Some Early feedback and giveback received from Baya shortly after the new site went up: I have a feeling more of the learned and inspiring content may be soon coming from my three children, none of which can really be described as children anymore.

Welcome to the revitalized DeArmitt dot com. Honestly, I cannot recall if this is the third, fourth, or even fifth time the site received an overhaul in its twenty four year existence. While I may not know how many times it has had an adjustment, something I can say with absolute confidence is the versatility of the initial design has been unexpectedly remarkable—doubly so given this is only the second website I ever made. That it has shouldered decades of change on both the technology AND consumption fronts is surprising. Bookpimp's initial feedback after seeing the new design: "I like it. It still has all the DNA but mixed up with some of the chaff removed." Lean with some sheen was the goal. Happy to have landed at least near the mark.

A few things to note: 

• The new Home page includes a Past Post of the Day and a Publication Schedule! I’ve always felt bad about the erratic and uncertain nature of when new things would appear. I don’t ever want to let down people kind enough to support this site, let alone be a weekly letdown. So going forward, I will plan on scheduling updates so you don’t have to play the is-there-content-this-week guessing game. 
• All past content has been tagged, meaning over 2,600 items have been individually read and cataloged. That work was the most grueling part of the renovation, but given the varied content in this collection, it was a meaningful update that needed to happen. In all, that review took four months and happened in eleven states (Chronologically Mo, Ut, Wy, Co, Pa, Nj, Ct, Va, Wv, Ga, Nc). 
• The Site Archives page has been reorganized by era.
• All of the pages have been refined to make their presentation more digestible (e.g., larger fonts, better organization). I’m most pleased with the look of the TroyScripts.
• The What I’m Reading page also saw a significant update. There is still a sizable amount of missing data there. I'm working on backfilling books, reviews, and quotes but did not want that to hold up the site release.
• It is not ready yet, but the second region of the site has been dog-eared for a future site extension called Troy Notes. I’m not sure when that will come online, as it needs a healthy bit of design consideration. 

I hope you enjoy the newly restored site. Since promoting it a few days ago, I have been sleeping better, knowing I no longer have the most dilapidated house on my virtual block. 
dearmitt dot com Home Page
BEFORE July 2024


dearmitt dot com Home Page
AFTER July 2024

Someone recently told me I lied to them. When I asked why they thought that they said I told them I was going to start posting more and then didn't, which made me a liar-face.

Yeah. So. Sorry bout that. She wasn't wrong. But she wasn't entirely right either.

The thing she, and none of you can see, is the fervent work happening on the dearmitt dot com restoration. I'm so excited to unveil it but there is so much work to do to reverse and correct the years of neglect. But please know that this work is underway, obsessively so, and you will soon be sailing down this branch of the internet highway again, with your arm out an open window and you singing, full-throat, to the valley girl soundtrack.

In 2016, I left my job to start a company. I still vividly remember an exchange with an older guy shortly thereafter.

OLD GUY
Oh. So you started your own company?

TROY
Yeah. I’m a little nervous but more excited.

OLD GUY
Sure. Fun stuff. Being your own boss is great. Want to know the best thing about having your own company?

TROY
Sure. What ...

Many people wondered over the decades why I NEVER used proper capitalization when I wrote. The answer is to save time. I can type faster without having to mess with the shift key. Further, I never thought the capitalization merited the extra keystrokes in the type of writing I did. If I ever wrote a book, I would use proper capitalization because I think it would aid in the readability of it. But with the short, silly things I do here, I never thought it mattered enough to be bothered with.

Some have noticed I've started using proper capitalization this week, and are again wondering why. Curiously the answer is the same, to save time. Now the places where I write for this site auto-capitalize everything. I know it is possible to go and mess with settings, but I write and edit things in various places. The way tech runs these days, it has become more effortful to craft everything in lowercase than to just let nature run its grammatically-correct course.

So, in summary, I used to not capitalize things to save time. Now I capitalize things to save time. I know. Confusing. But as Gale Snoats told H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona, "This can go hard or easy H.I." That was no lie in 87 and it is no lie now.

good friend bookpimp called me recently to tell me i was in a dream of his. he described it as such: the next day he called me to tell about my place in history. he said that when he read this in his dream, he chuckled. and the worker even asked him why he laughed. he played it off saying he knew something about one of the sites. i could totally see that playing out as there are few things sweeter in this world that a genuine bookpimip chortle.

dreaming my work is not only in the top 10 of pivotal sites to mankind, but third on the list, should definitely earn you top-billing on the super-fan list. vp at the least.

and i don't think we need to hire a fancy dream analyst to gauge bookpimp's mood on the current state of affairs.

this week i'm going to be be doing something a little different. the more astute of you may have noticed that i have let this year's monthly gallery section lapse, by quite a bit. there have been times in the past where i've missed a month or two but could dig out without much issue. this year, i have fallen 8 months behind which will require a bit more to recover.

first, in explanation of the arrears, in January my company won a contract that we kinda thought we weren't going to win. the good side was this was a huge get for our small and new company. the bad side is this meant a whole lot of work for our small and new company. this is why the last gallery post happened in February.

so i have made a plan to mend this motley fence by posting two long-form pieces. the first is about family pets and the second is about family lessons. this week will be a five-part story about our experience fostering dogs.

