marty has a sister who lives in new york city, typically around the village. she's very good about sending birthday cards and occasional notes of thought. her messages are always bright and colorful, just as she is. recently she helped bella out with a school project (as did one of my everyman judges noted in the below message) and sent the following update to us which i thought was colorful enoug...

a friend and former neighbor sent me the below email and pictures she recently happened upon.
this moment happened as i was driving home from work. a mess of neighborhood kids, including my two, were playing a few doors down from our house. all the moms were in huddles and sitting on steps chatting and commiserating. i pulled to the curb to say hello to the group. with the alacrity of a military operation, my car was besieged by the little ones (which was most likely set in motion by a war-like cry from bella). as suggested in the above note, my now-twenty-year-old car was (and is) treated as a playground apparatus. much of the coolness of this was lost on my children who climbed on my car in front of our house all the time, the same could not be said of the other kids who weren't allowed to climb on and in and around their parents cars so for them it was still pretty cool stuff.

i thank miss anne for (1) capturing these images back in the day and (2) taking the time to pass them along now. taking them in, and seeing a mini-bella and a tiny-aleo, reproduced the smile seen in the first image below. thank you miss anne.

and as a side note, i think had she told me she was in possession of a directory of images titled FUN WITH TROY that was from my past and didn't tell me the nature of subject matter, she may have been able to blackmail a pretty penny from my uncertainty. i guess i owe anne another thank you for not cleaning out the $64 in my savings account.



allow me to direct your attention to the girl in the passenger seat, who is not my child,
who is taking a giant pull from my water bottle.



the only surprise here is that drew beat bella to the top of the car,
via the sunroof of course.



that roof-spot is for a number of reasons, considered the catbird seat



i don't know what they're are pointing and laughing at,
but odds are it is not something in my favor.
good money could be put down on it being vomit or feces related.



one look at bella's face confirms that children come without guile or deception.
kids come to us clean and pristine. the uncertainty and insecurities come from the adults.



while i was fully prepared to do a lap with them glued hooey-blooey to all parts of the car,
a few of the moms thought that may not be prudent.

(and look at how close the side mirror is to completely capturing aleo's adorable little face.
how perfect would that have been.)

thanks again anne! you made my day!
you also made the day's posting much more colorful than what was originally planned. hat tipped.

excerpt from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography

if you ever wondered how skittish marty is about letting one get by the goalie allowing for an accidental/unexpected pregnancy, your curiosity would have been well satisfied when alex mistook her birth control patch for a big-ass band-aid* and motioned towards it, offering to take it off for her. the way marty jumped and twisted away you would have thought alex was about to mistakingly pull the pin from a live grenade, which when you consider spending all day, every day keeping anthony alive, a pin-less hand grenade may be an astute and reasonable comparison.

* since the patch is larger than a conventional band-aid and was placed on her ass, calling it a big-ass band-aid was quite perfectly perfect. but please don't mistake this as me saying it was a band-aid on a big-ass which i think would be written as a big ass band-aid. perhaps grammar-police dave can set me straight because if i botch that and people misinterpret my message, the need for birth control in my home could become a moot point.

someone who knew i adored this picture, was kind enough to send me this picture.

excerpt of an email i received from a second year law student and in regard to my Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review:

anthony. anfer. anferoni. an-fun-nee.

a few recent observations and happenings regarding our blonde-headed child.

the first comes from a college student who watched anthony. no bella. no alex. just anthony. the student was an experienced babysitter. the student enjoyed, even loved small kids. when his tour was up he looked haggard, he looked older. the first thing he said to the ...

i came home from work yesterday and asked if the kids wanted to go hit tennis balls. bella had a friend over so declined. anthony only likes hitting things that are not tennis balls with the racket so he was out. alex was at a friend's house but due to come home. i called over and asked if i picked him up if he'd like to hit tennis balls. he said yes so i picked him up and we headed to the courts. on the way there he said he forgot something at the house and we had to go back. almost to the courts, i said we'd stop on the way home.

then we played tennis, which means i fed him balls while i stood at the net and he hit them back. i initially got the kids interested in hitting balls by saying the object of the game was for them to try to hit me. when i reminded alex of this yesterday he said we couldn't play that game. when i asked why he said because if he hit me, he would break my glasses and i would be mad. i like this kid quite a bit. so i fed him balls and he returned them not hitting me once.

