we are recently back from a week of tent-camping in northern michigan. i would say where exactly but since i'm pretty sure we will return, i'm not looking for any more competition for campsites, so the specific place we like shall go nameless. some highlights of the week though:

• i slept outdoors in a hammock all week. our location was remote enough the sky was fully peppered with stars--so much so that you could make out the hazy stripe of the milky way. the scene was so rich that i kept my glasses in a little pocket connected to the hammock so when i stirred in the night, instead of going right back to sleep, i would fumble around for my glasses, put them on and take a few minutes to take in the sky through the gaps in the trees above me. i had to do this odd ritual because i went to bed before the sky was in full bloom.
• i began every day, save one, with a 30-40 mile bike ride through rolling michigan hills.
• i concluded several of the afternoons with a multi-mile paddle board adventure along the coastline.
• i didn't shower for 8 days.
• i swam with olympian-speed (for me) to save anthony (8) who got caught up in a riptide. *
• via yelp, we once again discovered an eatery the whole family enjoyed so much, we are tempted to make a weekend trek back up there just to enjoy it again.
• on the way home we intended to stop for a hotel but after running into (a) very few hotels, and (b) no hotels with vacancies, we ended up driving straight through. when the day began i expected to be asleep by midnight or one at the latest. when i finally laid my head down on my own pillow on my own bed, i glanced at my watch--it read 6:00am precisely.

* regarding the riptide event. we were on a strip of beach where a large lake and a small lake were separated by about forty feet of sand. a little kid, around four, and his father dug a small trench between the two so the boy could float his boat through the channel. four hours after they connected the two bodies of water the trench had grown to be forty feet wide and possessed a waist deep (for me) current that was hard to stand against as the water from the smaller lake was pulled into the larger body--creating an instant riptide of sorts. as the channel and the current grew larger (as it was continually eroding the fragile sandy banks) so did its reach or push out into the larger lake. of course this new feature proved to be huge fun for the kids playing on the beach as they rode the waves on boogie boards or just simply threw their bodies into the strong current to be rolled along. for the several hours this went on i stood sentry at the bank, twice having to step in and grab kids who were having problems in the waters. the six kids with us (my kids plus three from a family we were traveling with) were having so much fun i offered to hang back while the other adults headed back to camp to get dinner going. i figured this would give them another hour or two of play in this unique water feature.

once the time had passed and we needed to head back to camp ourselves, i called the kids over to help collect our gear. just as i thought we were ready to go one of the young boys who was playing in the water came up behind me saying "mister! mister!" when i turned he pointed out into the water, past where our riptide's sharp current ended. bobbing in the water i saw anthony (8), a single arm waving in the air. i dropped what i had and sprinted into the shallows and once it was knee deep dove and began swimming towards him. i didn't do my usual freestyle technique which would have allowed me to swim faster because intuition told me to watch where he was positioned should he go under the water. sadly this change in form did not make me swim faster. when i arrived to him i saw he was clutching onto a kick board (thank god) but panic set in when i turned to the shore to see how far out we were and realizing how fatigued i was in getting to him. just before the panic took full root a voice behind me said, "would you fellas like a lift".

i spun further to see a man kneeling on a long paddle board. i had spoken with the man and his wife hours earlier, initially about their paddle boards but also about the area and such. he had been resting on the beach with his wife when the boy had pointed to a wayward anthony. alert and astute he followed me out to anthony and thank god he had because when i looked at how far we were out i was not confident about getting not only me but me and anthony back to shore. so i need to thank that three dollar kick board that allowed anthony to stay above water until i got to him and dan, the wildly calm and cool (and ripped) middle school history teacher and track coach from kalamazoo who definitely saved the chili of both anthony and i on that day. thank you dan.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dream fail

the scene looks like many american backyards on the weekend, with a dad doing lawn work. the predictable part of the picture is interrupted by a second story window being cast open and a partially eaten apple being chucked from it. the father watches the apple, land, roll, and then stop in his freshly manicured lawn. later when the father polls his children about the apple, the eight year old boy confesses to being the thrower. when challenged about his choices. he said mom told him to do it, or admittedly, said he could do it. to the question of why his mother would tell him to do it he said, so they could see what would happen, but only after guessing (or hypothesizing--science teacher and all) what would happen to the apple in the days ahead. and now they were testing their guesses (or hypotheses).

i wonder if any of them hypothesized that their father would come chirp at them about chucking fruit out of second story windows.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. what are you, a comedian

when bella was still in pre-school i began a ritual called dad days. dad days happen once a year, and are not to be confused with dad hours which happen five times a week. dad days began as a way to celebrate a child's achievements in school. in the beginning i would pick them up from their last day, which was usually a half-day, and take them out on some adventure catered just to them. further, t...

aleo and i have been playing some video games together. much of this time, especially in the early going involves him getting me functional. occasionally his use of language is the greatest. two examples that stand out are:

1. i was complaining about my joystick. he asked to see it. he moved around a bit and then said, "yeah, your joystick seems to be a little cockier than mine. we can trade if you'd like." i said i'd rather not, because i for sure thought the cockier controller would pay off in the long run (this has not yet come to pass).

