a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. good thinking

i came home from work yesterday feeling dour. because this is not a mood or emotion that hits me often when the stars align in certain ways against me, the results are amplified. i sat through dinner quietly, distantly, while my family engaged in one another. i was so occupied, i hadn't even noticed that everyone had left and i was sitting alone in the abandoned dining room. i pushed my plate back and rested my head in my hands, massaging my temples. after an unknown number of minutes, i sensed a presence next to me and glanced to my left. alex was standing there staring at me. when i looked at him he didn't say anything, he just inched slightly closer to me. when i didn't respond he inched forward again to where his shoulder touched mine. at this contact i sat up and he slid onto my lap. i leaned back and he snuggled into my chest. if someone happened upon this scene, they might think they were watching a father comfort a son without realizing it was truly the other way around.

last weekend marty took bella's girl-scout troop camping. what this means is that bella (who stopped going to meetings four months ago) stayed home with me and anthony while marty and alex (the most enthusiastic member of bella's troop) took eight third grade girls and one mom camping. of the nine people who went with marty and alex, not a single one of them had ever camped before. here's one of the the more delectable highlights from the report as told to me by marty:
of the eight, only three girls cried and only one wet the bed in the night. but they all did finally go to sleep and as promised woke in the morning and there wasn't a one of them that wasn't proud as heck, walking taller, and bragging it up to anyone who'd listen. when they came to marty's tent at 6:30 in the morning chittering excitedly, she sent them to the tent of a group of ninth-graders who were up making noise well past midnight.

when i first saw alex i asked him how things went for him. he said good. i asked him what sorts of stuff he got to do. he described several crafts and games they played. i asked him what the worst part of the weekend was. he said some girls (those same loud ninth graders) were making fun of him for being the only boy at the event. i asked how they were making fun of him. he said they were saying he had very long eyelashes. smiling, i told him i didn't think they were teasing him but that they may have been doting on him. i asked him what his favorite part of the weekend was. he said when he made friends with one of the teasing girls and now she, a girl named lexi, and he were friends.

after marty partook in a shower and nap, we chatted on the porch. after most of the recounting and laughter (my laughter) was done, i asked her if she had to choose between taking nine never-been-camping third graders out again or repeat the ten day hike at philmont (the boy scout's mecca) she did some ten years ago, which would she do? without hesitation, she said philmont. but then she smiled and said that having now been through this once, she thinks she could handle, far more easily, a bunch of camping newbies were she confronted with that again (and she wonders how she keeps getting drawn into these situations).

kudos to you walter for persevering (once again) against such odds. several of the girls were heard to already report looking forward to next year's adventure as if last weekend's affair was nothing but puppies and poppies. it's moments like this when the source of bella's spirit and vinegar and mettle are so obviously rooted (although i'll take credit for alex's eyelashes). i honor your work marta and your contribution(s) to the future adults of our world.

while alex and anthony were taking a bath together, alex started playing a puppeteer game with his penis (a surprisingly under-mentioned perk of not being circumcised). after taking this show in for a few moments, anthony asked, "why do you do that with your penis yallix?"

alex matter of factly said he did it because it was funny.

after watching and listening to alex's antics a few more moments, anthony brightly called out his agreement saying, "it is funny alex. it is!"

chalk this up as another reason younger siblings are on the concord of development. without an older brother to teach him, anthony may not have discovered that his penis could double and a funny finger-puppet until he was four, maybe even five.

your hair looks like a letter M.

what alex said to marty just after she get out of bed one morning.

photo by aunt missy.

a memorable moment from each of the kids over the last few weeks.

everytime we drove by a nativity scene, anthony would call out, "hey! baby genius! baby genius!"

and during our christmas meal thank-yous at my parents house alex led off with "i'm thankful we have food to eat and that none of us died before this christmas day."

and while driving home from visiting friends bella enlightened the family with the following bit of wisdom:

BELLA
don't ever say 'sitting' while holding your tongue.

TROY (after thinking it through)
where'd you learn that?

BELLA
school.

TROY
from who?

