bella keeps a dream journal.

most mornings you'll find her in bed, freshly woken, leaning on her pillow and furiously scribbling in a spiral bound notebook. if you walk in, she'll sharply hold her hand up so you don't talk to her. once you nod your understanding, the hand darts back to the page and continues its mad dash.

the other morning while i was showering, bella came into to go pee. she started telling me about her dream.

BELLA
i had this babysitter. and she was hot. and then a second babysitter came and she was also hot.

TROY
are you saying hot like hot-pretty or hot-sweaty?

BELLA
hot-pretty.

TROY
ok. that's what i thought.

BELLA
well, then they got into a catfight over who was supposed to babysit me. and, oh, they were wearing swimsuits.

i don't want to say this dream was wasted on bella, but seriously, in a just universe, the ten year old girl doesn't get this dream, her father does.

back when bella was about four or five years old, she and alex would occasionally stay the night at my folks house. on such weekends we would meet my parents at a mcdonalds that was halfway between our homes. there was a period where bella was saying the word "god" a lot, as in "oh my god!" if surprised or wowed. this was definitely gotten from her mother as i was trained young to never play around with the lord's name, even in any of its derivative forms like gosh or lordy or jeezo and the like (from my own mother). oftentimes on the drive to meet my folks i would remind bella that grandma didn't like that word and she should say something else when visiting. my dad recently told me, through great laughter, that at one of those pickups bella excitedly ran to the table my parents were sitting at and slid into next to them. before saying hello or anything, she animatedly said:

BELLA
i know the thing i'm not supposed to say at grandma's house.

GRANDMA
oh yeah. and what's that?

BELLA
'oh my god!' because grandma doesn't like it.

this was one of my folks favorite grandkid stories to tell to any who would listen.

walking down the hall, i passed marty getting anthony dressed in one of the bedrooms. she was crouched down helping him with his pants.

what anthony said:
there are two kinds of balls. there are balls in your body and there are balls outside of your body that you can play with.

what marty said to anthony in response:
the balls that are in your body have a long science name called testicles.

what marty said under her breath:
and, depending on the day and your mood, you might find there's a touch of overlap here.

CLICK HERE
for a visual representation better defining
anthony's playful balls theory

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. mouthache

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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.

and speaking of apple, i almost forgot about a recent interaction i had with them. one of the imac's in my office flaked out so i took it to our local apple store for repair. i made an appointment with the genius bar, boxed the machine up (rookie move not to keep the original packaging!) and went to the appointment. it was a few weeks after christmas and at 10am on a friday, the sprawling store looked just as crazed as it did days before christmas (buy more stock!). a man standing at the door, took the heavy box i was carrying from me and led me to the check in spot. typical apple care thus far. i reported into the ipad-equipped angsty kid with bangs in his eyes, spandexy jeans, and an ill-advised lip piercing. the apple host(ess) informed me that due to a higher than expected volume of customers today they were asking patrons if they minded doubling up with technicians. not so typical. reading this as a "share your time with someone else or don't get helped" kind of option, i said that would be fine. i was then told they were running about fifteen minutes late. i nodded again in impotent compliance.

just as i stepped back to wait my go, a man approached the two employees managing the queue and brusquely began

CUSTOMER
you can take my name off the list. i'm going to go buy a pc.

TROY (laughing genuinely)
ha. that's a good one.

CUSTOMER (looking at me sideways then back to the apple-fanboys)
no, i'm serious. i'm tired of this. every time i do this, i go make an appointment in your over-designed website only to come here to be told that you're running behind.

APPLE KID
i'm sorry sir. it's just that a lot of people are needing help with their christmas purchases.

CUSTOMER
what's the point of an appointment system if you don't keep your appointments?! i've been waiting here thirty minutes. i have places to be and i don't have time to sit around waiting for help for a computer that's supposed to work in the first place. so i'm going back to a pc. at least then i know what i'm getting!

the man left. after he was out of the hipsters sightline, they spoke under their breath to one another, saying something along the lines of "yeah, enjoy your pc mister", a quip as inventive as each of the lad's fashion sense. i smiled at getting to take in the bit of impromptu drama. i then sat back and studied the varying levels of exasperation among the mixture of folks waiting for help.

