on very cold nights, our home has one less blanket than it needs. which bed comes up light is about as predictable as who will be resting in any of the various sleeping spots our house has to offer.

obviously, you'd think the adults would carry the advantage being bigger and smarter and all. but, little people move quietly and have more to fear if caught. so blankets get tugged back and forth across a bed and even drug from room to room in the night's silent hours. but that's not all that gets transported. i once saw alex pushing a miniature baby stroller down the hallway at 3am. i looked just long enough to verify my blanket wasn't in it before flopping my head back on the pillow, tightening my grip on the corner of my linen and going back to sleep.

three nights ago i drew the short straw. while sleeping in alex's bed (which is pushed up against bella's bed), i got bested by bella who wound herself up so tight in my comforter, my fatigued arm couldn't work her out of it. so i spent the night in and out of sleep, curled up and shivering. i gave up on sleep around 5am and headed towards the bath for a steamy shower. in passing my nemesis, i cast a scornful look at the blissfully warm and sleeping girl. i swear i saw a contented smile form on her rosy face as i stumbled by tightly hugging my naked chest. while i stood waiting for the shower's water to get hot, i noticed something about my body; it felt lean and my skin was super-taut. it was almost as though my body's futile attempt to generate warmth caused me to loose three pounds in the night. then my mind recalled a suggestion from a health magazine where it said drinking ice cold water, instead of tepid, burns forty extra calories per glass because your body has to heat the liquid once in the stomach.

it seemed to make sense. at least to my un-rested and slightly bella-jealous mind. instead of gyms having saunas they should have seat-lined deep-freezes where old rich guys could go in with their buddies and sit around naked debating last weekend's games while chattering and rubbing the tops of their thighs for warmth. granted if these did exist, i wouldn't actually get a membership, because between having a wife who doesn't like to turn the heat up past 60 degrees and a daughter who outfoxes me with frustrating regularity, i'm already paying a mortgage on my very own seat-lined, bed-scattered deep freeze.

and as clarifying note, marty is the exception to this rule. she (a) always sleeps in the same spot and (b) never goes without covers. everyone living here knows not to lie on mom's clean patch of sheets and to never slide a blanket off her sleeping frame. even bella won't tangle with that sleeping lioness. and that's saying something.

one week ago was my six month anniversary at the new job. the biggest factor of this milestone is i can now take vacation time (i can also get sick). coincidentally, bella had yesterday off school so i cashed in my first official vacation day. marty had invited bella's entire kindergarten class to join us for the day at a pumpkin farm. she had several takers and it was shaping up to be a lively day in the country. then monday morning we woke up to this ...

so what does any sane, hookey-playing family do with a free day, no plans and torrential rain. we go to the zoo! the saint louis zoo is a real city gem, one of our finest. we spend quite a bit of time there. you could say it is our family's amusement park, and it doesn't hurt that it is in biking distance, although, we left the bikes at home on this wet day.

the moment we walk through the zoo's gates, alex starts; "train daddy. i want to ride the train. where's the train daddy? is the train sleeping? are we walking to the train daddy? do i hear the train?" if you hadn't guessed yet, the zoo has a train. it can carry something like 50-75 people on its nearly two mile run and has four stations along the way. alex personally thinks a zoo is more about this miniature locomotive than about exotic wildlife.

given the weather i was not confident the train would be in operation. as we approached the desolate station i saw a man in a conductor's hat sitting behind a fogged ticket window. i asked if the train was running. with a sigh, he said it was. he picked up the phone and said into the receiver, "i got a family of five at the living world station". he then hung up. it was here i realized the train was scheduled to run but was sitting warmly in the garage because of the few patrons at the zoo, none were requesting a ride on the outdoor steed. and then there's alex looking up from my hip, "train coming daddy?". yes alex, train coming. i could only imagine the startled expressions and gravelly curses exchanged between the two mason-like men who got the call. after our attendant had summoned the train, we learned there was a problem with our membership tickets. given the engine was en route, the ticketeer gave us a free pass. when the train pulled into the station a few minutes later marty and i expressed our gratitude to the two rain-slickered engineers who were extra-gracious about the task.