BELLA
i don't remember. but they taught a bunch of people by telling them to all say "i was sitting on the toilet the other day" while holding their tongues.

i hope your break was equally irreverent, insightful, and educational.

it may or may not surprise you to learn that the most zealous and enthusiastic participant of bella's girl scout troop is our very own alexander.

with anthony coming in a very close second.

aleo and i moments before walking up to his first day of school

anfer getting some individual attention while his siblings are at school (and he isn't)

today i have one boy turning three (anfer) and another starting kindergarten (aleo).

anfer (aka anthony) has been best described as, "just like bella, but male" which if you know bella at all you know just what a terrifying sentiment this is. a three-year old anfer is one year smarter, stronger and more bull-headed than the two-year old variety. wish marty and i strength and patience. and wish anfer continued cuteness for when marty and i run out of strength and patience.

and last night i watched alex fall asleep. while his body relented to the day and his fingers and arms began twitching in surrender, i studied his peaceful countenance and thought how the next day would mark the beginning of a new and long chapter of his life. i fear aleo will dislike many parts of this leg of youth (education) but i'm confident that through the journey he will discover what part of our world speaks to him. at least, i desperately hope he does because should he not find that facet of this universe which interests him more than all others, he may spend more time wandering dimly lit hallways than enjoying what he is meant to do in this world. godspeed my aleo.

marty just stepped out of the shower. i was there and ready to go in next. alex just had his morning pee. marty bent over to dry her legs. alex was standing behind her. i saw his eyes lock onto her backside. they widened. marty stood up, snapped her hair back over her head and walked out of the room. alex called to her, "mom! mom! come back here. you have floss stuck on your butt." when he saw her continue walking he bolted after her.

from around the corner i faintly heard marty tell alex that what he saw wasn't floss. the boy wasn't having it.

the conversation developing in the next room made me think of the scene from planes, trains and automobiles where steve martin and john candy shared a bed together. in the morning the two characters awoke snuggled into one another and martin's character asked candy's character where his hand was. candy replied that it was between two pillows and martin told him, shriekingly, that those weren't pillows.

this felt like that. only with the potential of being way more disgusting. given this, i stepped into my shower before marty's explanation got too scientific (ex-biology teacher and all). i was afraid if i waited too long, her anatomically accurate account would scar me more than it would alex who sports the significant benefit of not knowing what all the words mean. that and i didn't want to wreck my perky morning grin brought on by the cruel imagining of marty in the next room trying to sidestep an early morning menstruation lesson to her six year old son while wearing only a bra and an alleged piece of floss stuck to her naked rear. in the world of motherhood, that's called a day-breaker before you're even down the stairs.

it's good to be back. i've missed talking at you.

it's sunday morning. i just had a great night's sleep. marty and i were lazing in bed chatting when the first villager crested the hill. it was alex. he came and threw himself onto the bed in an exasperated way. i asked him what was wrong. he said what was wrong was that i kept telling him i'd fix his remote control car but keep not fixing it. i explained the reason i haven't fixed his car is beca...

i believe i can summarize alex's birthday weekend with three snippets of conversation:

-- CONVERSATION 1 --
MARTY
and what's the other hermit crab's name?

ALEX
sleepy.

MARTY
why sleepy?

ALEX
because he hasn't woke up since we got him.



-- CONVERSATION 2 --
ME
hi luke. what's up dude?

LUKE
i punch myself in the face whenever someone says dude. (he does so here)

ME
really dude?

LUKE
yes. (another punch to his face)

2ND 5-YEAR OLD BOY STANDING TO THE SIDE
dude. dude. dude. dude. dude. dude.

LUKE
(good to his word, luke delivered repeated punches to his own face, one for every uttered dude)



-- CONVERSATION 3 --
ME
i think luke peed his pants.

MARTY
no. i thought so too and asked him but he said he was just sweating.

ME
and you believed him?

MARTY
if he really peed, there'd be a lot more than that.

ME (after a long pause and repeated looks at luke)
that has to be one of the most unfortunate male-sweat patterns i've ever seen.

1:30 i stood up from my desk to go to bed. marty was sleeping diagonally on the ping pong room futon. anthony was sleeping diagonally in my bed. i chose my bed. anthony is easier to push around than marty.

2:22 i woke up to anthony lifting my head with great effort and saying, "no you! ma-ma. no you! ma-ma." squinting my eyes, i lifted my head and had the following conversation with my blonde-headed 2 year old.

anthony, what are you doing?

no you. mama.

no me? no you. i'm sleeping here. mom is in the ping-pong room. if you want to sleep with her, go there. (with this i laid my head back down)

(anthony starts wailing and continues trying to push my head out of the bed) no! mama. mama! MaMa! MAMA!

i get up, carry him like a sack of potatoes under my arm to his crib and leave there wailing. i return to my bed, collapse in and am back asleep within 20 seconds.

2:50 alex whispers in my ear. he says he scared in his bed. wordlessly i lift the covers inviting him into my bed. he crawls in and snuggles into me.

3:43 alex wakes me again and says he really wants to sleep in his bed. i tell him to go sleep in his bed then.

