excerpt of an email i received from a second year law student and in regard to my Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review:

after bella asked me about girls and bras a few weeks back and i had to confess ignorance, i emailed a girl i knew in my elementary school days who has a son around the same age as bella. it read: reliable as always, carrie responded, and in great detail, with the following: then days ago marty was telling me about a friend of ours whose daughter just got a breast bud and how that phase of maturity would be starting for us soon. i first asked marty to describe what a breast bud was. she did. i next asked marty if she meant to say that the girl got just one, and if she still had one budless side. marty said that yes, that is what she said and that is how it tends to happen. marty went on to tell the story of when her first breast bud popped, she was sure it was cancer and remembered specifically thinking about how sad her mom was going to be that one of her daughters was dying.

the blank, lifeless stare i gave marty during my breast bud tutorial was not due to a lack of understanding. it was due to an exaggerated sense of understanding and an immense gratitude that when it all began for me one of the two face-down cards i was dealt had a giant Y on its face.

a friend made a great observation/addition to my natural gift theory. first, a refresher: to this my friend added that the very most effective, and successful people are those who not only identify and check their personal foe, but also turn it to their favor, using it as fuel for some productive or competitive element. in example, an athlete using a rage issue in their sport or a compulsive person using their obsessions for detailed labors such as art, coding or other creative outlets.

in thinking on this for a moment, it seems this fella is a natural to point this out because when he was in his twenties he swam the english channel and two summers ago, while in his early-forties, he ran an unsupported fifty mile foot-race on the spine of a mountain range. i believe the race was called the devil's backbone. i also believe that in addition to carrying his own water filtration system, he also had to carry a can of bear mace. i guess once you've put your personal demons behind you, a bear on the weekend is nothing but child's play.

most guys obsess about fried food, hollywood starlets, first-person shooter games, fast cars and/or fantasy football. i used to work with a guy who obsessed about grammar, or more accurately, broken grammar. for this guy my site and its quickly penned material was like porn of the highest caliber. most correspondence i receive from him contains a bulleted list of errors he's found in my ramblings. that said, the latest message i received from him surprisingly did not contain a litany of my blunders.


first off, he's going to have a hard time convincing me he didn't pen that retort. and secondly, i for the life of me can't imagine why that banter would lead him to me.

our neighbors moved into their home in 1962. this was six full years before i was born. or 47 years ago if you rather. last night was the last night they will sleep under its roof because at 10am today they are getting into a car and driving north to chicago to live in a retirement community near three of their daughters.

the couple, both widowers of previous marriages, have been together for many years and are well into their 80's. medicine-wise, the most either of them ever take is an occasional aspirin. they walk to church. they walk to the nearby university to hear lectures. they walk to our local business district to listen to concerts. they are both in great health but are just being pro-active.

norma, the lady of the duo, is more ready. she is the one driving the move. she said she knew she was done after having the gutters replaced. after the work she looked up at them said to herself she hoped to never do another repair to this aging home. additionally, her thinking is that if something happens to one of them, unexpectedly, she doesn't want the burden of a five bedroom home with fifty years of possessions to fall onto just one of them. while it is a fair point, wally, the male of the team, isn't done yet. he's still living and enjoying being in the zip code he's spent the lion-share of his life in, having grown up just blocks away where his father owned a corner pharmacy as well as his own career teaching german at the local high school.

watching the dismantling of a home over the last few months has been sobering. i can't help but think how that will one day be me. that one day i will be expected to step aside and let a younger version of myself step into my place, sleep in my bedroom and eat meals in my dining room. that my children will one day return, knock on the door and tell the current residents that they grew up here, and can they come in and look. all of this wrecks me.

yesterday after the moving truck had left, wally pulled marty and i to the side and said that bella had come over to their house, knocked on the door and said to them in a very heartfelt and official manner that they were the two best neighbors anyone could ask for and she was very sorry they were leaving. marty and i were both surprised at bella's initiative. and it was easy to see that wally was touched if not even moved by bella's gesture. i sincerely share bella's sentiment and will miss the couple who generously and kindly helped marty and i settle into our first home and teach us some of the history and ropes of the community we are now part of. farewell. your village will miss your presence.

