if you recall, marty and bella were in nyc last weekend. marty went there for two reasons:

1. so bella could see her long time friend, grace, who moved there earlier this year and,
2. to get the hell away from alex.

marty had been commenting on how clingy he'd been since she started the weaning process. i didn't notice it, but then again i'm at work for 3 hours a day so i'm not the fixture in the house walt is. with marty gone and me on little man duty, allow me summarize the weekend as such:

alex's attention requirements make the needs of my third girlfriend look like care instructions for a pet rock.

on a positive note, at least i didn't wake up to find him attempting to draw milk from my itty-bitty, one-haired, man-nipple, as i did with his sister.

this weekend bella is going to have her first sleep over at a friend's house. the friend is grace and the place is manhattan. this puts little man and i on our own this weekend. very exciting.

on the morning they were to leave, i was up early (4:30am) addressing work issues. at one point i walked into the bedroom and found bella had snuck into my spot in bed and was snuggled in close to marty. i took a moment to stand and watch my two girls looking so perfect. suddenly, marty bolted upright, looked next to her and pushed bella two feet further away and then re-collapsed into her previous pose.

this was not a gentle persuasion, one fearful of waking a resting child. it most reminded me of how i used to push fifty pound burlap sacks of idaho russets around the cellar of a restaurant i worked at.

you have to take time for the sentimental moments in this house because when they do happen they don't happen for long.

since having children, the tenor of our dinner parties has changed.

curiously, it's not to say they haven't changed for the better.

sadly, i wasn't here for the original conversation or even the retelling. i heard about it third-hand from marty so the players will have to forgive any kluged details (and, should that happen, walt is to shoulder the blame).

e-love and dr. j have a dog, hattie. they also have a new baby, alison. trying to gauge his wife's commitment to their family members, e-love recently posed the following questions to her.

1. if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your pinky finger or they would kill hattie, what would you do?
2. if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your baby's pinky finger or strangle hattie to death with your bare hands, what would you do?

let's just say you don't want to be hattie, or any other canine for that matter, on dr. j's watch should crazed terrorist break into the home looking to grow their collection of finger-pieces.

we got us a school-age child. she starts today.

if you run into me and think i'm crying, i am.

regarding any thoughts of strength, peace and love you were going to wish my way, please direct them to her teachers instead for they need the help far more than me.

those poor and unsuspecting souls.

here's the short sound bite:
and, here's the longer sound bite:
troyscript : the lie

alternate titles for yesterday's captain image:

boy were those some weird dreams.

yes, that would be marty who not only sat by while my children defiled and degraded my sleeping body, but she even took pictures while sitting by.

i swear my right eye was in the socket when i went to bed.

the good side of sleep deprivation.

is it butt-naked, buck-naked or are both acceptable?

you wouldn't believe how much i haven't got done for thinking about that damn question.

and if you read that previous sentence out loud in my house you would have bella tell you that DAMN is one of the two words on the CAN'T SAY list.

the other word is STUPID.

and, everytime i hear the 'stupid'-word-rule i can't help but think of the uphill battle we're going to have in front of us if we're drawing the line in the sand at the word STUPID. if i were expected to live by this standard there are people in my world who'd think i'd turned mime or gone mute.

click here

alex is walking. aside from the fact that in perambulation little man most closely resembles the orangutan that starred opposite eastwood in the the Every Which Way But Loose series, everything is good. and good except for we now have doubled the number of people padding about the house at any given hour.

really not a problem if you remove the intimate requirements of marriage. yea...

speaking of baby having, i just learned that the woman across the street had her second kid in a wheelchair at the entrance of the hospital. below are random snippets from our conversation.

me: so you didn't make it to the room. were you in the lobby, the parking lot or what?
her: yes. i was sitting in a wheelchair but could reach out and touch the door of our car.

me: was anyone around?
her: it was noon at the main entrance of a large city hospital on a workday. yes, there were people around.

me: did anyone just kind of stop to watch?
her: twenty people applauded when the kid fell out of me.

me: what was the first thing you said afterward?
her: can i please have a robe.

me: after having a kid on the front steps of a hospital would you give an ounce of shit about a totally silent tampon wrapper?
her: a what?
me: yeah, that's what i thought.

imagine a man sitting on the front porch of a house. in his hand is a plastic bottle of bubbles which he is dipping a neon green wand into before bringing it to his lips to blow a shiny-wet bubble. the man's bubbles are large and elaborate and it's easy to see he has been making such bubbles for many years.