3:47 alex wakes me again and says he still really wants to sleep in his bed but he's scared to alone and wants me to sleep in his bed with him. i tell him i can't because i'm already sleeping in this bed.

3:53 i'm climbing a bunkbed ladder with a sheet and comforter draped over my back like a deranged batman.

7:40 i stir to the sound of bella asking why she doesn't have any shorts in her drawer. as i open my eyes i realize i'm not lieing flat on my back. alex's head is under my right shoulder blade causing a large void beneath me and leaving me propped at an angle and pinned to the side safety railing of the bunk bed.

7:47 i gingerly rise to a sitting position and feel bones i never knew i had in my back rub together abrasively. a new day is underway.

can i do your belt and tie dad?

that's how it starts. and it goes that way just about every work morning. alex asking if he can help put on my belt and tie. this has been a ritual for over a year now. i don't recall how it started, it just did. and it's always the same. the belt goes first, every time. he asks if we're doing the black side or the red (cordovan) side this day. it's usually a red day and he studies the reversible belt to make sure it's set up right and then he feeds it into the first loop. after he pulls the belt through he quietly says "turn". he says this after each belt loop and does so with an air of concentration and seriousness in his voice. to this instruction i spin in place one belt-loop worth at a time. when i've come full circle he grabs up the other end, feeds the belt through the buckle in his practiced way. if i reach to help him in any way he quickly waves me off saying he can do it. and he does. sometimes when he cinches it tight i make an exaggerated gasp to which his face darts up looking to see if he hurt me. when he sees i'm ok he many times will caution me to "be for real dad" which is kind of like when i'm clowning around reading books and he frustratedly tells me he doesn't want any of my funniness right now.

after the belt comes the tie. i usually pick it out and throw it around my neck. i'll then sit on a bed and call alex asking him if he's doing my tie today. he always is. here he climbs up on the bed behind me, pulls my collar up straight, exposing the inside corridor. he then feeds the fat end of the tie through the left button hole and pulls it straight. he then feeds the skinny side of the tie through the other side. after both are pulled through he lowers the raised collar and smoothes it out with his small hands leaning around both sides making sure it is properly flat all around.

then i stand up and begin pulling the tie back and forth getting it properly centered to be tied. here alex, with great excitement and anticipation in his voice, says "do that funny thing again". the funny thing i do is tell a story when i tie my tie. the story involves two characters. sometimes it is a bunny and a bear. sometimes a squirrel and a lion. and sometimes alex and i. but always one big and one small. to start, with each hand i grab a side of the tie. i hold the little one up and say this is alex. then i hold the bigger side forward and in a deep voice and say this one is dad. then, alex and dad were at lewis park when dad saw alex and said i smell biscuits so alex ran under the slide thinking his dad couldn't get there but his dad could and chased him under there. then alex ran up to the top and and said his dad was too big and fat to get up there but i did. then alex jumped down the slide and said his dad was too smelly and scared to go down the slide but i wasn't and i jumped down the slide too.

as i'm talking i'm flinging the tie around in the usual manner to manage the knot. sometimes when i finish the tie is wrong. too long, too short, sloppy knot, and i have to do it again. alex learned that if i mess up he gets to hear the story a second time and even though the second-telling of the story is always much faster and less animated, alex is always rooting to hear me say "doggonit! stupid tie!. ok here we go again. this here's alex. and this is dad ..."

and so our mornings go.

i'm been avoiding buzz about the slumdog millionaire for weeks now. i've also had multiple chances to see the movie snatched from my grasp just moments before the lights in the theater dimmed. very frustrating. so when walt and i had a friday night dinner engagement cancelled the day before, i pounced. we had the sitter. we had the evening. marty was too exhausted to voice an opposing opinion. it was on.

when we sank in the seats i couldn't believe how much effort went into seeing a simple film that runs hundreds of times a day in our city. as for the film, this film, we made it twenty minutes before walking out. a friend of marty's said we just needed to make it another five minutes and we would have been alright. this friend does not have a son that looks like one of the main child actors, so our stomachs didn't have five minutes in them. we instead went and had persian kabobs and talked and laughed and made it home at a respectable hour in that we were missing our kids after our bad movie outing and thought we might sneak in cheek kisses before they drifted off.

