bella does a lot of house and pet sitting these days. this summer she spent more nights sleeping in other people's homes than she did in ours. and their homes have pools, multimedia systems and lavish bathrooms which is a bit of a bonus, particularly when you are being paid to be there. through this work and her other pursuits, she has become a competent manager of her time and juggling multiple r...

anfer has a new nickname at school. it is "ol grandpa anthony back at it again withe the new kycks" (anthony tells me the spelling matters, like a lot).

this came from a conversation where anthony and some classmates were talking about going back and playing minecraft again for nostalgia sake. anthony said, if he did, his username would be "ol grandpa anthony back at it again withe the n ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. siblings

you know how when people take a picture they sometimes yell an instruction like "everyone smile" or "everyone be goofy"? I think for this picture the instruction yelled was "everyone be their genuine selves". i say this because i've never seen a picture that so perfectly captures the essence of these four people.

going around the circle.
Marty just bleeds natural and confident hap ...

there have been multi-day stretches where anthony hasn't worn more than a pair of underwear and a robe, and sometimes just one of those. so when he was told that he had to dress up for his elementary concert we expected some grousing and an insistence to wear shorts and a t-shirt. we did not expect to hear him ask how bow-ties work. nor did we expect to hear him ask what suspenders were all about. ...

the below pictures need some explaining.

it was the last day of elementary for anthony and it was the last day of middle school for alex. when anthony and i were walking to school, our last one-mile walk to school ever (next year he will be taking the bus), i asked him if we would remember this final day with any sort of vividness or if it would just blend into the soup like most days. he said we probably wouldn't remember it in any special way other than it happened. sadly, i had to agree.

after dropping anthony off and returning home, i went to alex's middle school graduation. when the ceremony was over he came home with me to start his summer. we were home for about an hour before we had to walk back up to anthony's school to greet him for his end of school and start of summer. alex and i got there a few minutes before the last bell and grabbed a comfy spot on this bench in front of the school. we waved and chatted with the other families as they arrived. many people commented on how big alex (and his hair) had gotten. then the kids started getting released and there were lots of whoops and cheers and smiles.

anthony spotted us and joined us on the bench. we sat for a bit chatting with each other and folks passing by. after a bit the boys asked if we should start heading home. i said we should wait a minute. they asked why. i told them that when you were a celebrity it was good to make yourself available to the people, so they could see you out in public and take you in. the boys looked at each other and then started taking turns making jokes about me. the short story was that if i WERE a celebrity sticking around might be a nice thing to do BUT since i was just a loser who didn't know how to dress, we were probably safe to start home. when they were mostly done, i said that i would bet them that in the next minute someone would ask to take our picture. they looked at one another, deemed it a safe bet and said i was on. with some ceremony, anthony raised his wrist, called out the time, and the game was afoot.

he held his hand out so both he and alex could see the second hand charging around the watch face. they called out the times. 30 seconds left. 20 seconds left. 15. 10. just after they called out the number 5, a woman stepped forward and said, "well look at this handsome set of men, would you mind if i took your picture?"

the boys looked at each other in shock and disbelief. they then fell into hysterics, aided by my tickling them. while they reacted i calmly said to the lady, "yes, of course, we would love to have our picture taken." and that is what led to the below series of photos.















now part of me feels that fathers, like magicians, should never reveal their trade secrets but in this case it is only fair to let you in a bit more on this moment. as the boys started suggesting we head home i noticed a woman had seen us on the bench and was making her way toward us. and it wasn't just any woman but marty's best friend jona. i had seen a phone in her hand so had a sense she was going to ask for a picture since marty couldn't be here at pickup (marty had to go back to work after alex's graduation), and jona is thoughtful like that. on her way to us a family stopped jona to chat. this was when the boys started asking if we could go and i brokered the bet. i was hoping, desperately in the end, that jona could peel away from her conversation before my minute was up. my hope almost didn't come true, as you could see the boys got all the way to 5, but because of the last second save, it made the moment all the more dramatic. as you'd imagine, jona was a bit perplexed at the boys reaction and is why she thankfully snapped this series of images, images i am super-grateful to have.

the best part of this expertly and luckily executed plan is anthony and i will now forever remember not only his last day of elementary, but his last moment of elementary.

i took anthony to his first concert last week. it was a live show by a you-tuber anthony follows, a young man named jack septiceye. i didn't know what i was getting into but anthony (11) kept asking me if i looked into tickets AND the show was within walking distance of our house so after a third ask, i got us a few tickets.

the presentation out-performed whatever meager expectations i might have had. on one hand, it was all a bit ham-fisted but on the other hand, this 27 year old kid was surely handling his business in a much more impressive manner than i did at 27 AND had a standing-room only crowd frothing at his every word so who am i to judge. in short, it involved some humorous storytelling. that is not super remarkable i guess. a part i found curious was that the spirit of the stories meant to move and motivate the audience. again, it was a bit fumbly but i applaud the young man's ambition and attempt to help some folks out.

one common thread throughout his stories was there was a lot of drinking going on. he was from ireland and there seemed to be no lack of imbibing. the next night marty and i were at a party and i met a guy about my age who seemed very irish so i asked him if there is really as much drinking in the irish culture as is portrayed. he said, "i'm not sure but can tell you that when i was growing up, my dad replaced our kitchen sink's spray nozzle with a beer tap."