our family then shared in a personal tour of our city's zoo with bella and alex smiling widely in the very front seat. the conductor gave us the real-deal announcing the animals and amenities over the train-speaker just as he would for a sunny-saturday crowd. little did he know i, or even alex, could have probably done the same spiel straight from memory. although, at one stop he did say "we're coming up on the river's edge station, please have your tickets ready, but since you don't have any tickets, don't worry about it."

by the time we got home, we were collectively drenched and starving. we all stripped in the foyer and headed to the kitchen for soup, left over manicotti and oven toast. we capped the late-lunch with stove-top coco garnished with bella-cut mini-marshmallows and headed up for a viewing of monsters inc. while crowded on the couch, sharing a fleece blanket.

it has been too many month's since our family has enjoyed such a private and focused day. here's to remembering to slow the ride down every now again, even if you end up with wet underwear while on it.

labor began at 6pm, wednesday night. we left for the hospital at 3:30am. marty gave fully natural birth to a six pound healthy boy Thursday, August 17 at 1:54pm. the child is still as of yet, unnamed.

my mother watched the delivery, something she also did for alex. marty has now twice extended this very generous invitation to my mother since she never got to personally experience childbir...

for about fifteen years i've kept a large glass coin-jug on my dresser. at the end of each day i drop my loose change into it. about once a year i pour the contents onto the floor in front of a movie and roll my bounty. the collection typically amounted to several hundred dollars. since bella became old enough to request the jug be handed to her my annual accounting has dropped from the just under five hundred realm to the just above forty dollar range because you see bella likes playing with coins. bella likes playing with coins a whole lot.

one of her favorite treatments is to sticker the coins. how this works is she will empty the jug onto the floor and go through them one by one checking each side. coins that already have a small random sticker on them go in one pile, coins that have no mark go in another. once divided, she places a sticker on each coin in the stickerless pile and when done returns all the coins back into the jug. such an audit, which occurs about once a month, can take anywhere from one to three hours and is typically spread over a full day.

bella has it in her mind that i get paid at the end of each work day with a small handful of change. she thinks the size and diversity of the mix indicates how hard i worked. if i tinkle a large handful of coins into her cupped hands she proudly says "boy dad, you sure must have worked hard on this day!". a telling thing about bella is when i have just a few or no coins to share she doesn't harangue me but quietly accepts the news, maybe even giving me a commiserating "that's ok dad, we've already got lots of coins". criminally precious.

several months ago a relative of mine, cousin debbie, was in town and staying with my folks. we went over one night for dinner and bella became quite smitten with her (that my forty-something cousin would hang out with bella under the dining room table played a great role in this friendship). when it came time for us to leave, bella very seriously told cousin debbie she should come live with us because it would be lots of fun. debbie gracefully declined saying she wouldn't want to impose. bella cheerily said it was not a problem because we were rich, 'we have piles of money in every room of our house.' truth told, that is a correct statement. although a minor omitted detail is the aforementioned piles range in value from $1.34 to $12.75 depending on how much bella lost sight of and how much you're able to find.

alex likes barney. we tivo the show routinely but, for reasons i don't understand, he always insists on watching a solitary barney tape that somehow came into our possession. he's had to have seen the thirty-minute episode over fifty times. he refers to this show as 'white barney'. it's dubbed as such because the physical cassette is white in color, instead of the usual black. while this innocuous reference poses no problem in our home, it occasionally creates discomfort when out and about in our diverse community.

if before any of this took place, had someone presented this exact scenario to me soliciting my opinion, i would have thought little of it, proclaiming the child's rant to be simple and harmless. however, in the few instances we've been out and he's decided he wanted to watch the show, like now, and freaks out when he can't, things gets murky. because reality has me pushing a stroller through a crowded urban street with a fitful child wailing WHITE BARNEY, WHITE BARNEY, I WANT WHITE BARNEY NOW! at the top of his lungs. needless to say, i find the questioning gazes of onlookers to be a tad challenging. i don't know what they think. i don't know what i would think. but i don't think they think he's asking to watch a recorded episode of barney that just happens to be on a white VHS tape and if they aren't thinking that are they thinking this kid might as well be yelling ARYAN JOE, ARYAN JOE, I WANT ARYAN JOE NOW! because in the end, i think that might be what i was thinking had i witnessed the scene.

