bella does a good amount of house and dog sitting. she has for years. just about anytime she sees someone walking a dog she approaches them, asks if she can pet it, and strikes up a conversation. most of those talks end with the following sentence -- "if you ever need someone to watch your dog and you hire bella's bright dog-sitting business, the future will be bright for you and your pets!"
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we were driving home from our michigan camping trip. marty had bella and anthony in the van and alex was with me in my car. alex and i had just eaten dinner and were about 60 miles west of indianapolis.

as we were driving and talking i noticed a car had pulled up on my left and was driving steady with me. after a few moments, i looked their way. there was a college-aged guy in the passen...

my uncle tim died in october. this was my mom's older brother and he died nine years to the month after my mom, his sister. i always described uncle tim as my favorite uncle. at his funeral lots of people described him as their favorite fill-in-the-blank. a contributing factor to this was my uncle tim was a prankster. never malicious. never hurtful. but also never off-duty. he seemed to always hav...

PART 3 - keisha earns a second chance.
working with keisha was tough sledding from minute one. we saw gains but they were infinitesimal and the kids zeal for the true rehab work at hand was waning given the small returns they were seeing in return. after several months, the guy who placed dog with us, andy, brought us a second dog that was part of the same rescue. he apologize...

PART 2 - bella finds a loop hole
bella missed her curfew. i was never destined to be one of those parents who world ignore these adolescent mis-steps. i had the wrong mother for that. so when she was three minutes in default i texted her asking why she wasn't home. her reply came immediately. "sorry dad but i can't come home right now because i'm holding sleeping, day-old pupp...

PART 1 - mom hates dogs
i have been quite happy about the childhood i was able to make for my kids with one exception--pets. having pets in the home is one thing i always imagined for my children but was never able to make happen. readers of the site know the main road-block here has been marty. fact is, marty and all six of her siblings are famous pet-haters. granted, it is h...

there is something in the dearmitt-world that merits a bit more discussion. those paying super-fine attention will have noticed that my days-left-with-bella counter (REF) started displaying negative numbers last week. no one dreaded that moment more than i. 

i've talked a little bit about bella and college but let me hit ...

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...

bella merits one more shout-out this week. earlier i had talked about bella reaching one of her high school goals but there were a few more i didn't mention. shortly after starting her freshman year, bella learned that at her school there were a few service awards presented every year to the senior class. she immediately pointed to the s ...

i'm pretty sure this is why we don't live in wyoming, or colorado, or utah, or, and especially, montana.

one of the most often told origin stories of the marty/troy relationship deals with where we live. when people learn that i grew up in colorado, the first thing they ask is why we don't live in colorado now (versus st. louis).

of all the couples that live in st. louis, 90% of ...

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 ...

aleo just got his driver's permit and has begun learning to drive. as with bella he is learning on a manual and like bella i taught him how to do it when he was thirteen. this means his first time out instead of just teaching him how to drive a stick-shift we could get right into the rules of the road and other next-level skills.

i took him to the same place i took bella and where lots o ...

there are two things you need to know for this story.

the first thing is that one of my best friends, bookguy, turned 50 six months before me. i have always basked extra-overtly in these six-month spans where he is older than me, with a lot of tired and sad jokes about old men and the like. these adolescent quips roll off him as easily as you'd expect with his knowledge that i am a few s...

in addition to the box of awesomeness (yesterday's family gallery), the weekend/week of my 50th was delightfully decadent and had multiple exceptional moments that blew me away.

BLOWN AWAY I
my celebration began officially at 3:30 on friday, or birthday-eve if you prefer, with a massage. the masseuse asked if i needed something specific worked on. i said not really. she asked why i was there. i told her that i always get a massage on the last day of the decade of my life so i was there to close out my forties. she said fair enough and we got underway. at the very end she said something really cool but i was so comatose i can't remember precisely what she said but it was something like "i hope this marks the end of one great decade and the beginning of an even better one". i loved the touch and thought she gave to the moment (pun for anthony).

i left there and went to one of my favorite meals in the country, stuffed atlantic salmon from mccormick and schmick's (originally Jake's Seafood in portland Oregon and still #2 on this list).

