a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. oma

there's a special chalkboard in my mind. what makes it special is in the upper right hand corner in neat print, neater than my own, are written the words SAVE THIS. there's a balloon-like bubble drawn around these words using the side of a piece of chalk, so the border is thicker than the print. the things noted on this full-size board i consider special in life and have hope, however meager, to one day achieve them. an example of one is 'bike coast to coast'. another is 'live it italy'. like i said, meager.

if you asked me about one of the special chalkboard items two years ago, i would have easily placed it ten years out. if you asked me about the same item one year ago, i would have put it five years out. if you asked me about it yesterday, i would have said it was less than twenty-four hours away. that line item is 'teach at a university'.

given this wasn't realistically on my radar a year ago, its development has been quite sudden. and since the moment it firmed up, i've been in a wake of emotion. my current mood is quiet confidence. i'm quiet, which is not entirely like me, because of the uncertainty of it all. i'm confident because of the months of obsessive planning i've done.

so that i may stay quiet and so that i may keep a tentative grip on this delicate confidence, i'm not going to go on further. if you're sitting around at 2:30 CST with nothing to do, send me some karmic love and good thoughts. only if you got some you're not doing anything with that is. now sit up straight. and eyes forward.

it was twenty years ago today that i left colorado. i had just graduated high school and was headed to saint louis to attend college. it was not my choice. i had forfeited my option to stay in the state by not taking control of a situation earlier. this was one of my first severe lessons in life. as i pulled off I-25 and onto I-70 east i recall repeatedly looking into the rear-view mirror, watching the mountains dissipate in the distance. i couldn't cry outright because my home-town pal snake was cheerily riding shotgun next to me. his jovial spirit was certainly a by-product of his golden two-way ticket.

time has shown, leaving fort collins and colorado was one of the best doses of medicine i ever ingested. staying there would have stunted my emotional growth more than a pack a day habit would have stymied my physical maturity. leaving the serene shelter of fort collins granted me not one but two re-inventions of myself (the first of which lacked some of the potential i thought possible). it allowed me to shake off my adolescent conditioning and live a life governed by natural instincts rather than societal expectations. i'm unable to quantify how this change in approach improved my life and ultimate fulfillment other than to say it was immense.

another unanticipated boon of the change was oddly enough my theatre-going. before moving away, i had never gone to movies alone. after the move, i went solo quite frequently (having no one to go with) and found it to be wonderfully liberating. i've actually tested this theory against real-life folks and find it to be mostly predictable. that is, people who live in their hometown seldom or never go to movies alone and those who have had some major change in geography will sit alone without compunction if not by preference. i know it's sad to to insert this sophomoric discovery in with such a heartfelt reveal but i'm disproportionately proud of this observation.

i do have great adoration and warmth towards colorado and love saying i am from the state. a pre-boom, pre-california colorado where kids rode bikes into the mountains without helmets, routinely ice-skated on wild lakes and always knew on which horizon the sun would set. i may return one day but will do so as a different person and with different expectations. and thanks to in-town family i love and a job i greatly enjoy in saint louis, i will patiently do so many, many years from now.

residing in saint louis in the summer months is comparable to living inside a combustion engine doing 120mph on the autobahn. and if you weren't bred and born in the region, your body is simply not equipped to gracefully handle the climate. i sweat so much here it's unfair to even call it sweating because a distinct property of sweating is that it is intermittent. when your body constantly exudes fluids it is really more an act of leaking, which is what i call what i do in saint louis, leak. as for the leak-season, it starts in mid-june and ends in late-september. the native residents don't really get why outsiders leak so, in part because they themselves never leave the city (for reasons i don't yet understand) so they don't realize there are environments in this nation and on this planet that have less than ninety percent humidity.

recently i was working with a colleague in my office. when we were done talking i left and biked home for lunch. the moment i walked in the door marty reminded me of something i forgot. so i jumped back on the bike and made the five minute trek back to my office, ran upstairs and logged onto my computer to get what i needed. after a moment the same colleague i was working with earlier walked back into my office to ask me a question. she paused at my desk staring at me oddly. i, in a distracted state, asked what she needed. she posed her question and i answered it. i noticed she remained standing there and i turned to find her staring at me wordlessly. when she realized i was looking back at her she lowered her gaze, turned and left.

