The only item that caught us ill-prepared through this shut-in has been toilet paper. After each empty-handed return from a store-run, Marty would ask if people understood the Corona virus doesn't give you diarrhea.

This unexpected plight reminded Marty of an interview she heard a few weeks prior. In it, a recent immigrant to America shared a story that shortly after re-locating here, the state he lived in was bracing for a hurricane, and people stormed the stores in preparation. When he went for his supplies, he paused at the frozen section to take in the throngs of people fighting over a rapidly dwindling stock. After watching for a moment, he continued to an aisle of canned foods. In that aisle was just one other man who was also identifiably new to the country. They exchanged friendly nods, and one commented on the mayhem in the frozen aisle. The other said it seemed the people living here had not been through a recent catastrophe, else they would know there would be no electricity to run their freezers. The other smiled in understanding. They both then shrugged their shoulders and continued filling their carts with canned foods.

Whatever the cause of this bum-rush on toilet paper (;-)), there were a good number of folks about to be greeted to an empty shelf, both in their linen closet and local store.

Marty was unperturbed, like completely. So completely, in fact, part of me thinks she was hoping we would run out. When the kids and I, all visibly unsettled about the situation, asked what we'd do if we ran out, Marty flatly said, we'd just do soapy bottoms. Soapy bottoms are what would happen when the kids were little and complained that their bottom itched. Marty and Marty only need I say it, would tell the child they must need a soapy bottom washing. This ritual involved the child sitting on the toilet seat leaning forward as far as they could to give their mother easy access to their itchy place. When in position, Marty would wash their backside with her lathered-up hands. No cloth. No gloves. No hazmat suit. Just her bubble-coated mitts.

As the table of people aging from 13 to 51 stared back at this woman, she asked how we could not like or even want a soapy bottom washing. She said she'd very much enjoy such lavish treatment. This epiphany led her to ask the big question, who was going to do her soapy bottom when the time came. I don't want to say people actually recoiled, but I'm pretty confident I did hear one person's gag-reflex kick in. At this reaction, Marty reminded the three children that their parents weren't getting younger, and they might want to start wrapping their arms around the notion because it would soon be her turn to climb on the toilet seat and their turn to lather up those hands.

When everyone balked at the soapy bottom plan, Marty calmly said we could go the cloth diaper route. In the event you were not a cloth diaper house, Marty's version of this plan involved wiping with old cut-up socks and then rinsing them in a bucket that would sit beside the toilet. Then when the bucket was filled, those used, soaking socks would be washed, and the cycle would begin anew. As you might guess, plan B didn't get a lot of traction either. I'm not saying people would have preferred soapy bottoms, but rather no one was prepared to call those our only two options just yet.

By the end of the meal, Bella and Alex said they would just take showers after using the restroom. Anthony kept asking why we couldn't just use paper towels. I said I was just going to eat super healthy and exercise religiously so I would have nothing but perfect no-wipers. Marty said anyone was free to use the socks and bucket they would find next to the toilet.

Thankfully, at 6:48 a.m. on Tuesday, April 7th Marty and I found toilet paper at our local supermarket.

Now that we have dodged that near traumatic situation and I had time to study some hard choices, I can say there is a largish difference between CHOOSING to play soapy bottom and HAVING to play soapy bottom.

after anthony, who is five, goes poop he loudly calls from the bathroom "i'm done" and waits for someone to come and wipe him. if someone doesn't respond soon enough he calls, more loudly, "i said i'm done!". whenever i am home and hear this cry i try to be the one to respond since marty has certainly wiped enough ass that's not her own in the last eleven years i figure any soiled cheeks i can take off her hands is deserved and appreciated. last week when i pushed the door open and walked in anthony groaned. i asked what was wrong.

ANTHONY
i'm bored of you wiping me.

TROY
bored of me? you should be bored of mom.

ANTHONY
but mom does it better.

TROY
impossible.

