a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. Personal Question

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...

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...

as i said yesterday my most pondered question of 2015 was what should we do about our children's impossible-to-police and premature exposure to the open waters of internet porn. the parental measures offered by browsers and operating systems are more laughable than my junior high hair style. instructing a child to "steer clear" rivals abstine...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. have you seen my manhood

our favorite moments of the kansas MS150 ride. it turns out this is one of the biggest ms150, attendance-wise, rides in the country. thousands of riders and lots of hoopla and fanfare and organization. bella's jaw was agape for much of the weekend at the participation and energy of the event which i reckon was her favorite part. my favorite part took place shortly after the above photo was taken a ...

i'm that dad who challenges kids, wether they are my own, known or some random kid i've never met, to employ their manners (e.g. saying 'thank you' or 'please') when something is done for them. recently i went out of my way to give one of alex's friends a ride. when i delivered him to his destination, a group sleep-over, he began bounding up the front walk without as much as a 'see-ya'. i called to him:

TROY
ethan!

ETHAN (10)
yes.

TROY
is there anything you might want to say or do to acknowledge that something was just done for you?

ETHAN
i don't think so.

TROY
truly.

ETHAN
oh. that. (with this, he bows in a courtly way and says with a regal flourish). i thank you kind, old sir for the ride in your lovely chariot.

he then turned and resumed his sprint into the house to meet his friends. the mom hosting the party stifled her laughter as i looked at her. when i gave her that 'really' look she shrugged her shoulders and reminded me that i did chide him for a thank you. this was the first time this kind, old sir had the grumpy, old phrase 'kids today' roll through his not-so-kind, old mind.

the day before fourth of july, which kindly fell on a friday this year, served up the most spectacular day of weather i can ever recall seeing in a usually hot and humid st. louis. work that day proved quiet and productive given many people chose to take the day off. staff was released at noon but i took advantage of the silence to get a few more things done, leaving at 3:30. i strolled along my walking commute staring at the magically blue sky which had crisply lined clouds slowly floating by. they were so pristine they looked near-animated, like miyazaki himself sketched them above us.

between this weather and my early jump on the three day weekend and my walking commute i near floated home. as i turned the final corner towards my house bella and anthony came towards me on roller blades. upon seeing me, their already large smiles grew bigger and they spread their arms wide before them asking (shouting) why i was home already.

throwing my own arms wide, i proclaimed, "i'm naming this the most beautiful day of the year and in honor of that, i'm coming home early to enjoy it with my family."

with them riding a scooter was an adorably cute neighbor girl of about six or seven years old (imagine how cute a huge-grinning, near-toothless anthony is, but then make him even cuter and give him lopsided, pigtails). after my proclamation, all three kids looked up and around, not having seemingly noticed the magical mood of the temperature or the cloud-dotted sky or relaxed state of our community. they consented that it all did seem pretty nice. i introduced myself to their friend and we chatted about the day briefly. as we parted bella stopped and yelled back to me that my pants were very blue. the pants were my new light-weight summer pants from jCrew and were a pastel blue (they were my favorite cut (urban-slim) and summer-time fabric (oxford-cotton) AND were on sale for 50% off BUT only in this color AND were part of the very necessary post weight-loss wardrobe re-fresh). I yelled back my thanks and that they were my homage to this beautiful day. bella flashed me the smile she uses when i say silly, fatherish things and turned to catch up to the others.

later, when bella and anthony returned home from roller-blading, bella told me that after our exchange about my pants, when she caught up to anthony and the new girl, the new girl said to her, in an understanding tone, "it's ok bella, my parents aren't very classy either".

just when i thought the day couldn't possibly offer me more.

on the first morning with marty's new phone in the house, the low battery alert started chirping at 4:45 a.m. starting my day two hours and fifteen minutes earlier than i had planned.

i missed that perk in the marketing materials.

i am not a texter.