i spoke to bookguy a few days earlier regarding our annual ski adventure. he said he was reading three musketeers. i said i was reading three musketeers. he asked if i had seen slumdog. i said i had not yet but was hoping too. i asked why those were connected and he said they just were and he was fearful of saying more giving my neurosis about learning stuff about movies before seeing those movies. he did add though that seeing the movie would not wreck my ability to read three musketeers. we had both just started reading so we compared how far we had gotten. he said he had just read the translator's forward and was ready to dig in. i said i skipped over all forward and preface material and turned to the first page of the first chapter and started at the first word (because i like my books like i like my movies, unspoiled by insight and opinion). bookguy went on to say that the forward was interesting because the translator of his text explained how it was important to continue re-rendering and re-translating books even if this had previously been done in order to keep them semantically relevant and readable to contemporary audiences. i thought this was a sound insight but not worth risking a spoiler just pages before the real story begins.

then sometime after talking to bookguy (but before seeing slumdog) i was chatting with a colleague. they asked me if i do a certain thing. i said no i don't, i in fact avoid it like the plague. then i took pause long enough to know that i don't really spend much time avoiding plague so corrected my comment by saying i avoid it like i avoid syphillis, because i think syphilis is actually something i've actually tried to avoid in my lifetime. i think the person i was talking to wanted to say "too much information" but knew me well enough not to bother.

bella has always been bright-eyed, but alex was only briefly pudgy

ALEX
is today a school day?

TROY
yes it is.

ALEX
ah dammit.

from his tone and the easy way it rolled from his five year old mouth, you'd think he had to take an obnoxious client to lunch or deliver bad news to a subordinate on this day.

and these are still coming from marty's camp. when i become the source of their swears i'm confident calls home from school with threats of detention will be part of the discussion.

in dating you have something called hand. the notion of hand was probably best handled and described by seinfeld and team. if you haven't heard the term it pertains to the battle for influence between a dating couple. i believe it is an abbreviated phrase for 'having the upper hand'.

in the world of parenting, hand is replaced by something called currency. as a parent it is always your job to know what your child's currency is. currency in this context refers to any object or event your child especially loves. with this knowledge, the theory goes, you're able to influence your child's behavior instead of beating them with a switch.

but, children also have their own currency. a child's currency is what they can do to sway the behavior of their parent. such currencies for children include looking cute, acting sad, throwing a tantrum, making lofty promises, embarrassing their parent or saying they hate the parent. these are all antics done in the hopes of causing a parent to buckle. as an aside, all child-currency has an inflated value in public. and the more public, the greater its rate. children who understand this principle of micro-macro-economics can often be a handful and are known as children who wield their currency with great expertise, getting the absolute most for their money.

the other night alex and i got into a row at bedtime. i wanted him to go to sleep. he wanted to invent things to delay his going to sleep. after threatening his currency he stood for a few moments and then turned to me and shouted, "FINE. THEN I WILL GO TO BED WITH NO STRAWBERRIES AND NO BOOKS!" after this outburst he scaled his ladder and threw himself into his bed and was asleep moments later. this would be an example of me using my currency with greater alacrity than he used his. while one may be inclined to gloat, i suggest your do not because we all have the occasional weak outing. like the time i threatened to take bella's play horses from her for a week. without a hint of emotion she suggested i take them for two weeks and offered to throw in all of her dolls for added measure. that was a solid counter-move on bella's part and easily trumped my dated notion of her currency. then there was this time when alex got me all twisted up:

TROY
alex if you don't put that stuff away like i've asked i'm going to take away your transformers toy.

ALEX
i have a transformers toy?

TROY
uhhm. well yes. i mean, i thought you did?

ALEX
can i see it?

TROY
i don't know. i'm not sure where it is right now.

ALEX
what does it look like?

TROY
i don't think i know that either. maybe we should pick another toy.

ALEX
ok. but if you see my transformers toy, can you show it to me?

TROY
uhhm. yeah. sure.

in reproduction, there are two kinds of impotence. there's the physical kind that doesn't allow you to have children and then there's the emotional kind that happens after you have children. the research isn't entirely conclusive as to which of the two is more psychologically crippling to the male esteem.

i fished my first thing out of the toilet for reuse. it was a pair of tweezers. i saved them for two reasons. first, i didn't think i could successfully flush them down and secondly, we use tweezers a lot in this house. unfortunately, we don't use them for fun things like shaping my chest hair into a bold triangular mass like nic cage had in valley girl (although, if i had more than seven chest hairs spanning my chest, we just might be doing that). we instead use tweezers for splinter extraction and dangly skin removal and dropped screw (in toy) retrieval.