ANTHONY (exasperated)
dad. i've been bored of you wiping me since after the first time you did it.

well. i do apologize that you find my company while cleansing your feces smeared buttocks so unappealing. how insensitive of me to not be more engaging during the wondrous opportunity you are affording me. please accept my most humble apology.

if you're thinking a child who is five should be wiping his own ass, i'm of the school of thought that no one should be left to that task until they think a job poorly done is a problem. anyone who doesn't mind a less than perfect outcome, in my eyes, is not ready for the task. and yes, i do appreciate that under this definition we all know people in their thirties who, technically, should still be wiped by a parent.

i'm sick. i'm convinced this and half of my illnesses ¹ can be tied back to a hand-shake i made with a person who i heard say, to someone else, moments later that they were finally coming over something. thanks.

while i love the cordial and storied tradition of the handshake, i think i've decided i'm done with them. as for how i'll dodge an outstretched hand i'll simply confess that one of my children is home sick and they don't want anything to do with the microbes that have pitched tents in my little humans. i figure that's like two slots below circling my office in a red CONTAGION tape.

oddly, i think hugs are still ok so don't by surprised if you suddenly find me all up in your business.

¹ the other half can surely be tied to surprise, wet, sloppy zerburts from kids with mucus plugs filling their nostrils or them taking pulls off my drink before i realize i'm sharing my cup with a plague victim.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. problem solving

a year or two back i was in a large bathroom stall of a public toilet with all three of my kids. one of them had just gone to the rest room and i leaned over to flush the toilet. bella put her hand on my arm and said in an alarmed tone:

BELLA
whoa! what are you doing?

TROY
what? i'm flushing the toilet.

BELLA
you can't do it like that.

TROY
like what?

BELLA
standing like that.

TROY
why not?

BELLA
don't you know that a toilet can shoot spray from the bowl, like, twenty five feet into the air when it is flushed.

TROY (straightening back up)
uh. no. i didn't know that.

BELLA
uhhh. yeah.

TROY
where'd you hear that?

BELLA
at school.

TROY
oh.

BELLA
and just think if there is pee or pooh in there.

some things:

1. what bella doesn't know is that while i'm surely fearful of pee or pooh being jettisoned at me in the form of a fine mist, clean water from a public bowl disturbs me almost to the same degree.
2. since that day, i have never flushed a public toilet without thinking of that moment with bella (not to mention using an outstretched foot and turning away as soon as the flush begins).
3. also since then, i've come to believe that she (and her teachers) are right in that a few times after flushing the toilet in my office, thanks to a bright frosted window in the stall, i can see small droplets flying through the air in volcanic-like antics.
4. and, by the way, where the hell was that lesson in my sixteen years of schooling?
5. i will confess that, as a grown man, it sucks to have your eight year old child so effortlessly place more obstacles for your neurotic mind to navigate. she's exerted more energy asking to have the potatoes passed her way.

regarding yesterdays post about poop and pooping, just like in real life, when it comes to poop and pooping, there's more.

for any surprised that marty and i still participate in our children's ablutions, we have tried turning them loose, but it wasn't good. and marty and i are in agreement that we're willing to wipe asses longer than we perhaps should be expected to if it saves us from stain-treating brown skids out of clothes and from furniture and off ceilings. for dodging these household chores and keeping our family's feces in the bathroom, we're willing to shoulder this grim, preemptive practice.

if you find my excuse weak, i'd like to invite you to come spend some time with our animated youngest. perhaps you could join the litany of one-time, college-age babysitters who have deemed him more work than organic chemistry, and this when he isn't hiding feces on his person or in his clothes. add a smear of rank and contagious excrement to the anfer-equation and the tables would tilt, irrevocably, in his favor. the consequence of which could cross state and possibly national borders. so you should not be questioning our choice, you should be thanking us for making it, hard and unappealing as it is.

i mentioned that we recently potty trained anthony. he has recently entered phase three of the potty training process. in the event you have never potty trained a human and aren't sure what the evolution of a developing toddler looks like, it is this.

