my young friend that recently shouldered a cancer diagnosis goes in for his final treatment this afternoon. after that, all involved expect to place him in the 'in full remission' category. but as they say, once a survivor, always a survivor which means the big C knows where you live and you'll never again live without the fear of opening the door and seeing its grim face staring back at you.

in our most recent coffee outing, which was our first to come in under four hours, he spoke of the positive impacts this experience has had on his life. the first thing he said, in example, is he could sit in this chair, stare out this window and see the wonder and beauty of the slush-filled road and its surroundings, and he could do so for hours without getting bored of it. i asked him if he thought the feeling would ever go away. he said he could see it subsiding in time but doubted it would ever leave fully.

he then spoke of a new ritual he has adopted. he now greets mornings with a new respect and gratitude. the first thing he does after waking is not go back to sleep as he would in the past (i mean the guy is 23 and fresh out of college). the second thing he does is walk through his apartment and slide each sun-blocking curtain open wide, letting the sunlight flood each room. third he does some sort of full-body stretch. lastly, he makes his bed. once that is done he begins his day with an appreciation few hold.

i think i've discussed how in recent years i've converted to being a morning guy. my only personal sadness is i didn't do it decades earlier. already, i have my own set of rituals i partake in the morning, rituals meant to prepare for and give thanks to the day ahead but in hearing sam describe his morning routine, i see my own practice lacks the reverence i feel in sam's approach. i'm left wondering if the only way to enter our days with like gratitude is to have been part of a medical guessing game of how likely it is you will be around for the planet's sunrise this time next year.

a young friend of mine was recently diagnosed with cancer. it arrived with a suddeness and ferocity that is hard to comprehend, let alone understand. the manner in which this young man, sam, has shouldered this dark card in his deck is as hard to comprehend as the event itself. i have twenty years of life experience over this fellow and even had the privilege of once calling myself his teacher, and he has faced this moment with a maturity and courage i don't think i've ever witnessed first-hand, like ever. suffice it to say i often feel as though i'm the one in the auditorium looking up at him standing tall and confident at the lecturn. to give you a taste of this young man, i share his latest broadcast from his company web-site:
you can follow the adventure, and get plugged into their next game which my alex is feverishly awaiting, at their website butterscotch shenanigans.

we recently learned that one of bella's dogs (from her dog-sitting business) had taken ill, ill to the point that the vets told the family they probably had a week left with him before it would become unbearable for all concerned. of all the dogs bella has cared for this one, Guinness, held the top-spot with our family. whenever bella watched Guinness he would stay at our house, sometimes for weeks at a time, sleeping in our beds, walking laps around our dinner table and standing guard at the french door windows for joggers and dog walkers.

marty and i held off telling the kids as long as able due of the holiday break but given the short window we had to work with—as we had to go down to say our goodbyes—we called the kids down to the living room just days before christmas and explained the situation. bella was, predictably, leveled by the news. marty held bella's quaking frame, tears streaming down her own face at seeing her daughter rocked so. i sat with alex who leaned into me silent and staring. we hushed anthony's questions telling him we'd explain better later.

alex and i then left for a lunch we had planned, leaving marty still holding a now quiet isabella. after a few silent miles in the car, i asked my ten year old how he felt. following a longish pause he softly said, "i think i'm a little bit devastated."

if there is one who makes the most of his words in our family, the safe and accurate bet would point to alex.

over the summer marty found herself catching up with an old girlfriend for a few days. during their visit our dishwasher saga got shared. the moment marty concluded the roller coaster of woe the girlfriend, anne, said, "it's your refrigerator". i wasn't there but in my mind i heard marty correct her saying "no, not my refrigerator, my dishwas...

part four is over here

someone recently turned the tables on me and asked if i ever received any good business advice. as you might guess, i'm a better question asker than answer giver, concise answer giver at least.

