i called my family to the dinner table on a saturday afternoon. once assembled i told them—the children—that the consumptive model we've been living until now had to change. i elaborated saying that thus far they have largely been consumers in our home; taking time from amazing computers and scrumptious food from a bottomless fridge and clean, folded clothes from their magical, re-popu...

part one is over here

towards the end of king's memoir he penned a sample passage of a bar scene. in reading it bella ran into a number of words she didn't know. this turned into concern about fighting with the language and that this struggle might take away from her enjoyment. she expressed this to marty first. marty said she should maybe wait to read them. bella agreed.

when she mentioned this to me i reminded her we would be reading them together and i could help with any words she didn't understand. she said it wouldn't be the same and we should wait.

i'd be lying if i said the notion of sitting in bella's new bunk bed reading stephen king books with my daughter every night of the summer didn't have me bristling with anticipation. i already had it planned out. we were going to start out by reading them in the same order i met stephen king: pet semetary, it, tommyknockers, needful things. from there we'd branch out. i saw a large part of my summer hopes slipping away with my daughter's prudent decision making.

seeing my uncertainty, bella said, "it's like you say dad, sometimes wanting is better than having".

boy do i hate it when my good advice sinks its teeth into my own buttock.

update: in the end the pull of trying him out proved too enticing so on saturday june 8th at 10:03 pm, my daughter and i began our first joint-reading of stephen king beginning with the same book i first read when a little older than her, pet semetary. we would have started at ten on the dot but i had to pee. unfortunate timing that. but we sat on the porch with multiple candles burning. i read the first chapter, using my clearest and most measured reading voice. when i finished the chapter i excitedly looked over at my daughter who was sitting on a deck chair facing me. her hand extended toward me, palm up, requesting the book. she said, "nice try dad but you don't have what it takes. hand it over." so she now has the reading duties and she is quite good at it. i'm convinced she learned most of her character voice skills from her mother when marty read all seven of the potter books to alex and bella a few summers back, employing a wildly impressive array of voices and energy. after i handed the book over, bella leafed through the pages i just read, finding passages and telling me "this should have sounded more like this dad" and would then re-read the lines with am admittedly higher level of enthusiasm and skill. aside from struggling with the elderly neighbor Jud Crandall, who via bella sounds more like a young hiphop artist, she's knocking it out of the horror aisle.

and now that we have a few nights under our belt, i must say that these neat and tender reading moments i'm sharing with my eldest child makes all the early years, fumbles, questions, trials, sacrifices and challenges of getting to this comfortable, close spot we can share together and look forward to every day ... well ... it just makes all that early work and effort seem crazily trivial.

part one is over here

one thing i haven't mentioned through all of this is why bella is so ravenous to read stephen king. the reason is bella fancies herself a bit of a horror writer. she has written a number of scary short stories. they definitely are not what you'd expect to come out of a twelve year old girl, who otherwise seems as normal as bella seems at least.

she mostly has done this in her free time and just shared it with family and friends but one day she asked me to proof-read a school assignment for her. when i did it was one of her horror stories.

TROY
what is this for?

BELLA
english class.

TROY
you can't turn this in at school.

BELLA
why not?

TROY
because the department of family services would come here and take you away from us.

BELLA
why?

TROY
because this is twisted and deranged. i mean don't get me wrong, it's very good. the problem is its almost too good and thus twisted and deranged.

it turns out she was very excited to turn it in and had already talked it up to her friends and teachers. our compromise was she had to include an author's statement with the assignment. what she quickly penned to appease her stickler-father follows:

part five

part one is over here

yesterday's mention of bella giving up television reminded me of a related story.

now that bella is older, about a year back, marty suggested we get a proper television so she could comfortably have girlfriends over and for gatherings, sleepovers and the like. our conversation quickly and excitedly turned into a top-down redesign of our living room, sketching out a remodel to take it from its present state--which is about two steps from looking like the monkey cage at the zoo (we're missing simply a swing-rope from the ceiling)--to a fully re-imagined space that included an L-couch, a wall mounted flat-screen, surround-sound, a stained-wood mantle, matching built-in bookshelves lining the walls, and new natural-wood, functioning french doors (note: these were recently installed). marty envisioned herself curled up under a fleece blanket watching some of the series-tv she's missed over the last decade. i imagined myself buried in the couch's corner, watching weekend football, wearing a pair of tired sweats, a fresh bowl of stove-top corn on my lap and a few logs popping in the over-sized fireplace. both marty and i were plenty eager to assume these relaxed positions.

a few weeks later while out with bella on our dad-lunch, i revealed this plan to her. instead of the shriek i braced for, i received an inflectionless response that she kinda liked not having a tv didn't want to get one. i almost reached over to her feel her forehead thinking she must have taken ill in the time it took me to utter my sentence. this sorta moving target is one of the core reasons parenting is often named the hardest thing you will ever undertake.

later in the day when alone with marty i began a conversation with the words, "you're not going to believe this but ..."