i have a text-able phone but it is pretty exclusively reserved for work matters. when people outside of the office ask me for my number my pat response is "you'd have better luck getting minka kelly's number than mine." and even with work, i use the texting feature namely as a pager, meaning you can send me a text but i would not suggest depriving yourself of any gulps ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. motivation

we took our kids (and one of bella's friends) to dinner to celebrate some start of school kid achievements. since we don't go out to eat too often we're a bit of disaster at restaurants (e.g. we've found that most places don't appreciate shows of roman gladiator dominance around their other patrons). so, between the kids not knowing how to act or the effort of finding something for them to order, it is often a full-on debacle. this time it was exaggerated by that fact that at the end of chipotle's order line, which getting to proved most effortful, marty and i looked at each other to produce a wallet. with both of us tapping our empty pockets, we exchanged the classic but un-winnable "but i thought you said you had money" debate in front of the cashier, our three kids, one guest, six plates of food, and a growing line behind us. thankfully our twelve year old, the girl we were here to celebrate, once again bailed us out by holding up a hand and saying, "it's ok, dinner's on me because i do have money."

we backed away from the line telling the cashier we usually don't make our children buy our family dinner, especially when we're out celebrating the successes of those children.

oh. and another interesting thing about the dishwasher bit. when the repairman, one of them at least, was at our house assessing our broken washer, after backing out of the washer, standing up and drying his hands on his rag, he explained that what we're experiencing is now rather common. he said f'ing brilliant.

the director of my office sent an email to our young, female center coordinator. in the message he meant to request the following. instead his email read when i arrived at the office, because of the dropped 'contact', the recipient of the message read the sentence to me, asking what she should do. before i had time to respond a graduate student in our space who overheard the question said, "the only proper response is to write back and ask if you can please them one at a time or have to please them all at once."

this was far more entertaining than anything i had planned.

last week our family watched a film called babysitter beware for our friday night movie. there was a scene at the beginning of the film where these kids put a dog's shock collar around an evil neighbor's neck and then repeatedly tricked him into shocking himself. on the following tuesday at breakfast, anthony said the following in regard to that film. i stopped making my lunches contemplating his notion, shook my head in agreement and told him i thought that he was right and that would have been a smart and funny add. i finished lunches marveling at the human brain, and the young mind sitting in my kitchen presently, that conjured that specific thought days after the initial experience.

for any envious of me getting to be entertained by my witty six year old so, let me share what came out of my cerebral cherub's mouth seventeen minutes later after i pissed him off for goofing around in the backyard when he was supposed to be getting in the car. after finally sliding into the backseat and slamming the door in a huff, he proceeded to light me up.

ANTHONY
i wish i came out of someone else's stomach.

TROY
what? why would you say that? we're going to school, we're not playing in the backyard.

ANTHONY
i wasn't playing. i was trying to walk to the garage without getting mud on my shoes.

TROY
well, i'm sorry. i didn't know that was what you're doing.

ANTHONY
i didn't want to track mud into my school. what kind of parent yells at their child for trying to be respectful of their school?

welcome to another glorious day in the corps of parenthood.

"penis! penis! penis! penis!"

the above is what anthony ran through the house screaming after i finished that night's reading of shel silverstein (this is what we read whenever marty is not around at bedtime as both the boys enjoy the poems). the reason he ran about screaming that particular phrase is connected to my promise (after reading shel in particular and before lights out) to turn a sentence said by one of the boys into my own shel-like-poem. anthony, obviously, wanted the first line of the poem to start with the winning phrase, penis-penis-penis-penis.

when instead, i chose to use one of alex's sentences, anthony became inconsolable. between groans of disappointment he said he wanted his sentence to be chosen. i explained that i liked the variety found in alex's sentences more. a moment later anthony went silent in protest. minutes in he broke his stand to ask what would happen if both he and alex said nothing but penis-penis-penis-penis after poems and before bed. i hesitantly confessed i guess the poem would have to start with penis-penis-penis-penis. suddenly his angst vanished and he raised his head to call down to alex in the bunk below, "alex! tomorrow night after poems you have to ..." i reckon you can guess the rest of the plan.