the Liefer family of five were walking along. one of the younger children did something that caused a parent to chastise them. the child resisted the parent, asking why they couldn't do what they wanted to do. the parent stalled, unable to verbalize the reason. the first parent looked to the second parent for help. before either parent could say why they wanted the behavior to stop, their oldest child, a girl of ten, interrupted the process saying, "you can't do it sam because it's not the Liefer way".

if i had to buy the life story of someone i know i would choose a friend of marty's. i would do so based upon the following facts.

1. she grew up with the last name of Grief in a small, midwestern town.
2. in her family there were six girls and one boy, born last, which made them known around town as The Grief Girls, even after the arrival of the seventh.
3. her home had a communal underwear drawer which meant on any given day you could be wearing a lean pair of jockey briefs or a tattered pair of hip-huggers worn by your mother the week before.

if you don't think the above points to a house, a home, or a group of lives of interest, you and i do not agree on what is note-worthy.

last summer i visited a close friend of mine who lives out of state. his brother had recently got engaged and during my stay i was invited to meet the woman about to enter the family. the four of us went out and had a fine evening together. the brother and his fiance seemed well suited for one another and the evening contained lots of laughter and stories from our younger years.

a month after my visit the brother and his fiance were eating dinner. she asked him about that guy who came to their place. he asked what guy. she said that movie guy. he thought on this and replied that he didn't know who she was referring to. she said the movie guy who makes gay movies. he said, 'huh?'. she said 'you know, that movie guy who makes gay movies that your brother brought over'. he said 'troy?'. and she said 'yes, troy'.

now ... the people involved in that evening, aside from her, the culprit, have talked about this and why my friend's brother's fiance would think, based on our short time together, that i am an actor in gay pornographic films. truthfully, not one of us could raise a certain story or comment or utterance which may have directed someone to this conclusion. and let's be clear, this does not seem like a detail that would escape three guys who would revel in holding such a nugget over the other. when the brother asked his fiance why she thought troy made gay movies she said she didn't recall exactly why but just walked away from the night thinking that's what troy did.

it has since been alluded to that i may get an invitation to this wedding. if anyone thinks i'm showing up in something other than daisy dukes, a spaghetti-strap tank top that says 'i promise i'm a virgin' and some knee high jack boots, they would be tragically mistaken.

update: to clarify, i don't own any of that clothing yet. i would have to buy it.

except for ... maybe ... the daisy dukes. but that is a story for another day.

on the way home from having dinner out on saturday night walt and i dropped in on friend we haven't seen in awhile. in fact we hadn't seen him in so long we learned not only was he moving out of his house the next day (they were doing their last minute packing when we arrived) but he and his new girlfriend were expecting their first child in a few weeks. during the few hours we sat with them amidst a bunch of cardboard boxes and stacked art the guy mentioned to me that a mutual friend of ours recently bitched to him about my website, this website, saying that i should try writing about something other than my kids. while i have gotten my share of complaints and requests for different sorts of content (i.e. too long, too short, more pictures, more stories) i must say this was a first. no one had ever told me to stop talking about my kids and talk about myself more. if there ever was a common thread among readers of this site it is an agreement that my parental observations are the life-blood if not the only content of merit on this site.

of the rare instances i've meandered through my archives to the the pre-bella days, i'm embarrassed by what i find. truly. it is some really horrific and boorish stuff. so much so, every time i see it i consider culling the first few years out of the database en masse. what keeps me from doing so is the documented genesis in my life and written voice. for me personally it is noteworthy. most of all though when i look at that early stuff i wonder what kept my seven visitors coming back. i guess i have better friends than i thought. or more deluded perhaps. but ... to show i can be a good listener, this one time, for this one guy, i'm going to do something i've never done and deliver some on-demand, by request content and share something of myself instead of my kids or my wife.