phase 0 : not potty trained. totally comfortably deucing in their diaper and sitting with said feces in direct, warm contact with their ski...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. enjoy your anger

alex is peeing standing up. in watching him feel his way through this transition, one side of me wants to step in and counsel him on how he could do things better. another side of me sees how little i've come in 35 years of peeing upright. my own lack of progress keeps me both quiet and humble. truth told, there is really only one mistake he routinely commits that i never do and that is resting his penis on the rim of the bowl while he goes. of course the only reason i never do this is because my stuff doesn't reach the bowl. if it did, i'm sure i would take, and i don't think i'm alone here, the occasional break from hefting my phallus through the daily and arduous affair and just let it laze about on the cold porcelain while it does its deed.

people who own them and women who are married/living with them know of the variety of potential urinary misfires. i liken their haphazardness to those strobe light balls at dance clubs that randomly shoot multi-colored lights out of a spinning orb? when urination goes wrong it is a bit like that. but, instead of light they shoot fluid and instead of different colors they shoot variant types of streams (i.e. hissers, splitters, arc-ers). it's hard to get on a kid about this because it happens to grown men as well. when it occurs the best i can do is tell him to shake it, or whip it, or hit it, or tug it. while the approach seems mildly unscientific, it is the best we've got. reason is, penis flakiness happens with such pure unpredictability it's virtually impossible to study proper. so when it occurs your mind simply reacts and thus the shake, whip, hit and tug approach.

at a dinner party last weekend i mentioned our home's new kid-trauma to a fellow father. he has two older boys and asked if my son and i had yet crossed streams. i looked at him a little askew wondering if he forgot what a piddling four-year old was like because at the moment if i'm in the same room with him when he sets up, it is a mistake or an oversight on my part because i need a doorjamb between me and him until his reaction time is a little more in the sub-second range. i told the guy i hadn't yet had the pleasure. he looked at me nodding slyly and said "it's pretty cool the first time you cross streams with your boy. it's pretty damn cool."

something that makes all the random sprays and mystery puddles worthwhile is one of alex's more unique rituals. when he's done, he reaches to his left grabs some toilet paper, dabs the tip of his penis, drops the square in the water, pulls his pants up, runs his mits under the water, dries them on a towel and proudly exits the bathroom. what makes his routine unorthodox is that he doesn't tear the toilet paper square off of the roll before pulling it over to blot his penis, meaning that the next person to use the bathroom finds the toilet paper elegantly draped from the wall holder and into the bottom of the commode. you just gotta hope you've arrived on the scene before the toilet water has leached its way up the paper strand and into the full roll. admittedly, if the moisture does reach the source and i'm the first on the scene, i'm going to quietly make my way out of the house and ask the neighbors to use their facilities so i don't have to be the one to swap out the soggy roll in our home's only bathroom.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. i'm not sleeping there

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dad has to go

if we are at someone's home and bella has to use the restroom she employs the best of manners. she seeks out the host(ess), asks them where their restroom is and if she may use it. after receiving consent and directions she turns and hurriedly moves towards it. if what she has to do is poop, she will pause, turn and ask if they have father wipes<...

the family went camping this last weekend. one of the mornings i passed another fella in our party and commented on how impressed i was that he'd already showered. he said he hadn't and asked what made me think he had. my eyes drifted to his hair in that it looked wet and shiny. he noticed my gaze and ran his hand through it telling me that it was just oily and he needed to go wash it.

sorry dude. my bad.

this mis-speak seemed to make its way back to the camp because later his wife engaged me:

HER
so troy, how long does it take for your hair to look un-showered?

ME
as long as it takes for mcdonalds fries to start looking as if they're rotting.

HER
and, how long is that?