TROY
you're not going to believe this but when i told bella about our plans for the living room, she said she didn't want a television.

MARTY (stopped what she was doing and looked at me)
what?

TROY
yeah, she said she didn't want a television. she liked not having one. she said having one would change, ruin even, the tenor of our home.

MARTY (after a brief pause)
well screw bella. i want a television. when she has a home of her own she can preserve the tenor of it all she wants.

this would be that target i'm trying to aim at picking up and moving again. and not just like moving two paces to the left but like moving in a fast and serpentining pattern that i'd need an uzi to hit, and as confessed before i'm working with a home-made slingshot. truth is, ninety percent of the surprises i contend with come from the two women in my life saying things i don't expect (and sometimes just the plain, darn opposite of what they said before). the other ten percent comes from the boys in my life doing things i don't expect, things like:

• dropping toys down the neighbors sewer vent.
• riding red wagons down hills while standing on top of them, surfer-style.
• climbing trees so high you can't even yell loud enough for them to hear you screaming, "get down! now!"
• or like, our six year old arriving at the dinner table with hundreds of dollars in his piggy bank and saying it's just his chore money from the last few months. of course when you combine (1) the fact that he gets fifty cents a week and (2) his brother and sister's banks are suddenly empty, his defense starts plummeting faster than his computer time over the next two weeks.

but at least with the boys, while i may not expect all the things they do, i do understand them. this is what makes raising men a more tenable undertaking for another man.

but moving back to the original topic, bella and television, don't think that the rapidity in which my daughter accepted stephen king's advice (mentioned yesterday ), which she encountered exactly once before mine (and having shouldered my advice dozens of times) has been lost on me. i see it. i see it most clearly. i also imagine it is not the last time she will accept notions from a fella new to our lives before she would take my own, identical, tested and trusted counsel. i'm sensible enough to see that coming and yes, i'm already saving money for the therapy i'm sure to need when the dark scenario actually happens for real.

and for any other people possibly fighting this fight, or other similar fights, with their small humans, i will share the closest i ever came to persuading bella to abandon her digital herion (without the assistance of a best selling author at least). the nearest my methods took me happened after we attended a school event (her induction into the national junior honor society--sorry, proud father, couldn't resist). before the ceremony began two students from the school performed for the audience, singing and playing acoustic guitar. they performed beautifully, so rife with confidence and composure, especially for two junior high age girls sitting in front of better than a hundred people. after the event the pre-show music came up in discussion. bella acknowledged who they were and said they were amazingly talented. i asked bella if she thought she would be as good as those girls if instead of watching shows on her computer time for the last two years she had practiced guitar. bella thought for a moment and said probably. i repeated her 'probably' and added had she done that people might be watching her playing guitar on television instead of her watching other people do enviable things on television. i watched her reaction, closely, and saw something happening but admittedly the success lasted about as long as a netflix login. that said, that brief moment is the closest i ever came to getting bella to put the media needle down.

part four

part one is over here

i put two conditions on bella's reading of stephen king. the first was that we would have to read the books together. the second was that before we start, she had to finish reading his memoir, On Writing, a book i had given her several months earlier.

the only issue with the first condition is she said i'd need to find five hours a day to give to the effort. i'm confident i do not need to go into the nine kinda ways this was not going to happen so we quickly negotiated that down to a more realistic thirty minutes a night, and maybe the occasional hour depending on my schedule and the plot line.

regarding the second condition, the moment we concluded our time-each-day bargaining she turned and ran from the room. over the next several days every time you'd see her she'd have king's memoir on her; either opened for reading, stuck in her armpit if walking, or resting on her thigh if sitting. a brief aside—on the top of bella's reading log for the library's summer program, she added the words 'you can't compete' followed by three exclamation points. i, the library staff, and multiple summers worth of other kids in the reading program can attest to the undeniable truth of this declaration.

an unexpected bonus from sir king totally came when he slammed, viciously, television saying time spent watching was wasted, forever lost and offered no redeeming value, namely in this case, to one's writing skills. bella said she got that and was considering fully giving up tv and computer, replacing it with reading and writing. while my mind furiously staved off a that's-what'-i've-been-saying message bella continued on, "so who would have thought you and stephen king feel the same way about television. crazy." spared.