then i said we had to wrap up and head home because dinner would be ready soon. he reminded me about stopping at his friend's house. i said i didn't think we'd have time and would have to get them later. he stopped and scolded me, firmly reminding me that i said we would go and i can never break a promise. never! i paused, looked at him and said, ok, but he'd have to be quick because we were late for dinner. and, i told him i wasn't even fully stopping the car. on the way to the house, i asked him what he forgot and he said his ds lites. since alex doesn't own a ds, lite or otherwise, i figured i misheard him but didn't bother asking him to clarify. when we got to the house, alex jumped out, ran in and came running back with a sheaf of papers in hand. when he returned to his seat, i asked what he had. he said his ds lites. upon inspecting the pages, he and his friend had drawn games on the pages as if they had ds lites. all i got to say is nintendo ain't got nothing on hangin' out at a bud's house after school, with a well-worn set of crayons spread between you at the kitchen table while you try to best each other's hand drawn games in the pre-dinnertime hours.

although the scene laid out in the below image looks eerily similar to the climax of the gimp escapade from pulp fiction, and i'm not entirely sure how i should feel about that.

excerpt from tom wolfe's A Man in Full

it was ten years ago today that dearmitt.com posted it's first monorail entry which means i've now been chipping away at this slab of stone for a quarter of my life.

the result, thus far, is 1,450 monorail postings, 123 gallery updates, 131 troyscripts, and 93 books read.

since i began i've had three children and one wife. i've buried two hermit crabs and had a hobbled knee repaired. my tennis game has gotten worse but i've learned how to make stained glass windows. i spent many brain cells railing against television, circumcision, and walgreens. to my knowledge, all of my preachings and ravings resulted in a single benefactor and that in the form of a small boy who was the subject of an international adoption and has me to thank for still possessing the foreskin he came into this world with.

my hope in the next ten years is to sway not one but two decisions that take place on this bustling and frenetic planet of ours. i'm not picky about the nature of the influence, it's just nice to know you're not always talking to yourself.

someone recently commented to me that my blog seemed to be a lot about poop and penises and nudity.

i commented back that they must not have children.

the third thing marty said to me the other morning was, "tonight i think you should get an erection at the dinner table and then show it to everyone."

if you're wondering how such a request comes to pass, this is how.

1. it begins with an unfinished patio project in the backyard.
2. this is followed by a two-hour game of boats and moats which involves the muddy patio pit, a running garden hose, and my three children (as well as a few neighbor kids).
3. then comes a dinner call.
4. before children may enter the home, they must be hosed off. for the older children, this can be done by them holding hands out and pulling pant cuffs upward. for the three year old, nothing is salvageable and he must be stripped of everything and hosed down like a reluctant prisoner being processed for incarceration.
5. next comes the three year old's very usual reluctance to put a diaper back on which results with him eating dinner naked.
6. shortly after thankfuls, the three year old looks at his lap and says his penis is 'giant'. to this, his biology teacher mother flatly says, "that is called an erection anthony which means a lot of blood has gone to your penis but you don't usually see it because it is usually hidden in your underwear" to which he says a reflective "kewl" and to which his brother who is already keen to the giant penis condition says nothing but his sister (who is not so keen on the condition) says, "neat, can i see."
7. to this anthony says sure, stands up on his chair, juts his groin forward making his miniature staff hover over his prepared dinner plate of french toast and syrup.
8. alex and marty paid him no mind. bella craned forward to see better. i sat taking the whole scene in and guessed this very scenario had probably never gone down in our eighty year old dining room and thought it was super cool (kewl) it was unfolding (pun prop) right before me. standing there as he was, he looked like a miniature gladiator home from expanding the empire, and for me conjured images of roman decadence and pride.
9. without looking up, and while stabbing a few bits of french toast marty said (again flatly), "boys at my dinner table don't show off their penises while the family is eating so please sit down and finish your meal."
10. and once again, marty earns our home's title of 'spoilsport'.

marty's stay home from school policy is this:

if you can't produce blood or puke, you are going to school. if you just think you're going to puke, it doesn't count and you are going to school. if you puke while at school, then you can come home.

as for the blood, i'm pretty sure you only get to stay home while you're bleeding. once it is cauterized or the hemorrhaging relents, grab your backpack. you'll be met at the door.

i seem to recall the rule used to state that if there wasn't blood, puke, or poop (ed. like involuntary poop), you were going to school. i also recall bella looking a little too reflective about the poop option one day and that is how it got dropped from the rotation. hell, i know grown men who'd crap their pants for a day off work. and i got five bucks that says if bella did gravy her drawers to stay home, she'd be so excited, taking a shower wouldn't even be the first thing on her list of things to do with the free day.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. good thinking

the 2nd annual everyman pro galleries opened today.