ME
i don't know, they're still watching them.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. things that are yellow

i wish i could say marty was talking to alexander when she said that but she wasn't, she was talking to me. yeah, that's right, i got THE TALK. the one virtually any man is going to get after they begin co-habitating with a lady-friend.

it was suggested that i sit down when i pee, like my friend chris. when chris first announced that he always sat to urinate when at home or friends, i was intrigued, but apparently not as intrigued as marty. little did i know she concocted a five year strategy to get me to do the same. it's so sad really because she's been architecting this move for years only to have its execution marred by the most minor of details; she pulled the trigger as we moved into the fall/winter season. the only reason i'm able to lower my cozy warm skin on the icy cold seat of our toilet once a day is for fear of soiling my pants, bookpimp style. sorry dear, but if it's any consolation there ain't no love in this world i could make such a chilling sacrifice for.

something difficult to do in my home; keep the roll of toilet paper hanging next to the commode dry.

and, it's wet for different reasons than the roll at the shell gas station down the street is wet ... or at least that's what i'm repeatedly saying aloud as i'm sitting on the john delicately pulling the moist plies of paper apart so i can use them.

as for why i haven't engaged the issue more aggressively; i've never felt more fresh or pampered.

bella obtained some new underwear that has a different day of the week printed on the front of each pair. a few of the days are missing which makes me afraid to ask where the pantaloons came from. my spidey-sense is whispering bad words in my ear. like words that begin with 'good' and end in 'will' or begin with 'salvation' and end in 'army'. don't get me wrong, 90% of my wardrobe has come from vintage stores or darkman's closet, but 100% of what i like to call my 'intimate line' came straight from the super-mall (or mail order). because there's no real reason to maintain the secret that used boxers are to troy dearmitt what punctured scrotums are to george constanza. for sanity's sake we're going to chalk bella's 5-day week skivvies up to lame packaging, dear lawd please let it be lame packaging and if it ain't please let me remain an ignorant old fool.

anyways, i've been looking for the adult, male version of these decision-free briefs. wondering how the adult, male model differs from the tiny, girl model? instead of the days of the week, they have, in block print across the front, the weeks of the month, as in week one, week two, and so on. sadly, this item seems to be quite in demand because every store i contact says they don't have anything like that in stock.

---

as for the quiet week, my dsl went out to lunch a few days ago. i'm making this post via the back porch of some out-of-town neighbors who left their wireless router on. truth told, i only started out on their back porch. i've since found a way into their home and am now sitting indian style on their king size bed, with my shoes on. and, yes, i did see if he had the cool weeks-of-the-month boxers. he doesn't. nor does his wife.

i've been showering daily (mostly) since i've been old enough to stand under a spray of water. it wasn't until LEVER soap's 1000 parts ad campaign came out that i realized what a suck job i was doing at bathing myself. when i first saw the commercial i'm sure i took it in with a wide-open mouth. 1000 body parts! frick! i counted out on fingers my known body pieces, bathing-wise, and came up about ...

last night i listened to a show discussing dream analysis on npr. as i took in the eruditic ponderings of the panel i thought of a dream marty had earlier in the week.

in the dream she woke up in the morning and smelled poop. she called into the kids room asking if anyone needed a diaper change. none did. she then marveled at the proximity and strength of the aroma. she threw the sheets ...

i'd pay killer money for someone to wash me everyday. i'd just sit there and lift my arm when told. roll over when asked. and close my eyes when prompted. i'd be the best person you ever washed. so why doesn't she get what a stellar perk this is?

my home needs a new toilet. our current toilet is over 80 years old, the original, and sprays water out of the supply pipe when flushed. it has needed replaced for some time but i have struggled with the decision. you see, the world is no longer accepting of these five-gallon giant killers. they've been banned, cast onto the growing heap of products deemed poor for our environment. for me, it is a...

bella went from absolutely loving baths to finding them acceptable to loathing them to the point that if water touches her skin she will shriek in a mad terror that brings the neighbors to our windows, hands cupped to the glass.

most recently she went on a three day jag of refusing to bathe. to put her in forcibly, while an option, was to put yourself in harms way. three days is a long time for an american to not bathe, especially when they live in my home. and especially when they pass the time playing games called DIRT and WORMS.