but, for any ground i gained on the television front, my dinner table suffered as he also says that if you really want to be a writer you cannot let things like social norms stand in your way and to properly hone your craft you might need to read during certain social routines. he named family dinners specifically. bella informed me, so i wouldn't be surprised, that she will now be showing up to dinner with a book or writing pad in hand and i couldn't protest because she was just following the advice of someone i told her to read. un-spared.

part three

bella, who just turned twelve, has been asking pleading to read stephen king for the last two years. of course, each time my response has been a wordless glance over my glasses. she knows what this means. and she hates it. still without a word from me, she exclaims, "why not!". i explain she is too young for the likes of stephen king. to her huff i explain he will still be there when she isn't too young. to her second huff i explain she needs to save some things for when she is older because if she consumes it all now there will be less to enjoy later. to her third huff, i explain she only gets one childhood and it is my job to protect her from leaving it too early, for the wrong reasons at least.

that talk happened more than a year ago. over the last few months bella has built a shrine to King on our family bookshelf, meticulously organizing all of his works, all that i own at least, onto a single shelf. i've caught her a few times either (a) re-scanning the shelves for any books she may have missed or (b) staring longingly at the bindings of the collected works and maybe even placing her fingertips on the glossy wall of bindings in a way that could only be described as reverent. the other morning i walked by while she was in the second state. i asked what she was doing. she said sadly she was waiting until she was ready. i replied i thought she might be ready. her head snapped up and her eyes shot open. she asked me to repeat what i just said. i did. she asked me to repeat it one more time just to make sure. i did again. she danced in place. she hooted. she screeched. she whirled in circles. she reached her hand out towards the books touching them softly, letting them know they'd be together soon and softly, but excitedly, ran her hand down the length of the volumes reveling in the memorable moments awaiting her.

while we walked to the bus stop fifteen minutes later she asked why i changed my mind, what was different. i said she was different. she was more mature. she asked for specific examples. i recounted the night before how i asked her to walk a dog that was staying with us (due to bella's dog-sitting business). it was late and she didn't want to walk the dog and said as much. i explained that other people in the family had taken the dog out that day but she had not and it was her turn and she told her clients she would so she had to do what she said because someone was paying her money based on that understanding. she turned and left the room. she got dressed and took the dog out. and not just for a quick circle of the block as i expected her to do but for a good, proper walk. she came home still mad but instead of injecting her mood on the home, she retired to her room, went to bed and woke pleasant as usual. i explained that one of the reasons for green-lighting her was her more mature handling of problems which even six months ago would have been a big dramatic affair.

i added that it was also her evenness and reliability. not only is she consistently responsible in her chores and duties (jobs and school) but she has also been steady in her conviction to read stephen king. she has shown it to be more than just a passing fancy.

and there is a third reason. i didn't mention it to her but it is something i've discussed here before (i think) and that is the school bus. based on her reports, the conversations are every bit as salacious as anything stephen king has ever penned ... and at least he's a grown man who has experienced many of the things he's writing about which trumps information that comes from older siblings, cousins, uncles and neighbors. so if she's going to hear such things, she may as well hear them from a human, mr. king, that has actually experienced such things (and while i'm there to bandy about the questions that remain).

part two

anthony and i were out on his last dad lunch as a kindergartner. anthony likes multiple places but hardees is his favorite. he says they have the best meat sandwiches of anyone. for a long while he confused hardees and arbys because the names were so similar. after sensing his lean towards hardees i taught him a trick to remember his favorite haunt. i told him to think how it's "hard" to wait to g...

i'm a bit of a commencement address junkie. i reckon i've admitted this before. last year my employer put forth one of the best of the year. remarkably, they've come through again with what i'd say, even though others aren't, is again one of this year's strongest offerings. and i'm told by someone on the stage during the talk, the man didn't have a single note or scrap to reference through his thirty plus minute address. remarkably good.

each year as i spin through the selections i'm struck by how good the good ones are (and surprised that the bad ones aren't better--c'mon people, if given the platform you gotta get your obsess on).

our refrigerator is on the fritz (running too cold) and a milk bottle exploded in the night last week. sunday night, after i had gone to bed, marty emptied the fridge to finish cleaning out the spilled remnants. when done, and putting everything back she dropped a glass shelf on her left big toe which was, at the moment, as naked and vulnerable as a soft nubbin of human flesh could possibly be.

her writhings and moanings woke me sometime in the four o'clock hour. as i learned of what happened and got up to help, she first asked for a sock knowing enough to not let me see the carnage else i'd pass out, fall into our dresser and gash my temple open and then we'd have double the problems. while she wrestled with the sock, i readied a fresh ice pack for her. after getting her foot elevated and settled, i went to my office and returned with two of the pain pills i'd recently been given for my separated shoulder and placed them in her hand. when she asked what they were, i replied, "they're for pain. they work really well but you should know you probably won't be able to get an erection while you're on them."

would you believe, she seemed far less wary of that side-effect that i was?

each year before exiting from marty's birthday brunch i say a few words to marty and the guests. the first year, if memory serves, i shared how important marty was to me and i knew how important all of the ladies in the room were to her so it made perfect sense to devote a day to all of these people who are special and meaningful to one another.

this year held more of a "we've been here before - you know the drill" vibe that went something like: later that night after the kids were down and the day was minutes from done, marty thanked me (again) for the day and said.

