the following events happened to me in a seven minute span on an otherwise picture-perfect day.

1. i sat down to watch some queued up college basketball when alex changed the channel on the remote. for those who don't have tivo, just accept that this is not something you want to happen.
2. after taking the remote away from alex and turning back to the tv to turn the channel back, he reached up and pushed my Vietnamese iced coffee over onto our white futon. for those who haven't experienced Vietnamese iced coffee, it is the approximate color and viscosity of 10w30 motor oil.
3. after removing the futon cover i went to the basement and started the washer only to find i just doused a load of laundry that had been washed but hadn't yet been moved to the dryer.
4. after emptying the washer and waiting for the water to fill, i was spraying a stain treatment onto the futon. it took my brain a few moments to realize i was bathing the nine open cuts on my hands with Zout. and these were not your average scrapes or abrasions, they were the mementos from my latest window project which means they were slices from glass which makes a paper cut feel like butterfly kisses from your high school sweetheart.

and, i'm not entirely convinced this isn't further retribution for yesterday's post.

and, i'm sure i'm not going to have to suck the pipe for this either.

man is my mom going to hate this photo. but not nearly as much as i'm going to hate the one my family goes on at an official photo studio, ala olan mills, in the days to come. "you tilt your head this way...now you move a little to the left...you rest your elbow on your knee like you're relaxing...you tilt your head back the other way...now everyone smile...eveyone have fun...can someone make the ...

marty was passing through an intersection yesterday when an suv running a red light t-boned her. the point of impact centered on the passenger side rear door and the collision sent marty's car into the neighboring lane where the car came to a slow stop.

no one was hurt. i can't even begin to tell you what kind of ziggurat needs to be erected to the germans for their automotive prowess. the center point of this collision was 15 inches away from 2 month old alex's head. he was pulled from his car seat unscathed, screaming his tiny, diapered ass off, but unscathed. it's friggen amazing. especially when you look at the car. the entire passenger side is a complete disaster with both doors having been pushed in about six inches.

when marty called me at work, and after confirming everyone was ok, i was ravenous for details. how fast were you going? 40mph. who was at fault? the other person. how's the car? bad shape. was it a man or a woman? woman. was she talking on a cellphone? uncertain but the car behind her said she was messing around with something. what did she say to you? nothing.

NOTHING?!? this was the response i wasn't prepared for. i asked marty for clarification.

t: do you mean she didn't say anything important or she really didn't say anything?

m: she didn't say anything. i never spoke to her. what did you want her to say?

t: how about i'm sorry. i'm sorry for being such a complete idiot and endangering you and your childrens' lives. i'm just sorry.

m: well maybe she was shook up too. i mean she probably recognizes what she did.

t: you see, by not apologizing i'd say she doesn't. i'd say she doesn't appreciate that she just made us a one car family for the next month. or that if they total the car, we're out the 1000 bucks we just put into it last week. that she just cost us 20 - 40 plus hours of our life in trying to get all of this squared away. i'd say that she doesn't appreciate that she could have killed your child. i mean i'm not asking for a lot here but a simple apology seems quite in order.

i can't exactly explain why i'm so enraged by this minor detail. my best guess is fear. the thought of what could have happened on this day terrifies me to the marrow and i want the person responsible to simply own that. and i know how that sounds and i can already hear mike mumbling something about me being a petty fool and the rational side of me knows all of this. all that truly matters is i've got three healthy family members sleeping in this house right now and we're not at the hospital or worse. i do know all of this.

but the other thing i know is how much i hate shopping for cars so just say your sorry dammit if for nothing else, for making me have to go shopping for cars!

odd places i've seen stray pubic hairs in the not-too-distant past:

1. in alex's diaper at his 1-week pediatric exam. the doc checked to make sure it wasn't attached before confessing that had it been, we may have a problem.

2. sticking out of the play-doh as it passed through a fun factory's shape maker. the shape of the moment was a simple square.

3. on my work laptop's computer keyboard.

and on the last item it was the client i was meeting with who brought it to my attention. he didn't say anything, he just waggled a long index finger above the letters R and T where it sat. 'oopsey-daisy, wonder where that come from?' and, to say you don't quite know what to do with it once you're holding it in the air pinched between your thumb and forefinger, highlighting it's curlycue shape, would be a vast understatement. if it were an obvious head hair you'd just lightly shoo or blow it off the desk and onto the floor, but i know how i'd feel if someone started floating stray groin hairs around my work area all willy-nilly. so i did the only respectable thing i could think of (at 8:15 in the morning at least) and daintily picked it up, studied it momentarily and deposited it into my shirt pocket. i'm a staunch believer in conducting low-impact business meetings.

after leaving this appointment i spent a moment hoping the guy knew i was simply trying to be respectful of his space and that i was not a collector of random short hairs. although, i can say, should anyone have such a hobby or collection, i would have interest in seeing it.

it was 3am on a friday night. i was going to bed which means alex was waking up which means marty was mumbling incoherently and picking up things that weren't there (once marty hits 30 plus days of deficient sleep, watch your ass).

