thursday morning i woke up, took my shower and then went downstairs to the kitchen wearing a towel around my waist as i'm like to do. bella was already down there sitting at the counter eating her breakfast.

b: good morning daddy.
d: good morning sweetheart.
b: there's another daddy in the basement.
d: oh is there? that's nice.

one quickly adjusts to the rocketing imagination of a young child and learns to nod and 'uhm-hum' with great frequency. so i got my breakfast together and sat next to bella at the counter eating. then the 'other daddy' emerged from the basement appearing in the kitchen doorway.

o: good morning.
d: oh, good morning.
b: there's the other daddy, daddy.
d: yes, i see the other daddy.

turns out the other daddy in the basement was the exterminator marty had let in while i was showering. marty entered the kitchen and started rapping with the guy. i decided to quickly finish my breakfast and head back upstairs to get ready for work. but, the conversation he and marty were having proved interesting enough to draw me in. it's not often that i stand in front of strange men in nothing but a towel and jaw for 20 or so minutes but (1) i didn't know he was here and (2) it is my house and this is what i do. one may ask what can be learned in such a short span between a man holding a can of bug spray and another wearing a plush green towel. here's a sample of what i now know about this other daddy.

our exterminator ...

1. was one of eight children. four boys. four girls.
2. had a nun ram a pencil into the palm of his hand when he was in first grade. the lead tip is still there.
3. is a book-writing, painter.
4. grew up on a farmhouse built where a lake used to be. in addition to several feet of water they would routinely find salamanders swimming around their flooded basement.
5. went through a horrible divorce where he sold his bar in attempt to get his two sons. he lost the petition and was instructed to give them up and pay child support. when he and his wife exited the courtroom, she pushed the two boys to him and said you take them, but i still want the checks.
6. cried when he dropped his oldest boy off at college. he almost made it out of there but as he was driving away his son looked back and waved. it was here he lost it.
7. almost died from internal bleeding after having colon cancer surgury.
8. wished he had learned to play the piano in his youth, but feared for his safety given his three brothers.
9. tried to domesticate a flying squirrel, mole and just about anything else he could catch in the woods.
10. knows a guy who looks a lot like me.

i had no choice. i told the guy i had to go to work but he would absolutely have to come over for dinner in the very near future. once at work i had the following conversation:

g: hey troy. so what's up?
t: not much. although, i just met the most interesting guy this morning.
g: who was it?
t: my exterminator.

this modest piece of banter culminated with the following life-lessons being passed down to me by a half-circle of the hunting, scratching, full-time-uber-males i work with ...

1. the man of the house should always know, and i mean always know, when another man is in his home.
2. men do not walk around their home in a towel.
3. men do not talk to strangers while in nothing but a towel.
4. men do not invite perfect strangers to their home for dinner.
5. men do not wear boxers. (one guy)
6. men do not wear briefs. (another guy)
7. men switch between boxers and briefs. (and yet another guy)
8. men shower before going to bed and not in the morning.
9. men do not run outside in their underwear to grab the paper.
10. sleeping naked is left to hippies and perverts.

i fear these guys are three minutes away from dragging me to the bathroom to prove to them that i'm actually a member of their gender club.

marty left last thursday for a long weekend at her sisters in chicago. she called me that night saying she forgot to put the diapers out to be picked up. i said i'd take care of it. she followed by saying "i usually put the bin in the hall, so i don't forget it." in my best indignant voice i reminded her that i had said i would take care of it, and wouldn't need any advice on how to perform the act. i was in fact an adult who holds a job and is considered by many to be a responsible individual and have long thought i left the days of being treated like a chore-hating adolescent behind me.

so friday morning at work, when i realized i forgot to put the diapers out that morning, i dashed home only to find i was too late and our new bundle of cotton swaths were already sitting on the porch. i'm sure there are those out there thinking the right thing to do would be to own up to the oversight and admit my failing. the people saying that have obviously never made marty's acquaintance. those that do know her understand the only viable option is/was to throw last weeks soiled diapers into the dumpster behind our house and when marty asks about it, snap the newspaper down long enough to say "i said i'd do it didn't i, so i did it".

