this is unfortunately not an atypical dinner conversation at our table

BELLA
dad, you're going to die first.

TROY
what? me? why do i have to die first?

BELLA
because you're the tallest and the tallest means the smallest life.

TROY
well, i'm not such a great fan of that.

MARTY
it's ok troy. someone has to be first.

BELLA
and mom, you're next.

bella starts kindergarten today.

as if i'm not already enough of a mess with this looming milestone, i've had a number of veteran parents tell me that the period before your oldest child starts full-day school is the golden era of parenthood. the rationale claims that once a child enters school-proper, parenting becomes more challenging given the child's exposure to people you haven't liked enough to personally invite into your home. the theory does seem sound. the theory also does seem to suck a whole lot. on the positive side though, while some of the folks bella will be forced to interact with will be evil, the process is sure to bring some experience-rich personalities to the table she/we would not have otherwise met.

and as proof of the universe's incontrovertible balancing act, the same weekend our golden era ends, bookpimp's journey begins. congratulations michael and christine on the birth of your first child.

wish me luck. wish bookpimp luck. wish anyone responsible for tiny heart-absconding humans luck.

04.30am		put my computer to sleep after working on a site design for 7 straight hours
04.35am		get undressed in the dark and fall into bed only to learn alex is sleeping in my spot. i yank my pillow from under his head and drag it behind me to his bed.
04.40am		listen to bella grind her teeth for five minutes and do some unqualified projections on what orthodontic expenses will look like in ten years.
04.45am		fall asleep
06.18am		roll over and smash my face into a metal thomas the tank engine toy. attempt to throw it across the room but send it into the wall next to the bed. fall back asleep.
07.30am		get pushed in the head by alex's foot and told to get out of his bed. i push him away telling him to go ask mom.
07.34am		get shoved again by alex, this time with a hand, and told more emphatically to remove myself from his bed. i repeat the instruction to take it up with his mother. he leaves.
07.50am		pushed in the back by marty and told to get up for work.
07.53am		bowl of grapes spilled on my head and chest as alex roughly climbs over me for the thomas train that accosted my cheek and nose earlier.
08.00am		pushed harder in the back by marty and told she's not telling me again to get up.
08.06am		tickled by bella and excitedly told 'first one to the tv room gets to pick first show'. i tell her i hate the formulaic brainwashing that happens on modern broadcasting and am fifteen hours into a boycott. moments later i hear her shout her first-show victory through the house.
08.10am		again shoved in the back by marty and told i am ruining her morning.
08.32am		i wake, naturally, and stumble to the bathroom feeling surprisingly refreshed and have a notion it is going to be a good day.
08.35am		i find my electric toothbrush lying behind the toilet. it seems the good day hunch was a tad premature.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. three shows

the day after sassafras was born, i took the kids to the hospital to meet their younger brother. bella immediately latched onto the newborn making various cooing and gooing noises at him while waggling a finger over his face and belly. alex immediately went to marty taking his rightful spot on her lap. about five minutes into the visit bella spoke up and said she knew what we should name the baby. we asked what, preparing our poker faces for the worst. she confidently announced Abrey. after her proclamation she turned and hunched back over the infant as if the matter were resolved. marty and i both made faces, but they were different.

TROY
i kinda like it.

MARTY
what did she even say, avery?

TROY
no, abrey.

MARTY
spell it.

TROY
A-B-R-E-Y.

MARTY
abrey? that's not even a name.

TROY
sure it is. everything is a name.

MARTY
well, i don't like it.

TROY
and if i do?

MARTY
i'm not naming a child abrey.

TROY
it's two against one.

MARTY
alex, come here.

here's a thing to know when negotiating with the human who just spat another, smaller human out of their special hole; they always possess more stock in the business at hand than you. so abrey was out. after a brief bout of panic and uncertainty a name was unanimously agreed upon ... anthony. anthony walter dearmitt.

that said, everyone in our house calls him something different. marta calls him anthony. i call him antonio. bella calls him abrey. and alex calls him sassafras. no reason to not get a quick jump on the schizophrenia his world is sure to bring.


click here peggy

labor began at 6pm, wednesday night. we left for the hospital at 3:30am. marty gave fully natural birth to a six pound healthy boy Thursday, August 17 at 1:54pm. the child is still as of yet, unnamed.