dismissing her oddness, i resumed my own work. i felt a drop of sweat roll down my temple. i swiped it with the sleeve of my shirt. in doing so i realized that the material of my oxford was completely soaked through, like see-through soaked through. as i flitted the shirt around trying to cool off and air out it occurred to me that this woman was probably seriously perplexed that she was in my office moments earlier and i was fine and when she returned twenty minutes later i was drenched in sweat. she of course didn't realize that i made not one but two half mile sprints on my bike in the 94 degree, mid-day swelter. and because she didn't know this i now work with a woman who secretly fears the leader of her project team is free-basing heroin behind the closed door of his office.

what she's forgetting is that missouri is the nation's leading producer of crystal meth, not heroin.

when i'm on my game and living life according to troy, saturday mornings begin with a 35-mile bike ride through some of the most finely paved and tree-lined streets my city has to offer. between the newish job and even newer baby life according to troy has gotten slightly manipulated and disfigured. until now.

the renovation began with a doctor's visit late last year. specifically when my physician walked into the exam room, his eyes focused on the chart he was leafing through.

DOCTOR
so mr dearmitt. if my math is right it says here that you've gained seventeen pounds since i last saw you (more leafing) fourteen months ago. this can't be right can it?

TROY
yeah, i'd suggest a new scale.

DOCTOR
so what's going on with you? where's this weight coming from?

TROY
would you believe it's muscle-mass?

for the first time his eyes leave the chart to look me up and down. he then resumed reading the chart saying, "No, I wouldn't". that is where my recovery began. six months later, i'm back down a belt-loop and am comfortably slipping into my nine-article wardrobe. the best of all news is through spinning three times a week i finally felt my conditioning was back to a point where i could resume my saturday treks. on the first morning i suited up to leave, alex upon seeing me said he wanted to come. i explained that this ride was too long for him to pedal himself. he quickly, desperately almost, said he could ride in the bike carrier. i explained that i would be gone for several hours and he would get bored. he quickly said he would not get bored, promised even, and could he please, please, please ride in the rickshaw carrier. ten minutes later, i'm hooking the carrier to my bike (this child is dangerously cute). while doing so, i speculate, with occupant, it is about the performance equivalent of dragging a roped cinder block behind me. and i get this fifty pound break on my first return to the road.

i gotta say alex was a champ. while we didn't make it the full thirty-five we did do thirty and it wasn't him but me that made the choice to head home. the added weight and extra pee-in-the-bushes stops bumped the usual two-hour ride to a whopping three and half hour event, but it was wonderful. truly. every comment and expression alex made was one of enjoyment and appreciation. he even took about a thirty minute nap towards the end.

the one and only possible downside to the morning was i started getting the sense that some of the people seeing us were quietly cursing my parental selfishness, saying ...

look at that man! making his child ride in that uncomfortable bike contraption just so he can go out and ride his fancy bicycle. big important man and his big important exercise. the nerve of some people.

in response to these folks (or this neurosis) i've already affixed a sign to the back of the carrier. it reads simply: he asked to come.

on the first day of my second year at the new job my boss called me into his office. he congratulated me on the anniversary and presented me with a few gifts, totally insightful and peachy gifts. he then told me he was approving a request made for me to teach a class in the fall. year two seems to be off and running like the bulls and will be the year i teach my first university level course. so much for ditching this ridiculous smile.

today marks my one year anniversary at the new job. that means it was one year ago today that i walked to my new office with a broad, idiotic, unremovable grin across my face. you see, i'd set this goal approximately six years prior and now here i was cresting the hill. as the year progressed the sheen didn't fade. i'd find myself walking the hallways or sitting in my office just grinning, still idiotically. and while i remain enamored with the employer and the work and the colleagues, it is the little things no one would expect that really keep the situation special.

if you need something you ask for it and assuming it is not a prostate massager or the like, you get it. after one of the several mergers at my last place, our new ceo instituted a policy that this company, his company, would no longer supply pens and pencils to the staff. i mean sure, it's not like a financial institution would need something superfluous like writing instruments to function so i found the move quite insightful if not inspired. when asked what employees were meant to do should a need arise the response claimed there wasn't a person on staff who didn't have a junk drawer full of pens in their home. and i reckon his $37 million year-end bonus could swing at least two such drawers.

