driving back from utah from our third year of skiing we slid into a wyoming rest stop. the kids and i took first shift in the bathrooms. upon returning to the van, we saw no sign of marty. i asked bella if she was in the bathroom with her. bella said no. we scanned the space looking for a sign then a goofy bird sound had us all look over our heads where, high in a tree, sat the children's mother. ...

for the last few years marty has organized a large regional girl scout retreat. she first took it on during bella's short-lived stint in a troop. but even after bella stopped going, marty had formed a fondness for the mission so stayed involved. if i'm remembering correctly, alex attended more of these weekend adventures than bella has—it surely never hurt that all the girls found him wildly...

shortly after bella was born, marty declared we would be a family that ate together. if you're wondering what happens when marty carves something in the tree like that, well, after fourteen years, if everyone was in the same zip code, i could count on both hands and feet the number of times this family did not eat as a full complement. dinner is typically at six and lasts, functionally, for about ...

at dinner bella launched into a marty love-fest that went something like this.

BELLA
you're so awesome mom. i mean, you wake up super early in the morning. then you go work all day. then you pick the boys up from school. take them to playdates. then come home and make dinner. and then sit and grade papers every night.

MARTY
well, i don't grade papers every night. i maybe ...

in the opening weekend of 2015 the first of our nephews and nieces got married. since there are lots of nephews and nieces in marty's clan this begins a new chapter for our family--which translates to a host of mass walter-fests in the decades ahead. some might groan at all these familial commitments but marty comes from a wildly spectacular and interesting family that enjoys one another. this aff...

this is a picture of marty taken just weeks before i met her.

my biggest problem in knowing and dating her in those early years was my belief that every man who met her would become as deliriously struck by her presence as i had been. while she claims this was not her life, i've seen and heard enough examples to the contrary that i only half believe her. all i can claim first hand is mee ...

now that marty is working again i have company on the porch for the post-work, pre-dinner winddown. on nice summery/spring days at least. ...

we've had some great dinner table questions as of late. things like:

• if the kids were here home alone, and one of you, let's say anthony or alex, were reaching onto the counter for something and cut the underside of the forearm deeply--like deep where blood was pulsing out of the cut--what would you do?
• what do you think makes someone a good conversationalist? ...
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for school, bella (13) was asked to write an essay about a family member. this was her response. it's crazy how much she knows about my/our past. at her age, i was never that plugged into my parents, or anyone who wasn't me for that matter. i find her curiosity and empathy both impressive and humbling. if i'm ever in need of a biographer, i for sure know who i'm tapping.

younger (and shorter-haired) versions of marta and bella.

and boy, seeing bella that small already blows my mind. ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. left field

the other morning in our refrigerator there was a bowl of peanut butter with a dinner spoon sticking out of it. i've learned to not question or challenge such findings. namely because i've never liked where my investigations led me.

later that morning when more people were awake and marty looked in there. she pulled the bowl of peanut butter from the fridge, and asked, seemingly to the contents of the fridge, "what's this?". she then spun and held the bowl out towards anthony who was eating breakfast and said again "what's this?".

he sheepishly replied, "a peanut butter spoon."

now this is where things get interesting, interesting in this case meaning, this is where things go drastically different than i expect them to go, which is why/how i've learned not to run down seemingly simplistic matters, because i've learned there are no simplistic matters.

marty continued, "a peanut butter spoon? a peanut butter spoon? do i need to go over again what a respectable-sized spoon of peanut butter looks like?"

she rakes the spoon through the bowl, lifts it up in example, "this! this is what a proper peanut butter spoon looks like." then showing the boy the bowl adds, "this is like, five days worth of peanut butter spoons."

she then licked the spoon, then drove the spoon back into the sticky mound and tossed the bowl back in the fridge with a conflicted mixture of disgust at the heaping glop in the bowl and the tasty dollop in her mouth which her jowls effortfully worked through.

and if you're wondering what other sorts of culinary options our children are being exposed to, it is not at all uncommon to see anthony arrive to the dinner table with a plate of ketchup, like five hamburgers-worth of ketchup by my meager estimation.

it was 6:27 in the morning. i was sitting at my desk writing (for you, for this). i heard marty's alarm go off twelve minutes earlier and then heard her shuffle to the bathroom. then at 6:31 i felt her hands on my shoulders. they slid down my chest as she leaned down to hug me from behind, my desk chair mildly in the way. i then turned and took my wife in, standing in nothing but a pair of cotton underwear and looking amazingly young and fit with her flat stomach (after 3 kids !!!) and tan skin. i stood up and stepped in to hug her.

