there was this water table that had water bubbling up at four points. the object was to use these pipes and connectors to divert the water from their sources to other parts of the table. bella got the thought to lead two water sources to each other to see what would happen. she quickly discovered how hard it is to get two tubes, both of which were dispelling water to connect. people around her proved to be quite annoyed or tickled by her efforts. i couldn't help but be fascinated by her persistence to stymy the contraption as the first drop to hit my skin or clothes would have ended my curiosity. so i did what any grown man would have done - stood at a safe distance and took pictures of the animated struggle.

with alex's help she/they finally did persevere.

two pictures, both un-staged, that do much to show the breadth of bella.


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on the weekend of marty's 40th birthday, numerous things happened. some things were pedestrian like sick kids. and some things were not, like the dead goose that mysteriously appeared, precariously hanging in a large tree in front of our house the morning of her birthday. in attempt to salvage some part of the weekend, i had declared marty off limits to the kids (and myself) on saturday and sunday so she could rest or leave or do whatever she wanted. during this time marty's sister from chicago called. we were chatting and i relayed marty's rough week and suck birthday to her. i also shared that my ski trip got cancelled because my mancation partner still fancied himself a twenty five year old at times.

the sister said our family should come to her house for spring break. i explained my family's acceptance rate regarding extended invitations (it is aberrantly high), even when the gestures are offered out of simply courtesy. pride, shame and sense aren't things we contend with as much as we maybe should. even with this understanding, not only did the sister persist, she even upped the kitty by offering to watch the kids friday and saturday so marty and i could go downtown for a couple days. as this would be only the third time in ten years both marty and i have spent a night away from our children (and never two nights!!!), this proved the deal maker. seven days later we packed up the car and headed north to chicago.

on thursday and friday we went downtown with the kids and took in a couple of the museums and a few of the sites. then on friday evening and saturday instead of spas and shopping on michigan ave, marty and i pulled out of the sister's driveway, drove a couple miles down the road, checked into a fairfield inn and slept, ate decadently and watched in-room movies while sharing bags of microwave popcorn in bed (the tourist and inception).

the first morning there i heard a calamity next door while i read and marty slept. it was a family ... with children. i groaned at the poor luck as i heard them bickering and chirping at one another. i was still conflicted on how bad this was when i heard the mother bark at someone, "put on your underwear - NOW!" and found myself happy it wasn't me doing that yelling or my child being yelled at. so even with the shrill, tense family next to us (to remind us of our boon), our weekend couldn't have been more lovely, relaxing or peaceful.

and, i will often talk about the good side of raising kids without a television but rarely do i talk of the downsides, one being whenever you go anywhere that has tv's or computers your kids will forego all else, even a store full of legos, to suck on the teat that is digital media. like the amish to a pepsi.


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if you extend the dearmitt-walter clan a polite invitation to your home, this is what very well may result.


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if you're ever doing something that bothers anthony, he turns on this very serious voice and says, "you make me nervous when you do that."

i have no idea where he picked this up but he uses it in a convincing and effective way that conveys a genuine sense of care and concern for your well-being. some examples of things that make him nervous.

• picking at your nails
• pouring my vietnamese coffees from the glasses they're made in to the nalgenes they're taken to work in.
• throwing him around too vigorously when playing ogre

as for the first time i tried emulating anthony's move, i was told, "well i guess it sucks to be you then."

on the tail end of three grueling days of work, i came home to the following scenario.

• i was to take alex on a thursday night boy scout field trip to a fire house.
• marty asked me to look after a friend's son on the field trip and take him home afterwards.
• marty had a meeting and was to be out for the evening.
• a sitter bailed on us which meant anthony was with me at the fir...
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a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. onslaught

a dog is in our future. the first time i seriously raised the topic marty stopped what she was doing, turned towards me giving me her full arms-folded, hip-on-counter attention. surprised by her intentness, i moved forward a little uncertainly with things like:

i think the kids are getting older and more mature

and

they surely don't seem to go in and out of wanting a dog.

and

it's not about us, it's something we do for the kids.

the first thing marty said was ...

i won't do anything to help.

in reply, i asked her to elaborate on what exactly she meant by "anything". she said ...