and i can claim yet another parenthood first for me--spending open neurons in my day trying to think of creative rhymes for the word penis. i'm pretty sure dr. spock missed that chapter.

the lady who cuts marty's hair had a friend whose family kept next to their toilet something they called "the poop knife". the moment marty mentioned this to me in passing was the moment the story became the tale i was most disappointed to not hear first hand in 2012.

what i mean by this is i quickly overwhelmed marty with a flood of questions. what did it look like? was it a proper knife or a tool that looked like a knife? was it taken from a kitchen drawer or a basement tool chest? was it bought special or re-purposed from something already in the house? was it a lame toilet or a giant-sized bowel? was it one bowel or a family of prolific defecators? if the toilet, why not get a new one (or maybe it was one of these new 'efficient' models that started it all)? was the same person, like the mom or dad, always responsible for hewing a fecal mass down to bite-sized chunks or did it follow the 'who dealt it deals with it' philosophy? who had the realization a full-time instrument was required? did they clean it? where did it sit? did they hide it when company came over? is it still used? do you know where it lives? can i go there and ask to see it?

i couldn't have been more astonished to find marty possessed not a single answer to my generous serving of questions. this led to one last question, "however does the phrase "poop knife" pass before you in conversation where the next forty minutes isn't dedicated to discovering everything there is to know about a family who conjured, procured, and put to routine use something called a 'poop knife'.

saddened.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. boyfriend

we know a man who self-destructed. timing smacks a bit of a mid-life thing but people are tricky and complex so who knows. whatever the source the man lost virtually everything he had amassed over the last few decades: wife, kids, job, home. seeing him since the falling has been strained and when we cross paths he predominately ignores us. marty saw the man's brother and stopped to ask how his brother was making out. she also asked him to pass along the message that she wasn't judging him since his troubles and is ok continuing a relationship. ultimately, she said she wanted him to know she wasn't turning her back on him and if he needed a friend from before, she'd be there. the brother smiled knowingly and assured her she mis-read his brother's behavior. he then summed the situation up by saying, "he's like a grown man standing in the middle of a party with a diaper full of shit."

given how self-conscious i feel sporting a sizable zit or wonky hair, i reckon i can vibe this man's unease. the thought of a more permanent blemish that can't be washed or cut off must surely be debilitating.

in our house, i wash the laundry. i'm also the one to fold the laundry. when i'm done marty steps in and puts the folded stacks away. every now and again i'm the one to put laundry away just as every now and again marty is the one to wash and neatly fold the clothes. when i do the putting away, i usually botch a few things, that is, i mix up which clothes go with which human. as the children have grown in size and their wardrobe has grown in number of articles my error rate has grown alongside them. though, that i'm making more mistakes isn't nearly as interesting as the reaction my family has to my mistakes.

the girls are both quick to let me know not only that i made mistakes but also to show in some way the number of mistakes that occurred. bella's play is to appear in my office with the garments in question. after raising her hands to showcase the items--and jutting a hip to the side for emphasis--she tilts her head down and glances at me under a raised brow saying only, "really dad?". to this i'll sheepishly reply, "oh those aren't yours?" or "i thought i saw you wearing that" to which bella will follow up with a "me? this? really?". marty's far more subtle and respectful. for her she might just quietly pass me in the hall with a small stack of mis-filed garments clapped between her hands giving me a polite smile as we pass.

