For most of their lives my children didn’t know a website existed that chronicled a great number of the things they did and said. Upon learning of it, their...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. Don't do that

"See you Sunday."

This is what we say to Anthony when he leaves the house. It doesn't matter if the day is Monday or Saturday; this is what is said. The source of this is tied to a single weekend from his sophomore year where Anthony left the house on Saturday morning with no real plans in hand, and we didn't see him again until Sunday evening.

He did a number of things with tho ...

End of an Era, Part II

End of an Era Part I here.

Logic dictates that when one thing ends, another thing begins, and this new era has plenty of interesting fodder in the folds. For one, it, the new era, is marked by Marty and I being the parents of three grown children. There are many curious things about watching your children ste...

I recently, to Marty, compared Anthony to Bella saying that something he did reminded me of her. With zero pause, Marty quickly corrected me with the following.

PART 2 - Shopping on the Bed
(In case you missed Part 1, it is here)

Another big difference between Marty's experience and mine was where the gifts that lined the tree came from.

For me, part of what made Christmas morning so exciting was the complete mystery of it all. While you...

Click for a fuller-size rendering of the above.
PART 5 - Meanwhile, at home

The above picture was taken on the first day that all three of our kids were back to school, virtually, of course. Our tradition has been to take individual photos with each child on the first day of a new school y...

After Marty got her online-curriculum process in place, she turned her attention to students who seemed to be struggling with this new virtual schooling. Her idea was to invite small groups to video chats and talk through the challenges they were having. Before doing a for-real call with her first set of students, she wanted to practice running a Zoom meeting. Like all of us, she had heard the horror stories and didn't want to be the next casualty. To this end, she sent an invite to Bella, Alex, Anthony, and I. In the invitation, she asked us to (1) join her on a practice Zoom call and to (2) try to wreck the meeting.

At the appointed hour, I joined the meeting. Marty's office is right next to mine, so after joining, I went to her desk to explain the process. Bella was down the hall in her room, and the boys were downstairs in our "computer cafe."

Bella was next to join the meeting. Bella and Marty were talking nicely when Alex chimed in. The second he appeared, he started screaming. Loudly. Then Anthony popped up and started screaming too. Also loudly. Remember, Marty asked the kids to try to wreck her call. I've held many Zoom calls since starting my company, and the most significant challenge I've encountered is a lagging internet connection. I was about to learn how badly one of these could go.

From the moment they joined, the boys were screaming jokes and trading memes, totally taking over what moments earlier was a peaceful conversation between Marty and Bella. Marty immediately got flustered and asked how she could shut them up, hands flared over the keyboard. I, leaning over her shoulder, helped her find the Manage Users / Mute option. She hit it for Alex, and his voice dropped out. Then she hit Anthony's switch. But the moment she muted Anthony, Alex's voice returned, saying demonically, "I will not be silenced, mother."

More panic. A deeper dive into the settings revealed a second mute switch that would let the meeting organizer mute people and keep them muted. After silencing Alex a second time, you could see she was starting to understand the setup. But the moment she killed Anthony's mic, Alex started writing on the screen in a huge jagged scrawl using the Annotation tool--TURN OUR SOUND ON!!!

It took Marty a few moments to find how to disable the writing tool. All the time this was happening, Bella was helping Marty find the settings and giving her additional suggestions.

BELLA
Mom, make sure you don't have any porn tabs up.

MARTY
I tend to not run a lot of porn in my browser, so I should be safe.

BELLA
Well, check your history too. People have been bitten there also.

MARTY
Again, I think I'll be safe Bella.

BELLA
And make sure other people don't play porn on their screens.

MARTY
They can do that?

To this question, Bella changed her background to a beach scene. In the time we asked her how she did that, she changed the picture to an old boyfriend. While we asked how she did that (again), she contorted in her bean bag chair, pretending to make out with his large smiling face. While we looked for how to defend this setting, Bella put up a textbook drawing of a penis with some medicinal (I hope) thing on it. Even though Marty had figured out how to silence the boys of both their verbal and annotated barbs, we could still hear them downstairs howling hysterically at Bella's phallic background.