when you go on your annual weeklong ski trip and the children forget to feed the dog and it is laid out, dehydrated in front of its water bowl and just needs me to pour a glass, a tiny glass, of water into it ... i won't. and the first thing you'll have to do after walking in the door after your annual weeklong ski trip is carry a dead dog into the backyard to bury it.

to this bit of insight, i said ...

oh. i see.

given that marty didn't appear to be "on the fence" about the matter, the getting a dog initiative kinda stalled, indefinitely. a few days ago marty told me about a girlfriend of hers who asked her husband about the family getting a dog. in response, her husband said:

i'd rather you had an affair than brought a dog home.

in the end, it turns out marty is near cuddly on the matter.

the kids had an extraordinary number of snow days this year (one more and i think marty would have made a house-call on the superintendent). on the last afternoon of the last snow day they had, marty took the kids swimming. in the bustle of getting out the door, marty didn't have time to address her adjusted winter time shaving routine. while at the pool bella swam underwater to marty. when she, bella, came up she leaned into marty and whispered in her ear.

BELLA
mom, you have some hairs sticking out ... down there.

MARTY
i'm sure i do bella.

BELLA (still whispering)
but what if someone sees them?

MARTY (whispering back)
i have the benefit that most people here aren't swimming at my crotch in swim googles bella.

we don't discuss often enough the crazy good parts of getting older, the number one of them being, caring less about what others think. in fact, i think our care level decreases in direct proportion to the growth of our number of wayward hairs. the jaw-dropping intelligence of the human body does not end in the womb or after puberty or after childbirth. it's smart to the end.

additionally, i remember a former boss of mine once telling me that a big breakthrough moment in her life was when she realized not only weren't people talking about her, they weren't even thinking about her. that woman taught me many amazing lessons and i attribute a great quantity of my professional experience to things she taught me in her small office in our large cooperation.

bella's recent ipod purchase has sent me into the depraved world of modern, popular music. lady gaga has been the latest talking point. having heard her name but not knowing anything about her, i bought a few of her albums. after pushing them to my ipod and listening to them while coding, i found what the rest of the free world had discovered months and years before me - her stuff is catchy, charged and kewl. if there's a burn it is that several of her songs are overly suggestive but, at bella's age, we're entering a period where it's hard to parentally ignore or deny such pervasive elements ... even when you don't have a tv.

that said, there is one song in her catalog that gave me great pause. it's called Teeth. yet, Teeth doesn't seem to be so much about teeth, in the academic sense at least. i've tried to make sense of the message but fear i'm a decade or two out of the conversant demographic. i assume hope it goes beyond her just having a tooth-thing like marty has a tooth thing (and dislikes chipped teeth in her suitors and offspring) and i hope it is figurative and she's trying to figure out what to make of an interested party and asking him/her to display their fierce and passionate edge. but which is the case is not abundantly clear and to date i've been the one expected to explain such matters to my children.

then one night while in the midst of struggling with this heady morsel and brushing anfer's teeth, he held his hand up in the middle of the job to pause me.

ANFER
open your mouth dad.

TROY
why?

ANFER
i think you have a golden tooth.

TROY (opening mouth and mumbling)
i do. which one?

ANFER (in seeing all of my fillings)
OH! i think all of them! all of them are gold.

TROY
oh. that doesn't sound good.

ANFER
when you were a boy, you ate candy too long.

and at that moment it occurred to me, perhaps this was gaga's angle. maybe she just wants to make sure her men or women didn't eat candy "too long" when they were little. in which case i not only feel ok about my daughter listening to her but am inclined to recommend her for your own daughters. of course, i'll leave it to you to interpret what is specifically meant in the same song by, "Take a bite of my bad girl meat". i'm hoping anthony will say something to me in the coming weeks that helps give meaning to that riddle as well. but aside from that lyrical gem, gaga is as good for your kids as fluoride itself.

it was sunday morning. the kids were strewn about the house getting their hour of screen time. marty and i were in bed getting our hour of husband and wife time. the serenity was broken by anthony running down the hallway on the other side of our closed door yelling, "i have to go pee!" (as has been chronicled here before). i acknowledged his call with a household version of "roger, copy that." fifteen seconds later marty broke the renewed silence by saying, "you don't hear that get called out in the background of porno movies too often, do ya?"