my mother watched the delivery, something she also did for alex. marty has now twice extended this very generous invitation to my mother since she never got to personally experience childbir...

walt and i went to a bbq last summer. while surveying the food spread, i saw a stack of plates, quartered heads of iceberg lettuce, a small bowl of white dressing and a large plate of ribs and chicken. it all looked great and i was anxious to get started but was stymied in that there wasn't a sign of any silverware.

the male host walked up behind me and invited me to dig in. i said i was looking for the silverware and he gaped at me like i was mad. "SiLvErWaRe? SILVERWARE!?! THIS IS A BBQ AND I'M FROM TEXAS AND WE DON'T ALLOW NO STINKIN' SILVERWARE!!!" so i did what any scolded and denied adult would do. when he turned away, i walked into his house, uninvited, and went through his kitchen looking for cutlery. no silverware my ass, there were piles of it inside. so i helped myself to a place setting and for my trouble, also took a wacky straw i happened upon (that was just to make a point).

now appropriately equipped, i returned to the food table and prepared my plate. i neatly cut my lettuce, dripped some of the white stuff on it and took my seat. i looked across the table as the sticky-fingered heathen held his iceberg wedge like a football, raked it through the chunky white sauce and raised the full dripping mass to his already smeared mouth. he made an exuberant-scrunched face as his mouth bore down on the roughage. i quietly shook my head at the scene, stabbed a small piece of the lettuce on my plate, dabbed it in the dressing and carefully placed it in my mouth. two minutes later the fork was in the grass and i was cramming the lettuce/sauce mixture into my mouth as rapidly as my two hands could scoop it from the plate. and when the concoction was done i licked the residuals from the folds and crevices of my fingers and palms contorting my wrist and hand as needed to access it all.

texas blue cheese dressing is pretty dang good.

on our trip to the beach last month, marty gave bella and alex disposable cameras. she explained there were a certain number of pictures and when it was done, it was done. we just now got the developed rolls back and i was impressed with alex's range.

• (top left) i've long been a fan of cattywampus composition and this shot was skillfully crafted. field of depth and division of color is wonderful.
• (top right) this looks straight out of a gap/j crew/fitch seasonal rag. it's a totally overdone technique, but if you can't nail the fundamental shots, you got no business being in the mix.
• (bottom left) the 'what's happening here' quality of this shot makes the viewer commit a few brain cycles in contemplating the action and more importantly why the action warrants being photographed. (spoiler: ethan just bested his father in a thumbwar and is counting his winnings)
• (bottom right) nailing the 'moment in time' shots is a skill any serious photog must be able to harness at will. sure, you wish the cup wasn't there and the window wasn't behind her but your gotta work with what you got.

the full collection, only excerpted here, had several shots of bookguy and his people so i forwarded the relevant ones on thinking he may like to see a photographic savant's early work. his reply ... imagine being privileged enough to also see the early steps of a future world ruler as well.

were our family being monitored by nasa, our latest transmission to them would read "houston, we're set to pop. i repeat houston, we are set to pop. confidence is high". technically, we're still weeks away but we've entered the any day milestone. alex was almost two weeks early which means who knows how quickly sassafras could appear now that the track is greased. if you looked, touched, listened to and smelled marty's stomach protuberance, you'd be amazed the little nipper hasn't just fallen out into the tub while she showered.


while the first picture is representative enough of the home's state, this second photo better captures the true breadth of moods. we are (right to left) frenetic, meditative, swirling and observing.


wish us strength and health over the next few weeks getting the child little man simply calls 'assafras' to the other side. and peace out. (photo credit to the soon to be big brother, alex)

i'm always pimping the cool stuff made by the kids but have never bragged on my own prowess at the breakfast table with the watercolors. and sorry for any who were already pulling their checkbooks out, the piece is not for sale. it was commissioned for a private collection.

any of you catch the latest round of women against public milkings? my favorite quote was from this en-lighted pioneer of human rights out of kansas ...

I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table.

which was almost trumped by ...