the greatest lesson i ever learned did not come in a moment but was instead a slow drip of learning over many years, decades really, but an over-arching message was present. my two main mentors were my mother and a female boss i worked for for several years (and i've spoke of before). the message they delivered is that success isn't solely governed by a skillset but also by a host of tangential qualities surrounding a skill set: respect, presentation, honesty, vision, commitment, kindness, persistence, belief, to name a few of the sorts of qualities included. yes, of course, you have to have the base skills but the point is those skills alone aren't enough to deliver success or fulfillment. the import of all of these factors, blended and balanced in work and in life, were repeatedly demonstrated and re-enforced by my two mentors, and their noting them, in my behavior and professional endeavors during our time together. you might call them, en masse, the intangibles.

truth is i learned the intangibles before i learned my end skillset, as i would again be taken under the tutelage of new people who gave me the professional tools i still use today. but i feel it was the presence and honoring of 'the intangibles' that helped to distinguish me among my peers early on and continue today to effectively guide me into and through new waters.

and putting it that way, the intangibles, makes me think of the quarterback tom brady. athletically, tom brady is one of the lowest graded quarterbacks to ever go through the nfl combine (the testing ground where nfl hopefuls are evaluated). yet, he has gone on to be one of the highest achieving and best-regarded quarterbacks in the history of the nfl. were you to ask him and those who coach him, play alongside him, or compete against him, you will often hear words from 'the intangibles' toolbox mentioned.

so that would be my advice to a young professional. mind the details. all of them. and if you chose to ignore one, like say proper dress or good vision, make sure you are neglecting it mindfully and for meaningful, defensible reasons as there are plenty of unknowns ahead of you and it would be a shame to let an avoidable issue slip into your blind spot that might impact your opportunities or potential.

while that may seem long-winded i promise you, it could have have been immensely worse. just ask my daughter or wife. they would confirm you got off easy.

so how about you? did you get any good business or life advice along the way that made a difference for you? if so, i'd super-love to hear about it.

Last Tuesday my laptop stopped working. Signs pointed towards hard drive failure. Being a faithful user of the wondrous and reliable Time Machine, I feared not for my data making the situation merely inconvenient. Being the middle of the week I didn't have free cycles to give to the repair so tabled it until the weekend.

I mentioned my downed machine to a friend later in the week. When he proffered the expected 'bummer' I replied it surprisingly wasn't much of a bummer, and it was actually kinda nice. Without a machine to mindlessly, magnetically be drawn to in the evening, I found my time at home sedate, like the most sedate I can recall (caveat disclaimer-an iphone allows me to see I have no pressing email and/or issues (which I never really seem to have, like ever)). Wednesday night after dinner and getting the kids down, I finished a book. Thursday night after dinner and kids I visited a bookstore walking the aisles for over an hour considering candidates for my next read. Friday night we were out but when I came home I was spared the usual draw to my machine to just check on 'the state of the world'. Instead I made ground on the much more personally relevant book I had bought and actually slipped into bed at a sane hour like a sensible human instead of wrecking my weekend, the crown jewel of my week, before it really got underway by starting if off bleary and unrested.

Saturday evening, aleo and I ran out for a replacement drive. Upon returning, aleo, looking at ifixit.com directions, fully completed the repair-- opening my machine, pulling the bad drive, installing the new, and closing up his titanium patient--pretty dang neat to watch. I planned on using my post-kids Saturday evening to restoring my machine from backups. Upon firing it up the machine still struggled. Further inspection makes the culprit look like, not the drive but the drive cable. Another night without a computer, which translated to another night of reading and enviable quantities sleep. In fact, after we discovered it was the cable I told aleo drats and confessed we might need to pull the drive he just installed. He said, "That's alright dad. But maybe we should do it in the morning. We don't want to be tired and crabby on mother's day." Rock star!

The good news is I scored a few more days without my digital crutch, which aside from chatting with you all I find I don't really require much these days outside of work hours. In the same conversation mentioned above with my friend I told him of a local business-owner here, like one of our city's most successful and creative and certainly the modern-day architect of my community, does not and never has had an email account. If you want to do business or interact with this fella you call him or make an appointment for a live conversation. I find myself regularly thinking of this man's choices. My friend put it best when he assessed his chances for such a lifestyle by saying His sentiment pretty accurately describes my boat as well. And let's be clear, I'm not angsty about my situation. Without the technology boom of the late 90's I can't imagine what I'd be doing for a living but I can near guarantee I wouldn't be enjoying it as much as I do. If I've learned anything this week, it is that not only can I manage with less digital minutes in my life, but that my life would be more pleasant and sedate without them (this realization is no kinda good news for my kids as I was already a bit of the amish-style dad on the street). Now if I could just find the strength to break the hold my computer has on me without using a hammer to do so, i'll have more restorative evenings and proper nights of sleep in the time ahead.