parties and celebrations are held at people's homes. sometimes catered, sometimes not. either way, the personality of these affairs warm me. i recall back in corporate-world such celebrations entailed a boss flying in from another city for the day and the staff assembling in a conference room with too few chairs where we'd stand around awkwardly and eat a grocery store hoagie off paper plates.

there is a switch on the wall that allows me to turn the light in my office on and off. back in the day i remember standing on my desk to unscrew the broad fluorescent tubes over my workspace, disabling them. at some point in the week an elf would come in the night and reverse my adjustment. the next morning, up i'd climb and thus went our dance of persistence. i'll let you guess where the switch on my new wall most often resides.

windows. glorious, tall, world-framing windows. and as if just having them wasn't enough, they open. there are few professional perks sweeter than plying your indoor trade in the natural light of the day and feeling a soft morning breeze usher a co-workers acerbic flatulence away from your nose.

here's to what is hopefully another year of bliss and appreciation.

what the associated press had to say about this happening: and what troy had to say:

and a word about the cut-off shirt mentioned in yesterday's post. when marty says i'm wearing a cut-off shirt, it's not like the eighties-style top you're probably imagining. eighties-style being defined by one's full gut and navel being exposed. my cut-off shirts are a product of how ill-fitting todays basic t-shirts are for me. they wear more like a tube-sock than a undershirt. they hang several inches below my groin. they don't quite pass my knees, but obviously i look quite ridiculous. and if i tuck them into a pair of pants, i end up with all this bunched up material just below my belt-line and the last thing i need is more padding sitting anywhere near my ass. so the last time i bought some shirts, i got totally disgusted with how low they were hanging. so i took them off, got a pair of scissors and cut six inches of material off the bottom so the damn thing would actually end somewhere near my waist instead of three inches below my crotch.

my idea was gold excepting two details;
1. i'm not garment savvy enough to project how much a shirt will shrink, so a few of the first shirts i did this to have shrunk so much i can no longer tuck them into my pants. if i keep them long enough i reckon they may soon qualify as an eighties-caliber cut-off, but this is not in any way intentional.
2. when you scissor-cut a cotton shirt and don't stitch the wound, it rolls up like a severed achilles tendon. no matter how much you flatten it with your hand, it rolls right back into its tight curl. at first i wore the shirts inside out so the roll was inside towards my body, but then the label faces out and everyone you pass asks if you know that your shirt is on inside out. so, i stopped doing that and in time have grown to like this added flourish. in fact, it strikes me as a smart addition to something that is otherwise, a dull, flat and boring shirt hem. you just wait, in ten years time, this is how all shirts will be manufactured. granted by that point mine will have shrunken so much they will stop a few inches above my nipples, and unfortunately that trend won't catch on for an additional ten years.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. the bedtime story

last year we had a santa mis-step. bella had left him cookies, eggnog and a note. in the morning the cookies were chomped, the eggnog chugged and the note held a quick scrawl from the man himself. it was something simple. something like a short hello and thanks for the eats. it seems bella had it in her head he was supposed to take the note. that he did not was an egregious trespass. one year later she had no intention of letting him forget anything when he left.



her solution was to put the chair and table that held all the goods directly in front of the fire ensuring he wouldn't miss anything this time. i told bella that he was kind of a big guy and she may need to give him more room to get out of the chimney and her setup may be too close. she explained that if he could fit down the chimney he should have little problem getting by the table and chair. as it turns out, he was able to successfully navigate the space although the agile santa didn't see fit to leave me better reasoning skills so i could stop getting schooled by my kindergartner. sees everything my ass.