2. then we were playing something else on the computer and i was complaining about the mouse being extra twitchy. again, he asked to see it, opened up a control panel or two, moved some dials and then told me to try again. in explanation, he said his friend maria was over playing with him and he had to turn the "sensibility" up for her. knowing maria as i do, i'd second aleo's suggested course.

and let's get past the point where i come off as a over-delicate fool that just complains when things aren't exactly to my liking. it's not like this is getting exponentially worse with each year that passes. i can't help if i'm a touch cocky and high on sensibility.

the question on my mind as of late has been about mentoring and namely about why it seems so challenging for middle-aged guys to find and nurture mentoring relationships with our elders. i mean there are plenty of older men out there. and many of them are certainly accomplished enough. hell, simply by being older, even if you squandered the lion-share of your years in an armchair watching crappy, or even good, television, you're bound to have observed a meaningful thing or two, even if by accident, in your multiple decades of life.

so, these days, when i meet a person around my age i ask them about any older mentors they have and how they came to have them—you know, just the normal backyard party small talk. i posed my question to a neighbor who is a surgeon. through our talks we discovered how similar developing young talent is in both technology and medicine. he was experiencing some difficulties with a new, super-bright doctor his practice had brought on. when he asked one of the senior partners about it, the older doc pithily said with a hint of knowing sympathy in his voice: and that was all he had to say on the matter. in reflecting on the brief response, i'd conclude, that might be all that needs be said on the matter. while there are many challenges in aging, having a better grasp on the why's and how's of life certainly goes a long way in making those physical deficencies sting a little less.

no. i'm not talking about that kind of family tramp. i'm talking about the family tramp that the neighbors who moved away gifted you before their departure. i don't think a week had passed since members from both families hefted the awkard ring over the three-foot fence (pictured in the background) that marty commented on how comfy of a bed it looked like. then, i don't think two days passed befor ...

here's my new favorite all-time, acapella song.

when i first played it for bella, i blindfolded her and sat her in my office chair facing my stereo speakers and then blasted the song irresponsibly loud. something about that focused listening enriches the experience.

marty was driving home from georgia after a week away with the kids. i was in a meeting in my office. in the middle of a sentence my phone, which was sitting the desk between the man i was meeting with and me, began to ring. in the seven years i've had my phone this might be the eleventh time it rang as no one really had my number and those that did knew using it was about as effective as screaming my name out their front door. surprised to see it come to life, i glanced down at the screen. it read: SEX GODDESS. i swung my eyes to the man on the other side of the desk to see if he noticed the caller. he had not. i said i had to take it and answered the phone and heard: i later told the guy what happened and was relieved at the time that he didn't see it. he said if he did see it and i wasn't going to answer it, he surely would have.

bella and i were on an evening bike outing. in the summer she has taken to riding later in the day, some rides lasting well past sundown. while many parents and riders would balk at these post-sunlight rides, bella landed the right riding partner because for twenty years i did all my distance cycling between 10pm and 2am for a number of reasons i won't get into here/now.

on this night, we wended our way through our typical route. as we rounded a gentle bend with high brush on either side, we came upon a broad meadow that, at this particular moment, had thousands, and i do mean thousands, of fireflies dotting the landscape. the vision fully took our breath away as we rolled through a scene straight out of a Miyazaki film. as far as you could see in either direction small dots of light silently winked on and off in the dark.

it wasn't until we cleared the meadow that bella turned her head to me, mouth agape. she didn't even say anything—she just had a look of amazement on her face. i shook my head in agreement. the next time we stopped a few miles later, before the bikes had even stopped rolling, bella was commenting.

BELLA
did you see that?

TROY
yeah that was really something.

BELLA
have you ever seen anything like that?

TROY
never.