TROY
you look amazing.

MARTY
you're not going to want to get fresh here.

TROY
what? me? ok. why not?

MARTY
i've got to go try to find the baby bunny we buried in the back yard last year.

TROY
uhh, like now?

MARTY
yes. i need it for school.

TROY
is that why there is a sheet of paper on the kitchen that says BUNNY BONES?

MARTY
yes. what did you think it was?

TROY
another one of your mother's recipes.

MARTY
nope. for real bunny. hopefully fully decomposed somewhere in the back yard.

ladies, for the record, there are few things, and i do mean few, that can de-rail the male libido in the early morning, but i can now attest, images of your potential partner digging holes in search of a tiny rabbit carcass definitely lives somewhere on the list.

last week marty's summer officially ended.

:-(

our last family act of the summer was to have a celebratory "sam-survived-cancer" (rel) dinner complete with porterhouse steaks, giant potatoes, fresh corn from sam's family farm in iowa all chased by cookies, ice cream and cup cakes. there's few things sweeter than appropriate decadence. at 9:30 (or at the end of the third hour of the dinner) and in the middle of a rich conversation about tips, tricks and lessons of growing up (mostly for bella's studious edification) but after her moving thankful about sam and diana, marty pushed her chair back, stood up and said, her final words 'best summer ever' came with oprah like fervor on free stuff day. i and the children repeated her calls of best summer ever and the kids came forward with big smiles, hugging her. en masse the group looked like a sporting team that just played their last game of the season and were ending their run together, never again to field the court in that exact complement. in many respects, this metaphor aptly describes us as we will never again enjoy a summer with a 13, 11, and 7 year old. given this magical age-set, we enjoyed a rare time together full of many things, such as:

• marty not working (a facet of life we will never again take for granted since her return in 2012).
• sleeping in (and it's counter-part, staying up late)
• roller-blading (at rollercade and on our neighborhood's newly paved streets)
• beach vacations with marty's mom and siblings (to celebrate mama nat's 80th)
• minecraft-marathons (other marathons include xmen, star trek and x-files)
• trampolining (a gift from our newly departed neighbors)
• sleeping on the trampoline (a stellar marty idea and which saw a 5-night run)
• watching blairwitch on the trampoline + sleeping the night on the trampoline (bella and i only)
• group reading (both from books, kindle and audio)
• monopoly (the real-one, no more of that monopoly junior bullshit - thanks to marty's brother mike)
• eating on the porch (we've evolved to setting a table out there)
• movie nights (one even at a drive-in, front playground included--which anthony came back soaking wet from)
• bike rides (my biking regimen is nearly back to pre-kid form)
• introducing my family to the great world of true, professional comedy (starting with bill cosby)
• walking to a vp fair concert in forest park (please move it to forest park every year)
• closeness
• calmness
• laughter
• smiles
• family
• health

marty commented that a big difference maker this year was the kids, all of the kids, are now old enough where they can mostly run their own games and we have fully entered that next phase of parenthood where we have more mutually interactive relationships. for me, it is the last six items on the list that make for the core ingredients of great times. marty's summers-off job is what allows for great quantities of this and her working the other nine months of the year, accentuates their importance. at the start of the summer anthony asked me why i didn't get summers off like mom. i told him that mom had a special sort of job that allowed for that but that also, when mom has summer break, so do i, given that she essentially takes all of my chores on (e.g. dishes!!!) during these months and making my time equally relaxing and special. but placing an active emphasis on those bottom six is key:

• by making attentive time for our kids.
• by trying to run a non-frenetic home.
• by ensuring everyone has laughed every day (tickling a human does wonders for that).
• by breaking a funk by forcing an agitated human to smile (fart jokes and actual farts can distract young boys from a foul mood).
• by that so often taken-for-granted human need, to know you are loved. it's one of those few, rare things you can never get enough of. so make sure you kiss and touch and wink and smile at someone you love today.
• and possibly most importantly, by acknowledging daily that there are only two kinds of health—there is the health you have before you are told you have a life-threatening illness and there is the health you have after you are told you have a life-threatening illness—and appreciating every day you and yours spend on light-minded side of the fence (because when you are placed on the other side of the fence, it is all consuming to you and those who care about you).

