my wife more interested in me. she had never discerningly reduced her affection for me over the decades as i added better than a pound a year to my frame but once the weight left my mid-section, there was a perceptible uptick in the attention i received from her. for instance, as i passed her in the hallway where before we'd politely skirt by one another without any antics, she might now hold a hand out as i passed and rake her fingers across my flat-ish stomach or she might come up behind me as i did dishes and send a slow hand down my side, leaving a tantalizing comment in my ear before peeling away. again, while this sorta stuff never fully went away, this sorta stuff wasn't happening with the same frequency when i was having to up-size my pants every other year. and even though this perk wasn't on my radar of benefits when i began the trek, i can whole-heartedly say it stands out (and up) as the best part of the view now that i've crested the hill.

MARTY
that stove is going to look bare one day without your kettle on it.

TROY
where's my kettle going?

MARTY
when you die.

TROY
that's a lovely morning thought to get my day off to a booming start.

MARTY
i do what i can.

shortly after marty and i began dating, in one of those early relationship questions, i asked marty if i died how long she thought it would be before she would date someone else. she thought for a few moments before saying, in a fully seriously tone, "i'm sure it would be at least a week."

a week! a week! now i'd be the first to admit the three years i wished she would say might have been a touch ambitious but a week. in seeing my startled response she quickly adjusted, saying, "not a week -- longer than a week" and then as if bracing for a firecracker to pop added probingly, "like a month -- three months". marty is pragmatic even in matters of the heart, even in matters of new love. but without this cut to the bone approach, marty wouldn't be marty.

she did pay for her cruel offense by shouldering six months of jokes about trying to pick up guys at my funeral and if it would be gauche to invite cute fellas who didn't know me to the funeral just so she could get a jump on the replacement relationship.

several years later when our path together looked a bit more certain, in a quiet moment marty said out of the blue, "ok. so maybe i'd need more than a week before taking up with some new guy." nicer words were never said to my young, longing heart.

marty and i were in bed, just waking up. the quiet of the house said the children were still tangled wildly in their sheets and blankets. marty leaned against two pillows reading. i had not yet come that far along achieving nothing more than sliding her way, pressing my naked back against her bare skin, in a when-you-think-about-it odd show of intimacy. eyes still closed but too awake to fall back...

to the question of do i have the note mentioned in yesterday's post? of course i have the note. it even includes a greasy spot from the food.



regarding my penmenship, while it's never great, it's really quite un-great at six in the morning when i'm trying to be quick and sneaky.

and in case you want to read the backside too.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. timing

i used to get those daily far side calendars that would sit on your desk. best as i can recall, my mother gave me one every christmas they were ever issued. me being me, i never threw any of the pages away. i'd just pull them, read them and then stack them neatly in some corner of some drawer of my desk. when marty and i got married and moved into our home she came upon a box full of the residual sheets. she asked me what they were. i told her. she asked me why i had them. i told her that too. she asked me if she could throw them out. appalled i took the box from her hands and said no. she asked why we should keep them. thinking for a moment and trying to meet marty's practical side, i said we could use them for scratch paper. marty gave it a fractional thought, shrugged her shoulders, said fine, and told me to put the box over there. that was nine years ago and we're still using them today.

whenever i use one, before marking up the backside, i flip it over, read the comic recycling the good it had, sense the pulse of nostalgia from the moment, and then resume my business. the other day i saw marty snare a sheet off the stack and start scratching a note out without reading it. i stopped her:

TROY
hey, you're supposed to read the comic on the backside before you use it.

MARTY
what?

TROY
the paper you're using. it's an old far side comic. before you use them you're supposed to read the comic ... because it's still funny ... and it gets enjoyed again.

MARTY (pausing long enough to look at me, then at the sheet, then back to me)
yeah, that's not going to happen.

there are multiple flavors of candor, marty employs the extra-lean, time-sensitive kind.

i was once at a dinner with friends and the topic of earliest memories came up. some people, like my wife, had crazy early memories going back as far as pre-school. my first memories started way later than most the pack, solidly picking up in mid-elementary. every now and then i'd get a glimpse of something hazy but after further contemplation the flash was just as likely to be a scene from an old...

as of today, i am married to a 40 year old woman.

i remember when i was young and i'd hear old guys say they thought their wives were as beautiful as when they first met them. i'd look at their wives and think they must have been some haggard looking eighteen year olds. but now i'm that old guy and can honestly say that marty looks every bit as radiant and winsome as when she threw that door open in 88 and i got my first ever glimpse of the girl i'd go on to spend my life with.

and, i've now known her for more than half her life (which means i've know her more than my life as well).

crazy how that clock on the wall ticks away so. i hope we're all taking care of the business we hope to be taking care of.


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