then i headed home to meet up with the family for an a cappella holiday concert. we have been going to this event, run by a friend, for almost two decades and it has always been conveniently scheduled near my birthday. on this day, due to the massage and dinner, i was running late. because of this marty went out to pick up some other people who were going with us, friends of the kids, and said she'd swing by the house to get me after getting them. i got home and knowing we were now pinched for time, watched for the car. when marty pulled up, i trotted towards the car. as i approached alex, through a cracked window, said i would have to drive. so i ran around to the driver's side. i opened the door ready to apologize to marty for being late but instead of seeing marty in the passenger seat i found one my best friends, bookpimp, from north carolina. *

i should add, our being late did not derail the evening as our friend had roped off a section of seats for us. so our party of eight was able to arrive at a packed auditorium minutes before showtime and slide into a protected run of third row seats. thanks e-lo!

BLOWN AWAY II
the weekend was a lock after that and we enjoyed the concert and then some lion's choice and capped the night off with some ted drewes custard.

the next morning bookpimp and i went to southwest diner for some mexican breakfast burritos and then spent the rest of the december day in front of a fire trading stories and one-liners. for dinner we went to my favorite eatery in all the land and where i spend every birthday dinner, cafe natasha (still #1 on this list). they were totally full up and i failed to make a reservation (we rarely go on uber-busy saturday nights). the hostess was about to shuttle us out when the owner saw us. she came over and gave hugs and the situation was explained. she told us to wait while she checked things out. she returned and said if we could wait ten minutes she would take care of us. so i got my syrian kabobs after-all. there were two other birthday groups there, one of which was a table of about twenty people who turned out to be some sort of choir because when they sang happy birthday to their person they lit the room up with a rendition of happy birthday fit for a royal. later when the owner surprised our table with a piece of candled-birthday pie and started singing happy birthday, the twenty person choral group joined in and it was a most lavish moment.

BLOWN AWAY III
we then went home, re-stoked the fire and gathered round for presents. anthony got me a mug that said essentially that i only urinate glitter and defecate gold, something i may have been known to say around the house a time or two--anthony felt it only right to commemorate my personal position in ceramic form. aleo made a video for me where he modified the opening credits to calliou (pronounced kigh-you) to instead say troy-you as i had always told the kids that show was about me but i wouldn't give them the rights to my name which is why they had to call it calliou but it was originally named troy-you and every time the song played i would replace the word accordingly, much to my childrens' agitation (i also may have told a very young bella that high school musical was about my life--that time i let them use my name because it was cooler than some whiney cartoon kid with a perfectly round head). bella gave me a "missing-bella" kit to help me after she leaves for college (it included a generous quantity of her hair which she had cut a few weeks prior in support of this gift).



then marty closed the affair with her mic-drop box of cards (discussed yesterday).

BLOWN AWAY IV
then on sunday bookpimp and i drove to central illinois for a horseshoe at d'arcy's pint and then on to the video game museum in mclean illinois for some 80's arcade ambiance. after a good number of quarters we made the two hour drive home. the four hours we spent in the car magically felt like twenty minutes which bookpimp astutely called amazing and terrible at the same time (amazing how time magically passes and tragic that it seems to end so soon). we returned home for sunday dinner and some more fire time.

in the morning i drove him to the airport and he was off. for the record bookpimp made a surprise visit twenty years earlier for my thirtieth birthday.

BLOWN AWAY V
two days later i drove back to the airport to pick up my other best friend, bookguy, also from north carolina, who flew in for a quick visit and we shared a lovely day together. that i have two friends of this caliber at this point in my life (three if you count marta) is not something lost on me.

marty, my children and my closest friends went to great lengths to make me feel special and valued by them. at the end of my birthday, in front of a warming fire i told the people circled around me that they would never know what their love and support meant to an only, adopted child who lost his mother eight years earlier. short of having my mother as part of that circle, i can't imagine a better way to greet one's half-century mark.

