04.30am		put my computer to sleep after working on a site design for 7 straight hours
04.35am		get undressed in the dark and fall into bed only to learn alex is sleeping in my spot. i yank my pillow from under his head and drag it behind me to his bed.
04.40am		listen to bella grind her teeth for five minutes and do some unqualified projections on what orthodontic expenses will look like in ten years.
04.45am		fall asleep
06.18am		roll over and smash my face into a metal thomas the tank engine toy. attempt to throw it across the room but send it into the wall next to the bed. fall back asleep.
07.30am		get pushed in the head by alex's foot and told to get out of his bed. i push him away telling him to go ask mom.
07.34am		get shoved again by alex, this time with a hand, and told more emphatically to remove myself from his bed. i repeat the instruction to take it up with his mother. he leaves.
07.50am		pushed in the back by marty and told to get up for work.
07.53am		bowl of grapes spilled on my head and chest as alex roughly climbs over me for the thomas train that accosted my cheek and nose earlier.
08.00am		pushed harder in the back by marty and told she's not telling me again to get up.
08.06am		tickled by bella and excitedly told 'first one to the tv room gets to pick first show'. i tell her i hate the formulaic brainwashing that happens on modern broadcasting and am fifteen hours into a boycott. moments later i hear her shout her first-show victory through the house.
08.10am		again shoved in the back by marty and told i am ruining her morning.
08.32am		i wake, naturally, and stumble to the bathroom feeling surprisingly refreshed and have a notion it is going to be a good day.
08.35am		i find my electric toothbrush lying behind the toilet. it seems the good day hunch was a tad premature.

the day after sassafras was born, i took the kids to the hospital to meet their younger brother. bella immediately latched onto the newborn making various cooing and gooing noises at him while waggling a finger over his face and belly. alex immediately went to marty taking his rightful spot on her lap. about five minutes into the visit bella spoke up and said she knew what we should name the baby. we asked what, preparing our poker faces for the worst. she confidently announced Abrey. after her proclamation she turned and hunched back over the infant as if the matter were resolved. marty and i both made faces, but they were different.

TROY
i kinda like it.

MARTY
what did she even say, avery?

TROY
no, abrey.

MARTY
spell it.

TROY
A-B-R-E-Y.

MARTY
abrey? that's not even a name.

TROY
sure it is. everything is a name.

MARTY
well, i don't like it.

TROY
and if i do?

MARTY
i'm not naming a child abrey.

TROY
it's two against one.

MARTY
alex, come here.

here's a thing to know when negotiating with the human who just spat another, smaller human out of their special hole; they always possess more stock in the business at hand than you. so abrey was out. after a brief bout of panic and uncertainty a name was unanimously agreed upon ... anthony. anthony walter dearmitt.

that said, everyone in our house calls him something different. marta calls him anthony. i call him antonio. bella calls him abrey. and alex calls him sassafras. no reason to not get a quick jump on the schizophrenia his world is sure to bring.


click here peggy

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. the last word

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. can i keep this?

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...

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.

i wish i could say marty was talking to alexander when she said that but she wasn't, she was talking to me. yeah, that's right, i got THE TALK. the one virtually any man is going to get after they begin co-habitating with a lady-friend.

it was suggested that i sit down when i pee, like my friend chris. when chris first announced that he always sat to urinate when at home or friends, i was intrigued, but apparently not as intrigued as marty. little did i know she concocted a five year strategy to get me to do the same. it's so sad really because she's been architecting this move for years only to have its execution marred by the most minor of details; she pulled the trigger as we moved into the fall/winter season. the only reason i'm able to lower my cozy warm skin on the icy cold seat of our toilet once a day is for fear of soiling my pants, bookpimp style. sorry dear, but if it's any consolation there ain't no love in this world i could make such a chilling sacrifice for.

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.

i get asked to write referrals for this or that every now and again. i reckon we all do. recently i was asked to do a new sort of one though. these guys were trying to be a host family for a child coming from another country to receive a medical procedure. the child would stay with them through the operation and recovery which would last almost two months. the reference, obviously, was going to the agency placing the child. i found this an extra-challenging item to write because it was not about some dude i went to college with or used to work with nor was it whether they would make a good programmer or college student, it was an assessment of a whole family and at stake was the well-being of a young and ill child.

fortunately i like this family. i like them a lot. this is what i wrote: while thinking about what to write i had a memory of a moment i shared with jack many years ago. some of his college buddies invited him to a week in a cabin on a lake. when jack asked about accommodations for his family the friend laughed at him stating that the whole point of the vacation was so everyone could get away from their families.