now the boys. the boys still let me know of my error but they do so in a totally different manner. how i know if i put something belonging to alex in anthony's drawer is anthony will come downstairs on a school day wearing the item. in example, anthony came down for breakfast the other day wearing a pair of alex's boxer briefs. if you're wondering how obvious the error should have been to him, the underwear is snug enough but it travels down slightly below anthony's knee and could easily be confused for a certain sacred garment. when i ask anthony if he noticed anything funny about his underwear (which should be a non-question since anthony's full line of underwear are still superhero branded tighty whiteys), he'll look down and then confess no, he does not notice anything funny about his underwear. he'll then ask if he should and i'll defeatedly reply, no he should not.

truthfully marty and i are just thankful he wears underwear as his tendency to travel commando has been the number one complaint of his school teachers over the last few years (and no it doesn't help that his tiny business is essentially spot welded to his lean frame and not flying, spilling, or sagging about all that much).

and alex, while similar is different enough to warrant his own sentence or two. for aleo, he will bounce down the stairs for school wearing a pair of his six year old brother's pants. i'll pause whatever i'm doing to take him in. from the waist down he most closely resembles mary tyler moore's laura petrie character from the dick van dyke show in a pair of her style-setting and form-fitting capris. when i ask alex if he noticed anything funny about his pants, he'll look down and then confess no, he does not notice anything funny about his pants. often, he will ask if he should which, yes you guessed it, i say no he should not. truthfully marty and i are slow to correct him because even in his gender-bending ensemble he pulls the look off better than most of us would and surpasses the dress caliber of his father by gravity-defying leaps and bounds.

in all the hubbub i never finished our topsy-turvey tale. i left off with me having knee surgery (see topsy turvey part 1 for the detail). so i had my surgery on a tuesday and everything went fine and well. prior to the procedure i asked what to expect recovery wise. i was told i would walk in and i would walk out. i took that to mean it would be like nothing at all had happened and that my life would resume as soon as the anesthesia wore off. with this understanding, i told my office i'd be be out tuesday and back on wednesday. the first sign this was not the case was the prescription for 60 vicodans they handed marty on our way out the door.

in addition to the prescription there was the direction to keep the knee perpetually iced and elevated for the next 72 hours. while the week was shot to three kinds of hell, on the good side of all this dour news, marty and i discovered downton abbey. while laid up and bored in bed, i trolled the netflix hallways looking for anything of interest. something took me towards downton abbey. i watched the first five minutes of it and hit pause. i called for marty and said she should plan on having lunch with me in bed as i had a show for us to watch. so we sat in bed, my knee wrapped in ice and atop four pillows, eating sandwiches and discovering a 1912 english village while our children were at school. possibly our most quaint and romantic workday afternoon since our college days (and certainly our most peaceful moment in recent weeks).

i gingerly returned to work on friday to begin the dig out. it went slow but steady. at three in the afternoon marty called. she said the principal from the high school she used to teach at called. a teacher had taken ill and they needed someone to fill in for three weeks ... (pause) ... starting monday. after another pregnant pause i noted that by her calling me at work and positing the question, she was expressing interest. yes. after a third pause in the conversation, i said i supported whatever she wished and said we could talk about it further that night.

before children, marty taught for nine years (at this same school that was calling now). marty then took off nine years. returning to teaching is something that has definitely been on her thoughts especially now that our youngest, anthony, is slated for full day kindergarten next year. but next year is the earliest we'd ever thought about her return and would have, in an ideal world, preferred two years to give marty one year to breathe and collect herself before returning to the fray.

marty was interested on several levels which i'm sure i'd botch if i tried to represent them so won't. suffice it to say marty's brain was above an idle with the notion of challenging her mind beyond innovating on what went in her kid's lunchbags or reading a new goosebumps book to her five year old. i get this need. fully. when i returned home that evening and saw how lively her eyes were, i made three points. i asked that she didn't start monday because the still-broken fridge was scheduled for repair on monday. i asked that she not let this sudden jump back into a professional routine, taint her notions of returning for real because she wasn't giving herself a chance to re-enter work life with a proper amount of time to plan and prepare, professionally or mentally. and i said, i could handle the kids in the morning but she had to find places for them, especially anthony, when they got out of school. within twelve hours she returned the call saying she would do it. fortunately, because of paperwork she couldn't start on monday anyway so the fridge got repaired (thank gawd!!! as post-knee surgery is not the time you want to be without a working ice-maker).