Part 1 - Mom hates dogs.

ok. so i've been away for a bit. i know. it's not that i don't still love you all or that my interest in this website has waned. neither of those things are true. the basic answer is over the last few months i have had less time available to document my life.

the first reason for this is my children. when your kids are young life often feels like a merciless beat-down that takes all of your time and energy. and this is true in many regards. you are often told that when your children are older you get your life back. this is also true in many regards. the problem no one mentions is when your children are older they like doing cool things, cool things that you want to do with them. fact is they sorta start looking like grown, real people. and not just people but people you like, i guess maybe in part because you are alike in a lot of regards. but it is also true that you start getting your own life back, which is great. problem is you don't have the bounty of free time you had when you were 25 so now you're trying to shoe-horn your own interest inbetween moments of hanging out with these, in my case, three new adults you like spending time with.

all this equates to more living of life and less writing about life.

and as if this didn't throw enought sand in the gears of time, i have a new child of sorts--my company ofCourse Scheduling. it obviously has placed certain demands on my time that aren't the sorts of things that can be back-burnered. while there is usually a natural divide between my new company and my old life, there are occasional overlaps. one collision recently happended when two months ago i decided i should start a newsletter about my industry. in doing this planning one of the things i realized was i needed a body of seed content to start the newsletter off. so i have been writing, fervently, for the last two months, only i've been writing about something other than myself, my wife and my children. while most civilians aren't probably into course scheduling for universities the evidence of my labors can be seen here: The ofCourse newsletter.

but, now that that boulder is safely perched atop its hill, i'm eager to turn my writing cycles back to the crazed lot i live with. i thought a sensible starting point might be to share a recent moment from each of the cast. so this week we will have five updates to the family scrapbook, one day for each person. obviously you can't really lead off with anyone other than the family matriarch so here i introduce the first recap: Family Scrapbook (Marty) - Your vagina is how old?.

part 1 is here

2009
anthony lotion


2010
mom


2011
boyhood


2012
potty words


2013
someone to love

vcr


2014
black

2015
you spilled


2016
hear out

new car

selecting past posts to share was a much harder assignment than i expected but not for the reason you would think i would say, at least not fully.

finding anything of merit in the early years of the site is very challenging. i was a blathering dolt. and i know this. i know this now at least. and it is why i nearly deleted the first five years of the site one night. but a reader, the way-with-words girl from seattle, convinced me to leave it in tact. now, yes, she agreed with me that the early days were quite the embarrassment and i was a competition-grade bore but the point she made was that when viewed en masse you get to see an opinionated and self-absorbed CHILD transform into an opinionated and self-absorbed ADULT. she was obviously kinder in saying this. she more eloquently, as is her way, put it as "you get to see the birth of a man". namely because there was a lot of sharing about what a fumbling parent looks like. so to protect the transformation story, that early stuff will stick around. but you can't know how hard, painful even, it is for me as it really is quite embarrassing.

so while this began as finding my favorite posts, it turned into trying to find ANY posts in the early years to then when my children were older and more entertaining to limiting myself to just a few posts. so this is far less organized than i hoped and represents a collection of posts that my memory drew me to.

2001
the start of it all


2002
dad nursing


2003
aleo


2004
sonogram glove


2005
marty in florida


2006
alex toys

anfer


2007
a morning in the life

bloody anthony

FSU


2008 (the year of the bathtub)
alex sleeping in the tub

bella tub battle

stroller debacle

the other day bella and i were driving and discussing a recent event. after rehashing things, she said it was ok if i posted that story on my website. how telling is it that i find posting things with the subject's permission less satisfying than when they have no idea it's coming.

i'm a not-broke-don't-touch-it kinda guy. as such dearmitt.com has been quietly existing on the same server for the last fourteen years. in case you haven't been watching, a thing or two has changed internet-wise since 2000 so i thought it might be time for an upgrade.

in addition to running on shiny, new hardware (which if the move went well, you shouldn't notice at all) there have been two changes, both modest enough.