note: the astute eye will see the above post uses punctuation. worry not. this does not mark a new and conforming troy. just a troy that doesn't have his usual tools at his disposal and given the temporary nature of his plight doesn't feel like losing minutes with an amazing book he stumbled upon to correct the annoying side effect of an auto-correcting word processor.

a boy spent the night at our house. it was his first time in our home. he did the usual room to room discovery most kids seem to do on an initial visit of a new space. as he passed through the kitchen where marty washed the morning dishes, he stopped in front of the refrigerator and in a wondrous and astonished tone said, "woooowwww. look how big this refrigerator is." and then asking no one in particular added, "have you ever seen a refrigerator this big?"

in all my years i've never had a guest in my home marvel at the grandeur of my perfectly normal sized refrigerator. truth is, aside from a dorm style cube fridge, i didn't even know they came in another size. since that moment i've not looked at my fridge, or its contents, the same again. in fact i've not looked at many of my possessions the same again. a fruitful and balancing issue to have in this thanksgiving time of year.

we know a man who self-destructed. timing smacks a bit of a mid-life thing but people are tricky and complex so who knows. whatever the source the man lost virtually everything he had amassed over the last few decades: wife, kids, job, home. seeing him since the falling has been strained and when we cross paths he predominately ignores us. marty saw the man's brother and stopped to ask how his brother was making out. she also asked him to pass along the message that she wasn't judging him since his troubles and is ok continuing a relationship. ultimately, she said she wanted him to know she wasn't turning her back on him and if he needed a friend from before, she'd be there. the brother smiled knowingly and assured her she mis-read his brother's behavior. he then summed the situation up by saying, "he's like a grown man standing in the middle of a party with a diaper full of shit."

given how self-conscious i feel sporting a sizable zit or wonky hair, i reckon i can vibe this man's unease. the thought of a more permanent blemish that can't be washed or cut off must surely be debilitating.

excerpt from candy chang's "before i die i want to ..." ted talk (link)

bella likes the show the voice. i tolerate the voice to spend minutes with my daughter. early on, i found the judges to not be judgmental enough which on a show about judging is a reasonably damning trait. i did like the blind facet of the competition though. as the competition wound on and the delta in performance and talent got tighter, i felt for the judges who were forced to decide between two closely matched singers.

then one night bella and i watched two of the battles before bed. in each of the cases the pairings were quite close but in each case there seemed to be a clear winner. and in each case the person who seemed to outdo the other was voted off and sent packing. after this happened the second time i replayed what happened in my head and saw a pattern. in each case the person who gave the stronger performance was, in working up to the performance, also the more difficult to work with. they acted privileged and pouted when a decision was not to their liking (e.g. didn't like the song selected). the judges who had to make the call had to consider their smaller teams in the later rounds. they needed people who could work outside of their comfort zone, if need be, and were able to continue to give effort and more importantly positive energy to a situation that might be less than ideal. this is how these two people beat the more skilled competitors, by being versatile and continuing to work even when the cards didn't fall their way.

i shared my theory with bella. i rewound the show and pointed out the behavior i felt cost them the win. this is the sort of concept one can explain to a child, but without their own experiences and personal examples to lean on, i imagine it's hard for a young mind to fully embrace the significance of such a thing. thus, what a gift we had in this show, a show my bella is ravenously interested in. she saw vivid examples of people acting childish and then later suffering for their stubbornness downstream. cool way to discuss a nuance of attitude. i have new respect for the voice, and in particular for adam levine and chistina aguilara, for having the insight to not reward these prima-donna antics.

this unexpected moment also reminded me of an old, pre-republican, dennis miller bit. in it he said his father took him to a rated R movie at a very young age. in the movie one of the characters was killed which caused a young dennis to lean into his father and asked why that man got hurt. his father replied, "because he was a slack-jawed asshole and one day all slack-jawed assholes have to suck the pipe." i'm sure i'm botching the quote slightly but it is in the ball-park of what went down. i'm glad a found a more age-appropriate vehicle to share this message with my daughter.