her first morning of work she left at 6:00 am. i woke up early to make her breakfast. as she ate i confessed this was only a "first day back to work after nine years off" treatment and she shouldn't expect it everyday. i also made her a lunch and stole a little note in there in case she was getting treated poorly by the day or the kids. then she left. after a short bit of quiet, i started prodding kids out of beds.

the kids knew my getting them ready was going to be different. marty is definitely far more accommodating that i am. she is known for making them pancakes, kraft macaroni and cheese, or even crazy time-consuming waffles. when they ask me for such things, i look at them as if i didn't understand the questions, which in some regards is true. in the early days, they'd repeat the question and i'd tell them to go get a muffin and yogurt. now they don't even repeat the question. they just look at my face and head to the muffin tin all on their own. progress! and, if i'm known for anything in the morning it is when i am ready and they are not i stand in the foyer and yell, "you're putting me behind schedule Dufresne. don't make me come up there and thump you." rabid fans of shawshank redemption might recognize this loose translation of one of my favorite lines from the film. my kids obviously have no idea what i'm talking about or who this Dufresne cat is, but they get the gist that i'm getting irritated and they best up the pace.

i wasn't too intimidated about getting the kids off to school. this is something i usually do on wednesdays so i have a sense for what is involved. but there was one variable i failed to consider. every time i've taken the kids to school on my wednesdays, marty was there, in the house and part of the morning. we'd really not gone through the drill without her. the problem stemmed from anthony's morning ritual, which goes like this. when anthony wakes up you will often here a stretch and a yawn. this gets followed by hearing the creaks of the slats in his upper bunk as he moves to the ladder. once down, you hear a quick patter of feet, and might see a flash in the hall, as he quick steps it to the bathroom. urination. more patters—this time to marty's side of the bed. then you hear one word in a very business like tone: cuddle. with this marty's arm raises the covers like batman might swoosh his cape and anthony lithely slides into the warmth of her space and the covers drop, engulfing him. this is followed by three to ten minutes of silence which is broken, always, by the same question: is it a computer morning. computer mornings are weekend mornings where the kids get a few hours of computer to start the day.

on the first day marty was away anthony woke, he went to the bathroom, then the empty bed, then came and found me.

ANTHONY
where's mom?

TROY
at work. remember she's going to be working for a few weeks.

ANTHONY
but what about my cuddle?

TROY
oh. i can do your cuddles while mom's away.

ANTHONY
but you don't know how.

TROY
i'm sure they won't be as good but maybe you can teach me.

ANTHONY
now i'm doing nuthin'! and i'm not going to school!

with this declaration anthony turned and ran back to his room, climbed his ladder and cried for the next ninety minutes. although to say he cried at the news is like saying i was merely disappointed when i re-injured my knee. what he really did was screamed for a full hour and a half that we wanted his mommy. bella, alex and i quietly ate breakfast to this upstairs tirade. as i told bella and alex to suit up to go, alex asked me what i was going to do about anthony. i answered honestly that i didn't know.

i climbed the stairs and entered his room. he repeated his missive that he wasn't going to school. i told him he had to. it was the only choice. no one was going to be home. he said he didn't care. i said i wished i could leave him but i just couldn't. it wasn't safe. he pleadingly said he'd lock the door and not answer it, no matter what. i told him i wished that was enough but it wasn't. he was just too young and he had to go to school. when he said no again i had to pull out the big gun, the one thing for which anthony seems to have no defense: 1-2-3. immediately after i said the single word "one" anthony yelled, "okay stupid head, i'm coming." and he did. he immediately came down the ladder descended the stairs, headed toward the kitchen but i stopped him saying he missed breakfast and now there was no time. without protest he sat down and i put his shoes on. he put his coat and backpack on and headed towards the car without breakfast and still in pajamas.