as any routine reader of this site knows, i sleep naked. fact is anyone who speaks to me, lives near me or even drives by my house knows this. as for the people who live directly south of me, they really, really know this given their window's vantage points to my stairwell and kitchen (sorry about that one morning ann). the other day i overheard marty on the porch telling a neighbor-lady that since my surgery i was no longer sleeping nude. i heard both women express surprise. marty almost sounded concerned for my well being. not so much so that she addressed it with me though. curious, i drifted onto the porch and both women uncomfortably looked at me. the neighbor lady, who is charmingly forward broke down and asked. i took a seat and began to explain. first, i said that right after my operation there were a bunch of different people in and out of my bedroom where i was permanently laid up. at one point, even one of my female college students dropped by. obviously i felt quite vulnerable and helpless in this state so always made sure i was presentable to any audience. as i started to heal and could get around a little bit, i continued to always have something on. when the ladies asked if this would be a continuing trend i confessed that only as long as i remained on crutches. when they asked why the crutches mattered, i explained that i had already tried returning to my ways but the first time i crutched to the bathroom with nothing on i was struck, intensely, by how unseemly my swinging and hanging and slapping business was. it was so striking, i actually turned around before ever making it to the restroom and put on shorts before resuming my trek.

what i've learned is this. it is one thing to stand or walk cooly about your home with all your business out there, it is totally another to thrust it through the air in confident and sweeping arcs of your body forcing a daunting 3D experience onto any who have the misfortune of being between you and your destination. i wouldn't wish that on you, my children or the one woman in the world generous enough to sleep with me.

so there you go, a troy-story or as close to a troy-only-story as i'm able to give you. hope that slakes your unique need.

before we had children, when accommodating out of town guests marty and i would straighten and clean our home. now that we have children, all we look to do is remove any visible blood, feces or urine from our kids. that said, if we see a bodily excrement sprayed or wiped on a wall or piece of furniture we will attempt to clean/remove/hide it. although, i don't do ceilings. so if an illness, natural event or blood-sport marred something i can't reach on my tippy toes, it's getting left for the visitor's imagination.

and i assure you this is one scenario where the mind's creativity won't surpass or even come close to our life's reality.

i promise.

about ten years ago i worked with a guy who had a urinary-tract infection. for the sake of this telling, let's call him matthew. we were collaborating on a project during his ordeal and in addition to witnessing a lot of fidgeting and quiet curses, i received many vivid descriptions of his ailment.

during one of his many doctor visits he complained that the prescribed medicine wasn't work...

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.

bookguy calls it noun-challenged. to be noun-challenged is to be someone who can't remember people's proper names. between he and i, it's unclear who is more severely afflicted. as per usual, he would claim the title and i would claim he is wrong. either way, it is a fierce race.

as evidence to my condition allow me to turn to my proclivity for nicknames. i give people such monikers for three reasons; (1) to insulate them from embarrassing things i may say about them online, (2) because i can't remember their name at all, or (3) because i can't remember the version of their name (mike, michael, mikey, m-bag) they prefer or more importantly, they greatly dislike. and on that last item, i've argued many a time that mike, michael, mikey and m-bag are entirely synonymous and should be freely interchangeable.

to recap, some of the past characters, several of which you've heard of countless times ...

• bookguy
• bookpimp
• e-love
• man who screams like woman
• doctor j
• the way with words girl
• chavez
• smart ryan
• buddy james
• thin when tan girl
• the why the hell wouldn't ya guy
• the doctor of diss
• guy with mussed hair
• and of course, girl who dates guy with mussed hair

here's a few i've never shared online and use mostly when talking with walt (or rather marty) ...

THE FAKE MOMS
a group of highly augmented ladies who hang out at our pool.

NEWSPAPER DAD
a guy who sits at the park with his four young children reading the ny times and shooing his kids away anytime they near him.