...

i wish i could say i did this, but i didn't. because the only thing worse than lying to marty is not recycling things used in her home. the term 'divorcable offense' comes to mind. for instance, i reckon most of you think ziploc baggies are used once and then discarded. to marty, ziploc products may as well have a tupperware logo on them. we got a box the year we got married, haven't purchased a box since and still possess and use as many as we had on day one. this is called dedication and i suggest you don't stand in the way of such grim determination to an ideal. i know i don't which is why i'm able to sit her and type this with two functioning arms.

most people who meet me are hyper curious/anxious to meet marty, and not for the same reason luby was itching to meet her. first they want to see if she's really a she (marty ... marty ... could go either way). and secondly, for the same tired reason of just having to know who elected to put up with me till death makes us part.

well, for your information, the person putting up with me had a very lackadaisical look on her face when we saw two pandas having sex in a tree on the tele and the commentator talked about how the female had two vaginas. after telling marty she was at least 50% deficient she informed me that i was short one bifurcated penis as well and that if i'd work on mine, she'd work on hers.

marty then went onto say that she's often contemplated stopping to check out road-maimed opossums because they, like pandas, have this dual genital thing going on. first question is, how does anyone know this. second question is, how the hell did i end living with a person who knows this. third question is, how the hell is it i'm somehow known as the freaky one living at our address.

and, if you're curious, luby seeks to meet the partners of people he may intend hanging out with just in case the other person totally sucks because he "already has one friend he can only eat lunches with because that's the only time his wife is sure to be working and thus guaranteed to be previously engaged."

awhile back i was approached by a guy who wanted to know if i was interested in doing some design work for a porn site or two. he assured me that he and people he knew had quite a need and the opportunities would be both abundant and lucrative.

the only burn i could see is that i'd be doing work i couldn't exactly put in my portfolio which is a little bit on the evil side. when i mentioned it in passing to marty she surprisingly had a few more negative items outside of the portfolio issue. "just how would you feel telling your daughter that you peddled pornographic material for a living?"

would i be sitting in my new Porsche when explaining it to her?

this would be an example of the wrong thing to say to marty when discussing such matters.

marty has a rule that if i'm ever going to cheat on her it's totally ok, under one condition; i must call her beforehand.

while this seems like a pretty keen deal, i can't help but wonder what effect speaking to my wife moments before would do to the mood. i'm guessing not heighten it.

but, just in case, anyone have a cellphone i can borrow?

how about a dime?

man am i going to make my boy proud of me.

and, we still haven't settled on a name for him.

so yesterday i shared my wishlist with you all. in asking marty about what she wanted for christmas, i found we may be a little bit different. you know what she said? she wants to buy a donkey or goat for a family living in a third world country. a goat!

how can two people with so much in common, have so little in common?

this site is know as many things to few people. my favorite moniker-maker is "he-who is-not-afraid-to-use-naughty-words-in-his-blog-ed". in addition to his current descriptor of "the whole life catalog", he previously referred to my site as "troy has his whole dang life online". thanks for the kind and apt descriptors f-bomb ed.

in addition i've recently gotten the impression, from another blogger, that i've been neglecting my viewing audience. to this, i agree. i have been taking you for granted and depriving you of the details you have become accustomed and addicted to. so in attempt to live up to big ed's nomenclature and to push the plunger for buddy james' awaiting needle, allow me to share some details from my recent life to get everyone up to speed.

more recently than i'd like to admit i wore the same pair of pants 23 days in a row. and, if you're asking the same question marty did (have you washed those this month?), the answer is a confident no.

when not wearing the 23-day pants, i wore the same pair of shorts, which i will call, for simplicity sake, the 23-day shorts. and again the answer to you and marty's question would be a second confident no.

i kicked a bella-discarded pickle part under the stove instead of throwing it in the garbage.

crouching near the ground in my work clothes i saved 8 earthworms from a post rain sun and droves of killer ants, despite many concerned looks by passerby's.