* when i say "one of my best friends from north carolina" i'm not saying that that is my, like, best north carolina friend and i also have a best pennsylvania friend and a best ohio friend in some bubba-gump shrimp sorta way. i was simply saying this is one of my best friends and he lives in north carolina. i see that it reads a bit funny. though to be comprehensive here, it is equally curious that my other best friend also lives in north carolina. so my two best friends in the world both live in north carolina a few hours apart, for reasons that are in no way connected (neither grew up there). and for further curiosity my mother's best friend also lives in north carolina and is situated perfectly between my two best friends. so on my road trip east every summer, sometimes referred to as the best friends tour, i visit my first best friend, then my mom's best friend and then my other best friend. that they all clustered themselves so conveniently close just ups their best-friend stock all the more.

the above screen shot shows a web page i look at nearly every day. it is part of a collection of webpages i use to motivate and remind me of things important to me. i originally made the above page to look at before leaving the office to help me shift from work mode to family mode. when i first made it, the day count in red had thousands of days. now it has hundreds of days, and barely so.
View in Gallery >>>

four years ago i received word that they were going to replace the college football stadium that was near my childhood home. while i wasn't a season ticket holder, i did have a respectable number of memories in the place, most notably sneaking in on weekend nights with my friends to play hide in seek in the sprawling facility under a moonlit sky, well, play hide and seek until we were chased out by security which was admittedly part of the sport and appeal. upon hearing the news, i made immediate plans to see one last game there in the last year the CSU Rams would play in the storied Hughes Stadium which butted right up against my Fort Collins foothills.

so i made a proper trip of it, and bookguy joined me, and we met up with boyhood pal snake and had some great laughs and panhandler's pizza and bookguy, and i biked a century up through estes park and into rocky mountain national park. in short, it was a lovely and memorable weekend.

then the next year i returned to fort collins to take in a game at the new stadium. no bookguy this time as he was out of the country but snake and i shared time, and i made the estes ride up the big thompson canyon solo. it was again a lovely and memorable weekend.

then this year snake reached out and asked if i would be coming out for another CSU game. i countered saying i thought those couldn't be very exciting for him since they were in his backyard and suggested he pick a game somewhere in the country he would like to see and we could meet there. he said he would get back to me. a few weeks later he sent a note outlining the following weekend. a few days of golf followed by a historic SEC matchup, Tennesee @ Auburn. then on sunday we would travel an hour north and take in some nascar at Talledegha. right away i could tell i should have put snake in charge of planning our weekends years ago.

part of the itinerary was influenced by snake's brother tommy and their long-time friend paul (who was the nascar guy). they have been golf buddies for lots of years. since i'm not a golfer, i said i would meet up with them on friday for the saturday game and sunday race. so i had a lovely drive down to alabama on friday. i imagine it has been said before, but i love driving. part of it is i love my car, a 91 bmw 318i (or an E30 for those in the know). i became its second owner in 1998, and it has brought me an unreasonable amount of joy since then. a slight problem i have is i have not driven to work for more than twelve years AND i live in a community where i can walk to nearly everything i need which means i can go long stretches without ever rolling it out of the garage. but another thing i love about driving, distance driving particularly, is the simple act of unplugging from the daily firehose (simple to do, hard to make happen). these cross-country treks are highly therapeutic and meditative for me. on these day-long drives, i cover lots of desolate mentalscape that rarely sees travelers pass through.

a quick aside to address the number one question people ask when they see my nearly 30-year-old car, how many miles does it have? i can't really tell you because the odometer broke about six years ago. when it stopped merrily rolling along, the dial read 130k miles. i reckon since i don't drive a whole lot locally, i could count up the trips i've taken and get you a respectable ball-park number, but those sorts of things don't really tickle me like some. it's like the price of gas. whatever it is isn't going to keep me from buying some, so i don't bother giving it any of my precious neurons.

back to our story. i put myself fully in their hands and was told just to show up as they would take care of all of the arrangements, right down to our lodging. marty will attest to my excellence on being able to follow that sort of plan and my travel day went off without a hitch, and i pulled into the hotel parking lot five minutes before the fellas returned from their double round of golf and the weekend was off and running.

tommy got us the football tickets and had us in the second row of the end zone facing their mega screen and just to the right of the visiting band. it there was a better seat in the house, i'm not sure where it might have been. tommy and i struck an immediate over/under bet on how many times the tennessee band would play Rocky-Top (not as many as he wagered by far more than i would have ever imagined). it was an excellent day with lots of blue skies and belly laughs. and i didn't learn/recall until after the day began that it was snake's 50th birthday. by my math, it would have been challenging to dial up a better celebration than what we were in the midst of.