MARTY
i liked your speech today.

TROY
speech? it was like three sentences long.

MARTY
well, it was a good three sentences.

TROY
that may be the first time a speech that included the words 'smeared feces' ever received such a praise.

the lady who cuts marty's hair had a friend whose family kept next to their toilet something they called "the poop knife". the moment marty mentioned this to me in passing was the moment the story became the tale i was most disappointed to not hear first hand in 2012.

what i mean by this is i quickly overwhelmed marty with a flood of questions. what did it look like? was it a proper knife or a tool that looked like a knife? was it taken from a kitchen drawer or a basement tool chest? was it bought special or re-purposed from something already in the house? was it a lame toilet or a giant-sized bowel? was it one bowel or a family of prolific defecators? if the toilet, why not get a new one (or maybe it was one of these new 'efficient' models that started it all)? was the same person, like the mom or dad, always responsible for hewing a fecal mass down to bite-sized chunks or did it follow the 'who dealt it deals with it' philosophy? who had the realization a full-time instrument was required? did they clean it? where did it sit? did they hide it when company came over? is it still used? do you know where it lives? can i go there and ask to see it?

i couldn't have been more astonished to find marty possessed not a single answer to my generous serving of questions. this led to one last question, "however does the phrase "poop knife" pass before you in conversation where the next forty minutes isn't dedicated to discovering everything there is to know about a family who conjured, procured, and put to routine use something called a 'poop knife'.

saddened.

a while back i wrote of gardener bob. since i last spoke of him the hedges rimming his lawn have grown so tall it's hard to see him when he's lost in his ballet, methodically turning his soil and tending his plants. and his shrubs aren't the only thing that have been growing, he himself has become more irascible, so much so that i decided to stop feigning our neighborly dance given his ongoing lac...

excerpt from bella's essay "what i learned from another" she penned when she was nine years old.

I learned to knit when i was six years old. My aunt had taught me. My family had went to Chicago to visit my Aunt Cherry and Uncle Tim. I had wandered into my aunt's room, I loved her room. Her walls were painted with the scene of a sunny beach, the rolling waves and the ladies tanning on t ...

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last weekend we were invited to a family's lake house. this family has four boys, three of their kids line up with ours in age and grade. alex's friendship with his age peer predominately fuels the relationship, but marty and i have come to enjoy the parents as we've gotten to know them more.

the kids were nervous and expressed concern on the way there. what will it be like? what if we don't like it? do they have an indoor toilet? marty and i confessed ignorance to all points and explained that we were on a family adventure and needed to enjoy the mystery of it all. after arriving late, we walked up to the adults who were sitting in swings and on picnic tables while kids played below in the lake. our kids approached the scene sheepishly, as did marty and i greeting our peers. down below a young boy's voice bellowed FROG! bella's face immediately lit up and snapped to. she looked at marty who gave the 'go ahead' face and bella charged down the slope to join the chase. as for aleo, he saw two paddleboats chained to a dock. he immediately moved to marty's side and repeatedly looked from her face to the boats. marty asked if the boats could be taken out and when the hostess said of course, alex was lost to us for the next five hours as he took one boat after another out, commanding them just as if he were a proper riverboat captain. and anthony, well anthony mostly just hurled himself off any dock or structure his muscly little arms could pull himself onto.

a few hours into the adventure, the adults continued to sit atop the hill surveying the scene, their conversations accented by the excited play of nine kids about the lake. the playful banter and calls were then broken by some elevated tones from two of them, one of them being anthony. shortly after the disagreement began i heard a long declaration ring out across the lake "stop it you stupid penis head." i cringed at the discernible words but hoped that this was one of those moments where, as anthony's speech therapist tells us, there will be things he says that we understand but others don't. as the seconds ticked off without any reaction i heard another tinny voice ring out, "mom, anthony just called me a penis head." my shoulders slumped as now i knew something more overt than a "later-talking-to" had to happen.

