props to david lienemann for the fine qDoba portrait

the last week in our house has been unique. i have been laid up in bed for six days now, only getting up to visit the bathroom, and this only when the need becomes dire. my mother stayed with us the first few days, primarily to take care of me. and marty has been doing the whole single parent thing with the kids. in that i'm stuck in bed, the house plays out more like theater to me than life. my family serves as the characters swishing in and out of my doorjamb view throughout the day. this week, i'm going to take a day for each personality and write about what makes their performance noteworthy, to my eyes at least.


let me start with anthony. he's the only one in the house i'm actually afraid of. the older kids understand i can't play or roughhouse. anthony does not. and he is a hooligan. and he is completely unpredictable. and he is the absolute wrong height to be walking around people who just had knee surgery. and he moves about the house with a cocky swagger that smacks more of a ivy league frat boy than a diapered and wordless child. when i see him stop at my door my body tenses. most times though, he just walks directly to my side and rifles through the glasses and dishes sitting on my bedside table. he reaches into full glasses to pull out a little handful of ice which he sloppily moves to his mouth. it is not uncommon for this trespass to topple glasses and crash dishes to the floor. his raids are inelegant and unquiet.

when he's not stealing or upending my food stuffs he dances for me. the style most resembles a little soft-shoe with his feet shuffling about, his arms swinging at his side. while dancing, he watches his feet in a studious manner as if evaluating his technique, although i believe he is just taking in the show as is anyone else watching. after a bit he seems to sense the need to mix it up so he turns around and steals away in our bedroom's double door closet which is situated just behind his dancing stage. once inside he pulls the doors closed, mostly. through the small gap he peeks out. when he sees you seeing him he giggles and waits. after an unpredictable pause in time he flamboyantly throws the doors open, jogging forward to the ohhs and ahhs of the crowd. he will then turn and again disappear into the closet for a repeat performance. and no one will ever question his stamina or dedication to the show given how many encores he's prepared to deliver. he is a consummate showman.

i'm going to do something i don't think i've ever done before. plug a photo contest that isn't my own.

a new one called snapmission recently came online. it cycles monthly and works off a theme. payout is $25 and i'm thinking unless someone can best the photo i just submitted, the jack is all mine, or i guess it's marty's since she officially took the shot. but i told her to.

regular readers of this site know my home has only one bathroom. long-time readers of this site know i've never lived in a house with more than one bathroom. marty recently asked me if i've reached the point where this oddity is something i hope to maintain through my lifetime. in reflecting on it, i couldn't answer. having come this far, it would be a bit of a shame to soil such a distinctive record. distinctive to me at least in that i've never had anyone praise the achievement or tout the benefits of a single toilet home, which do exist, whether they are acknowledged or not. for instance ...

i don't like cleaning the one toilet i have so am pretty sure i'd dislike roaming the house with a bristle brush and bottle of soft scrub playing weekend janitor to a bevy of log catchers.

some of our family's best proclamations come out of our one bathroom. like if alex has to use the toilet and people are in there, he rushes in, brushes past all the occupants and starts unbuckling his pants while dancing in place. the moment before he fully drops trow he calls out in his most commanding voice, "I'm going pee and poop. no one see my penis or butt!"

high traffic times of day allow for fun games that would not otherwise happen. if i'm in the shower and hear someone come in to use the toilet, i call out in my ogre-voice, "who is using my toilet" to which bella or alex call back in their fearless voice, "bella/alex is! who is using my shower!" when i reply it's just me, their father, they often don't believe me and say mom is in there too, which she sometimes is, but usually isn't. playing along, i turn and scream as if just noticing her and from behind the curtain stage a struggle of trying to throw marty out of the shower. i yell out OUCH!'s and UHGH!'s and punch at the shower curtain in random spots. every now and then i pantingly poke my head out from behind the curtain to tell alex or bella i am alright and will have her out in a minute and will then feign the classic getting pulled back into the fracas and scream out that pulling there or biting that is against the rules. the kids sit on the toilet with wide eyes, swinging their dangling legs and titter preciously.