after blowing a bubble the man would lean back in his chair and watch it slowly ro...

while playing outside at the neighbors house, bella ran up to me and said she had to go pee. "so go pee" i told her. she promptly whipped down her pants, squatted and proceeded to urinate in the grass pretty much right where she was standing when she asked the question.

some of you may think that the odd part of this story is that i not only encourage but actually instruct my child to drop trow and whiz in someone else's lawn, but it is not. nor is it in the detail that one of the boys playing with us, a four year old, ran up behind bella, laid down on the ground desperately trying to see the pee come out. i'm watching this little guy watching my daughter and thought, man this kid is a freakshow.

ten minutes later freakshow-boy announces his own need to urinate. his mom, like me, told him to go ahead and go. so he pulled the bottom of his shirt up to his neck, pinching it under his chin. he then pushed his pants and underwear down to his ankles and jutted his groin out in front of him as if he were trying to form the letter C for some seseme street skit. now for those of you out there certain this nearly naked pose is the weird part of my story, slow down. the weird part is not his body's pose, but what he did with his hands during the stance ... using both hands, he made a diamond shape around his penis/genitals, framing them while he peed. as i'm taking this whole vision in, i spied bella squatting a few feet from him studying the heck out of this dude's urination technique. i considered yelling at her to leave the freak alone while he peed but was myself too transfixed for such petty administration. so we both, father and daughter, watched the 4 year old from next door empty his bladder into the front yard of his home.

in closing, i can't even tell you how much i'm looking forward to my next work day where i can casually stroll to the bathroom, cram my polo shirt up under my chin, lower my pants and boxers to my ankles, jut my doughy paunch forward, letter-C-style, and aim for the urinal which will be an impressive four feet away. the only real question left will be if others in the bathroom will lay on the ground (ala freakshow) or simply squat (ala bella) to observe, what i'm sure they will all agree is, a mesmerizing vision to behold.

after watching sleeping beauty for the first time, the following conversation took place between bella and marty in front of grandma nat ...

BELLA
lay down on the bed mom and i will put a prick in you.

MARTY
excuse me.

BELLA
i said, lay down on the bed and i will put a prick in you.

MARTY
and, that would be what i thought you said.

can i get a hoo-wah for little man alexander who turns 1 year old today.

mostly, this celebration is not as much about him simply being 1 as it is about homaging how he successfully navigated the perils that come with being kid number two ... especially when kid number one is bella.

and somehow, someway he always gives smiles because that just seems to be what this little man is all about.


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bella went from absolutely loving baths to finding them acceptable to loathing them to the point that if water touches her skin she will shriek in a mad terror that brings the neighbors to our windows, hands cupped to the glass.

most recently she went on a three day jag of refusing to bathe. to put her in forcibly, while an option, was to put yourself in harms way. three days is a long time for an american to not bathe, especially when they live in my home. and especially when they pass the time playing games called DIRT and WORMS.

before having children marty vowed to not have one of those soiled and buger encrusted toddlers that other people were afraid to touch or be touched by. 86 hours into the water fast i asked marty about this missive. she half raised a hand in dismissal. upon seeing this gesture my mind placed this parental ideal in the junk drawer, next to 'will not throw food in restaurants' and on top of 'will not play in own feces' (that's one of my own).

hours later marty was sleeping in some part of the house. i in another with alex on my chest. i was stirred from sleep by someone poking me in the arm and talking to me. i began nodding in agreement and handing the remote over and promising to handle it, whatever it was, later if i could just snooze for five more minutes. bella continued to speak and i continued to lie there with closed eyes:

dad, i don't need to take a bath tonight.

bella, you haven't had a bath in three days

but ...

skipping tonight would make it four, so no deal.

but, i put special scasoli on so i don't need to.

you put what on?

i put special scasolee on so i don't need to.

what is scasolee?

no dad. vascolee?

bella, i don't know what you're saying.

vascoleen dad. vascoleen!

what? Vaseline?

yes. dad. i put Vaseline on.

where?

everywhere.

(i squint my eyes open to see bella naked and every visible shred of skin shiny, slick. and i'm talking from hairline to the tops of her feet.)

ok bella, go tell your mother.

ok dad.

(as she turned to leave i could see that even her backside had sludgy streaks of petroleum coating it.)