so while i'm sad to be writing about the end of the best summer ever, i'm thankful to be able to healthily say we just had the "best summer ever" and look forward to trying to top it is subsequent years.

definitive evidence of where all of our kids kooky behavior emanates from.

marty not only can run with her boys when it comes to being goofy, they often are sprinting behind her in attempt to catch up. ...

on saturday marty left for a six day trip with the kids. some happenings at work prevented me from joining them (this obviously was the core reason for getting the phone as they couldn't take my work-issued one with them). as they piled into the packed car i gave each one an enormous feet-off-the-ground hug and told them to be amazing listeners and helpers to their mother. i told alex to be extra frosty as co-pilot because he and his mother hadn't logged the hours behind the wheel together that he and i had. at the end of my embrace with marty i gave her an extra squeeze and said:

TROY
be careful.

MARTY
i will. i've done this before.

TROY
i know. it's just that you have my whole world barreling down the highway at 70 miles an hour in that van.

MARTY
got it. enjoy your peace and quiet.

TROY
peace and quiet? with all the parties i have planned. ain't gonna be much peace and quiet around here.

MARTY
well, i thank you for having your parade of women wait until we left before getting started.

TROY
of course. but i hope they don't wait too long. i feel a nap coming on.

they left. forty minutes later the phone rang. i answered it.

TROY
hello.

ALEX
hey dad. this is alex.

TROY
hey aleo. you ok?

ALEX
yeah, i just wanted to call you and let you know we got out of the city ok.

TROY
ok. i'm glad to hear that. thanks for the update.

ALEX
it's ok. and i'm going to call you every hour and let you know how it's going.

TROY
hourly updates. ok. that would be awesome.

and while they weren't consistently on the hour they did come. part of me was thankful for these drips of insight that my family was ok and sound. another part of me was wondering when my parade of women were gonna start showing up.

on june 5th at 12:55pm in an exchange that took a total of 35 seconds, marty walter made her very first phone call from her very first cell phone.

while marty was examining the cheapest flip-phone models the store had to offer, bella kept drifting towards the sexier, smart-phone options. seeing bella's longing glances, the young salesman sidled up next to her.

SALESMAN
you want a smartphone?

BELLA
oh my god. yes. they are so awesome.

SALESMAN
what is it specifically you need it for?

BELLA (stammering)
uhhh. well. uhhh.

SALESMAN (turning to marty)
that's what they all say to that question.

marty works with a guy who is trying to lose weight. he happily reported losing five pounds the week before. marty said she was trying to gain weight. reasonably astonished he asked whatever for. her reply -- because all the cute clothes on ebay were larges.

on the kids birthdays marty hides slips of paper around the house that (1) number and (2) read the number they are turning (e.g. reference). the night before bella's birthday this year she said not only did her mother not need to do it but she shouldn't do it because she, bella, had outgrown that. marty sagely ignored this commandment and ...

to follow up marty's bit of life knowledge (here), the advice i always give to struggling folks who approach me: in the name of full disclosure, marty is the person who taught me this lesson. she taught it to me when i wasn't making our early dating years as easy as she believed they should oughta be. so in some regards i guess everyone who has ever benefitted from marty's advice has me to thank because if i didn't spend a part of our early relationship being a crotch-face, then she would have never come to this bit of inspiration.

so you're welcome.

the single piece of advice marty has dispensed more than any other: people's response to marty's counsel has varied.

marty's accuracy in her counsel has not.

a taste of what it's like to babysit the dearmitt-walter kids. note marty's fourth bullet point below.

marty believes that if you make it fifteen or twenty years in marriage you should get to have a second wedding shower namely to replace the things you received the first time because after a decade of use, many of them are starting to wear out or are broken or are way out of style. while i chortled at her suggestion when she initially floated out there, holding one of the struggling items up in example as she spoke, i must confess the notion has been rolling around by brain long enough now that it has nice rounded edges and the sheen of a glassy marble, which is the look all our best thoughts take on in time—in my metaphorical world at least.

granted this time through i think marty would kindly request to swap any suggestive lingere purchaces for a more practical set of wool socks. and sad as it is to report, i would support the request. you would too if you ever had her ice-cold feet graze against your calf at 2am on a winter's night.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. how does this work

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. rat-fink