after pulling anthony out of the lake he asked what he did. i told him that he called the son of our host family a penis head. anthony immediately started with a "but he ...". i cut him off saying there is not a "but he" explanation out there that justifies calling the boy a penis head, especially yelling it across the lake so everyone can hear. then i thought about a few of the people i have professional dealings with and considered amending my statement. i opted to wait until later this week when anthony is at least six years old and has a better chance of discerning the nuance of when throwing down penis-head is not only acceptable but actually the best choice.

our first day in the mountains began perfectly enough. we arrived to the cabin early enough the night before to get unpacked, settled, fed, and to bed at a reasonable hour. the next morning we woke to clear skies. we dressed, ate and headed up the poudre canyon. our first hike this year was to be the one that eluded us last year--the neota trail--as we couldn't find the trailhead. with renewed guidance from our hosts, liz and john, we easily found the start point this time. about a half mile into the trek, alex (9) pointed at the peaks ahead and said it looked like rain and perhaps we should head back. marty and i scanned the sky and said it should hold out for this shortish hike and urged the kids to continue. alex re-expressed his concern. this was not the first time alex has given us weather counsel we should have listened to.

ten minutes later the clouds darkened and a few minutes after that opened up with a light rain. we assured the kids it was just a drizzle and things would be fine. five minutes later the thunder cracked, loudly. and five minutes after that the peppercorn sized hail began to fall. with this latest turn, marty ushered the family into the trees where we took cover from the hail under a dense clump of pines.

i took this time to brighten my dour crew by complaining about the how much these added frills were going to cost me when we got home. the children inquired what i meant. i explained that all of these antics, rain, lightning, thunder, and now hail were going to surely be on the bill i received when we got home and how it was sorta like a hotel experience and every order of room service or movie viewing would be a line item on the final invoice when the stay was over. and every time another crack of thunder rang out, i'd grouse, "oh great, there's another fifty cents". and when the hail started i complained vigorously, "hail! hail! oh wonderful, that's surely going to be like three, maybe even five dollars extra!" my theatrics mostly confused my kids as they tried to figure out the mechanics of such accounting. but my wife stood under a her tree, soaked sans rain gear, possibly wanting to cry but instead laughing uncontrollably through my exhibition while the kids looked at one another fully confused and asked questions like "who sends you the bill?" and "do we have to pay for rain at home?".

this short trail along a high elevation meadow is known for wildlife, especially moose. to this point in our walk we'd barely seen a bird or chipmunk. i'm confident this outcome was largely due to the kids boisterous way of life. now twenty feet off the trail hiding out from the weather, the meadow had nary a human peep. when the hail stopped and the family filed back towards the trail shushes were suddenly passed back and a call for a camera. i looked up to see a mother moose and her young moose kid/calf/mooselet walking not twenty feet from marty and bella who were at the head of our line. both of our proper cameras were buried in the pack strapped to me. worried about the time and noise it would take to get to the gear, i instead reached into my zippered thigh pocket for my iphone, pulled it out and sent it up the line.

i think, i imagine, i reckon this is where the cabin key fell out of my pocket and onto the ground. i think this because after we finished our hike and drove down the mountain and i walked to the front door and reached into the zippered pocket where i put the two most valuable things--my iphone and the cabin key--for safekeeping and found no key, my mind flashed back to me looking down at the pocket lining sticking out of the zippered mouth of the pocket after i quickly pulled the wet phone out of the wet pocket in attempt to get a picture of a momma and baby moose. i'm pretty sure that is where i lost it. i explained this much to marty and asked if we should go back to the trail to test my theory (as i pulled the phone out for other pictures after that as well) or do we drive the hour down the canyon back to town to get a backup key from the owners. without pause, marty voted for the sure thing and i slid back behind the wheel and we headed down-canyon to fort collins.

when we arrived at the house the kids were in different states of dress given the wet clothes had to be removed from their shivery bodies once we got back to the car. hours later the kids were no longer frost bit but their clothes were still a soppy mess piled in the back of the van. now more hours later yet, anthony was fully naked, although this is nothing especially unique. alex was wearing nothing but a blue-grey pair of camouflage boxer-briefs. and bella also was in just underwear but was additionally wrapped in a picnic blanket marty had on hand.

both Liz and John were obviously at work it being the middle of a monday and Will, their son, was out and about as a high-school age man on summer break should be. over the phone, liz talked us through where to look for backup keys. it turned out they had all been loaned out and not yet returned making the key on john's keyring the last available copy. liz called him. he was visiting with a client. not wanting to disturb them any further we offered to drive to him. the house was just down the street from liz's girlhood home and easily found.