i failed to detail a facet of last weekend's bookguy-troy trip. given the amount of distance we had to cover, we weren't quite sure exactly when we'd arrive in albuquerque. we knew it would be sometime sunday but couldn't know precisely when. to be safe, we booked the return ticket for monday (a direct flight departing at noon). saturday's drive had a few bumps in the form of a late start (i had to run anthony to the doctor before we could leave) and car drama (the check engine light came on due to a loose gas cap) and some highway shutdowns (which led to a detour through some picturesque farm country). hoping to hedge for further mishaps, we set out early on day three. this pro-activeness delivered us to our destination in the early afternoon, allowing bookguy to drop me off at the airport and finish the last few hours of his drive in a sane hour.

after getting lunch (an extraordinary lunch), we drove to the airport and looked for a nice/new looking hotel for me to spend the day and night in before my monday flight. after passing a few we pulled into a holiday inn express. unlike the standard holiday inns, these are reliably clean. given the early hour and sun-cooking day, i asked the counter girl if there were any outdoor pools nearby. she said there were not any in walking distance. i said i'd make do and took the $100 room she had offered. after paying and getting my key, bookguy and i exchanged a back-clapping hug and he continued on.

i went to the room which proved nice as expected. i took a twenty minute nap on the king sized bed. upon waking, i grabbed my bag and set out to find a spot in the shade with a view of the mountains to read my book from. as i climbed the hill away from hotel the two o'clock sun already had me sweating. i stopped to survey the land looking which way to go. in my scan a large blue umbrella caught my eye. i walked towards it and found the hotel just next to the one i checked into had a beautiful small outdoor pool that was totally unoccupied. i glowered at the holiday inn, miffed the clerk i just spoke with wasn't conscientious enough to tell me that if i wanted a pool, the place next door had one. i decided it wasn't in the cards and continued my walk up the hill. as i looked about i saw nothing but dry, brown desert. then two drops of sweat rolled down my cheek. i wiped my forehead. it was drenched.

i turned around, walked into the lobby of the pool hotel and asked how much for a room. $100. i slid my id and credit card across the counter and said i'd take it. after getting my key, i walked back to the holiday inn, grabbed the few items i left there. i opened the door of my new room (a three room suite!!! with a kitchen!!! and an outdoor pool!!!—for the same price!!!), changed into my trunks, grabbed my swim goggles (preparedness!) and book, and happily made for the pool. i enjoyed being the sole patron of this oasis for the next four hours. being a recreational pool, it could not shoulder any lap swimming, but it had a perfect design for me to practice flip turns. so for the next four hours, i enjoyed the feel of royalty under a deep blue, western sky dappled with the occasional extra-white, billowy cloud. my routine? i'd read a chapter of my book - the girl who played with fire - and then slip into the cool water and practice executing flip-turns for ten minutes or so. chapter. flip-turns. chapter. flip-turns. chapter. flip-turns. in this whole time i saw three people pass by the pool. none entered. adam levine may not have it this good.

then at seven i checked in with my family, had a green salsa sushi roll in downtown albequerque (the hotel would even shuttle me to and from town if needed!!!) followed by a movie (prometheus which was disappointingly disappointing). i then returned to my room, sacked out. i woke early, more reading, then a short shuttle ride to the small airport for a quick pass through security, allowing for more reading, and capped by an on-time, direct flight home, which yes, allowed for more reading. the final page count for the twenty four hours bested three hundred pages. it's been awhile since i've made that kind of milage in a book in a single day—granted, bella would not be impressed.

i'm not sure if i've ever said it on this site, but many who know me well know that one of my persistent life goals is to experience guilt-free boredom every now and again. for me, it is part of the human experience and one we don't get to taste nearly enough given our self-inflicted lifestyles. i can say that the twenty-four hours i spent in albequerque new mexico following a two day drive with an immensely great friend stood as one of the most blissfully boring stretches i can remember experiencing in the last twenty years. recuperative, therapeutic, and lovely beyond description.