HOLD MY BABY
actually bookguy-coined this gem but it is a fast staple in our home and i'm not really in a position to speak to its origin.

SMILING LADY
i see this lady all over the place and she makes the joker look morose.

BAD, DRUNK MOM
she's not just bad and she's not just drunk, she's both and therefore gets the double-bill.

YELLING MOM
the yelling mom scares me and is not too surprisingly married to ...

THE QUIET GUY
i got ten bucks that says this fella comes out soon.

the family went camping this last weekend. one of the mornings i passed another fella in our party and commented on how impressed i was that he'd already showered. he said he hadn't and asked what made me think he had. my eyes drifted to his hair in that it looked wet and shiny. he noticed my gaze and ran his hand through it telling me that it was just oily and he needed to go wash it.

sorry dude. my bad.

this mis-speak seemed to make its way back to the camp because later his wife engaged me:

HER
so troy, how long does it take for your hair to look un-showered?

ME
as long as it takes for mcdonalds fries to start looking as if they're rotting.

HER
and, how long is that?

ME
i don't know, they're still watching them.

i have a friend who hides his porn on video tapes labeled MATH COUNTS. his theory: nobody likes math enough to pop in a video dedicated to the subject and if they do, they could use a good dose of porn so either way, it's all good.

i have another friend who hides his porn related materials in a box labeled SHITTY HE-MAN TOYS. his theory, in his words, "who the hell wants to look at a bunch of shitty he-man stuff?"

i am so rich in friends.

this is an excerpt from an email i received yesterday from a lady i worked for many years ago. i love her dearly. my convictions and peccadilloes baffle her madly though. i prefer to think of it joann as someone with a keen sense for the annoying.

and, like there's something in the annals of this site that would deter a sensible human from choosing to sire and raise other humans. i mean it's not like they are going to eat feces off the bottom of their shoes or something, now is it?

guy A recently told guy B about how his wife was having twins. guy B excitedly asked when they were expected and guy A said two weeks from friday. guy B, shocked, said he just saw guy A's wife and she didn't look pregnant. this is when guy A said, not those kinds of twins, did a head-nodding wink and with his hands made the universal sign for heaving, cleaving bosoms. guy B said 'ooooohhhhh!, THOSE kinds of twins.'

i've decided the next time i see guy A i'm going to say i heard about their procedure and congratulate him on pulling off this spousal boon to fix what they must have collectively felt was a shortcoming in their relationship. as he beams with pride and before he can reply, i'm then going to ask if it hurt when he got the penis enlargement and however did his wife convince him to go to such drastic measures for something entirely out of his control.

guy A never liked me much to begin with.

family v.
bookguy and i extend our gratitude to you for sharing your warm and rich home with us for our ski trip. i can't recall when i laughed or smiled so much in a week's time (and i am blessed to laugh and smile quite often).

keri, i knew i remembered you so fondly for a reason and am glad i haven't let you permanently sneak away. you were wonderful and charming then and are even ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. missing keri

when bella was about two and eating not much more than a rod of melba toast, we ate out with some friends. during the meal their four year old consumed three plastic containers of cream cheese and nothing else. no bagel. no crackers. no fruit roll-up. just three smallish cups of cream cheese. upon leaving the restaurant walt and i had the 'did you see that kid inhale that bagel spread? my gawd! thank goodness that isn't our kid!' conversation about what we witnessed.

three short years later in our home, a 16 ounce brick of cream cheese is deemed a single serving. a stick of butter a half-serving. and a tub of crisco lard, reserved for special occasions, like saturdays, is considered a family size, although with so many little hands scooping the gelatinous, white goodness out you sometimes leave the table still craving more. and our salt, well, we have to keep that locked up in the home's fire-proof safe with our wills, swiss account ledgers and childhood photos because alex could eat his weight in salt, and that is without a drink. give the boy a simple glass of water and i'd comfortably pit him against a herd of bull elk.

late saturday i received an email with the simple and concise subject 'STEELERS SUCK'. the following thread ensued.