BELLA
we shouldn't tell anybody about it. just keep it as our secret. and only show it to people we really love.

we fist-bumped the deal. so if you ever want bella and/or i to take you to firefly meadow, you're gonna need to amp up the charm, like a lot.

i was making some new benches for our front porch (in part due to a new, totally sweet, dowling jig i recently bought). i was modeling them after a bench i made several years ago. between my superior skills (compared to several years back) and improved tools (uhhh, dowling jig), i considered upgrading to a higher grade of of wood. the problem point here is that it would add a fair bit of cost to the project so i wanted to make sure i could pull the benches off without any issues.

while getting things organized, i stepped out to the porch to take measurements on my existing bench. while crouched down and measuring the various parts and pieces, i noticed how the top slabs of wood, where you sit, had deep divots and mars in them from the kids various projects. the most damning of the marks came from our meat tenderizer hammer where, i recalled this day specifically, the kids went through a multi-day period of busting open acorns for sport using the medieval looking meat hammer as the pounder and my hand-made bench as the worktop. i imagined my reaction to them doing this, or any other number of their child-divined games, on high-dollar pieces of lumber versus the simple treated wood i've historically used.

then, from my crouched position, i recalled one of the first and most meaningful parental lessons i ever learned: you can love your things or you can love your children, but you can't love both.

after completing my notes, i, with nary a reservation, went and bought my low-grade planks of wood.

the mancation tradition has been happening long enough that we don't really know how long it has been happening. if asked, we say it has been in effect for around twenty years.

i know that it has been going on long enough that when bookguy got married, he listed his mancation as a non-negotiable part of his life and like his occasional surly attitude, is just part of the package.

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bella turned me onto this girl awhile back. at first i expected just another wispy dove-voiced girl who looked and moved right. but in each of the three videos my daughter sent me of the girl's work, i was repeatedly struck by her lyrics and storytelling. i'm not sure if she writes her own stuff or not but if so she's got a real talent for observation and bending it to fit her need. if it's someone else, she's got a good songwriter backing her up. i for one loved the days where songs more consistently made storytelling part of the craft (e.g. johnny b good, american pie).

here's a recent lesson on aging marty and i just bumped into. scars on older people stick around much longer and in an uglier, darker form than when you're young. i commented on how two cuts i recently got were acting like they weren't in any rush to go away. she flashed me her own battle wound and it looked almost exactly like mine. to add to it she told me to keep an eye on anthony, a kid who seems to get a minimum of one cut/bruise a day, as you can almost watch his skin heal back to perfection before your eyes.

if you are storming up on this lovely physical milestone as well, the good news is while our external mars don't go away so easily, the internal cuts that used to take weeks and months (or longer) to heal in our teens and twenties, barely break our thicker, tougher emotional skin these days. so aging, as people sometimes like to claim, isn't just broken eggs and spilt milk—there is a fluffy, cheese-filled omelet (or two) sitting within arms reach as well. you just have to look on that side of the table.

i recently bought amazon's most recent technology offering--echo. it is very similar to iPhone's siri but instead of being carried around in your pocket, it sits somewhere in your home. i situated ours on a window shelf in the kitchen. it's a fun sort of toy that can play 80's music (my preference) while you cook, make note of things you need from the store, tell you jokes (anthony's favorite) or ...

during school anthony would visit a speech therapist a few times a week. she was helping him with a few sounds he seems to stumble on when talking fast, like R's (my struggle when his age were any words with double-Ls). she, like seemingly all speech therapists, is young, charisma-heavy and attractive. she smiles big and talks with great positivity and brightness. both marty and i were struck by her after meeting at a patent-teacher conference. a few weeks after making her acquaintance a school-day story made its way back to us.

moments before anthony walked into the speech-lady's office she fumbled her drinking glass and spilled water down the front of her shirt. she dabbed it up as best as possible and then went about work. she greeted anthony when he stepped into the room and told him to take his seat. then as she turned to face him our second-grade anthony said: as is her nature she handled this unexpected comment with grace and humor. it probably didn't hurt that she was in fact a breast-feeding mother (not that anthony had any idea about that--but perhaps there is a look or a smell though--although it is probably more the case that he thinks all young women are breastfeeding some human). she later told marty she was struck by the ease and confidence of the eight year old's comment to which marty simply said, "well, you can tell he's a boy who saw a good number of years of breast feeding--maybe possibly a few more years than he should have."

driving back from utah from our third year of skiing we slid into a wyoming rest stop. the kids and i took first shift in the bathrooms. upon returning to the van, we saw no sign of marty. i asked bella if she was in the bathroom with her. bella said no. we scanned the space looking for a sign then a goofy bird sound had us all look over our heads where, high in a tree, sat the children's mother. ...