humanity happens in the single bathroom of a single-toilet home. especially when an urge sneaks up on someone and they can't wait for the room to clear. it is here that through clenched teeth and face you get to see/hear little people groan things like, 'i ... think ... i ... need ... privacy ...' most times the plop beats the end of the sentence. there's volumes of positive psychology out there on the merits of comfortable public plopping. it's truly an enviable and elusive life skill.

and lastly and most significantly, quality, family time happens in the smallest room of a one-bathroom house making it one of the most valuable assets a modern family can possess. except when your wife mistakes this closeness for permission to use your braun razor to shave her legs, bikini area and all, making it not quite a brazilian but close enough to one to make me a little hesitant the next morning before work. that pause always makes me think of the scene from friends where joey was trying to talk chandler into sharing a wash cloth. chandler asked joey to think of the last thing he (chandler) would wash during his shower and the first thing he (joey) would wash for his shower. joey's face stares off in contemplation a moment before grimacing painfully. while i don't know for certain the order in which a woman shaves her lower torso, i can imagine the end game is not in my favor.

it was seven years ago today that marty and i entered the parenthood game. time, it do fly.

a disappointment regarding this month's gallery photo is that my image does not reveal that the figures on the wall were made out of nothing more than masking tape. in posting i had to choose between showing the whole scene or a detailed shot which would better reveal the artist's medium. obviously i opted for the full display but in doing so felt the need to still share the uniquity of the technique. so here are a few images that better represent, or at least more honestly represent, the work:

i call this two-shot series photographed by alex "EVIDENCE".

alex got a fisher price digital camera for christmas. on christmas day he took 231 pictures. since then it's been like living with a three foot tall paparazzi. it also makes me sensitive to how often i'm naked. and he could not be a worse height to be taking pictures of me naked.

in planning for our last class of the semester, i told my co-teacher, a very seasoned pro, that i wanted to take a group photo of the class. he looked at me a little sideways and said, kindly, "that's cute". in virtually all matters of planning and decision-making i deferred to this mentor but this was one i had to have. as the final minutes of the class approached i gained the room's attention and said:


so that may not be exactly how it came out but it is what i was shooting for. truthfully, i found myself slightly emotional looking at the collection of young and bright faces before me. this collection which would never come together again as they have. this sentimentality surely stems from the only child in me, that plus an extra heavy dash of androgyny which makes for good and routine awkwardness. as requested we did shoot a picture and good to the end, they were champs, exquisitely smiling and hamming for the camera.

after the last student left and the door closed one more time for that particular fall07 course i walked home in the rain thinking about how and why i needed that photograph. by the time i reached my door i didn't have an exact answer, but did know this image, freshly made, would warm me for years to come.

historically, i've spent between 150 and 200 hours in the month of november producing my everyman photo contest. this year saw a 400% increase in submissions (to 8k) yet, through some custom-built web enhancements, i spent less than twenty hours end to end overseeing the 2007 affair. this is by no means a reflection on the mix because there is some really remarkable photos this year. although, based on the usual varied opinions of my judges, not many folks can agree on what those remarkable photos are. or, they don't often agree with me at least (proof of this can be found in the scorecards, i'm judge #1).

see who ultimately won and how they match up with your taste.

and make sure to check out this year's most discussed photo. it is noteworthy for two reasons. the first is that this is the first year (in seven) my great friend bookpimp hasn't won that acclaim. the second reason is, well, i think i'll let that part speak for itself (may not be suitable for work or those with good visual memories). and for those wondering what the title, the samsara, means, it is a buddhist term dealing with rebirth, some definitions citing it specifically as a rebirth from the earth.

i've recently talked a few times about the day we went to a wedding a few weeks back. i was just sent a link to a bunch of the images from the event and found some share-worthy. first, here is a picture of bella doing her thing after the ceremony.



here's walt and i at the reception before the music started.



and here's walt thirty seconds after the first song of the night.



and here she is sixty seconds after the first song of the night, and up two dance partners.



and here's a lucky picture of the first drunk guy i've ever enjoyed in my life.



he was spectacular.



and the later it got, the more entertaining he became.



at one point in the evening i commented to marty that had she married the dancing, drunk guy instead of me, she might actually have problems adjusting to someone who could outdance her at a wedding reception. this guy never once left the dance floor (wether it was empty or not). marty shot me a look that told me this was the most daft thing i've ever said to her. i stand corrected. and if i were the hot pants dancing guy, i'd stand on my head corrected.