i was nervous about this intrusion into his day but the smile john flashed upon walking out of the home he was working in was warm and welcoming. we quickly recounted what happened and apologized about the bother. he said no worries and handed over the key. he asked that we make a couple copies and leave the extras in the realtor-like lockbox at the cabin. it was here that i got to top any blows the day had delivered by confessing that neither marty and i had a wallet, having thought we were just going on a brief mountain hike, and asked if i could borrow some money to make the keys. this bought another flash of john's youthful smile while he reached for his wallet. he leafed through the bills looking up to ask with a smirk if we needed any extra money to feed the children or possibly go to the movies. earlier in our visit i was offering to let john adopt me given his vibrant and covetous lifestyle. as he handed me a few bills to get me though the day i felt a step closer to this relationship. although john may have been less sold on bringing another dependent on given this performance.

as this trial unfolded and lengthened the family did surprisingly well. given the fatigue, the hunger, the cold and even in the different states of undress the kids and marty proved champs. and when the conversation did turn to "when will we be home" or "how long is this going to take" i would remind them of great thing that was occurring right now. when they asked what that might be, i replied, this is a story that will be told around our dinner table for decades, possibly generations to come, and there is nothing more that can be asked for from a day than that (assuming no real peril or evilness of course) so instead of wishing it to end we should be basking in the awesomeness of this memorable individual life moment. a set or two of eyes may have rolled at this paternal wisdom. i can't say as i didn't look. i couldn't bring myself to glance in the mirror and chose to believe they were all nodding in understanding and appreciation. this is a little trick i have in dealing with with the world around me. it may have its flaws but has been working for me wonderfully to date. and yes, if you are wondering, i am glad i can't see your expression right now.

i started biking in my mid twenties. technically my biking journey began after marty commented that i looked a little doughy in the middle. surely when we met, thanks to a job unloading tractor trailers, i had a predominately dough-free middle. after some research and recruiting a friend to help, i bought a bike. my first ride, to marty's family home, was five miles long and concluded with a short but steep hill. to climb it i had to turn in a big circle every fifty feet or so to give my muscles enough of a break to continue the ascent. after that abysmal first showing i declared that i would ride this bike every day for one year, and i did. in this time, there were beautiful days but there were also rainy ones, and snowy ones, and ones that were so cold that i had to, mid-ride, stuff newspapers down my pants to keep the wind off my junk. the dough, largely, went away.

over the years, my rides got longer. by the end of the first year i could go out for twenty miles without great fear of not making it back. then in my late twenties while visiting my home town, i decided to try a ride some friends of mine once did. so i grabbed my $300 bike and my one bike bottle and set out to ride from fort collins to estes park. this was a thirty-five mile trek, one way, twenty five of them being straight uphill. after half a day of peddling and strain, i crested the final hill, rolled into estes and ate lunch on the front lawn of the stanley manor.

i've tried that ride three times since then, twice in my thirties and once in my forties. none of those attempts proved successful. the first time i got beat mentally and turned back on my own (i later learned i only had to round one more bend and i would have been there), the second failed attempt i didn't respect letting your body acclimate to the altitude and attempted the ride less than twelve hours after arriving in the state and couldn't breath (that time i didn't even make it five miles up the canyon), and the last time i just gassed out halfway up (due to an aging body and poor nutrition plan).

obviously these failed attempts have been plaguing me and besting that ride has been on my shortlist since the last time i didn't make it. last thursday, our last day of a two week colorado vacation (ensuring proper acclimation time), i attempted the ride, and with what was not a trivial bit of exertion i completed the ride for the first time in more than fifteen years. truth is i'd say i'm presently in the best shape of my life. in thinking through why i struggled so much in the last five miles, i attribute it to our vacation lifestyle. in each of the in the seven days before the ride, we had some physical family adventure. these mostly included hiking, canoeing, water-worlding, and even stand-up wake-boarding. the day before the ride we went on a four mile mountain hike that took us above the treeline (more on this soon). the hike in was the equivalent of climbing two miles worth of stairs, well, that is, if the stairs were uneven, of varying heights and never level. when i recount the happenings of the prior week, i think it's amazing i even came close to completing the ride as in some regards the deck has never been more stacked against me making it. certainly a testament to what swimming has done for me.

another, fortunate part of the experience was a few months back i mentioned this plan to bookguy who happened to be spending the summer months in new mexico. he had the notion of driving up and doing the ride with me. while there were many neat things that came from his participation, selfishly, the coolest were the pictures he snapped of me coming around the last bend and casting a fifteen year monkey off my back. i didn't know he was clicking off these pictures and he was obviously holding up far better than myself as taking pictures was the last thing on my mind while he was busy riding the same hill as me but shooting pics at the same time.