he sulked on the way to bella and alex's school. he sulked after their drop off and on the way to his school. when we pulled up he got out of the car still fully under protest and began a slow walk into the building. just as we started i saw anthony's best friend grady get out of his car. i called hello to him and when he saw us he yelled a gigantic, arms-in-the-air, ANTHONY!!! he then charged towards us and ripped his coat open showing a large scooby doo shirt. he said his mom let him get one just like the one he gave anthony for his birthday. astonished anthony unzipped his coat to show his scooby shirt and the boys happily marched into school arm-in-arm.

that proved to be the turning point for anthony and i had no more problems after that. in my second week i was heard to say things like "did you get your milk out of the freezer and put it in your lunchbag" and "don't put your shoes there because you won't remember them in the morning." which is really good news because after marty did her three week stint filling in, the school offered her the job, full-time, starting next year ... (pause) ... and, she accepted.

circumstance recently led me to j.k. rowlings 2008 commencement address at harvard. for me, her twenty minute speech surpassed the combined value of all her potter books. mostly because she's pro-failure, something i'm quite ravenous about as of late. my favorite line, of many: next, we just need to figure out how to move this message down from post-college to pre-kindergarten.

also, as i had to remind bella as she shoulder-hacked me crafting this post, the real meat of failure is not in failing itself, but in the building of tools needed to climb out of life's many divots, holes, ditches, cliffs and canyons. so maybe perseverance is the better term. less ambiguous is the fact that the landscape is treacherous and circumstance requires us to travel large swaths of it in the dark.

many years back i had a failed standoff with a guy whose dog took a dump in my yard while i read on the porch. that tale of woe may be revisited here. last weekend the universe presented me with the chance to redeem that day's poor showing. i was sitting on the front porch eating breakfast. a tall fella came down the walk with a large black lab. when they got to my yard the dog pulled up and started excitedly sniffing the grass (perhaps it is time to stop anthony from whizzing in the yard, or at least limit him to the backyard). i scanned the guy's hand and pocket for a plastic bag. i saw none. i began steeling myself for the moment and what i would say should the cur suddenly back up, clench his haunches and begin the deed.

i sized the fellow up further. as i said he was tall. he was also unshaven, wearing jeans, a dark shirt and a baseball cap that had a camouflage pattern on its front. i glanced down at myself. i was wearing a pair of express jeans that had been cut-off to capri length. i had a purple shirt on that read u-city unicorns ¹. the shirt also had a silhouette of a unicorn. i studied the horned horse hoping it was at least lunging at a foe in a menacing manner. no matter how i turned or squinted the unicorn couldn't be described as doing anything but prancing, and exuberantly so. i looked back at the guy. he was looking at me. i slightly raised my small bowl of yogurt, granola and strawberries in the form of a morning greeting. he nodded very slightly, tugged on the dog's leash and they proceeded on their walk before the dog could test these two men. thus, i'm putting this standoff under the WIN column—even if it is a caliber of win like the other team didn't have enough kids to play or reported to the wrong field.

¹ bella's softball team is called the u-city unicorns. i am the coach. we had a game the morning the above story took place. when bella saw me before the first game wearing the shirt, she stopped me in the hallway and asked, with all the vinegar you might detect in a junior high hallway, what i was doing ...

TROY
what? what do you mean?

BELLA
the shirt.

TROY
yeah. what about it?

BELLA
why are you wearing it?

TROY
because we have a game.

BELLA
but you're not playing.

TROY
yeah. but i am the coach.

BELLA
i don't know dad. i'm not feeling it.

granted, had i not been wearing a child's shirt with a gay horse on it, i would have been wearing light blue lacoste polo. in the end, i'm not sure how much ground this would have gained me with a guy wearing a hat purchased at Bass Pro.