as for why this situation has never escalated beyond uncertain glances, i can't say for certain, but the fact that alex looks like the product of an international adoption surely can't hurt the cause.

question. do you know the two words most used by a three year old? they are 'no' and 'why'. another question. do you know how demoralizing it is to get whittled down in an argument by an opponent who refuses to say anything other than 'why'? it is the equivalent of losing a chess game to someone who moves nothing but pawns, which for those who don't play chess is pretty sucky.

another que...

the why the hell wouldn't ya guy told me a story about a friend of the family who was placed in an assisted living facility. for a long time he was perfectly ok with it because he was free to come and go as he pleased because he still had his car. as he got a little older and by some people's estimation a little less capable behind the wheel his children said he had to start thinking about giving up his car. his response was simple; if they took his car he was going to kill himself.

good to their word, they eventually took their father's car. when he learned of this he made his way to the second floor of the building he lived in, opened a window and stepped out of it. and, good to his word, died.

wouldn't you think the children of a man possessing this much conviction, would know the man possessed this much conviction?

this weekend, bella and alex had a spend the night at their grandparents. when we dropped them off bella said to my mother in a very serious manner.

BELLA
grandma, i'm going to try real hard to not say 'oh my god!' while i'm at your house because i know you don't like it when people say that.

GRANDMA
well that is true bella. i would appreciate it if you did not say that at my house or ever. i think there are better things to say than that.

BELLA
yes i know, father told me. so instead we've been practicing saying things like 'oh my goodness', 'oh dear' and 'oh bother'. but sometimes i forget and still say 'oh my god' but i will try not to.

GRANDMA
well, i guess that's all i can ask.

upon getting the sunday report, bella didn't say it even once the whole weekend. and when she saw the one-legged man at the nursing home while visiting her great-grandfather, she didn't even ask him where his other leg went. so far, five seems way more mature than four.

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.

emma idessia hoffman-rutman
09.01.1921 - 02.25.2006

in late february my mother and her brother drove halfway across the nation to walk into a country-side nursing home in the evening hours of a sunday night to tell their father that his wife of 66 years, and their mother, had died in her sleep the day before. upon tearfully presenting him with the news he sat quietly in his chair before softly saying 'that is the saddest thing i've ever heard'. and then he wept.

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...

saturday while pulling into a curbside parking spot i scraped the fender of the car parked in the space behind mine. in the end the damage was not bad. nothing on mine and a scrape to the rubber fender of a honda accord. it was very, very minor and i considered just leaving it. but decided if someone scraped my car i'd want to be the one who decided how bad it was and if it needed some sort of attention or not. so, on a scratch piece of cardboard, i wrote the following. i slid the torn cardboard under their driver side wiper and went in to get my haircut. while waiting, i had an uneasy feeling and couldn't get a co-worker's voice out of my head about 'never admitting' and 'never apologizing' when it comes to matters of auto accidents. i argued that in cases where there is obvious fault one can admit and one can apologize. he tells me to ask any insurance company and they'll make it very clear ... never admit and never apologize, just call them. not often looking to insurance companies for ethical advice, i decided the note was the right thing to do and i would work through whatever came of it and i went about my day.

a few hours and errands later my pager went off. i instantly knew it was marty and it occurred to me that i didn't think to call her about the mishap or the note (if only they made a device you could use to contact others while away from home). i feared the worst. "troy. some insane woman just called raving about her ruined car and said you did it. is this true! are you back on the pipe? we talked about this! come home! come home now!" but instead this is what my pager read. when i got home marty went into more detail about the lady's phone call and how she went on about how our communities needed more mutual respect and ownership and she was so very appreciative of the gesture. she also mentioned a need for penmanship because she could only decipher about half of what my note actually said.

so there evil insurance-abiding co-worker. it seems the world does not have to revolve around fear of litigation or bloated insurance premiums ... or legible writing as far as that goes.