After much laughter and more than a few obscenities from Marty, she figured out how to run a defensive zoom campaign. Granted, she spent the whole time squinting at her screen and hovering over her keyboard in a frenzied battle-pose, which made her look like our own Ender Wiggen.

In one of her first meetings, she had a couple of kids show up she didn't recognize. She immediately asked them who they were and why they were there. When they didn't respond quickly, she bounced them from the room without pause or question. She then turned her attention back to her for-real students as if not a thing had happened.

If you would like to rent out the DeArmitt-children for your own Zoom training or Marty to run your Zoom-events, they all have an unprecedented amount of free time on their hands.

TOMORROW: Part 5 - Soapy Bottoms

we have a new ritual in our home. and to be clear, whenever i say "we have a new ritual" it means i am adding a new thing to my already lengthy list of routines. when the term "we" is involved it just means i am subjecting the rest of my family to the routine as well. i call this new one "house tip of the week".

this stems from a belief i have that if there is some life matter (versus s...

i recently had reason to go on facebook and came upon this lovely bit of history. glad stacey wrote it down as i failed to and it was nearly lost. i don't recall this bit of wisdom but it surely has marty's thumbprint all over it. thank you stacey!

marty and i begin a new phase of parenting this week. we are now the parents of three teenagers as anthony turned 13 on saturday. it seems unfathomable on many levels, but i'm sure time will blur again, and we will wake up as parents of three full-on adults.

i'm elated and relieved that we got all three of our children through their childhoods without any great catastrophes. not all famil ...

the above screen shot shows a web page i look at nearly every day. it is part of a collection of webpages i use to motivate and remind me of things important to me. i originally made the above page to look at before leaving the office to help me shift from work mode to family mode. when i first made it, the day count in red had thousands of days. now it has hundreds of days, and barely so.
View in Gallery >>>

you know how when people take a picture they sometimes yell an instruction like "everyone smile" or "everyone be goofy"? I think for this picture the instruction yelled was "everyone be their genuine selves". i say this because i've never seen a picture that so perfectly captures the essence of these four people.

going around the circle.
Marty just bleeds natural and confident hap ...

growing up i remember goofing on my mom at how quickly she could get emotional at something. i have a crazy, vivid memory of a coke commercial that ran for awhile in the eighties that made her cry not just once but upon every viewing. it depicted a family adopting a little girl and then raising her, showing pivotal snippets of maturation (riding a bike, blowing out birthday candles, graduating hig...

a few years back our car broke down in sidney nebraska. we were en route to utah for our spring break holiday. we left sidney with a surprising number of good memories and warm feelings having made the most of our two days in the small town.

a perfect example. one day while out for a walk (to the original Cabelas superstore), we saw this statue honoring the pony express. as the family read the related plaques that circled the impressive monument, bella climbed onto the horse and then called to me to take her picture. as i set up, marty snuck into the background and photo-bombed the shoot. then the boys joined in. and then, well it is just how things tend to unfold around here ...






























in the end, we were able to pull out a decent family photo but those never seem to come at a simple trajectory.

and this episode reminds me of a story that marty tells of when she was a young girl. she grew up in a house with three older brothers. the few times she would bounce downstairs wearing any sort of makeup she would get mercilessly taunted by her brothers. a popular one was for them to ask who beat her up and if she would just give them their name they would go give them a good pounding. this constant jibing kept marty from ever drifting too far into the it-girl lane (it-girl/it-guy being what my family calls the fashion-governed, opinion-driven in-crowd). i'm thankful for this because i share marty's brothers sentiments about makeup on marty (but probably for different reasons)--for me it is not just that it doesn't look right on her, but i think it makes her look less beautiful, or rather, she is always more fetching without the 'enhancements', however minimal she claims they are. marty has no prayer with me because there has never been a day where i haven't thought marty looked her best in the first moments of the day where she is minutes out of bed, wonky hair and all. she hates my position on that but i stand by my claim. this is the life of a natural beauty.

but back to my other natural beauty, bella. i've seen some moments where bella has begun the slide into the it-girl world but each and every time our family tugs her back to the ground and keeps her from ever taking that part of the game too seriously.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. i prefer the term mature

how about that stranger things? if you're one of the six people who haven't seen it yet, worry not, no spoilers here so don't sweat reading on.

