a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. look before you leak

here's the worst thing you could ever do to me.

make me live in a mcdonalds playland for a week.

without soap.

naked.

although that last part might make it the worst thing you could ever do to yourself too having to see my naked pieces press against and fall through the play mesh and random holes in the colorful habitrail for kids.

the family went camping this last weekend. one of the mornings i passed another fella in our party and commented on how impressed i was that he'd already showered. he said he hadn't and asked what made me think he had. my eyes drifted to his hair in that it looked wet and shiny. he noticed my gaze and ran his hand through it telling me that it was just oily and he needed to go wash it.

sorry dude. my bad.

this mis-speak seemed to make its way back to the camp because later his wife engaged me:

HER
so troy, how long does it take for your hair to look un-showered?

ME
as long as it takes for mcdonalds fries to start looking as if they're rotting.

HER
and, how long is that?

ME
i don't know, they're still watching them.

alex has two toys of choice at the moment. one of them is a six foot inflatable alligator and the other is a three-inch high space-cowboy he calls 'cool guy'.

let's begin with the object that inflicts the most physical pain upon me, the life-sized gator. to date i've walked my groin into its upright tail four times. sure you'd think something this large would be easy to spot but it's a sn...

a local radio station in town has been advertising, incessantly, a contest where first prize is two vip passes to something called 'the party-deck'. i don't know what or where this structure of joviality is but after extensive consideration have concluded it's the last place i'd ever want to be.

about a year ago, my family attended a carnival put on by a university near our home. we just kicked around and rode some rides and had a pleasant family afternoon. about two months later while walking through another part of our community this young guy stopped us and asked if we had been at that carnival. we told him we had. he said he thought he had a picture of me and my son he thought was pretty good and wanted to share it with us. i gave him my email address but never heard from him (i think what i wrote on the scrap of paper, later proved unintelligible to him ... shocking that).

last weekend, and almost a full year later, we were at another university function and he appeared again. he confirmed we were still those folks and said the previous mailing was returned but he still wanted to get it to us. this time i let him do the writing and good to his word this showed up in my inbox the very next day.

turns out he is a student photographer working for the school's paper. in additionally looking at his other work it is clear he has some serious skills. rachit, i sincerely thank you for making the effort to place in my hands a moment that will always warm me. hat tipped.


click to enlarge

i'm reasonably certain there's a game afoot in my home called 'hide dad's shit'. there are simply too many of my possessions that go missing at any given time for any other explanation to be plausible.

distrustful of my hunch? when i find my favorite tie rolled up in the bottom of marty's twelve-year old moon boot in the back of the coat closet ... downstairs ... i'm feeling rather convinced.

i share in a small professional consortium of sorts. there's just three of us and i am for certain the pup of the litter. one of the two taught me everything i know about web design and the other everything i know about web development. we all used to work together. now we don't even live in the same state and in one case not even the same country.

several years back in a ski lodge atop the canadian rockies, the three of us made five-year projections about our professional lives. one of us nailed it, one surpassed it and one, well, one keeps meandering towards the light but hasn't yet held a straight line to its source.

chris wanted to create a jackpot product. a sophisticated and enticing utility that would allow him to support his home while investing his energy in something he believed in. four years later he is performing enterprise-level implementations of a wiki-fashioned, microsoft-centric, intranet manager he calls thoughtFarmer.

bookguy privately covets the notion of hopping industries. i won't get into the specifics of his aspiration but the venture would offer him new sorts of mental exercises using his very impressive technology chops as well as his gift for oration and unavoidably, leadership. he is unconsciously adrift towards such a change, he just hasn't noticed the oar in his hand yet. i predict he will soon look down and see it though and when he does decide to lower it into the water it's better than a done deal.

and i, i managed to stay diligent and patient about things until i secured a position with the one institution in my city that i hoped to secure a position with. and time has aged it well.

i'm glad to see the three of us trending in such positive directions and i wish my cohorts much success. i wish myself an ounce more, or as bella would say, a worm's bite more, than them because as the runt of the litter, i need to be that much better to hold my own on our next ski boondoggle.

i've been with my current employer weeks shy of fourteen years. it is the only company i've worked for in my adult life and i started in their lowest non-janitorial position.

yesterday morning in a windowless conference room i said to my boss the words "i'm cooked" and slid a resignation letter across the table towards him. he looked at the document and softly said "son of a bitch".

two days earlier i penned my signature at the base of a written job offer. to that, if someone handed me a blank piece of paper and asked me to describe my dream gig, my notes would not have been as appealing as the position outlined in what i put my name to here.

bookguy, who offered me sage and consistent counsel through my job quest, said i should have quit long ago not because it was the right thing to do professionally but because i seemed to be a natural at writing resignation letters. in thinking back to crafting the brief message, the words did flow with great ease from my keyboard which i guess says about all there is to say.