somehow marty got to talking to the kids about wills. marty explained what a will was, why you need one and that she and i don't yet have one.

the two main things that came from the conversation are:

1. the kids would like to be part of selecting who gets them should both marty and i pass. my children's leading candidates were our immediate neighbors given their television, wii, handheld gaming devices, and dog. interest or appeal for any of the humans in the house was never mentioned.
2. bella and alex verbally climbed over one another in a feverish pitch for any and all electronics and computers i own.

while marty and i have finally settled on who she and i would like to approach about taking our kids in such a tragedy, if you would like to submit your name for consideration, i'm sure the ease in which you could buy my children's vote would be both grotesque and embarrassing.

i've now had to borrow money twice from my kids. both times it was alex. once it was to give a holiday tip to my haircut person. and another time it was so i could buy the spicy beef noodle soup i eat for lunch every saturday. i would have asked bella for it but she just depleted her account to buy an ipod (partially aided by a $50 gift certificate i gave her for christmas).

i initially intended to get her a apple gift certificate but when i went to the store the week before christmas, in addition to it being a madhouse, it was also completely bereft of gift certificates (buy stock!). the pert girl pulled a ipad voucher from a rack and said it could be used as a regular apple gift certificate. i took the oversized card from her. upon opening it up the first thing you read is, "congratulations! you are now the proud owner of an ipad!". after reading the words i looked back to the girl with eyes that said, "really?". she assured me it would work the same. i agreed, minus the part where my nine year old shrilly screams "an ipad! holy shit dad you rawk! thanks! you're awesome!" to which i get to explain on christmas morning that it's not really an iPad but a fifty dollar credit for the ipod nano she's been saving for which she would have thought pretty awesome until she thought four seconds earlier that she was getting in iPad. the still-smiling apple girl held to her "works the same guns" with the holiday turmoil roiling behind her. i handed the ipad voucher back, thanked her for the trouble and left the store. then, on christmas eve, i was afforded an adolescent moment of hand-making something to give at christmas. now that it's done, apple running out of their shiny and metallic gift cards was one of the brighter points of my 2010 christmas.


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the only thing more satisfying than crafting the homemade card for bella was seeing the homemade cards bella crafted me for christmas. 1 to 10 hours!!! huzzah!

FRONT click to enlarge	BACK click to enlarge
FRONT (transcribed) (on back instructions) Free Back Scratch or Head Scratch To: Dad From: Bella 1 to 10 hours of full back scratch or head scratch (as long as Bella can have a book or movie) Price: 0.00 Real Price : "Thank You!"	BACK (transcribed) 1. give Bellacard to Bella 2. choose from a back scratch or head scratch while (bella is) watching a movie or reading a book 3. feel the "magic" work 4. Thank Bella! All Done (also you can buy these BellaCards by the packs of 20 for only $1)
AND THE FULL SET i've already redeemed several. click to enlarge

and for any daft enough to think i couldn't keep the stool train on the tracks another day, allow me to present...

between marty and their teachers my children have been instilled with maniacal notions about energy conservation. they unplug the microwave after using it (b/c of the digital clock). they turn the light out on me when i'm working in the basement after calling down a feeble and unhearable, "is anyone down there?" (even though i was taught as a kid that turning lights on and off through the day was more costly than letting one run continuously). and some of them don't change clothes as often as they maybe should as evidenced by aleo's lonely one pair of underwear next to bella's stack of eleven on laundry night (i'm not entirely convinced his refusal to change bloomers has anything to do with saving the planet).

as annoying as it is to have to re-plug in the microwave with each use, or to have to stop what i'm doing to go up the stairs to turn the basement light back on, or to get a face-full of alex's unwashed briefs in round of roughhousing, their one and only initiative i'm declaring war on is how seldom anyone in this house flushes the toilet. the policy began innocently enough as the common-ish brown goes down, yellow is mellow. while this approach was not my preference, i learned to deal in the name of the team. but somewhere the rule underwent a sinister mutation and the policy now appears to be if we don't have to rush the person who just moved their bowels to the hospital, there is no need to flush the commode. if you're unable to imagine the cumulative effects of such a practice, allow me to help.