the show is crazy well-done. the story. the mood. and particularly for season two, the music. it is doubly poignant for me as i was the same age as the characters in the time it was set. i may have also, like the characters, been on the edges of ...

alex is not the only one wrapping up certain experiences (end of soccer). we just went to anthony's last elementary concert. i gotta say, even if it is not the focus of this story, i'm very impressed how well i am handling all of these last-milestones with my children. it's no secret that i'm the only one anyone in my house ever worried about gracefully surv...

a supplement to yesterday's soccer-story.

after the last game on the soccer schedule, we invited the team to our house for an end of season party. it was a remarkable mix of kids spanning all three middle school grades. this is the second year we have hosted this event. i was disinclined initially to make the offer for an odd reason. last year's party went so well i didn't think we could replicate it and the only thing that could happen is it would be a disappointment. i was wrong.

marty and i did next to nothing. we cleaned the bathroom, ordered some pizzas, and whipped up a few pitchers of kool-aid. aside from that everyone, and by everyone i mean every last player that was at the game, came over and enjoyed an easy, laughter-rich afternoon full of trampolining, xbox tournaments, slack-lining and basic juvenile ribbing.

at one point a lid came off a kool-aid pitcher as one of the boys was filling his cup and the bright red liquid raced everywhere. even that misfortune proved to be a non-issue given that the kid responsible reacted quickly and took care of the mess. my favorite part of that moment was the memory it jostled in marty's mind. she re-told the kitchen about when bella, at around age five, spilled a FULL pitcher of kool-aid half in the refrigerator and half on the floor. after walking into the room and surveying the result, marty wordlessly walked to the wall-phone, dialed a neighbor lady and said, "can i send my kids down to your house for a bit?". after a short pause while the other lady talked, she added, "oh no. nothing is wrong, but if they stay here i'm going to kill at least one of them."

for what it's worth i think it would take more than spilt kool-aid for marty to slay someone else's child. so the middle school soccer team was safe enough on this day, even with a near equal kool-aid catastrophe.

every saturday i clean the bathroom. part of my process includes replacing the set of towels. i throw the old set down and re-stock the bathroom with four large bath towels, 1 hand towel, and 1 wash cloth (for the shower).

on monday night i went to take a shower (as i realized it had been four days since my last shower -- a curious side-effect of working from home for me) and there was only one large towel hanging on the racks and it was damp. looking about, i found the second one, balled up and wet in front of the toilet. i started walking the house for the other two. i suspected they would be on the floors of one or more of the bedrooms. i suspected wrong. the search went on. in the end i found one in our computer cafe next to the kitchen on the first floor of the house and the other in the basement next to the washing machine.

while i will surely miss my children once they leave my home, i will surely not miss having to dry myself with wet towels that i had to search for once my children leave my home.

in a weekend bout of exasperation that she was losing the reins on her home's space, marty emptied two crammed basement bins of stuffed animals on the living room floor. she called her three children and explained that all of these forgotten toys were about to be donated. the only way one could stay in the house is if you, the child, wanted to keep it AND could say (a) where it came from, and (b) ...

while anthony and i were walking to school a man in a well-kept bmw stopped to bid us good day. we returned the sentiment. in parting, he told anthony to work hard in school and drove off. as anthony and i watched the car pull away anthony said ...

ANTHONY
that man must not have any kids.

TROY
why do you say that?

ANTHONY
because he has such a nice car.
<...

marty took anthony up to the bank to deposit money into his account. anthony, aged ten, handed his slip made out for over one hundred dollars over to the teller. she pulled it towards her, lit up and said, "boy that is a lot of money--where'd you get all this money?"

to this anthony said, "i sell things in the alley."

marty instantly knew that sounded a lot worse than it should. ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. front yard

the playground at anthony's elementary has two kinds of parents strewn about before morning bell: all the parents of the new kindergartener-crop and me, the parent of a now fourth grader. the kindergarten parents huddle expectantly. in these two and three person clusters you can see them pensively exchanging trials (and tips) about the rigors of turning your baby over to the education-machine. i'm...