TO:	troy
FROM:	a girl who looks like my nyc sister-in-law
MESSAGE:	um, Steelers suck. GO SEAHAWKS!! Steph
TO:	a girl who looks like my nyc sister-in-law
FROM:	troy
MESSAGE:	now how could you be so mean to such a mop-headed and cute young lad? care to make it interesting? loser makes sunday brunch for the others family. t (see, that's a smart bet on my part cuz i got more family for you to feed should i win, and more family to wipe dna on your food should i lose.)
TO:	troy
FROM:	a girl who looks like my nyc sister-in-law
MESSAGE:	Game on. I work in a hospital, DNA doesn't scare me. Steph
TO:	a girl who looks like my nyc sister-in-law
FROM:	troy
MESSAGE:	i don't even know what to say to that, not being afraid of dna. and, now i don't know if i want to win or lose. t

um.

so my people like pancakes. and marty and bella like droopy bacon while alex and myself prefer it crispy. although alex has been known to eat droopy bacon if that's all there is on the plate and bella has been known to eat bacon raw if you leave the kitchen while it's out on the counter.

and truth told, i haven't seen such a confident position on foreign dna since frequenting drive-throughs with big dog back in the day. i pay homage to your ability to disregard the horrifying.

cautionary note: we have sunday breakfast in our pajamas. and i don't really have any pajamas so i may need someone to warm my chair before taking my seat.

it is bookguy's turn to pick our ski destination. he chose utah. one of my favorite humans lives in salt lake city so i called her to tell her i was coming and see if one night we might dine together. she readily raised my offer to a full invitation into her family's home during our nearly week-long visit.

in trying to make sure she was ok with the arrangement, i sent an email offering her an out. in it i explained that my travel-mate could sometimes be a little difficult, especially when away from home for extended periods. she reiterated her original offer saying she would have it no other way but did caution that their home did only have one bathroom. she will be pleased to know that i am approaching forty years in age and have never lived in a home with more than one bathroom. [1] [2]

in trying to make sure bookguy was ok with the arrangement, since he didn't go to high school with this girl, i sent an email offering him an out. his response ...

although i can already tell the "no, you're the greatest" banter will get tough to stomach it should be good humor...

i love how open he is to new experiences. i also love how he so gingerly tip-toed between the sleeping ju-ju gods in his well-crafted retort (at some point during our annual boondoggle, one of us is sure to accidentally nudge one, if not all, of them awake).

[1] i did spend a summer with a family who actually had three toilets but i slept on a punctured air mattress in their basement so am inclined to categorize that more as camping than living.

[2] my current home has one bathroom but two toilets. the second toilet is in a wainscotted hut in our blairwitch-basement and to date bella has been the only one brave enough to lower her naked rear to its seat. and i will say, she has been brave enough an startling number of times.

for our christmas meal, i made the best pie of my pie-making career. it looked leagues better than it tasted and therefore, for someone as vain as me, represented a culinary slam dunk.


and while i was still reveling in my success a full five days later, the good handwriting girl brought this modest effort to our new year's party. if you, like everyone who looked at it, are wondering about the dark chocolate leaves, they were individually poured and molded against ficus leaves from her backyard. i think it's safe to say this upstart won't have to worry about being invited to next year's affair.


and as for this damsel's moniker, i'm a bit of a handwriting fetishist. marty's printing has on numerous occasions been mistaken for printed text with people asking about the cool font. so, in the end, it was marty's high precision penmanship that made me covet her so and not, as many suspect, her charm, beauty or candor. as for how i came to admire the new contender, i was doing dishes after the party and washing the solo plastic cups (remember ... ) when i ran into this one with her daughter's name interestingly printed on its rim and became smitten in front of my sudsy sink and open dishwasher.


although, if she emails me saying this is her engineer husband's handiwork, i may be in a bit of a pickle, literally.

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

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

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

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. go hide