regarding yesterday's pro-peril story, for any wondering, my part of the peril was installing the rope on the tree. i'm not a fan of heights and for sure know bad things can happen. but if i want my kids to leave their comfort zone and travel to new places, i reckon i should as well every now and again.

granted, being taunted by anthony while going through my trial with chants of "do you want me to climb up there and do it dad?" does not enrich the experience in any meaningful way other than, maybe, egging me on to finish the job.

and i'd never been more thankful for my failing vision because once i was at the peak of the climb and trying to manipulate the thick-as-my-wrist rope into the slip knot my super-neighbor taught me minutes earlier, i was able to slide my glasses down my nose a bit and given my severe near-sightedness, the distant world below blurred out, looking much less ominous.

i don't think folks talk nearly enough about the awesome parts of getting old.

we were gifted a trampoline a year ago. for the record, most cool things our kids have can be connected to the generosity of someone who is not their parents. the tramp is a modern-day issue with the high netting all around. for reasons i'll explain in a moment, we recently removed the saftey netting. seeing a tramp without this encasement these days is kinda like spotting a black bear in yellowst...

a few days after my fourteen year old bella was mistaken for a grown woman (ref), she and i were out running errands. i told bella that given (1) her looking older than she is and (2) me looking younger than i am since shedding 25 pounds we might start running into situations where people look at us and wonder if we're a father and daughter or a rich guy and trophy girl. after icking and hacking her way through the suggestion she explained that no sensible human could be that mis-guided. i agreed that it seemed crazy and unlikely but said she should prepare herself for the possibility.

not even twelve hours later bella and i were on an evening bike ride through our park. we pulled up in front of the art museum to adjust some gear (me giving bella my helmet because she forgot hers - again). as we were working things out a woman exited the museum and walked by us. glancing our way, she pulled up and complimented our bikes. she stood back taking them in and then said it was so great that we enjoyed the same things and got out together. she began saying "it's nice when a ... ". here she paused and looked at each of us and bella finished her sentence "father and daughter" and the woman picked it up thanking bella and saying it was hard to tell sometimes.

after we parted and got out of earshot of the lady bella turned to me, saw my broad smile and said, "don't say a word. not a word." and we biked on in silence for a bit while bella digested this new development.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you're what?

in trying to convey at point at the dinner table to anthony, i said:

TROY
haven't you ever heard the saying "as a man thinketh, so he is"?

ANTHONY (8)
uhh. no. and i know i've never heard that saying because i've never heard the word 'thinketh' before.

although after that exchange anthony will never again be able to make that claim because 'thinketh' saw tons of play after that as in "do you thinketh you could bring in the ice cream" or "i thinketh it is time for dad hours" or "i thinketh i must use the restroom."

all three kids were scheduled for haircuts. we lived through survived a time that logistically scheduling three kids for a haircut in the same visit would have proven a herculean and catastrophic endeavor. herculean given the ambitious feats of occupying the two not in the chair and catastrophic in the sense that afterwards you'd need the remainder of the day to recover. but these days with a 14, 11, and 8 year old, marty called out a ten minute warning. in seconds the boys charged by to get dressed (it was only 12:00 on a saturday). as anthony passed, marty asked him to wake his sister. and that critical thought you just had about our daughter sleeping at noon isn't judgmentalism, it's jealousy—i know because i felt it too. after getting dressed, anthony returned to marty and asked if he could say that it was her idea to wake up bella. marty chuckled and said, yes, he could say that "mom said" to wake her and then added that he should just give her a gentle nudge on the hip and say it was time to get up. and that's what was done and they were in the car at the appointed wheels-up time. AND the dearmitt-walter clan set yet another salon-record for amount of hair removed from three humans (granted, bella and alex carry the day here).

and the best news of all regarding this maturation is it totally possible for me to say to my wife that while she and kids were getting haircuts i was thinking about catching a movie. because there was most definitely a time saying those words to my wife while in arms reach could have resulted with her holding my larnyx in her balled up fist but now, instead of rending parts of my anatomy from their home, she says "yeah, that sounds great. we'll meet up after." and not in a facetious way but in a, "great—go have fun" way and there's like flower petals floating down around us and soft music playing in the background. so i got to catch a weekend matinee of ex machina, a movie i would suggest you carve out time out to see as it is a wildly excellent and thought provoking affair about not our future, but about our childrens' future (possibly our grand-childrens') but assuming we can hold this planet together long enough, it is in someone's future. curious riddles they will be. and if you can go to a guilt-free afternoon matinee i would suggest doing so, if for no other reason, just because you can.