oh, and name of the uber hotel which provided services and comfort beyond all expectation: homewood suites. it's astonishing that those two rooms, sitting side by side cost the same. the homewood people need to kick their PR people in the ass because what they have to offer stomps the heck out of their neighbor but there's no way for a passer-by to discern this great disparity.

a few people named two of this year's commencement addresses as the best, or most inspirational at least. the first, by cartoonist mike peters, happened where i work, the second, by author neil gaiman, took place at an art school in Philadelphia. as someone who dabbles in presentations (and is a commencement speech junkie) i was struck by how stupendously different the two approaches were. peters started out in such a meandering fashion you wondered if he prepared anything. gaiman's talk was so dense the first thing i did after watching it was find a transcript and re-read it marking it up with my symbols and notes like it were an academic text.

while i enjoyed both, gaiman's was rich with insight. in example: that has to be one of the most cogent insights into the professional world ever made. and i know the guy writes for a living but the compact, precise articulation of his concept is breathtaking in a literary and observational sense. if i ever met that guy, the question i would ask him is how he came upon that insight. did it bleed out over months or did it appear in a flash while showering or exercising. furthermore, gaiman demonstrates how life experience blows the doors off most other forms of learning and how the art of introspection is the prism that allows you to understand what unfolds around us. spectacular.

i suited up to bike the park on a beautiful sunday afternoon. as i stepped onto the porch, bella asked if she could go. while i needed a hard ride only a fool would turn down such a request from an eleven year old daughter. so i waited for bella to throw on her helmet, slip into some crocks and wheel her bike to the front. we were off.

on the tail end of our eight mile ride, we ran into a stretch of fine gravel, more like silt really. when we first hit this new surface (most of our route was a paved track) bella's tires slid as she pedaled through sharp turns. i began to caution her about biking on this type of terrain but stopped myself from saying anything. i'm trying to talk less and let my kids experience more first-hand. this new troy is probably shocking to any who know me fairly well. but those who know me well should also know there is always a new troy in the works. less than ninety seconds after biting my tongue bella turned into a corner hard and both tires slid out from beneath her. i pulled up next to her and asked if she was ok. she said she was. i commented that this silty stuff can be slippery to bike tires. she said she saw that. we stood her up. her knee had a small cut. i squirted some water on it and asked if she was ok. she was. we pushed on.

that night while dining on the front porch, i recounted the moment to the family, adding that i considered cautioning bella about the peril but decided to let her find this out on her own. i was mildly prepared to get some pushback in the "thanks a lot" variety but got none. i'd say the kids, bella and alex at least, not only understood but appreciated the looser hand.

we went on to talk about how mom and i would have to sit back in the future when the kids entered new waters and how some things have to be learned and not advised, especially in the world of dating. marty and i knew we'd have to just smile and let them watch the tires slide out first hand. when they said that was kinda sucky, i agreed but also assured them we'd be here to squirt water on their scrapes when it was done.

circumstance recently led me to j.k. rowlings 2008 commencement address at harvard. for me, her twenty minute speech surpassed the combined value of all her potter books. mostly because she's pro-failure, something i'm quite ravenous about as of late. my favorite line, of many: next, we just need to figure out how to move this message down from post-college to pre-kindergarten.

also, as i had to remind bella as she shoulder-hacked me crafting this post, the real meat of failure is not in failing itself, but in the building of tools needed to climb out of life's many divots, holes, ditches, cliffs and canyons. so maybe perseverance is the better term. less ambiguous is the fact that the landscape is treacherous and circumstance requires us to travel large swaths of it in the dark.

a relative recently experienced a cardiac event which resulted in a stint being installed near his heart and an honest talking to from a doctor about his lifestyle. at rehab, he asked about success rates for this particular procedure and recovery. the candid answer: over half the people who sat in his chair with his diagnosis were dead within a year. in the subsequent weeks he quit smoking, dramatically changed his diet (losing 25 pounds in less than two months), and exercised with a religious dedication. marty asked how hard it was to make so many lifestyle changes at once, he replied that it wasn't hard at all. in fact every decision proved quite simple, "if i eat pizza, i die. if i don't exercise, i die. if i do any of the things i did before, i die. so no it's not hard. it's not hard at all. it's most easy."