when i was in college and lived in the dorms, my floor had a feud with another all-male floor in the building. i have no idea what started it or why it persisted but on random intervals marked by boredom and angst, pranks would be directed at the enemy floor. after all these years i only remember one. we were the victims. what happened was in the night several people, i'd wager between five and seven, from our nemesis floor came down and took a dump in one of our bathrooms, in one of our toilets. the thing that marked it memorable was they never wiped (there was no toilet paper at least) and they never flushed. they just defecated. again and again. come morning what was left was a pristine bowl with a settled mass of brown matter in the bottom half. the contrast against the white porcelain was mesmerizing and thought provoking like contemporary art. as a gaggle of us stood around this unexpected marvel in morning, we surely resembled the uncertain chimps finding the obelisk in 2001 only we were in towels and holding plastic bins of toiletries. one of us reached forward and pushed the flusher. the rest of us were so entranced no one could say "don't do that!" fast enough. so it was done. but i imagine it had to be done (what else could be done?). a mess ensued. a mess so nasty and vile and inspired that we, young as we were, felt actual sadness and empathy for the poor worker who would be assigned the chore for an unreasonable minimum wage.

this is what my house is like. it's like i'm living with a bunch of frat pledges who have been forbidden to flush their waste. and i'm the janitor.

and need i remind you, we are fortunate to have a toilet that could flush paris hilton's toy canine down with a half flush.

regarding yesterdays post about poop and pooping, just like in real life, when it comes to poop and pooping, there's more.

for any surprised that marty and i still participate in our children's ablutions, we have tried turning them loose, but it wasn't good. and marty and i are in agreement that we're willing to wipe asses longer than we perhaps should be expected to if it saves us from stain-treating brown skids out of clothes and from furniture and off ceilings. for dodging these household chores and keeping our family's feces in the bathroom, we're willing to shoulder this grim, preemptive practice.

if you find my excuse weak, i'd like to invite you to come spend some time with our animated youngest. perhaps you could join the litany of one-time, college-age babysitters who have deemed him more work than organic chemistry, and this when he isn't hiding feces on his person or in his clothes. add a smear of rank and contagious excrement to the anfer-equation and the tables would tilt, irrevocably, in his favor. the consequence of which could cross state and possibly national borders. so you should not be questioning our choice, you should be thanking us for making it, hard and unappealing as it is.

the moving of bowels and the draining of bladders is big news in our house and gets screamed through the halls: "i have to go poop!" or, "i have to go pee and poop!" or "i'm going pee and i don't have to poop!". to these reports of nature marty and i respond with a mindless shout back, "ok, i'll listen for when you're done." when the child is done they will loudly call, "i'm done!" or "i'm done going poo!". here marty or i will stand and head to the bathroom where we will wipe bottoms clean and help to raise underwear and lift pants to their proper places.

yesterday when i walked into the bathroom to help anthony, i pretended to be a pretentious butler and spoke in a fancy, airy tone.

TROY
are the royal biscuits ready to be wiped.

ANTHONY
i'm not called biscuits, i'm called ant-ton-eee

TROY
oh, my apologies fine sir.

ANTHONY
and i'm not royal. i'm just rich.

and this from a kid that doesn't have a dime to his name. that's the kind of positive outlook i, and many others, chase every waking day.

although, if i had someone wipe my ass after every use, i might be fancying myself a tad on the affluent side as well.

a few years back a friend of mine told me of a ritual that happened in her home when she was growing up. her family termed the ritual "father interviews" and they happened every sunday. the reason behind father interviews was the dad was tied up during the week with work and didn't get a lot of time to participate in his children's lives. so on sundays after church and breakfast he would receive e...

marty was putting medicine on anthony's legs before bed. he was resisting by twisting and crawling away from her because he wanted to rough-house with bella on the bed. seeing this as i passed by i went in and told anthony to hold still. he did not. so i grabbed him and held him on the bed so marty could put the medicine on. anthony told me to let him go. i said i wouldn't because he wouldn't hold still. anthony then told me as he struggled to get free, "you (squirm) don't (fight) treat (wiggle) people (twist) this way." marty and i did not reply as we were both trying to hide the fact that we were laughing from his effortful plea.