very close to the fifteen minute mark i was approached. my machine was unwrapped and setup by the tech. i was sharing my time with a man a bit older than myself. he had a laptop which he was bringing in for his college age son. we both explained our problems and the tech began his diagnostics. in the quiet of our workspace, i asked the other customer if this kid was his oldest or if he had more. he lit up at getting to talk about his children. when done he asked about my brood. we exchanged brief technology-related stories about our kids only occasionally being interrupted by the apple tech with a question. enjoying this unexpected social encounter while getting my machine worked on turned out to be a pleasant addition to an otherwise irksome task and another inconvenience apple recently dealt me that in the end, proved more satisfying than i initially expected.

i believe unforeseen advantages to be one of the hopeful products of thoughtful and sophisticated design. granted had i been paired with a loud-phone talking, suv mom complaining about the brightness of her ipad screen, i may not be fawning so. but that is another by-product of design - they can all be improved upon, which is what keeps many of us getting out of bed each day.

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.

the first question i was to field in the year two thousand and eleven came from anthony. after waking in the morning, he came from his sleeping spot to snuggle between a still sleeping marty and i. after cuddling into marty for a bit, he rolled over, turning his open eyes to me. he brought his hand up and gently rubbed the stubble on my cheek, chin and upper lip. after several wordless moments of he and i looking at one another he broke the silence by quietly asking, "why is mom is getting older?"

grinning and unsure if marty was awake to hear him, i asked what made him think mom was getting older. he explained it was because she had a bump on her face. i asked about this bump. his clarification, while equally unclear, implied it was over her eyes which i took to mean a furrow or knit in her brow.

i took the time to explain that he was also getting older and that every moment of every day all living things are aging. he chuckled at this as if i were silly and explained to me that he wasn't getting older, he was just getting bigger.

after a few more moments of silence i asked him if i was getting older. without hesitation he told me i was not, i was already old.

i was walking anthony to school. to get there we walk down a long, wide grass median filled with tall, mature trees. it is flanked on either side by 80 year old tile-roofed, brick homes. it is a picturesque start to my day and extra so when i'm holding hands with my bright-eyed and chatty four year old. we've travelled the route enough that anthony knows where each tree is that he can reach when r...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. enjoy your anger

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. crystal clear

i was walking to my office when bella, who was using marty's computer, stopped me. she said i had to see this. she said it was so awesome. i pulled up a chair and sat next to her. she had a youtube video cocked and ready. the moment i was situated and looked at the screen, she hit play. three seconds into the video she paused it, turned to me and launched into a verbal dissertation that went somet...

last week i talked about our time dog-sitting. there was an oscar detail i forgot to share.

in our current games of musical beds in the night, most days puts me and alex waking up together on a futon in the ping-pong room (anthony having made my usual and expected spot his place of choice). one morning when i woke up alex was staring at me with bright eyes. this was my first conversation of the day:

ALEX
good morning dad.

TROY
good morning alex.

ALEX
dad.

TROY
yes.

ALEX
one time oscar was licking his nuts and then i saw a red thing come out of his privates and it was shiny and it was soooo gross ... and he was licking it.

people often comment on how calm and passive i come off at work. when your day begins with colorful, and wide-eyed descriptions of aroused, self-stimulated male organs, there ain't a lot life can throw at you that will sound alarming or disturbing.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. pint size pi

several years ago, i went to a bachelor party. like every bachelor party i get invited to it was not conventional. instead of drunkenness, strippers and vomiting it involved arcades, comedians, and storytelling. at the dinner one of the attendees suggested the married men at the table each offer one piece of marital advice to the groom. we conceded this was a good idea and began. i'm sure mine un-...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. good thinking

i forgot that i had one more facebook morsel to share, which i do realize takes me further from my seven sentences goal. a friend forwarded a message they received from another facebookian they didn't know. here's a name-protected version of the message:


i fear i'm unable to share the exact wording of my friend's message to me because i don't think i'm able to sanitize it enough for this public space without it losing all meaning or coherence. the gist of his message was simply asking how one should respond to an inquiry of this nature.

as far as conversational mis-steps go i put this right up there with asking a woman who is not pregnant what trimester she's in or when the child is due. i've been lucky enough to witness one of those first hand and for however uncomfortable the next few minutes were, i gotta say i'd rather be dealt that (says the man) than asked if my child, who is not mentally disabled, is mentally disabled.

after pondering my friend's fix for a moment i suggested he say no, his child is not special needs and that after receiving her inquiry he looked at her page and wondered if she is expecting again or is merely struggling with the baby weight from her last child.

and yes, my mother did raise me better than that (she would have asked me to share this point with you).

and yes, these sage advice services are also available to you. and get this, they're completely free of charge. i know, thoroughly unbelievable.