"A sphincter is a circular muscle which normally maintains constriction of a natural body passage or orifice and which relaxes as required by normal physiological functioning." - wikipedia

a body has many sphincters but at the end of the day you only care if one of them is working as advertised; the anal sphincter. this is one of those hyper-smart organs that can discern what's what with great alacrity and precision. right now, three of the five sphincters in my home are malfunctioning at the hands of some twisted and humorless virus. mine is one of them. bella's is another. and alex, well poor alex has all sorts of evil stuff going on.

as a parent of a school-age bella, the stakes of having an unpredictable digestive illness such as this are much greater, because she greatly delights in sharing everything about our home with her classmates (i mean does the child have no sense of propriety). so if my sphincter were to deceive or fail me while, say, sleeping on the couch and bella came to learn of this misfortune, she would be sure to regale her wide-eyed, floor-sitting schoolmates with the story about how everyone in her house is potty-trained except her baby brother and father. please wish me luck in holding the line.

and for those keeping score at home, i still haven't puked.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. currency

bella clips her own fingernails. toenails too. has been for well over a year now. she's quite adept at contorting her hands and feet in all sorts of crazed poses to get just the right cut. the thing i love most though is how meticulous she is about cleaning up. as clippings drop she plucks them from her thigh or shirt and adds them to a small pile of prior victims. and, if a shard jettisons through the air she tracks it with eagle-like awareness and then retrieves it, even getting up to recover the runaway if necessary.

another thing about bella is she's an improver. she often devises methods for doing things faster, smarter. at some point bella deduced that instead of handling every nail piece individually, it would be quicker to hold her foot or hand over some sort of container. this way, the debris, aside from the occasional shooter, would fall right in thus saving her a step. while you would think we could all celebrate such a handsome improvement i was quick to identify a slight flaw in her process. her receptacle of choice is my work shoe.

now it's not that bella is inconsiderate. when done, she carefully picks up the wingtip and empties it into a nearby trash can. after the initial pour, she'll peer into the dark recess of the shoe with squinty eyes. if she detects any hangers on she'll give it another tip and shake, possibly even clanging it against the side of the bin. when satisfied, she returns the shoe to it's home beneath my dresser.

this leads to a second issue in bella's workflow. if she's in the middle of her grooming and neighbor-molly sticks her head in our door calling for her, the clippers get immediately dropped and the shoe left in place as bella hurriedly scrambles down the staircase excitedly calling "coming molly. i'm coming." then at some later point in the day marty will walk by, see the shoe in the hallway, pick it up, quietly curse me and haphazardly toss the footwear in the direction of my dresser.

the next morning i will slide my socked and unaware foot into the loafer moments before dashing down the stairs to usher the younglings to school and then myself to work. i may notice something straight away but in the a.m. fervor don't take enough heed to do anything beyond wiggle my toes or shift my foot around. it isn't until hours later when i'm sitting in my office discussing some mundane matter with a colleague that it again occurs to me something is amiss. it is here that i roll my chair back, remove the shoe and tip it over. as i watch the translucent pieces of human waste tumble through the air before disappearing into the dull-colored carpet my mind screams "noooohhh!" i turn to look at the face of my alarmed co-worker. it is clear they feel are too near someone with an exotic disease that makes their toenails brittle and crumbly. and my condition appears so dire i can't even wait until i get home to attend to my illness privately and on top of all of this, am inconsiderate enough to just cast my withered body pieces all willy-nilly about the workplace.

have i mentioned that bella will also on occasion trim her own hair. that particular habit has 'night in jail' written all over it.

i was in the breakfast room reading the paper. bella was in the living room pretend-reading a nancy drew. she called from the couch asking if i would bring her a glass of water. i walked a plastic cup into her, she took it, raised it and then paused before drinking:

BELLA
dad, did you get this water from the sink or the fridge?

TROY
i got it from the sink.

BELLA
oh good. that means i won't get diarrhea.

it was at this precise moment that i stopped asking questions about things in my home. questions like why is our brita pitcher disassembled on the kitchen counter in more pieces than i even knew it had. or why did my daughter just say that our purified water supply would induce diarrhea? i didn't ask because i've learned, slowly and finally, that i'm simply not prepared for the answers that will come.

i don't exercise to look and feel good, but rather so i don't look and feel bad.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dad has to go

bella starts kindergarten today.

as if i'm not already enough of a mess with this looming milestone, i've had a number of veteran parents tell me that the period before your oldest child starts full-day school is the golden era of parenthood. the rationale claims that once a child enters school-proper, parenting becomes more challenging given the child's exposure to people you haven't liked enough to personally invite into your home. the theory does seem sound. the theory also does seem to suck a whole lot. on the positive side though, while some of the folks bella will be forced to interact with will be evil, the process is sure to bring some experience-rich personalities to the table she/we would not have otherwise met.

and as proof of the universe's incontrovertible balancing act, the same weekend our golden era ends, bookpimp's journey begins. congratulations michael and christine on the birth of your first child.

wish me luck. wish bookpimp luck. wish anyone responsible for tiny heart-absconding humans luck.