i recently watched the complete first season of OZ in two days. that would be 13 hours worth of humor for the uninitiated.

after the neighbor's dog licked my hand, i wiped the slobber off on the back of bella's shirt. (for those gasping at my lack of respect, allow me to report that she didn't seem to mind).

so as you can see, all's well and going as expected in troy-ville. thanks for your patience and continued intrigue and i promise (meaning i will try as long as it is not inconveniencing to me) to keep you better apprised of my happenings.

for those sending money and thoughts in the name of the tv-cart family (08.07.02), here's a follow-up. not tell me about the particulars of his marriage? perhaps not in an email and maybe not even today but unless he intends on severing all personal ties to me and never looking me in the eye again, this is a story that will be told.

we keep our microwave in the basement. have for years. and the years before that, we didn't have one. when company is over and they want to heat up their coffee or warm a plate of food, we take their morsel, disappear into the basement and return with a piping hot rendition of said item. you might think we would have to explain this a lot, but most of the people we hang out with surpass this paltry idiosyncrasy tenfold and don't think anything of it: "oh the nuke-box is in the basement, sure, where else would it be?"

allow me to proffer the following as evidence. some couple friends of ours tv lives on one of those black, wheeled audio visual carts in the garage ... a disconnected garage in at a home located in the country. as a rule they don't watch tv. as a helper to this rule, that can't keep the tube in the house, lest they may break this mandate. but when company stays with them, in comes the cart with the shiny picture box. here is where you get to envision my grown and portly friend pushing an a.v. cart across a grassy and bumpy backyard into the home so said visitors don't think them foolish or a tad on the eccentric side.

a situational side-effect of this routine comes from the effort required to return the cart to it's spiderwebby home all the way on the other side of the lawn. in getting it in, there is incentive, company and all. in getting it out all there is effort, and work and a hundred pound pain in the ass on wheels. given this, sometimes the tv cart out-endures the company. this is bad. this is very bad. because as you can imagine, there's a good reason the cart lives next to the family automobile.

i received the following email in regard to a sign left by my friend's wife, taped to the tv during its latest tour in their home: given my friends unwillingness to even check the actual writing on the sign for the above email, i'm thinking they will be watching the next super bowl wherever the tv now rests.

dearmitt.com's most eligible bachelor, the dr of diss, stevie williams himself, is no longer eligible and will shortly no longer be a bachelor, simply leaving the 'most' descriptor to describe him which i think he will retain with little issue. stephen and his bride-almost-to-be floated through town for dinner and stories after visiting his family in walnut grove a few months back. after leaving, and i never told steve this, marty and i compared notes and each voiced that we thought rachel was a bit of blend of marty and i thus allowing her to stroll about as an astoundingly bright and witty and wholly attractive and quintessentially pleasant young lady.

and this engagement holds special import for me because i occasionally feared the worst for stevie ever finding that one right lady given a horrible event which occurred in college. during a night of drunken tomfoolery in the dorms, steve found himself sleeping on an elevator, naked and adorning black permanent marker art on his rear quarters which included several inordinately large daisy's, a farm house in the distance and words defining who was here, and there, and basically just about anywhere an arrow could be drawn. and did i mention that he visited every floor of the tower in this comfortable state before regaining enough wit to return to his own.

at a later point in time i thought steve was drawn to medicine to divine a method of permanently removing the faint remnants of those indelible glyphs from his person. i gather he succeeded in that i don't know anyone would necessarily pursue a relationship with someone who's body logged a preverbal who's who of hudson hall in the 90-91 academic term.

good work steive-poo (and that by the way is what i wrote in elongated cursive on his inner thigh ... although it was two full years after the naked elevator incident).

marty and i have been married just over four years and i have finally, just now, convinced her to do away with the metal undercarriage to our bed. now the box spring is right on the floor and the mattress, obviously, sits on top of that. some people think it's silly, stupid and without point. those people are wrong. and simple. and waste their hatred of things on really, really dumb stuff. if you are going to hate, you should hate something of consequence, something that merits your venom, like walgreens or people who say that titanic was really an ok movie.

reasons we are better off without the metalworks beneath our bed.