before having children marty vowed to not have one of those soiled and buger encrusted toddlers that other people were afraid to touch or be touched by. 86 hours into the water fast i asked marty about this missive. she half raised a hand in dismissal. upon seeing this gesture my mind placed this parental ideal in the junk drawer, next to 'will not throw food in restaurants' and on top of 'will not play in own feces' (that's one of my own).

hours later marty was sleeping in some part of the house. i in another with alex on my chest. i was stirred from sleep by someone poking me in the arm and talking to me. i began nodding in agreement and handing the remote over and promising to handle it, whatever it was, later if i could just snooze for five more minutes. bella continued to speak and i continued to lie there with closed eyes:

dad, i don't need to take a bath tonight.

bella, you haven't had a bath in three days

but ...

skipping tonight would make it four, so no deal.

but, i put special scasoli on so i don't need to.

you put what on?

i put special scasolee on so i don't need to.

what is scasolee?

no dad. vascolee?

bella, i don't know what you're saying.

vascoleen dad. vascoleen!

what? Vaseline?

yes. dad. i put Vaseline on.

where?

everywhere.

(i squint my eyes open to see bella naked and every visible shred of skin shiny, slick. and i'm talking from hairline to the tops of her feet.)

ok bella, go tell your mother.

ok dad.

(as she turned to leave i could see that even her backside had sludgy streaks of petroleum coating it.)

on the very rare occasions when marty and i wake up before both children, we drift to the center of the bed and unconsciously wrap ourselves in one another. i can't exactly describe the embrace. a leg is wrapped here. an arm will get tucked over there. etc. just take my word for it that it works quite well and proves to be one of the most serene blips in our lives these days.

recently marty mustered the energy during one such session to whisper in my ear that i smelled like sauerkraut. i gave her the obligatory and frequently used, "whatever". twenty minutes after she left the bed i wondered what she was cooking downstairs, surprised that she would have something in the oven at this early hour. it only took a few minutes to realize the culinary treat i was smelling was me.

but it still wasn't sauerkraut.

i'm coming off two weeks of being off. going into it i had large visions of all the stuff i would accomplish. while i started out strong i petered out about 79 hours into the sabbatical.

as for what i do have to show for my vacation; one partially painted dining room. unless you would like to include pulling four inch-plus hairs from my neck.

in college i majored in english. unfortunately i was not a member of the cool and sexy camp of creative writing, that was better left to the james kelly's of our world. my specialty was in analyzing the literary greats. while my first college roommate wrote a three page study on the black jellybeans left in the base of his mother's easter dish i was dissecting d.h. lawrence's rocking horse winner, explaining how the young boy was having sex with his mother and dying on the cross all while madly riding his wooden, rope-maned steed (the key was in the eyes, the boy's eyes crack the mystery wide open). i didn't exactly seek this discipline out, it's just what came easy to me, it's how my mind operated, and by the end of it all i was pretty good at it if i may for once make this site about me.

last tuesday night i was forced to use my powers not on the likes of Nabakov's Lolita but instead on Frankel's Once Upon a Potty. the task at hand, making isabella understand what was passing through the main character's skull when she defecated not in her potty but right next to it. many would think that explaining this simple scene would be an eyes-closed kind of exercise for someone trained in the craft. but i spent forty minutes on it before looking into bella's tired eyes and giving up. i accept that in the very near future i will find a tiny, toppled turd on the floor inches from bella's very own portable lavatory, all because i was unable to effectively convey the nuances of prudence's thought processes to my eldest child.

furthermore, when i find this misplaced turd on the floor, somewhere in my home will be a content and proud isabella. when i find her she will be smiling and by the time i pick her up i will be smiling too. but, i won't be smiling for the reasons you may think. my grin will come from the fact that i will feign ignorance of the mishap and marty, ever true to her nature, will be the one to scrape human feces off our breakfast room floor with a not-thick-enough paper towel.