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.

after a mishap in the basement, bella informed me that 'this is not a house where we say dammit'.

she's right. fact is dammit is possibly the cleanest expression of disgust ever uttered, shouted, screamed or just plainly said in our house. fact is, dammit only came into existence about a year after bella came into existence. fact is, dammit is what i reserved for when in the company of a relative or a person of the cloth. fact is, i feel i can now say dammit with the conviction and intonation to make one feel i just said something much, much more severe. fact is, it's really to damn bad ours is not a house where we say dammit.

here's another way having a three year old around differs from a two year old.

e-love and dr. j are expecting their first child. congratulations e-love and dr. j.

with that out of the way, let us now move to the interesting part of the news.

e-love describes the vaginal sonogram instrument as highly phallic. i'm not sure what he or i expected from such a tool but we agree it seems like they'd try to do something to make it, well, less obviously phallic. we surmise they feel they're dealing with childbearing age adults and should be free to let such a detail slip by. e-love and i further surmise, they assume wrong.

now in the application of the sonogram, at least they use protection. i mean of course they use protection. this is america, you know, the styrofoam country. but the question is ... if you were a medical professional working with reproductive systems and had to sheath an item that was the shape, of say, a banana, what do you think you might use?

and before you answer, let me assert that these folks are on the baby birthing side of the fence and not tooting the prevention horn as much but i gotta think they're hip to the fact that a condom just might fit this tubular rod like a glove.

can we agree on this?

well, we may, but they do not. instead of getting something to fit the instrument like a glove, they instead use A GLOVE. and when does a glove not fit something like a glove you ask? when that something is shaped like a penis.

and for those who are as inquisitive as me, they use the pinky finger of the glove. and like me, that poor vaginal sonogram device just can't catch a damn break.

the highlight from this year's christmas happened the night before. aunt peggy came over to help make sugar cookies for santa. bella complemented the snack with a refreshing single-cup combination of milk & orange juice for him to wash it down.

we were to then drive around and look at christmas lights before putting the kids down. bella had a long day and it was apparent she didn't have the juice for a nighttime car adventure. marty suggested she and her go take a shower and then go to bed. bella quickly upgraded the plan to a family shower. and, being the awesome hostess she is, she even invited aunt peggy to join in our four-person bathtub fun. aunt peggy gracefully declined.

at one point during the family shower, i looked down to find bella catching the water dripping from my penis in a plastic cup while loudly singing happy birthday to jesus. if i had a nickel for every time that very thing has happened to me...

i sympathize with the burglar who selects my home to rob in the wee hours of the night.

i've lived here 5 years, know the floor plan and have yet to nocturnally navigate it, post bella, without:

1. kicking over a bucket of marbles in the 2am silence
2. running my scantily clad groin into the handle of a fisher price vacuum cleaner
3. stepping barefoot on a two day old, half-eaten and fully husked banana

sadly, we no longer have any valuables that have not been bellafied (aka broken) so they will be doubly pissed at their misfortune.

marty and i have been married somewhere between 3 and 7 years. in this time i have gone to bed before her exactly 9 times. monday night was one of these times. it was 12:42 when i laid down. i remember thinking what an awesome night sleep i'd be getting making it to bed in this nascent hour. putting it all into perspective, one must know that the three nights previous i went to bed at 4am, 3am and almost 6am (thanks to mr. everyman).

having children changes the whole mood of this nocturnal lifestyle because when you go to bed at six only to be beaten about the head two hours later with an empty gatorade bottle containing seven coins and having the words "big bird, i want to watch big bird NOW daddy!" screamed inches from your ear, you realize there is much in the world that's just not right.

but back to the going to bed first. when this happens, i do this, totally involuntary, meal worm dance as a form of acclimation to the cold sheets. to fully set the scene: i'm face-down. i'm naked. my body/limbs are in full stretch, grind and squirm mode all while rolling from shoulder to shoulder. i've never done this without thinking how cool it would be if i were doing it ten hours earlier, at work, midday, laying on that tight woven carpet, face down, naked, shaking and quaking like this. i imagine a circle of employees standing around me. one might ask, 'who's that?' whereupon another will answer 'that's troy, the web guy'. the first may then ask, 'what's he doing?' and the second would respond 'i have no worldly idea'.

in college i read shel silverstein's the giving tree in about 4 minutes and thought it both cute and well executed.

when reading this book to my daughter last sunday morning in front of the fire, i almost couldn't finish it because i was on the brink of crying.

it's going to be a long fatherhood.

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.