i didn't have kids yet so didn't think too much about the implications of the classmate's remark. i do remember though being totally transfixed on jack's disgust towards the comment. his emotion was so visceral that i knew there was a great amount i didn't understand about being a parent or even husband for that matter (a good one at least). he and his wife have totally given themselves to the life they have chosen. now that i have kids, i understand how hard this is to do. and now that i do understand this, my respect for how they live their life is ten-fold what it was.

and for those who know me well enough to ask about jack and jill's true identity, don't bother. i'm not sharing my alpha-family with any of you wannabes because i need all the help and one-on-one attention i can get.

there is a game of sorts marty and i have engaged in since the early days of our relationship. we refer to it as THE CHIP. i don't recall who started it or even if it was an original invention. i just know it showed up one day and has been used 3-5 times a year since its inception.

how it works; each of us began the game with an equally scant few chips. chips are given when one of us performs an act of personal sacrifice at the request of the other. for instance, if marty were going out with her girlfriends and asked me to go i could, and oftentimes would, decline. if for some reason my attendance was important to marty on a particular outing, she could simply say my going was worth a chip. with the offer of a chip, it told me that this was, for some personal reason that did not need to be explained, an important matter to marty.

another thing about our chips; the offering of a chip has never been refused.

back in the day chips weren't traded immediately. one person may burn through three chips before ever getting presented one in return. this is not so much the case these days because these days you always got a chip or two you could toss on the counter. and while chips used to mostly involve family functions or events requiring shirts with buttons, they now take a much more pedestrian form. an example of a chip exchange today looks more like this:

MARTY (walking into kitchen where i'm doing dishes)
you got something?

TROY (laughing)
do i have something? sure. go.

MARTY
stop leaving your wet towels on the bed in the morning.

TROY
hang the broom up in the pantry after using it.

MARTY
done.

TROY
done.

and, people say kids complicate life. pre-kid chips were never this simple and painless. for us, kids have simplified our days down to the lowest common denominator of life; survival. and i'm not talking about driving a leased-suv and having the summer place in the outer banks kind of survival, i'm talking about the crouching scared in the back of a dank cave kind of survival.

clarifying points: the chips aren't real, like poker chips or something. they are figurative. no official scorecard has ever been kept because no one has ever thought to abuse the chip system. and this is not out of fear of getting caught (which you would get caught) but out of respect for the good deed it has done for our time together.

sorry i've been away so long. i've been camping. i'm sure some of you are wondering what it takes for a man-purse carrying fellow such as myself to survive in the wild. well, first i need my man-purse and second i need a support staff of about twenty.

it was a great outing. one of the best we've had. the only bump under the tent came when a bed came available in the one air-conditioned RV in our party. the bed was secretly offered to marty. after learning of the opportunity, i said she should take it. she acted disinterested, albeit unconvincingly. i insisted.

on the surface, it appears to be a stand-up gesture on my part. under the surface it is the choice of a man who knows his wife well enough to know that if a raccoon drops ass within 50 yards of the tent, the girl is going to wake up. so for good measure throw in (a) two twisty, kicky, sweaty kids, (b) a 100 degree day, (c) one husband who is trying to go four days without showering (for reasons not well-defined) and (d) four people in a three-man dome tent and what you have is a proverbial no-brainer. for obvious reasons, i sent her off and for even more obvious reasons, she went off.

when it came time to for her to retire to the camper she paused on the way out of the tent and asked for the pillow i was using. this common house pillow was without doubt the only luxury item in the tent the kids and i were sharing. i uncertainly raised my head and started handing it to her when i asked what i was supposed to use. she tossed me a cloth object that i could have fit into the front pocket of my daisy dukes and told me to use that.

what the hell is this?

it's your pillow.

this is not a pillow.

it's a camping pillow.

what, for a ken doll?

well, did you pack a pillow?

well, did you pack an air-conditioned camper?

fine, keep the pillow. (throws it at me)

yes. how very generous of you. i think i will.

---

and this was how pissy she was before not getting a full night's sleep. i imagine my choices are looking much more sage at this point.

a detail i forgot to include in this month's gallery essay is that the day after getting the software, marty mocked me because i had stayed up all night working on my computer and was exhausted the next day. i told her to be nice to me and my new software because Apple's Tiger saved her marriage. she, like the gas-station clerk, indifferently shrugged her shoulders before turning away.

perhaps it's just that everyone but me knows that my seductress was really a prostitute trying to salvage a slow night.

marty is holidaying in florida with her sister, spring break-style for sure. she deserves it. this is her first vacation away from her children since she's had children. bella just turned four if you need perspective. fact is, i kicked her out, i said the words 'leave. get out. we don't need you. go. have fun. we'll be fine.' i want to be clear, those words were formed by me and under my own volit...

how the apple switch campaign works in our home.