yesterday i had two at-home jobs. the first was making dinner. after toiling to prepare wholesome and tasty sustenance for mi familia, bella sang a song through the meal, chin on palms, annie the orphan style that partially went something like this:

i hate being a kid
because everyone is mean
i hate being a kid
i wish i were a kitten
because everyone loves kittens
and father is so mean
father is so mean

we received this ten-minute, off-the-cuff serenade because i didn't serve her milk to her in a bowl. unbeknownst to me she was playing kittens and kittens don't drink milk out of cups, they drink milk out of bowls and fathers who don't know this are stupid-heads (child speak for priggish asses) and deserve, yep you guessed it, to be fired.

my second job was washing towels and rugs (because i didn't complete my chores on sunday). so i finished them and brought our fluffy yellow bathroom rug up. the kids were the first to get the benefit of the dryer-warm carpet, alex in particular. the second i pulled his diaper off for his bath he loosed a ten-inch long torrent of urine diagonally across the rug, smiling broadly at the arcing stream. not a drop hit the tile which could have been easily dealt with. all of it was perfectly placed and then absorbed into my freshly laundered mat.

but to be comprehensive about the day, while i was making dinner bella and i were playing prison-break. how prison-break works is she sneaks up behind me and bear hugs the bottom half of my legs together so i can't move. this is the prison part. then i have to use the keys, my tickle fingers, to try to get out of prison. this is the break part. when bella was three prison was fun. now that bella is five and quite strong, having her lock on unannounced is akin to someone duct-taping my feet together, hanging a fifty pound weight around my neck and giving me a hearty shove at the top of a stairwell. alex has watched this production a number of times, thumb-in-mouth and always standing a safe distance away. tonight he decided to step up and while bella was gigglingly bear-hugging my calves from behind and i was trying to tickle her loose i heard a quick, sharp crack, immediately followed by bella wailing. i turned to find alex with the biggest, proudest smile, resting a wiffle ball bat on his shoulder as if he's between walk-the-batter pitches. bella is holding the crown of her head with both hands screaming childs' curses towards him. this is one of those parental moments where the best you can do is simply not laugh out loud.

so obviously for a guy who gets heckled through the dinner he prepared AND has someone piss all over his day's labor moments after its completion, it's not shocking to learn the highlight of my march 14 was when my two-year old brained my five-year old with a long, yellow club. i mean, at least it was a plastic club and to be fair we were playing a game named prison-break.

bella fires more people than trump. this started a few months back. not sure what seeded it or even where she heard or understood the meaning. just one day people, meaning marty, started getting dismissed whenever bella became annoyed. earlier this week marty and alex were a few minutes late picking bella up from school. as marty approached, the door opened and bella's teachers walked her out.

MARTY
sorry i'm late.

MISS JUDY
oh, what's the bother? someone has to be first and someone has to be last.

BELLA (pushing her way through everyone towards the stroller)
mom, you're fired!

but, similar to the adoption trend, marty is the first to feel the brunt, but whatever hell she is catching is sure to be ultimately spread throughout the family. last night when i announced i had to walk the babysitter home, i was immediately "fired 50 times". don't get me started on this escalation-bullshit. upgrading my penalty by such magnitude is a complete abuse of one's power, and i for one take exception.

and forget the minor detail that we have children who don't wail and scream when we leave them with a sitter but instead when we return and send the sitter home. i always thought kids cried when parents left and rejoiced upon their return. we have to literally peel our children off the help just so they can get out the door. like my two year old son bear hugging the leg of our 20-something babysitter. which puts me in the awkward position of kneeling behind her prying his fingers off the back of her lithe thigh, pleading with him and apologizing to her simultaneously.

TROY
he really doesn't hate us. nor is he afraid of us. he just doesn't see outsiders too much because his mother is a bit of a shut-in and i'm a bit of germ-phobe. so, again, they don't get to see new people a whole lot. now dammit alex! let go of the maria's leg so she can go home! i'm really sorry about this.

in my distracted state alex leans forward and bites my hand which causes me to lurch forward head-butting the girl's ass (also lithe) which makes her fall in my lap and inadvertently pulls alex into her groin. this would of course be the moment marty chooses to enter the foyer finding the two men in her life rolling around on the floor with the one coed in the neighborhood who has not yet been warned to not babysit at THAT house.

i sense more firings on the horizon.

i've had a few folks inquire into my jaded tone towards alcohol consumption given my 'seemingly derisive' post about the guy wearing a 'GET DRUNK, BE SOMEBODY' shirt. my position is this:

in regards to alcohol consumption, i'm not arrogant enough to think someone requires all of their faculties to carry on a conversation with me, i just like to think i'm at least working with their A-game.

i assure you, it's not some biblical or puritanical assertion. i just find people who are inebriated to be less capable of meaningful or witty discourse than those who are not altered. that said, i have experienced one exception to this where i was at a party and talking to guy who the t-shirted dude on the plane would have certainly described as being wasted or possibly plastered (i'm the first to admit i'm deficient on the variant stages of inebriation and their proper semantics). this guy i was talking to led what i will simply call an alternative social life which i happened to have many candid questions about. this guy, in his state, freely answered any and every question i threw his way regarding the intimate details of his lifestyle. in this case his drunkenness assisted both of us in having a highly compelling and fruitful exchange (granted, one-way exchange) of information.