NEIGHBOR LADY
i feel sorry for the first guy to break bella's heart.

TROY
yeah, i hope he wears a cup to the discussion.

an exchange between a neighbor lady and myself while watching bella handle a surly playmate.

five years ago the everyman photo contest was ranked #837 by google when searching the phrase "photo contest". today it moves between the number 1 and 2 slots. this is a totally organic ranking meaning it has been achieved with zero advertising or search engine trickery. quite a feat for a contest that offers a $50 prize.

i also believe that this ranking has helped raise the submission count from 2,100 last year to 5,500 (and counting) this year. and this with still a whole month left. and that was my subtle reminder to any of you who have notions of entering this year's mix. tick-tock, tick-tock.

UPDATE: and a mailing list nearly 2,000 names long! of the 20 entrants in the first year's contest, 17 had eaten at my dinner table. those days seem to be long gone.

bella started school this week. something about the ramp-up made me think of an issue bella had late in her kindergarten year. some boys in her class were chasing she and her friends at recess and wouldn't stop. the girls didn't like it, or at least professed to not liking it. for a week, bella gave dinner-table reports on how bad these boys were and how they just wouldn't listen or leave them alo...

anthony turns one today. this makes it just about four days shy one year ago that marty and i walked into our home, labored to put three children to bed and collapsed glassy-eyed in our own room numbly staring at one another. one of us said, "what have we done?", the other didn't answer. over the years marty has told countless new mothers "it gets easier, don't worry."over the same period, i have told countless new fathers "it's temporary, totally temporary". we both slept that night with these missives playing, on repeat, in our heads.

and here we are already, with another one year old. what can i say about him? most notably, it's remarkable how completely different three biologically-connected humans can be. you'll get occasional glimpses that they belong together but much of the time it feels like i just run around yelling "where did you come from?" or "hey! you! are you supposed to be here?" in the end, you could slice many of these anthony-related moments into the following buckets:

the obvious things
the anthony scoot dazzles and tickles onlookers without fail. you ever hear the phrase 'money in the bank'? well setting anthony down in a public forum is just that, money in the bank. one unknown detail about his mode of transportation: the outside of his diaper is typically way dirtier than the inside, especially when what's on the inside starts finding its way to the outside, an unfortunate phenomenon that has recently come to pass.

the unexpected things
anthony is our first white child. while this was unexpected, it nicely rounds out our set. we now have one dark, one light and one white. i have friends who have joked about the uncertainty of my race saying that one day marty and i would have a child and the delivering doctor would catch a fully black infant in his hands, subtlety look at the nurse and say "we may be about to have a problem here." they would then hold the baby up so i could see and i would arms-open yell "heeeeyyy! my son, ohhh he's so beautiful." to which the doctors and nurses would retire to the corner of the room and whisper among themselves trying to figure out how i did not notice this child was black and i was not.

the inevitable things
when bella was little, if her pacifier touched anything other than her open mouth it went straight into the washer. with anthony, i've picked a paci up off the ground, saw something on it, brushed it off on my pants, looked again and still saw it, shrugged my shoulders and popped it into his waiting mouth. if we have a fourth kid i reckon we'll not even bother with store-bought soothers but instead just stick clods of dirt and other random small objects into the kid's mouth.

the problematic things
i'm an only child so watching two siblings interact has been quite academic. when things are good, it's spectacular. when things are bad, it's terrorizing. dumping a third child into this already heady equation complicates the math to collegiate levels. anthony often serves as a pawn to exacerbate, calm, excuse and manipulate situations between his older siblings. obviously the lion-share of his participation is not of his choosing and consequently causes him angst. it is not uncommon to hear a parent yell "bella/alex put him down. he's not a doll! he's a person who gets to decide where he wants to go ... now give him here, i need to change his diaper." it's also not uncommon for a parent to yell stuff like "stop standing on your brother, you're going to make him puke!" only to have them say "but, he likes it" and when you go to investigate, the little nut is laughing maniacally under the weight of his sibling to which you don't have much to say other than "well, just don't do it too long."