marty was away last weekend. in preparation i made sure i got proper sleep in the days before and spent some time in the week plotting out the weekend as to keep me on the offensive. i posted the day's schedule ¹ saturday morning, setting it on the kitchen counter. it looked like this:

SATURDAY 4/21
08.00 - 11.00 computer
11.00 - 12.00 lunch
12.00 - 01.00 watch softball (girls university team)
01.00 - 03.30 play at house
03.30 - 05.00 baya indoor soccer
05.00 - 07.00 dinner
07.00 - 09.00 movie
09.00 - 09.30 books/bed

this is what really happened.
08.00 - 11.00 computer
11.00 - 12.00 lunch
12.00 - 03.30 watch softball (i wished for an hour, we ended up staying for a double-header at bella's request)
03.30 - 04.15 petting zoo (surely an unexpected find a flash-mob of baby animals on our bike ride home)
04.30 - 05.00 baya soccer (we missed half the game so bella could sit with a miniature cow)
05.00 - 06.00 dinner (kabob house, alex got to bring his friend morgan since it was mostly a bella-day thus far)
06.00 - 07.00 ted drewes (also with alex's friend morgan who somehow had never been. remarkable.)
07.00 - 09.30 movie (morgan sent home after show)
09.30 - 10.00 books
10.00 - 10.30 bed

while the kids seem to have had a great day, at the end you can still get something like this. marty told me that anthony (age 5) needs lotion rubbed on his hands in the morning and before bed. she told me with a mild bit of trepidation because she knows i hate to touch lotion or anything oily in nature. but my son needed this to be healthy and i was the only one around to do it, so i would build up some resolve and jump in. after defiling my fingertips in the tub of lotion and applying it to anthony's hand, he, in the air of a wealthy lady having her nails done, said ...

you did a smear and a wipe. mom just does a dab and a rub. that's what you should do. a dab and a rub. not a smear.

i stopped doing my smears and wipes long enough to think how bad of parenting it would be to introduce my five year old to a toilet swirlie. then he could tell mom that when dad does it, it's more of a dunk and flush and not a flush and submerge like she was doing it. a dunk and flush.

¹ while on vacation last summer in colorado, i discovered the odd power a documented schedule had on our children. while before they might nudge and needle us for more of something, like computer, when we put it on the schedule, if a child would ask about it, another child would scold them saying, "it's not on the schedule." i thought to make one because on a mostly open day the kids and one of the adults (hint : her name starts with an m) were more restless and bickery than usual given the wandering and aimless nature of the day. while a free day is usually good and great, free days for multiple people with conflicting wishes seems to be rather un-relaxing. whatever the case, the schedule made the day after the listless day had a powerful influence on people's moods. fact is, it was one of the most surprising reactions to something i'd ever seen. and this last saturday was no exception.

a few notes about a family schedule. (1) like with all regiments, you, the parent, have to be flexible to change and overruns. (2) i've found it's tantalizing to put a mystery event or two on the list (so where are we going to dinner dad?). (3) i imagine, in this format, a family schedule is more powerful when used sparingly. (4) in the end, i knew i revered the power of a schedule. i'm just happily surprised at how much my kids revere the power of a schedule.

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.

yesterday was my six year anniversary in my current job. as i told someone recently, i suffer from the dire problem of having found my dream position about thirty years too soon (as i fear it may change before i'm ready for it to). but i will say of all the problems one can have, this surely ranks as one of the best to call your own. upon arriving at work yesterday, i had an email from my boss waiting for me. it was a generous and thoughtful email, the kind anyone who ever worked for anyone else would be grateful to receive. then later in the morning, i received an email from a former student who noticed (via my archive viewer) that it was my anniversary and sent me a lovely note saying he was thankful circumstance had us cross paths. as i told a colleague over lunch, marty, through her love and support, helped me to flourish as an individual and my present job and superiors, through their respect and support, helped me to thrive professionally.

now if i could just find someone who could help me dress better ...

a friend of mine who is a university philosophy professor recently asked me to pre-read a book he wrote on happiness. i think i came to mind because i've probably read more books on positive psychology and happiness than most. of all the great points he illustrated in his book, my favorite line was, "One should not be an asshole in the pursuit of happiness." while it might seem overly obvious, i reckon we've all bumped into a soul or two who would benefit from such counsel.