losing a pair of tweezers to the toilet was inevitable because of the way alex uses them while going pee. you see, alex is a nail fetishist. he loves clipping and pruning and detailing his nails. marty or i haven't clipped his nails in over a year. i'm sure 6 in 10 korean nail places would hire him tomorrow if i'd allow it. a couple times a month you'll find alex standing before the toilet, his batman underwear pushed down around his ankles, his wispy thighs leaning against the bowl's rim supporting his weight, his bladder long since emptied, even that lingering hanger-on drop has fallen or dissipated from his penis. he is lost in what he's doing. all his focus is directed at a single fingernail. all of this energy is put towards manipulating the too-large and hard-to-hold clippers to make that next cut just right. when he's shaped and cleaned his last nail he looks up and slowly reorients to his surroundings, coming out of the temporary fog he was standing within.

having watched his ritual more than once it is easy to know it would take just one lapse in thought to loose the clippers or tweezers to the bottom of the bowl. on the positive side, it's impressive it hasn't happened before now. on the down side, in the best of scenarios, you know you have at least one tiny bladder's worth of urine waiting to coat the fallen instrument when it does go in the drink. the most encouraging part of this story is after he asked me to help and after he showed me what happened and after my face sagged at the sight and after i showed him how to fish them out with a bent coat hanger and after we washed them in the sink, alex turned to me and said that he though about just flushing the toilet but knew that was a bad choice and came and got me instead. if that isn't a happy ending to a very long chapter, they just don't exist.

the passing of marty's father represents the closest person to our children to have died since they've been old enough to absorb things. fact of the matter, ken is the closest person to me that i have known to die. for this reason there was a lot of processing going on in our house over the last few days.

minutes after breaking the news, i sent marty to be with her mother and siblings as this unexpected event fell on their family. this for the most part made me a single, stay at home dad. in between the gatherings and ceremonies i've talked to both bella and alex about what is happening and their thoughts on it all. alex asked about how we would see grandpa again. he asked if grandpa was in heaven. he asked if grandpa was sad. he asked why people were crying. essentially, he asked a bunch of normal and legitimate questions, many of which we talked through together because i didn't know the answers any better than he did.

as for bella, she didn't ask a thing. to a direct question asking her about her questions, she said she had none. while at the wake i asked her if she wanted to go up and say goodbye to grandpa. she said she didn't. when marty later asked her about it, bella said she already did say goodbye. i wasn't really sure how to interpret bella's reticence to talk about it but i gave her space because she didn't seem upset or withdrawn and just kept telling her that if she had questions she could come talk to me. she said she knew this but never asked a single one. the morning of the burial, bella drew this picture while eating breakfast.



after looking at it, i asked her about the third item in the legend. she said that she would have used that mark next to grandpa if he had been murdered but since he wasn't she didn't have to. still curious, i stood for a moment studying the picture in my hand feeling there was a follow-up question i was missing. my eyes focused on her perception of grandpa's face and i saw that he was smiling. i thanked bella for making the picture, told her i thought it was special and walked away. how bella portrayed her grandfather in her drawing tells me she has, like her mother, a healthy understanding of what transpired in this last week. in fact, i think she reached this point far sooner than i had. i would typically say i'm pretty good at not over-thinking a problem but perhaps i'm not as good at it as i like to think i am.

my favorite family-mannerisms at the minute:

anthony
when anthony gets mad he flexes his entire body. he makes it so taught it arches in the middle as if her were a bow and the string was tied to his heels and the top of his head. his hands travel up his jutting stomach and search the clothing on his chest. he's looking for snaps or a zipper or buttons. if he finds th...

it was alex who woke me up. i had spent the night in his bunk bed. he had slept in my spot next to marty.

he told me it was saturday. he told me it was time to get up. finally relenting and beginning to move he told me that when i got out of bed he would be able to see my underwear. i agreed adding that the only reason he would see underwear at all is because i slept in his bed and not my own (i'm not devoid of respect). so the first thing i did on this particular saturday was awkwardly climb down a miniature wooden ladder while being taunted with a chant of 'i can see your underwear. i can see your underwear.'

what little energy i possessed at the moment was spent safely navigating the indiana-jones like ladder. once down the chant followed me as i groggily ambled to the bathroom. at some point i decided to see how long it would take for the taunting to die on it's own, naturally.

i thought using the restroom might put me over the hump but all that achieved was having alex pause to lean around to watch me pee. then the lambasting changed from 'i can see your underwear' to 'i can see your penis'. my penis was surprised by this early-morning audience. it certainly hasn't happened enough in its meager opinion. the cry continued until my penis went back into its quiet house on its even quieter cul de sac. back to the underwear chant.

things surely got to the point of intervention. i wanted to. needed to. three minutes in the morning are like two hours after seven pm. but i gritted my teeth. then i brushed them. and before my electric toothbrush pulsed marking the end of my brushing time, the chant was magically done too.

i was off to a good dad day.