after realizing alex wasn't going back to sleep, i plucked him out of his bassinet and stood rocking him. during this i noticed that a way cool fog had rolled in. seeing how the lights played through the mist it was a given i had to go out and get some shots. so with the little man master-blastered to my chest, i grabbed the camera gear and headed out. we ambled around for about an hour during which time we talked to a cop who warned me about being too affectionate to my kid lest they become overly attached, ran into a shopping cart guy getting a jump on the friday night trash can loot. he asked for a buck. it's sad how some people are just unable to clock out.

alex and i call the above shot 'the apartment building someone was having sex in'. my god can people be loud. or i should say, my god can this particular woman be loud. i heard her halfway down the block. she was so loud in fact i felt i had to commemorate the moment with a picture and since i had just talked to the cop i thought it may be uncomfortable if he had to arrest me minutes later for photographing a young couple having sex through their bedroom window, so you're going to have to settle for a picture of their building's entrance.

and, while setting up for this photo and listening to this woman's production, alex and i pondered why it was societally acceptable for women to make all this racket when the guys can't, or aren't supposed to at least. i mean i guess the guys 'could' light it up but i ask you, what do you think would happen to your libido if you had to take in my squeals and grunts of utter delight during your utter delight. don't bother answering that because i know what it would do to me and that's all i need to know at the moment. issue settled.

so the somewhat asked about gallery for captain is finally baked. i've not yet settled on a frequency for updating this yet. i posted to rockefeller center weekly for several months but that was primarily for my mom's benefit who was pining in distant pittsburgh, pa. now that she's here in town and gets regular smother of spoil stops she doesn't require the cyber fixes she previously thirsted for.

but, for equity sake and to not start that second-child slide so soon, i'll probably post every monday for the next few weeks as to let everyone, everyone that cares to that is, catch up on the little man since he's been living a rather reclusive life since his debut.

and as with rockefeller center, updates to this section will be noted on the front page and the photos are accessible from there or at the base of the gallery section.

allow me to introduce you to some troy math:

end of may work deadline +
a side project +
another side project +
a spanking new baby =

me taking the month off

the timing seems right in that i took last may off as well. i'll see you on june 1. and, make sure to check in because i have a surprise for you.

you'll notice i got the house ready before leaving by updating the eating section, the gallery section and of course it is the first monday of the month so i couldn't deprive you of the number one visited area of this site, rockefeller center.

i was holding off on making an april entry in the gallery section thinking that captain might make an appearance before month's end. while he didn't let me down he did wait until there were only three hours left in april. so please say hello to captain who joined our family at 9:15 last night.

wednesday, april 30, 9:40pm, st louis, mo (age 25 minutes)

marty thought rockefeller would be male and we have isabella. marty thought captain would be female and, well let's just say her intuition did equally well because captain is a dude.

in the end, i will remember this as the 'all natural on all fours birth'. it was a first for both nurses and only the second delivery...

so i'm about to meet what will be only the second blood relative i've ever known. for those bad at riddles, i'm adopted. so baby two, called captain around here, is pretty well cooked and we're playing the any minute game. captain isn't technically due for a few more weeks but it only takes one look at marty's painfully taut stomach skin to know just how long two weeks truly seems.

this second time around is a little different than the first. then we were just wide-eyed scared, this time we're droopy, tired-eyed scared. and more than once marty and i have sat quietly on the couch pretending to be watching tv, but not watching tv and then one of us will say something like "so are you freakin' out yet" and the other will say no, but not very convincingly.

and, no we don't know the sex. but, some would say that the jury's still out on me so it seems kinda fitting.

marty has entered the second half of her pregnancy with captain*. she started showing about a month ago and her clothes stopped fitting a few weeks ago. frustrated for apparel she started ripping stuff out of the closet which slowly started to pile up on the bed in an unbuttonable fury. solution: raid the hubby's side of the walk-in.

do you have any concept how frustrating it is that after two years of religious gym-going you discover that your new svelte frame is the same girth as a half-pregnant woman.

and she's got room to swim in even my most hip-hugging khakis.

there's two years down the crapper.

* captain is baby number two's in utero name, rockefeller having been bella's pre vaginal chute-ride moniker. i had suggested Copernicus but walt nixed it for complexity reasons and somehow captain emerged as its elementary counterpart. and, you can keep your capt stubing jokes to yourself. i ain't in the mood and i don't have the time. there's a jazzercize class across town i need to sign up for.

so i'm working on a new section for the web site. i'm not entirely certain what to call it just yet. leading candidates are Rockefeller Center II, the Return of Rockefeller or maybe even Carnegie Hall.

for those bad at reading between the lines, yes, we are expecting number two.

and for those really bad at reading between the lines, that is not a reference to the feces-based number two but the kind of number two that a census bureau would be interested in.

and for those who are just butt stupid. marty and i are expecting our second child. you can expect to be deluged with photos and silly captions come early may.