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

at the conclusion of each year's everyman photo contest, i invite the judges to my home for dinner and discussion. this year, every judge within a six-hour driving radius attended. that number gets to be so great because of one fella who trekked in from kentucky. add to that, i've never met him and he'd never met me which makes the gesture that much more noteworthy.

in addition to my kentucky boondoggler, one of my international judges, the one representing italy, called my home during the party to discuss the contest and give his feedback. it was a very neat moment for me. and this guy lives, of all places, in the region of italy i consider the most beautiful piece of the world i've ever stood upon, la spezia, which is in northwestern italy and part of the cinqua terra stretch of coastline. he was also kind enough to open his home to my family should we ever be in the region again. i hope he is serious because there is little doubt we will one day be darkening his doorway.

another contest-related thought; i've noticed since i've increased the number of judges, i no longer get hate-mail when winners are announced. i'm going to take that as a positive sign (it did occur to me that maybe no one was chatting because no one was looking, but november bested the everyman's previous traffic record, racking up 1.2 million requests.)

and, i'll leave you with the partygoer's highlight of the evening. alex woke up from his nap and descended the steps wearing one of bella's black velour dresses. since it was his older sisters', it went all the way to the floor and for-sure looked like an evening gown. earlier he had been wearing a really festive pair of red overalls but insisted on the dress for his nap. i intended on changing him before his grand appearance but was tied up in the kitchen and didn't know he woke up. marty was talking with one of the judges when they saw alex round the corner:

joe : hey look at alex in his basketball jersey.
marty : that's not a basketball jersey joe, it's a dress.
joe: i know. i was just trying to help you out.

and lastly, everyone i owe work, email, money or affection to can it expect it in the near future now that my life is again my life. thanks to all who supported, tolerated and enjoyed this year's event. as always, i'm in your debt.

growing up, there were seven kids in marty's house. as they awoke christmas morning they were to go to their parents' bed. only after all nine people were assembled could christmas begin. one at a time groggy children appeared in the doorway and slowly took account of who beat them to the christmas bed before climbing in themselves. excruciatingly, only after a majority of family members were pres...

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

hey cocker.

hey jack.

what can i get you?

pastrami, hoagie roll, provolone.

what kind of soup you want with that?

no soup today, but thank you.

hell with you! go to the back of the line. (then to the decrepitly old lawyer standing behind me) what can i get you young man?

this is how the lion-share of my transactions began at two...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. go hide

i used to work with a Jehovah's Witness. during this period i was reading the bible on my palm pilot while riding the metro to work. every now and again he would ask what most recently happened so i would tell him and he would try to guess the chapter and verse. for any ex-sunday-school stars this may sound like a no brainer but there is a catch and that catch is my descriptions came in troy-speak and troy-speak sounded something like this: to his credit, chris was quite gifted at deciphering these modern translations.

anyone who tells me they've had a vasectomy can be assured of my undivided attention for as long as they will answer my questions. i'm entirely unable to explain my quenchless need to know more about this topic, i just know to call it anything short of insatiable would be a mistaken way to describe my mood. last night i received my best account yet from a man who i will call, for the sake of this telling, the beef-eater.

first, and this i did not know, there is a pre-screening. the extent of this pre-flight check seems mostly concerned with making sure you don't have three testicles and that the two you do have are sitting in the appropriate left-right configuration. although, i imagine they would be truly interested in any number above two. and as for non-left/right options you have the very rare front/back or even more rare top/bottom alignments, either of which would certainly earn a note in the metal binder. and, there is little doubt that any of these unique scenarios would generate extra fees (esp bonus gonads) so this reality check works to prepare the subject for any special handling fees that may arise. the day the beef-eater had his pre-screening was coincidentally bring your kid to work day which means he got to answer these questions with a backpack-wearing eight year old staring up at him.

the big day has you laid out on an exam table naked from the waist down. they drape a towel over your groin area only there is a big whole cut out framing the part of you the towel is usually there to conceal (nobody better look at the naked side of my hip while my johnson is laying there lifeless, bloodless and frankly scared quite shitless). the nurse then partially knocks you out so you're awake but mostly unable to put up much of a fight or think too straight. it was at this point in the procedure that the super-attractive lady who lived two doors down from the beef-eater and was a nurse in this office, unbeknownst to him, entered the room. the best he could muster was to raise a hand and mumble the single word 'foul'. the doctor came in moments later and began. after the incisions were made he took a tool that resembled a crochet needle and pulled one of the vas deferens out of the hole, exposing it to be severed. i'm told that having your gamete superhighway lifted from its tracks in this manner produces an extremely unnatural sensation. i theorize this is the anti-erection part of the procedure, just in case all the random fumblings elicited any sort of positive feedback. it is now that they snip, burn and return the helpless tube back to its home. my mind envisions the ends whipping around like a dropped firehose or more appropriately, a writhing and injured worm.

they then sent him home telling him to lay on the couch with frozen corn on his affected part(s) for the next 24 hours. these were the last words of our conversation:

TROY
wow. is it hard to clean up all of that corn when you get up.