that's it. nothing too overly judgmental here. you're free to be drunk around me if it helps you unabashedly reveal things about yourself that i want to know and that you otherwise would not tell me, if this is not the case, may i direct your attention to the jug of sweet tea on the counter.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. three percenter

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. things that are yellow

hello pittsburgh steelers. long time fan, first time caller. please get 'er done this weekend. i've been patiently waiting and i suck at patiently waiting. thanks. i'll look for my response off the air.

for the last eighteen days of 2005, i carried, in my wallet, a membership card to a local retailer's bra and panty club. i was nine punches in so not your basic tourist. three more clover-shaped holes and i'd be the proud and complimentary owner of a full-figure, soft-cup, microfiber, seamless, under-wire and smart-looking brasserie.

one may wonder how a short, stout, pasty fella like mys...

last night marty and i sat at the table in the breakfast room, soiled plates from the evening dinner strewn before us. both kids had excused themselves to play in the living room. it was mid-day before we realized it was our eight year wedding anniversary (which is the same as our sixteen year together-anniversary). as i looked at my exhausted wife i couldn't help but note the delta between the dinner we shared sixteen years ago and the one tonight. she looked exhausted. i felt spent.

i asked her what she thought we'd be doing in another sixteen years, once the kids were all up and away. she wistfully referred to a retired couple down the street who still walk along the sidewalk arm in arm headed to one of the neighborhood eateries. they seem so youthful. so still in love. she commented on how weekend nights they go to formal halls to ballroom dance. i considered this as the sentiment came from her dreamy face and gently replied that every time she made me dress up to waltz around a high-ceilinged room, i'd make her go to a network-gaming party in some never-married geek's finished basement.

click to watch
more than one person has commented to me that they imagine this is how i am at work. it is clear to me that those people either ...

1. work with me currently
2. worked with me in the past
3. have or had a hidden camera set up in my office.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. adopt you

so, i've been a little bit out of commission as of late. i have a few weeks off work and within four hours of clocking out, i began deconstructing my office. my office occupies the smallest part of the smallest room of our house. fact is, my office is in a closet. granted it's a double door closet, but it's still a closet.

i've learned over the last few days that this miniscule space is the most coveted real estate in my home. once i had it emptied, marty stood in the room eyeing the double wide clothes receptacle. i didn't like the look. i asked her if something was wrong. she simply commented that a girl could spread a wardrobe out quite nicely in such a large closet. i told her not to even think about it, it was mine, i called it fair and square when we moved in. when bella saw the vast expanse she told me not to put my desk back in it because she and the defecator could play house in it. and by told, i mean instructed, harshly. when alex saw it, he just looked around and said NUNNEL which is how he says the word tunnel which is how he sought to claim my space because his favorite architectural structures are nunnels.

after making the modifications i planned (paint, more shelves, lighting) i had to reclaim the nook in the wee-est hours of the night. my plan would have been foiled had a single person been awake to obstruct my maneuver.

additionally, i'm not sure how connected i'll be next week either. so many engagements, so little bandwidth.

i've previously mentioned how marty treats ziploc baggies in our home. they get the same respect and delicate care as our finest dinnerware. this has always been her fight, never mine. anytime i would see a soiled and stained baggie on the counter, i'd leave it for her. this was understood.

last night i washed my first ziploc baggie.

i didn't want to do it. the whole time i was asking myself, aloud, why are you doing this troy? problem was i had just cleaned the kitchen and it was immaculate, save for this one sad-ass, large-size freezer bag on the counter. i couldn't leave it. i tried. i've left them hundreds of times before without the slightest of pangs. i even started walking out of the kitchen but made the mistake of looking back only to see this crumpled blight on my pristine countertop's landscape. it was here that i slowly turned and walked back to the sink. i held it up by a corner examining it before gingerly turning it inside out so i could wash my first ziploc baggie.

this is a sad day in the world of troy. sad because troy has begun washing his garbage.

about a month back marty told the kids that they had to start thinking about my birthday present. marty no more than finished the sentence when bella said she knew what to get me. marty, playing along, asked what was that and bella replied, "well, when we were at aunt peggy's father really, really liked the homemade ice cream they made, so we could get him his very own ice cream maker!"

absolutely stupefying. no garfield ties for this dad cuz my little humans rawk! first serving will be ready for tonight's movie night. i also got a $50 credit with iTunes (thanks momz and popz) and a killer campfire popcorn maker which we're already two batches into via the fireplace which was at a four-log state all day thanks to the three inches of snow that was accumulating outside. which meant 5:00 sledding and 6:00 big V burgers. and because of those events, it wasn't until 9:00 that i noticed a card on the kitchen counter which contained the following ...





i do recall, vaguely, that trip peg, but not nearly as vividly as my big boy bank does. the card is already tacked to the wall of wonder.

i thank everyone who added to what amounted to a really spectacular day. i gotta tell ya, i'm floating.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. 37 years in 5 minutes

several years ago, marty and i were lounging on the futon watching tv. i had an abdominal pain and kept massaging the side of my gut, groaning painfully.

what's wrong?

i have this damn stitch in my side. it hurts like hell.

it's probably just stuck poop. push on it, it will help work it loose.

she never even looked away from the tv nor did she stop popp...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. marcher