Another reader said she was "horrified" when she received the magazine and hoped that her husband hadn't laid eyes on it.

i assume by these women having this magazine in their home they are about to become or recently became a mother, which makes the reaction all the more surreal. i mean if this is your position on the matter shouldn't you be in a confessional asking forgiveness for the tingling sensations you occasionally experience 'down there' instead of pining your time away educating yourself. and, perhaps your husband's discomfort stems more from the fact that you never leave the house, granting him ten minutes alone with your bleeding-edge girlie mag because i'm going to go out on a limb and say these men just may not be receiving an adequate amount of intimacy in their life. but then again, leaving the confines of your safe and always dressed home may expose you to someone wearing a strapless halter or biking shorts thus casting you further into your psychological tailspin.

i'm finding it hard to go on too much about the never-naked ladies cited in this article because i out-loud laughed more in reading it than i did watching four hours of kevin smith candidly answering questions from college kids. well that's not true, but i did laugh quite a bit, alone in my office and was thankful no one popped their head in to ask what was so funny because lord knows what ogling such outrageous pornographic materials in the workplace would do to my career path.

for about fifteen years i've kept a large glass coin-jug on my dresser. at the end of each day i drop my loose change into it. about once a year i pour the contents onto the floor in front of a movie and roll my bounty. the collection typically amounted to several hundred dollars. since bella became old enough to request the jug be handed to her my annual accounting has dropped from the just under five hundred realm to the just above forty dollar range because you see bella likes playing with coins. bella likes playing with coins a whole lot.

one of her favorite treatments is to sticker the coins. how this works is she will empty the jug onto the floor and go through them one by one checking each side. coins that already have a small random sticker on them go in one pile, coins that have no mark go in another. once divided, she places a sticker on each coin in the stickerless pile and when done returns all the coins back into the jug. such an audit, which occurs about once a month, can take anywhere from one to three hours and is typically spread over a full day.

bella has it in her mind that i get paid at the end of each work day with a small handful of change. she thinks the size and diversity of the mix indicates how hard i worked. if i tinkle a large handful of coins into her cupped hands she proudly says "boy dad, you sure must have worked hard on this day!". a telling thing about bella is when i have just a few or no coins to share she doesn't harangue me but quietly accepts the news, maybe even giving me a commiserating "that's ok dad, we've already got lots of coins". criminally precious.

several months ago a relative of mine, cousin debbie, was in town and staying with my folks. we went over one night for dinner and bella became quite smitten with her (that my forty-something cousin would hang out with bella under the dining room table played a great role in this friendship). when it came time for us to leave, bella very seriously told cousin debbie she should come live with us because it would be lots of fun. debbie gracefully declined saying she wouldn't want to impose. bella cheerily said it was not a problem because we were rich, 'we have piles of money in every room of our house.' truth told, that is a correct statement. although a minor omitted detail is the aforementioned piles range in value from $1.34 to $12.75 depending on how much bella lost sight of and how much you're able to find.

i have settled on a new hair person. needless to say i didn't have a great amount of luck cold-calling barbers around town. the issues were numerous, the frustrations even more-so. it sucks to learn something you already know; replacing a master-craftsmen isn't easy.

for once i've been rewarded for blathering on incessantly about something that only i cared about. after reading, or at least getting tired of reading, about me go on and on and on about the departed hair-savant, larry evilsizor, this girl emailed me, asking for a shot at the title. surprised and curious i responded, asking what i could expect from her service.

she promptly replied saying it was the typical salon scenario; appointment-based, cut, wash and style. i like knowing i can get in the chair on the quick, the cut was obvious, the wash i was a little nervous about for reasons i'll explain, and the style, well styling my hair is like raking cement so i'd be kind and spare her that frustration.

regarding the wash i emailed her with a possible issue; it was an absolute certainty that i would moan, groan and make other such utterances while getting my hair washed and would this cause a problem. she simply asked if they were good or bad noises to which i simply answered 'yes'.

last week while reclined in the heaven chair getting washed, i commented how this was the most intimate relationship i had with anyone outside of my family. i added, this would be the case until i'm no longer able to duck the glove-check my doctor threatened me with at my last visit three years ago. i've been shockingly healthy since that conversation. i advised the hair girl that she will probably hold this unique troy-distinction for some time in that i'm waiting for technology to get to the point where they can discern the state of my rectum while sitting on the other side of the room. although, my children would claim to have already mastered that unlikely feat.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. remedial self-help