paul was in charge of the nascar tickets as he had family in the south who were regular patrons. shortly after meeting paul i said i heard he was a nascar guy. he said nothing but held up a finger instructing me to hold that thought, went to his bag, rummaged a second and then turned, holding to his chest his very own ricky bobby wonder bread race suit. with my mouth still agape, he turned to his bag again, this time announcing that if you didn't want to be ricky bobby you could always wear his race team partner cal naughton's old spice suit which he held before him with equal flourish. yeah, i guess he'd fall into the nascar guy column.

but, it turns out snake had some nascar connections of his own and was able to get us passes into pit row. this is the racing equivalent of scoring backstage passes to your favorite band. while the race was going on and paul was texting with friends telling them where he was right now, his phone almost caught fire from all the envy and hate being sent in reply.

the only downside to this mega-weekend is what in the heck could we ever do to follow it up. and/because it will be followed up as i'm hoping to make this trek to some college rivalry/experience a new annual tradition. too many interesting places and cultures in this country to not stick your head in the room at least once and soak it up.


hughes staudium (2016)



new stadium (2017)



auburn game (2018)



talledegha 500 (2018)

there is a young man i visit with once a month. i met him through my former employer where he is a rising star. this ascension, by my estimation, is largely connected to a number of things: he is capable at his craft, his has a very likable nature, a unique upbringing, an obsession for improvement, and possibly most of all, he has a wildly energetic and engaging way of communicating. if you picked...

Bella DeArmitt
Ms. Gray
African American Literature ACC
August 20 2018

The Impact of a Tradition

My family holds great value for traditions: Sunday mornings are reserved for cuddling in my parents' bed, winter breaks are spent holed up with our favorite action heroes--my family will take Jason Bourne and Lieutenant Ripley over the Grinch and Frosty the Snowman any yea ...

my uncle tim had two grandpas. one was a minister and one worked the train lines.

when tim went to the minister grandpa's house as a kid, the three children in the family (tim, my mother and their sister) would sit stone-still while the adults caught up. i remember my mom telling stories about how tim, the family prankster, would try to get the girls to make noise. he would whisper funny...

i recently took my annual friends and family tour back east. this is a solo trip i've been making the last few years, or put differently, since the kids have been old enough to not overwhelm a single parent. i am fortunate that a few of my closest friends and a portion of my family are clustered in a remarkably small area, an area i did not grow up in (but did finish college in) which makes it all ...

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'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...

a few years back our car broke down in sidney nebraska. we were en route to utah for our spring break holiday. we left sidney with a surprising number of good memories and warm feelings having made the most of our two days in the small town.

a perfect example. one day while out for a walk (to the original Cabelas superstore), we saw this statue honoring the pony express. as the family read the related plaques that circled the impressive monument, bella climbed onto the horse and then called to me to take her picture. as i set up, marty snuck into the background and photo-bombed the shoot. then the boys joined in. and then, well it is just how things tend to unfold around here ...






























in the end, we were able to pull out a decent family photo but those never seem to come at a simple trajectory.

and this episode reminds me of a story that marty tells of when she was a young girl. she grew up in a house with three older brothers. the few times she would bounce downstairs wearing any sort of makeup she would get mercilessly taunted by her brothers. a popular one was for them to ask who beat her up and if she would just give them their name they would go give them a good pounding. this constant jibing kept marty from ever drifting too far into the it-girl lane (it-girl/it-guy being what my family calls the fashion-governed, opinion-driven in-crowd). i'm thankful for this because i share marty's brothers sentiments about makeup on marty (but probably for different reasons)--for me it is not just that it doesn't look right on her, but i think it makes her look less beautiful, or rather, she is always more fetching without the 'enhancements', however minimal she claims they are. marty has no prayer with me because there has never been a day where i haven't thought marty looked her best in the first moments of the day where she is minutes out of bed, wonky hair and all. she hates my position on that but i stand by my claim. this is the life of a natural beauty.

but back to my other natural beauty, bella. i've seen some moments where bella has begun the slide into the it-girl world but each and every time our family tugs her back to the ground and keeps her from ever taking that part of the game too seriously.

a story-portrait of a moment in time.
Thursday November 16th @ 6:50am

alex is in the dining room eating breakfast.
bella is in the foyer putting on her socks.
marty is in the living room packing her bag for the day.
anthony is upstairs just waking up.
troy is in the kitchen making anthony's lunch.

there's a knock at the door. in that i am the least busy of...