grinding out the last hundred feet
on the way back down bookguy made a most poignant comment. he said you don't realize how impressive climbing this hill is until you blast down it the other way. the reason for this is there is something difficult about gauging terrain in the mountains. there are times you look ahead and are sure you're looking at a downhill slope and wonder why you're struggling so on it. i imagine you could liken it to a mirage seen by a parched castaway. it's not until you fly down the other direction that you realize there were no downslopes at all and you just climbed a twenty five mile hill.




cresting the last bit of hill
i wasn't able to stand very long as my right quad cramped the second i'd lift out of the seat. this inability to vary how i approached the hills in the last few miles surely didn't do me any favors. in the end, i don't think i'd ever been so glad to see the end of a climb.




entering estes park proper
bookguy was miffed at the bad luck of having some guy taking out his trash just as i was passing the sign. marty felt the pedestrian chore gave the picture some good and real flavor. liking authentic imagery, i think i side with marty on its presence.




bookguy and i on the lawn of the stanley
just below this phenomenally picturesque veranda sits a pool. on this day it was unused and looked so cool and refreshing. the notion of hopping the fence and diving into the pool was the closest i've come to conducting an arrest-worthy offense, like, ever.

i can tell by bella's listening stance that she's dubious of the yarn i'm spinning. at this age she still did not fully yet know the annoying draw she got in fathers. now she can spot a questionable tale minutes sooner than most. while it surely makes her a tougher mark for me to hoodwink, i reckon it will serve her well on the debate team or in professional matters. ...

at my last job once a week the database guy at my shop walked the aisles of cubes collecting money for lottery tickets. everyone would hand him a wrinkled buck or two, he'd make a scratch on a small piece of paper, and move to the next. then at lunch or on the way home, he'd buy a block of lottery tickets with the money. routinely i was the only one who did not participate. routinely he was the one who would shake his head and tsk-tsk my decision, saying i'd be really sorry if they ever won because i'd be the only one left in the office to hold all of these systems afloat. to this i said if they all won, in a year's time i'd be the happiest one of everyone involved. that comment bought me many a debate on the merits and ills of an average person coming into an un-average flood of money.

my belief on the lottery system spread through the office and my lottery-playing co-workers would appear at my cube in twos, threes, and fours to confirm what they heard and question the source. i would confess to the row of bemused expressions that i did believe they would all be miserable if they won the lottery. when pressed on how that could possibly be i would explain. i would single out one of the gawkers asking about their family. parents still living? how many siblings? aunts? uncles? friends? after getting a sense for the inventory of friends and relations i'd ask what their plan for all of them was. they always had a plan which i imagined got drawn up in their forty plus minute commutes home. their presence would gain a beat as they excitedly stepped through the awards each tier of the family would get thinking they were the first to stagger the amounts with such acumen. i'd then move us along saying ... while all of my arguments were based on simple conjecture which were based on scenarios i'd drawn up in my head, after more than a decade of my lottery-conviction, i heard my first bit of first-hand evidence through the aunt of a close friend of mine (and a woman i had socialized with as recently as six months back). four years ago this woman's christmas list was 225 addresses long. then her husband died and she was awarded one point five million dollars. guess how many names were on her christmas list last year, or rather, three years after she was handed one point five millions dollars? when i asked bella this question, she guessed 1,000. i had to tell her the real answer was seven. and then less than three months after the seven-name christmas she took her life with a handgun she had from earlier times.

our house has a swear jar. anyone caught using swears (e.g. damn, shit) or even simple potty words, sometimes called bathroom words, (e.g. penis, butt, nummers) may be called out and penalized. i know many homes with growing children employ this tactic to bring awareness to the use of such words, attempting to make their children more aware of their place in the vocabulary/society. our operation has the slight twist to typical installments in that bella began and governs our swear jar. what drove bella to this drastic, even if unoriginal (unless your qualify a child starting it), response is she is the last one in our house to giggle at creatively blended strings of potty words or lavishly crafted scenarios about bathroom happenings by her two younger brothers ... or her father ... and even sometimes her mother.

many a night bella has sat at the dinner table appalled at her brothers conversation and hysterical laughing at some extra-juvenile story. when she looks to me to correct and scold the boys, she may find me laughing right along side or even congratulating one of their boys for their detailed recounting. extra-exasperated she turns to her gender-comrade in arms only to find her with her head bowed and a hand covering her face trying to hide her laughter. in one of these moments bella, with all but a fist slamming on the table, called our behavior outrageous, and wholly embarrassing, and what if she had a friend over, and then she declared that going forward, people caught using such words, especially at our family dinner table, would have to pay a penalty, the amount to be determined by the offended party. i broke the unusually long post-proclamation silence (in an equally unoriginal move) by pledging five dollars to this swear jar and told bella to see my people when the balance was exhausted. more hysterics. while she didn't appreciate the added laughter she was quick and glad to accept her foundation's first funds.