life was humming along like a newly installed operating system. my project work was on schedule. i was well-rested. i actually saw days, a few of them even, where my daily goals were met and i had an hour, a free hour on my hands. in these astonishingly rare moments, i slid my book from the shelf and sank into a couch corner for a guilt free hour of recreational reading. through all of my systems and processes, these are the moments i'm so effortfully chasing.

getting in this steady clip was extra important because i was due to have knee surgery the following week and would be sidelined—and drugged—for a day or two. i worked hard to enter this planned downtime in a sane, comfortable mindset. then with surgery six days out, my office phone rang. it was worded as a professional favor but proved to be more of an emergency. my next five days (a saturday and sunday included) were completely fouled. it was like a monsoon destroyed my picked up house and manicured lawn. any pre-existing order was devastated.

the end came at 3pm the day before my surgery. at 1pm this same day my doctor's office called and said they had to move my slot from 2pm to 6am. at first i was elated because this took my fasting-period from fourteen hours to a mere seven. child's play. but when i called marty with the change i could see her body sag over the phone as she said, "but i had all the kids covered for 2pm. how am i supposed to get someone at five in the morning?" oh. yes. that.

i'll skip over the four hours marty spent scrambling for a solution and just move to what she came up with. a neighbor i work with had told marty of a service we have through our employer benefits. it's essentially subsidized, emergent care for children and aging parents. the neighbor had expressed great satisfaction with this service. marty called me and told me to to call them to set up an account. so at 5:30pm i registered with this company. at 6pm marty called them and described our 5am need, now a mere eleven hours away. they said they were on it and we would hear back by 10pm.

at 9:30 i was certain we were going to get the "sorry we tried but we just didn't have enough notice" call. instead the phone rang an 9:45. a confident voice introduced herself as emily and said she would be watching our children in the morning. after my expressions of relief, she went on to ask a series of questions so cogent, i started taking notes for future reference. pets. allergies. name of the kids' school. neighbors names. my destroyed house was beginning to look much better. and the next morning this girl, emily, arrived on the dot. she even cleaned the breakfast dishes, put away the couch that marty had pulled out for her to sleep on until the kids woke up, and left us a debrief on the backside of the note marty left her.

oh, and one thing i didn't mention in all of this is that during the initial bum-rush of mayhem, our refrigerator stopped worked (and would be in that non-working state for eleven days.)

oh, and one other thing. the service we were so happy with is called bright horizons and if you have access/ability to use them, i'd recommend them. highly.

from the eighties show cheers, in one of norm's celebrated entrances he answered the question "how's life treating you norm" by saying, "like a baby treats a diaper". norm's sentiment does much to summarize my monday. life knocked me about both physically and professionally (while it opted to not trample my personal affairs, we all know how intertwined the personal, physical, and professional worlds routinely prove to be). by evening i sat fully cooked and proved short with my kids, who did not a thing to contribute to my woes.

just before bedtime marty stopped me in the hallway, put a hand on my arm and suggested i work harder to mellow my tone as it wasn't helping to make anything better. i acknowledged her point and apologized. she smiled and headed in to read to anfer. i continued down the hall to read to bella and alex. when i walked in the room, a reclined and knitting bella looked away from her work long enough to say, "ooohhh, you got in trouble by mom and got a talkin' to." had you just overheard the exchange you would have put confident money down that she directed those words at a sibling and not her father. i looked towards alex as he sat in a circle of legos with a partially constructed object in his hands. he gave me a consoling and wordless nod. i moved to the futon and collapsed in the space next to bella, opened our book in my lap and read a few chapters. while i'm an ardent believer in evenness, i reckon it's not an entirely bad thing for our usual roles to get a jostle every now and again, just so we remember what it feels like to be on the other side of a lecture or disapproving gaze.

bella recently asked me to establish an email account for her. i told her that i would under the condition that her first ever email be sent to me. she readily agreed.

here's the first ever email she received: and the first ever email she sent: it's hard to not appreciate a healthy dose of self-awareness and candor.