it began with both boys choosing to get into the shower with their clothes on. it continued after they got soaked through and got out of the shower to walk around the house looking for me to ask if they could get in the shower with their clothes on.

glaring at the two boys dripping water on my hardwood floors, i chastised them both for their foolish choice. i sent alex back to the bathroom to take a proper shower and i stripped anthony's clothes from him and sent him to bed, crying (because he couldn't continue his shower).

then a partially informed marty who was downstairs when this took place brought a repentant and naked anthony before me to apologize and ask if he could return to the shower. she coached him through the steps of a negotiation prompting him at each turn. i smugly observed the teaching moment and said it was up to her but as far as i was concerned he should be sent to bed. marty vouched for the boy and escorted him to the bathroom. her first step onto the tile soaked her sock through as she experienced first-hand the boys' handi-work. it wasn't until then anthony wished he hadn't exercised the second-parent gambit.

following an episode like this i find myself whimsically contemplating how i'm going to spend our kid's college funds as it seems they may not have use or need for them.

the night anthony slept with the briefcase, i had put him to bed. this meant that when marty went to bed, and was sleeping next to anthony who was in my spot, she had no idea his legs were propped up on a full-size, man's briefcase. he woke at one point in the night and complained that something didn't feel right. he reached under the covers and started tussling with something. she assumed he just had another erection and was trying to finagle into a more comfortable angle in his pants. then she saw him struggling with something and threw the covers back to see him fighting with a large, leather briefcase under the sheets.

her words to me in the morning, "i'm prepared for a lot of things in life but when he pulled that out from under the covers, i must say i was at a true loss."

i'd like to add that the sound that brought me from sleep that same morning was the loud spring release of the locks snapping open after anthony had un-scrumbled the combination upon waking, as promised.

as i type this anthony is in my bed sleeping with his legs propped up on a locked, black-leather briefcase from the seventies. he knows the combo and plans on opening it first thing in the morning. this is why he has his legs on top of it right now. so he remember to open it first thing and so no one takes it from him while he's sleeping. after the initial opening in the morning, anthony will likely open it an additional forty to sixty times throughout the day. when he does open it, he will never take anything out of it, or put anything in it. he will just unlock it, open it, close it, and re-lock it by spinning the gold, number-dials. he may ask someone to scrumble the numbers for him. and if you say you're going to scrumble them so hard he'll never get it back open, he'll laugh hanging his upper torso over and doing everything but slapping his knee. when he composes himself enough to stand upright again he'll explain to you that you can't scrumble it too much because all he has to do is put all the numbers back on the circles (0's) and then he'll get it open again.

one of my kids pulled this briefcase out of a dumpster about four years ago.

who ever threw it out was kind enough to reset both the right and left flip locks so both sides were 0-0-0.

the combination thing reminds me of a friend of mine back in colorado-days who once found a bike lock on the sidewalk. it was one of those thin silver chain locks with a colored, usually blue or faded red, sleeve of plastic covering it. they had a four-number combination. after finding it he brought it home and over the next three months he and his three siblings would sit and try various combinations on the lock while watching television. they kept a notebook on the table with the lock and people would note the numbers they tried. they eventually discovered the combo. i don't recall how long it took them. it was in the months. and it was an impressive show of fortitude. (snake? do you recall?)

back to our briefcase.

there's always something in it. bella usually keeps her more personal journals in there. alex stores all sorts of random stuff in it which he re-discovers, with great fanfare, in later months and years.

approximately fifteen percent of our children's toys have been pulled, by them, out of dumpsters around our home.

as i think i've noted before, our hermit crab aquarium came from a dumpster. it still sports the red, raised-letter punch tape message that says PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ARTIFACT. we turn that message to the backside.

bringing things home they pulled out of dumpsters stands as one of my most vile, yet endearing, things my children do. in this father's eyes at least.

i keep trying to sleep but i just can't get the hang of it.

anthony to me the morning after i had problems putting him to bed

anthony was standing in line at school. he reached forward and took something from the boy standing in front of him. the boy started crying. a teacher seeing this approached the boys and told anthony that we don't take things away from our friends. anthony looked at the boy and then back to the teacher and said, "but he's not my friend."