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. one percent

i'm a regimented person. so much so that people mock and ridicule me for the amount of structure in my life. i have talked to many people who say that sort of daily rigor is not for them--even if we have just discussed some challenge in their life where a routine is the exact answer to a problem they might be battling. this is most certainly my family's position on this matter. dad's schedules are...

do you know how if you ever click on something in amazon, then all the amazon-suggestions and even sidebar ads on other websites tend to be related to what you looked at/for on amazon? marty knows. marty knows because she was looking for new underwear and accidentally clicked on a pair of crotchless panties. ever since that inadvertant selection, those curiously designed pantaloons have been chasing her all over the web.

if asked why she would ever click on that, with an exasperated huff she replies, "it was a small thumbnail, i couldn't tell what they were and they looked weird, so i clicked". our eleven year-old anthony can attest to this confusion as he saw them pop up while using marty's computer to renew some books at the library. he pointed at the screen and asked his mother, "mom, what's wrong with these underwear, that lady's butt is falling out of them".

at the tail-end the holiday break marty was woken up in the middle of the night by someone coming up the stairs. our kids are now old enough that we no longer have to participate in their bedtime rituals. that said, marty will still often do rounds of cuddles at bedtime but that tends to only happen on school nights because on the weekends and holidays the kids way outlast us, me especially as i t ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. ice-balls

alex is not the only one wrapping up certain experiences (end of soccer). we just went to anthony's last elementary concert. i gotta say, even if it is not the focus of this story, i'm very impressed how well i am handling all of these last-milestones with my children. it's no secret that i'm the only one anyone in my house ever worried about gracefully surv...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. outfoxed

i woke up at my usual 6:30. this was a saturday. i went to the kitchen to get my morning drinks. as i walked into the kitchen, anthony entered at the same time from a second doorway. i knew he had slept downstairs in the living room and assumed he was still balled up on the couch. surprised, i asked him why he was up. he said he couldn't sleep. i tousled his hair, told him it was too early to be u...

Note: The top three pictures were taken within a few minutes of one another and represent a pretty typical summer morning in our household (granted alex isn't usually up that early but he was excited about this old iMac he resurrected from the basement earlier in the week). in the last picture, we were picking bella up from a leadership & service camp she attended where she met a boy she was pretty taken with (and is most likely responsible for her extra-giddy state in this pic). it is also worth noting that at the camp bella was known as "the awesome girl who knitted all the time". i'd say that sums her up pretty well.

in a weekend bout of exasperation that she was losing the reins on her home's space, marty emptied two crammed basement bins of stuffed animals on the living room floor. she called her three children and explained that all of these forgotten toys were about to be donated. the only way one could stay in the house is if you, the child, wanted to keep it AND could say (a) where it came from, and (b) ...

marty took anthony up to the bank to deposit money into his account. anthony, aged ten, handed his slip made out for over one hundred dollars over to the teller. she pulled it towards her, lit up and said, "boy that is a lot of money--where'd you get all this money?"

to this anthony said, "i sell things in the alley."

marty instantly knew that sounded a lot worse than it should. ...

the above picture shows anthony sitting on the front of a slow moving house boat. the lapping waves occassionally slapping the tops of his feet. he's been sitting there almost twenty minutes and seems rather transfixed by it all. it is worth nothing that alex is the one driving the boat so both of our boys are making the most of this new experience. at some point during anthony's reverie a woman o ...

i imagine i've announced this before but an odd life claim i can make is i've never, in almost five decades of life, lived in a house with more than one bathroom, even today. growing up, being an only child, only three people had to juggle bathroom time. now we have five people who have to dance in and out of the space. with three of those people being young children, or women who have given birth ...

our doorbell has been busted since we bought our house. fixing it is on the list. that said, if it was in the top 1,000 things to be addressed, i'd be surprised.

the two wires that are connected to the home's doorbell system are there, sticking out of the wall and if you rub them together you can make the doorbell go off. since day one the kids have preferred sounding the doorbell this way than if there was a proper button in place. recently that has stopped working though and the doorbell seems dead as a, well, doorbell.

on a no-screens saturday and in a bout of complete and utter boredome (lucky him), anthony took it upon himself to craft a new, working doorbell which he proudly displayed for me when i returned from a morning of tennis. i tried it out and complimented him on how well it worked. this was a genuine compliment as i was pretty impressed with how stable and functional it was.

a little bit later anthony came into the bathroom while i was showering and told me he was happy with his new doorbell.

ANTHONY
yeah. i think it turned out pretty well.

TROY
i agree. super good for a V1.

ANTHONY
what's a V1?

TROY
version 1. it means it is your first attempt.

ANTHONY
what do you mean first attempt? it is done.

TROY
yes. you have a working doorbell but when you make something yourself, you will sometimes think of ways to make it better. if you think of something and then do it, then you will have V2, or version 2, which should theoretically be better than version 1.

ANTHONY
but how would i improve it? it works.

TROY
uhhhm. what would happen if it rained? is your note protected.

ANTHONY
oh. no. it isn't.

TROY
what do you think would happen to it if it rained?

ANTHONY
i think the words would blur out and it wouldn't be readable.

TROY
so, since that is outside, your design should account for that. you should think about things you could do to make it so i can last through the rain.

version 2 proved to be a marked improvement both to the doorbell and anthony as an inventor.

version 1 is shown below

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. smarts

this was how every day of the week began for anthony on our northern michigan camping trip. he would wake, pull on some clothes to combat the morning chill, head out to the picnic table, heat some water over the camp stove, and make a cup of steamy hot cocoa.

he did this quietly and peacefully. he was almost meditative in his actions. and to see a boy (of 8 at the time) be so independent ...