1. bella can climb in and out of the bed without the aid of a stepstool or boost from marty given her little baby legs.
2. troy can climb in and out of the bed without the aid of a stepstool or boost from marty given his malformed stub legs.
3. not tempted or able to store meaningless stuff under the bed.
4. more room in our room for my bursting ego.
5. summer is coming and we live in st louis and heat rises.
6. when in bed, the room looks super big and you can play the "i'm a little munchkin living in a mushroom house and it all looks wildly out of proportion but that's because i'm a munchkin guy and i am also wildly out of proportion" game.
7. the metal framework holding your box spring does not do anything. the fact that you think it serves a need is the result of a capitalist conspiracy.
8. after peeing the bed in the middle of the night and getting angrily thrown out by marty i don't have as far to plummet.

now i just have to convince marty to let me hang up my black felt iron maiden posters and my vision will be complete.

one of the worst things about being married is having to share the free selections from the quality paperback club membership with your spouse.

walt and i were in a heated argument as to whether one of our selections should be the newly available The Clitoral Truth or not. i'll let you intuit who was voting against us getting it.

in a fit of frustration i suggested that she use one of her selections to get the book How to Make People Like You. i further suggested that she might even consider using both of her choices on that so she can get two copies given that amount of help she needed.

suffice it to say, we will not be getting The Clitoral Truth with this order.

suck.

sorry bookpimp but it's really not my fault.

two weeks after buying my first ipod, I purchased my second ipod at the apple store in st paul's atrocity of america. this would be because 9 days after buying my first ipod, apple released a newer and bigger ipod for a mere $100 more and as I like to say when dealing in such matters, they're giving them away. So now instead of 5gb I have 10gb of space and instead of having 1000 songs I have 2000.

the first thing marty asked was where i planned on getting the extra 100 bucks. i was happy to report that my wedding ring already drew an impressive $135 on ebay.

Marty made the observation that dating is better when you don't live with the person you're going out with. When I asked why she felt this way, she responded:

"Because, I then wouldn't have to watch my date walk into the bathroom and pull the boxers he's going to wear out of the dirty clothes hamper."

I must admit I don't get her point.

I have this thing with hand lotion, skin creams or essentially anything that makes my hands greasy. One of the quadrillion times Marty obtained poison ivy in the back yard she asked me to apply some soothing ointment to her back. I looked at her back and then the bottle of murky murk she handed me. I pondered the request to touch evil substance A to evil substance B with nothing more than my left or right hand. I dealt out five spots on Marty's back, smartly distancing each glop for even coverage. I then took the opening of the bottle and began pushing the mounds of goo around to all of the affected areas.

What are you doing?!?

I'm putting this stuff on your back.

You have to rub it in.

I am rubbing it in.

With your hand, not with the bottle.

What's the difference?

One is what normal people do and one is what insane people do.

Yeah, I know all of those crazy people getting this stuff all over their hands, that's why they're crazy.

Oh forget it. Give me that.

Marty sat up, snatched evil substance B from my hand and went into the bathroom to tend to evil substance A on her own. I wanted to help. I sincerely did. But, I sat on the bed unable to get the thought of either of those contaminants out of my head and the epidermal mayhem that was occurring just down the hall behind the half closed bathroom door didn't ease my anxiety. After a few minutes she returned looking a tad peeved. I asked if I could help, she said that she was just fine on her own. If she could have done it herself I'm not certain why she asked for my assistance to begin with. I decided not to mention this foible to her. She did have poison ivy and all.

Walt and I are about to celebrate our 3rd wedding, 11th together anniversary. We honeymooned in the big N.O., New Orleans for any nubiles out there. This probably wasn't the best-suited locale for us. We dont drink, eat very little, and reserve our nudity for one another. One might think, well, you got each other. Yes we did, but on this day we have been sharing such time for eight years and we ha...