TROY
i'm replacing your computer.

MARTY
what!? why!? i just got this computer.

TROY
i don't like it.

MARTY
what!? why!? it's my computer, you don't have to like it.

TROY
as long as i'm the one expected to fix it when it has issues you're wrong, i do have to like it and i don't like it so i'm replacing it.

MARTY
why do i care? whatever!

and that's what i call another satisfied customer.

i just met my second person who used to have a scanner that could pick up cell phone conversations. as i understand it, due to changes in cellular protocols, these devices can no longer receive the signals. too bad about that really, cuz there are about seven traits of my personality that would have made that activity and me real good friends.

interestingly each of these fellows had similar findings. they said that the dominant thread of conversation they heard dealt with infidelity. one of them went as far to put it at 70% of the conversations he listened to took place between affair goers.

the second most common discussion they spied; couples fighting.

now there's some math even i can add up.

2 days ago i said that marty gets $40 a month in allowance. she asked me to correct that statement in that she really only gets $30.

either way, she doesn't spend it which makes me think she's still getting too much jack.

at the beginning of the month marty and i each get an allowance. mine is $140. hers is $40. this money goes towards any impulse and/or frivilous spending like eating out, going to the movies, buying candy or coffees, etc.

somewhere between the second and third weeks, i'm broke, always, and hitting the atm to pull funds out of my savings to supplement my monthly expenses.

if at the end of the month marty doesn't have $40, she has $35, always.

i don't even get that. what she does should not even be possible. the girl is a serious freak.

i'm sick. i'm certain it's because i haven't been able to buy my new ipod yet. i told marty that my health will continue to slide until this need has been sated. you know what she said?

"you've got thirty two dollars in your savings account. if that's how much a shiny new ipod cost, then knock yourself out." (she said the words 'shiny new ipod' while flitting her hands around in the air mockingly)

you know what i said...
"why do YOU know how much money I have in MY checking account?"

you see this is what i call getting to the point while confusing the subject. but she's good, as can be seen in her response...
"cuz i'm smart"

i wasn't expecting that. now reeling, i have no choice but to revel in the suck that is my financial situation...
"thirty two dollars. that ain't very much!"

while having my loving wife rub my nose in the sad state of things...
"no it ain't."

looks like we may be seeing a new ipod fund on the horizon. and i got that one without selling blood or semen which means this time around should be a snap because if this latest illness has taught me anything, it's taught me that i'm all about the bodily fluid. just ask marty.

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...

my garage door is broke. since having a garage we've had the clicker, openy thing. when it stopped working, i just stood there, in front of it repeatedly pushing the button on the wall, with no results. after about ten minutes of this, i did what any cold-blooded american male would do, i went and asked my wife what i should do.

m: pull the red ripcord to disengage the door.

t: then what?

m: then open it.

t: how?

m: with your hand.

t: no button?

m: no button.

suffice it to say, she may has well told me to reach shoulder deep into a water buffalo's birth canal to look for the television's remote control. if it were the 20,000 pyramid the answer to this scenario would be 'things troy just doesn't do'. when i asked marty about replacing it, she said we don't have the money, right now, for a new garage door. i assured her the new opener would be way cheaper than the small child i was prepared pay to stand at the door all day long waiting for me to pull up so he can raise and lower the door for me. marty told me to find a cheaper child.

on the very rare occasions when marty and i wake up before both children, we drift to the center of the bed and unconsciously wrap ourselves in one another. i can't exactly describe the embrace. a leg is wrapped here. an arm will get tucked over there. etc. just take my word for it that it works quite well and proves to be one of the most serene blips in our lives these days.

recently marty mustered the energy during one such session to whisper in my ear that i smelled like sauerkraut. i gave her the obligatory and frequently used, "whatever". twenty minutes after she left the bed i wondered what she was cooking downstairs, surprised that she would have something in the oven at this early hour. it only took a few minutes to realize the culinary treat i was smelling was me.

but it still wasn't sauerkraut.

i recently admitted i don't like to dance. it even more recently struck me what a vast understatement that was. to say i don't like to dance is like saying i don't like to run the underside of my penis through a cheese-grater often.

i'm not a dancer. marty is a dancer. marty is a groin-grinding, hip-bucking, trunk-slapping dancer. it's a fame thing. it's a solid gold thing. it's a rhyth...

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'.