the satisfying things
not only does anthony not look like anyone else in the family, his demeanor is also quite unique. with bella, she looked like me and acted like her mother. with alex, he looked like a walter but acted like me. with anthony, well, he doesn't really look or act like anyone already living here. when left to his own, he's perpetually happy. lots of smiles. lots of giggles. our house was already jovial-rich but now we got a one foot high billboard scooting all about wearing a slobbery, indelible grin. it's warming. it also tempers a home otherwise rife with an ever-changing and frenetic energy.

happy birthday sir anthony. thanks for being something we totally didn't expect.

i'm holidaying in north carolina this weekend. this is my third cross-country trip of the year and it has been as issue-filled as my previous two outings. because of this consistency, i will not be crossing the saint louis city limit again until year 2008. for sure the only smile to cross my face during this ill-fated twelve-hour drive to NC came when i pulled up behind this car from texas at a construction slow down.

we have a new ritual in our home, although we pass it off as more of a game really. it's called 'everything has a home'. we play 'everything has a home' after dinner. how it works is everyone walks through the house and anything that is out of place gets put where it is meant to go. we start in the dining room and move all the dinner stuff into the kitchen. then we set a timer for fifteen minutes ...

regarding yesterday's sassafras post, there's more. i captured this series of images on the second morning of our last camp outing. when the first photo was snapped anthony had been awake for one hour. this means marty had been awake one minute shy of an hour. alex is about ten minutes into his day at this point and me, the shooter, about two minutes in. if marty looks chagrined, it's because anthony is a morning person and marty is not and by rule all non-morning people hold great contempt for all morning people, especially when they birthed them. anthony is the first such human living in our home and we're all still adjusting to his peculiar and inconsiderate nature.


shot number two is nothing more than further evidence of anthony-dramatics. he is our best shot of having a child do shakespeare professionally. also in this image, you can see the mayhem on the alex's left knee. he scored a three-inch slice from a rock while playing soccer with his uncle the night before. the real culprit here is a pair of shoes three sizes too big for him. they were passed down by his cousin and alex has refused to wear anything else since obtaining them. shockingly he somehow got tripped up in these man-shoes while playing soccer in the woods after dark. dumb luck that. who could have possibly seen that mysterious result coming? as a bonus prize, that foul looking tear on his knee was re-aggravated four times during our nine days in colorado and is just now on the full mend.


this third shot i simply call PLAYER. anthony's saving grace is his ability to take the form a very chilled-out cat when he feels the looks from the family (namely marty) are getting too derisive (morning-people haters) for comfort. you'll note this laid-back, street-corner look has markedly softened his mother's gaze.


and now if i can direct your attention to the left side of the tent ...


keep going ... just a bit more ... there you go ... here you'll find the real royal of the family. queen isabella doing what she's doing everyday at 10am since birth. you should know such skills are not acquired, they are inherited. this was my contribution to my daughter's core pleasure in life.

i'm not a great outdoorsman. on my first ever camp outing my family went to yellowstone with some relatives from back east. my uncle had one of those boxy pop up campers. my folks and i slept in one of the two beds which hung suspended on either side of the camper. in the night i rolled against the canvas wall at the end of the bed, the snaps came undone and i fell out and onto the ground, never w...

a note about yesterday's photo. yes, bella is sitting in a dresser-drawer. she pulled it from the dresser on the very left of the frame about six months ago. after removing the drawer she stacked the clothes that were in it back into the newly created void. she then lined the drawer with a blanket and pilfered a pillow from the tv room to use as a backrest. she calls it her reading box and she uses it everyday, sometimes for hours a day. she's less than a month out of kindergarten and reading series based chapter-books. and she has a cooler reading room than me.

click to enlarge

2007 u-city photo contest
dad, you can't stay. you wouldn't even fit into the chairs.
category : u-city theme
awarded : fourth place

i also won first place for this and second place for this.

bella had a homework assignment. in it she was to go through her house and count things. things like doors, windows and such. the last page of the assignment was left open. here she was free to pick the object she would count. she chose picture frames. after dinner i ambled through the dining room and found this.


click to enlarge
it seems that bella kept losing count so devised this error-free numbering system for conducting her inventory. and, should you be curious, we have 132 picture frames in our home. and at least 132 post-it notes as well.