THE BEEF-EATER
you leave it in the bag, idiot!

TROY
oh. but, when you were done do you put the bag back in the freezer or throw it away?

THE BEEF-EATER
i don't know what other people do, but i threw mine away.

TROY
hmmm. i don't think marty would let me throw it out, groin-ridden or not.

and i can now check another fixation from my list. i found the account of this man's journey to be quite satisfying. thanks beef-eater for doing successfully what many before you could not.

some things i couldn't do in the house i grew up in:

take the lords name in vain
say darn *
say jeez *
say gosh *
or take showers during thunderstorms

* disallowed for their derivative nature to damn, jesus and god respectively.

i have a friend who once or twice a year sends me a surprise in the mail. these parcels always come neatly wrapped in brown shipping paper, the address written in his typewriter perfect handwriting. bella would sooner guess what her reward for pooping in the toilet was before i would come even ball-park close to the contents of one of these never-announced deliveries. and, for sure, no two have ever been remotely similar.

yesterday i received such a parcel. i can't tell you how this renovates looking through the mail. it's very exciting. i momentarily held the box in my hands, surprised by its heft, before setting it to the side to save it for last. i shot through the other mail occasionally letting my eyes drift to the magic box. as i said, i know i will never guess what's in it, but the childlike stir created in me is as pleasing as caffeine. after parsing the other mail i slide the box in front of me and begin opening it with the same care as used when it was sealed. once exposed i see the box inside is shiny silver with the year 1831 written in big fancy white script. i open this gilded box and find a handwritten note placed on top of the contents. it reads:

from the briefcase of every successful mormon. in case you ever want to read the inspiring text that fuels your newest hobby ...

inside the box was my very own book of mormon! this used to be his very own book of mormon because this friend, you see, is an ex-mormon which makes him a jack-mormon. most don't know that this descriptor for a fallen latter day saint is my most coveted title. jack-mormon. sounds rough. sound randy. sounds like a fella who would help you get your car out of a snowbank.

hello. i'm troy dearmitt. jack-mormon extraordinaire! it's so nice to make your acquaintance.

sounds cool doesn't it? while i'm on secret wishes, let me share one of my friend who sends the great baubles through the mail. he wishes privately that he was a minority. i don't think he has a specific one in mind. just any ole minority. i haven't really delved too deep into this ambition. i think i'm afraid of opening a wound that may stop my surprises in the mail and there are few things i enjoy more than those so i think i'll let him keep his secret all to himself (as well as anyone reading this).

thank you for the latest brown-paper man. i appreciate you and it.

these days, as we all know, i live in saint louis, which in the month of august means i live on the face of the sun. in saint louis, we have an outdoor theatre called the muny. Thin When Tan Girl and her man treated marty and i to West Side Story last night. at the show's intermission when the lights came up i looked around and thought to myself how stinking uncomfortably hot all these people looked. when i turned to my theater-mates, they looked quite startled and exclaimed 'wow. troy. you look ... awfully ... shiny.'

is it my fault i have rich, moist skin?

speaking of rich, moist skin, West Side Story is my all-time favorite musical. it holds this esteemed position for two reasons. firstly, one of the two mormon girls i was hopelessly in love with in high school played a pivotal part in my school's senior year production of it. and secondly, this same girl would sing the musical's songs to me after school when we drove around in her family's car that smelled like vomit. (this mixture of sensory input caused a real schism in some of my brain's memory pathways later in life. fortunately for me, i have rich, moist skin so i'm not expected to be all that together, mentally at least.)

it was almost eleven o'clock on a friday evening and i was driving to the apple store to pick up my copy of their new operating system, tiger. as for the late hour, they were open until midnight in honor of the software's release. i stopped on the way for gas and as i headed inside to pay, a youngish woman jumped out of a parked car and dashed in just before me, beating me to the counter. she purc...