it time, and after seeing she intended on enforcing her policy, after she'd announce something like, "ok alex. you owe the swear jar seventy five cents for that story" i came to the aid of my family. using my paternal authority, i proclaimed an amendment to the swear jar mandate. it was this: if the person telling the story can make bella laugh while using an offending word, the teller doesn't have to pay the fine. at first bella said fine because she would not laugh at such childish attempts at humor. but what she didn't prepare herself for was how the tales and descriptions would grow, as a desperate storyteller fought to get bella to crack a smile. the details became wild and grandiose and the imitations of sounds and shrieks became remarkably believable and piercing. this extra effort has saved the accused many a coin as for all bella's propriety and blossoming maturity, she too is a storyteller at heart and can't help but appreciate a good and spirited yarn full of juicy words and pulsing images.

i'm really shocked i never heard of this guy before now. and i stumbled upon him, surpisingly, while listening to a rather blue comedy stream in itunes.

this year's halloween was most lively. i attribute its sheen to the ages of my children (10, 8 and 5) as they are all members of the peak, invested halloween years. i've been eager to capture the night since returning from trick or treating last week but haven't made the time until now. this i attribute to the lowly monday night draw which is just the worst possible halloween day. it's so sucky in...

if you haven't guessed by now, i track just about everything in my life. one of the more unusual things i keep tabs on are my favorite reads of the year. this extends beyond books into websites, magazines, office notes, commencement addresses, and even wall graffiti. this year's front-runner has been carrying a strong lead since early march. i've been thinking something would have knocked it out by now but it just hasn't happened. i think part of its success with me resides in the way it snuck up and held me tight before i even realized it had laid hands on me. i've wrecked its chance to quietly sneak up on you, but hopefully you'll still enjoy my favorite story in 2011 (thus far), the tire iron and the tamale.

bella had an homework assignment. it asked her to envision what the start of a day would look like in her adult life. in the middle of working on it, bella read a cut at the work to the boys and i as we settled into bed for reading. it went:

three neighbor boys were over. they're all brothers, the oldest being alex's age. i was in my office and they were in bella and alex's room and making an astounding amount of noise, hysterical laughter mostly. i've been responsible for little humans long enough to know that such chaos, while good at the minute, can be short-lived for several reasons, many of which you'd never guess were even possible. having a few such debacles in my portfolio, i decided to look in on things.

in the middle of the room was a running fan. the protective grill on its face was missing (a casualty of anthony knocking it off a stool days earlier). in alex's raised hand was a peach-colored ball of goop, very similar to a product called 'slime' when i was a kid. this goop concoction makes orange marmalade seem like rock candy, and given its runny, sticky, gelatinous composition puts it in great contention to be the $800 answer to the question 'things troy would most hate to come into contact with'. that's all you need to know about the goop. well that and that at the moment i appeared in the doorway, alex's hand flung the nebulous mass directly into the spinning fan blades. upon contact, the goo jettisoned from the fan as if shot from a gun, flying straight towards the doorway i just darkened and hit me square in the junk.

the room went silent. all five boys gaped at me with frozen, open-mouthed expressions. after a moment of complete stillness, aside from the fan which was ramping back up to full speed, i grabbed my groin and doubled over in an exaggerated manner, dropping to my knees. the astonishment level in the boys faces heightened, if you can believe it. i looked up to alex and in a pained voice asked why he shot his father in his wieners. if you thought there were hysterics coming from the room before, my performance took these young men to an all new high. i'm glad to see that even in the age of the wii, a good sock in the crotch can still win a room over. it's hope-inducing.

last weekend the family of erik rogers held a memorial reception and concert in his name. after the event marty said to me that was the best memorial she'd ever been to and was certain it was what her father meant when he used to talk about how he wanted party, with a keg, instead of a funeral. i would agree that this was something special and thoughtfully and lovingly crafted.

it began with a open-bar, reception in a storied concert hall where people from all over the country who hadn't seen each other in as much as a decade shared time again. after an hour of cocktails, people were moved into the concert hall. here, people from different eras of erik's life went to the stage to share memories and emotions about erik. between these remembrances a remarkable jazz triplet played music from some of erik's favorite artist while his own saxophone sat in its stand on the stage.

the founding members of the secret cajun band were one of the first groups to speak. eddie o'neill, known by scb circles as swamp daddy, evoked laughs and tears with his memories of his friend since their boyhood years. after the event i asked eddie/swamp if he would share his writing with me and if he minded if i shared in on my site. his swamp-like response, "share it with the world!"