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

walt and i went to a bbq last summer. while surveying the food spread, i saw a stack of plates, quartered heads of iceberg lettuce, a small bowl of white dressing and a large plate of ribs and chicken. it all looked great and i was anxious to get started but was stymied in that there wasn't a sign of any silverware.

the male host walked up behind me and invited me to dig in. i said i was looking for the silverware and he gaped at me like i was mad. "SiLvErWaRe? SILVERWARE!?! THIS IS A BBQ AND I'M FROM TEXAS AND WE DON'T ALLOW NO STINKIN' SILVERWARE!!!" so i did what any scolded and denied adult would do. when he turned away, i walked into his house, uninvited, and went through his kitchen looking for cutlery. no silverware my ass, there were piles of it inside. so i helped myself to a place setting and for my trouble, also took a wacky straw i happened upon (that was just to make a point).

now appropriately equipped, i returned to the food table and prepared my plate. i neatly cut my lettuce, dripped some of the white stuff on it and took my seat. i looked across the table as the sticky-fingered heathen held his iceberg wedge like a football, raked it through the chunky white sauce and raised the full dripping mass to his already smeared mouth. he made an exuberant-scrunched face as his mouth bore down on the roughage. i quietly shook my head at the scene, stabbed a small piece of the lettuce on my plate, dabbed it in the dressing and carefully placed it in my mouth. two minutes later the fork was in the grass and i was cramming the lettuce/sauce mixture into my mouth as rapidly as my two hands could scoop it from the plate. and when the concoction was done i licked the residuals from the folds and crevices of my fingers and palms contorting my wrist and hand as needed to access it all.

texas blue cheese dressing is pretty dang good.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. remedial self-help

if we are at someone's home and bella has to use the restroom she employs the best of manners. she seeks out the host(ess), asks them where their restroom is and if she may use it. after receiving consent and directions she turns and hurriedly moves towards it. if what she has to do is poop, she will pause, turn and ask if they have father wipes<...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. the last word

as you may have noticed from my unintentionally, unannounced absence last week, i pulled the car off the highway (the car being my mind and the highway being my life ... cliff note for my closer friends). and not only did i pull the car onto an onramp, i actually removed the key from the ignition, tossing the small ring onto the dashboard where it sat all week, with one notable exception.

the hiatus was medicinal. and i'm not talking about your three-aspirin variety but a count backwards from ten caliber of narcotic. the topper ... i slept outside all week. have you ever slept outside? and i don't mean tent-outside. i mean outside-outside. my naked feet poked between the slats and over the edge of our beach house's second-story deck, the ocean winds massaging my triple-E soles. only one night did i sleep alone. all other nights, i had bella or alex or both nestled in an armpit or sprawled across my chest (marty and sassafras slept indoors, enjoying the bountiful real estate their bed offered).

one night after reading books on the porch-bed alex was drawing on a piece of paper with a bic pen. he set the page down and the wind lifted it off the deck sweeping it away. he immediately pointed at the lost parchment and sent me packing.

ALEX
daddy, my paper.

TROY
yeah, your paper blew away alex. you should have held onto it better.

ALEX
you get it.

TROY
no, me not get it. i'm in bed and it's probably a mile away by now.

ALEX
get my paper daddy.

TROY
alex it's gone. i can't get it. here, finish your picture on my hand.

he looked at the the back of the hand i set in his lap, shrugged indifferently and resumed his artwork. thirty minutes later my hand, arm, chest and stomach looked like a drunk tattoo artist was pissed at me. i mostly didn't mind serving as little man's canvass but alex became obsessed with fully covering my nipples with the blue ink of the pen. do you know how hard you have to press a ball point pen against a flaccid male-nipple to actually color it? allow me to answer; hard enough to make the full-grown owner of that male-nipple wince ... repeatedly.