first, you can now travel back ten years in time using the MonoRail Archive Viewer (which lives just below the the latest posting). the archive viewer used to only offer 7 years worth of memories but can now proffer you an additional three.

the second and surely more meaty of the two features is the site now offers a proper, meaningful SEARCH function. for reasons i cannot explain, google's cataloging of my content was ridiculously terrible (they thought i mentioned circumcision twice). given their reputation and record for success i'm sure the problem resides somewhere on my end but i'm too busy talking about circumcision and hating on walgreens to figure out our marital disconnect so instead wrote my own search engine. there's a link on the right-hand side of the monorail page ( WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR > > >) that will take you there.

there is a nifty feature on the search page i think some of you might enjoy. you will find two buttons below the search box. one that says "SEARCH ALL dearmitt.com content" and the other which says "view all updates from the LAST 30 DAYS". the SEARCH ALL option will, obviously, scour all the main nooks and crannies of the site: the monorail, the main gallery, the troyscripts, the family gallery, the reading section. a few of the galleries and sub-pages are not yet part of the main search. this may get fixed down the line but there's a reasonable chance it might not get fixed down the line. it kinda depends how many circumcision debates i get into in the years ahead.

the second button, or the LAST 30 DAYS button, might be a good fit for folks who swing by every few weeks as it will nicely lay all of the content, no matter what section of the site it got posted to, before you in a clean orderly line. additionally for your convenience, you can bookmark right to that page using this link.

i hope you enjoy the new digs.

first off, sorry for dropping out like that. i do believe it is the first time i have dissapeared for that long, sans explanation in the fourteen year existence of this site, but, well, you know, life.

the lapse began after i had one of my most tumultuous weeks i can remember. there were dramatically high highs which the universe followed up with unexpectedly low lows. by week's end i was a bit of a spent mess. everything is back to great though. it just took a minute to let my mind cut it all down into consumable, bite-sized chunks. minutes up. chunks swallowed. moving forward. trending upward.

if you're wanting examples, i won't bore you with the lows, as who wants to document or read about those, but will share a sample high. on may 25 i drove bella across town to attend a roller-skating party. whenever bella wants to get somewhere on time she taps her time-obsessed father who attempts to respect other peoples' time as much as his own. when we pulled into the lot i commented on how empty it appeared. after checking the invite in her lap bella smiled at me uncomfortably and confessed that she may have gotten the time wrong and we were an hour early. now this may seem minor to some but sixty mid-day, beautiful-weathered weekend minutes to a guy who likes distance bike riding and reading on the porch is like four hours any other time of the week. no stranger to my ticks, my daughter knew this was no minor mis-read. i breathed deeply and circled us out of the barren lot at a clip a police car would have noticed. wanting to avoid the busy avenue that brought us here i turned us deeper into the neighborhoods and we unhurriedly glided our way through the tree-lined streets pointing out houses and yards we found interesting.

after passing a sprawling church complex i made a u-turn and pulled into its lot. i drove to the dead-center of the large, carless, blacktop and turned off the car.

BELLA
what are you doing?

TROY
you said you wanted to learn how to drive.

BELLA
what? like now?

TROY
yeah, why not do something worthwhile with this unexpected free-time.

BELLA
oh my god! oh my god! yes. ok.

i then taught my thirteen year old (just turned) how to drive a stick-shift ... in seven minutes. the brief experience, twenty minutes end to end, culminated with bella driving figure eights in a church parking lot. my 91 bmw softly and slowly sailing across the smooth pavement, windows down, sunroof open and the biggest smile possible stretched across my fearless daughter's sunlit face. after we traded seats and headed back to the skating rink i told her that she, at thirteen, could do what a great number of adults could not, and she should feel like a bad-ass because of it. her beaming face and quaking frame revealed that she did.

so these are the sorts of things (e.g. the highs at least) i'm experiencing and as long as i'm the one charged with both having and documenting the happenings, the math will quickly show there are just not enough hours in the day. but i don't want to become that guy who just appears every now and again, and only when it is convenient for him and never for you (e.g. like that fair-weather college pal who is only hangs out between love interests) so i've given some thought to how i can continue to nurture this website (and our relationship) and still lead my new hurly-burly life. here's what i've come up with. if you look in on monday and there is no posting, there will be no content all week. but if you look in on monday and there is a post, then there will be a post every day of the week. i think in a relationship like this there needs to be some sort of understood expectation.

of course the thought of just stopping rolls off my mind's ticker-tape machine every now again but for personal reasons i wish to continue recording my family's moments and i have learned this vehicle is an imperative part of that commitment. for those of you that enjoy reading along, you incent me to pull my act together. without you, it's a very hard affair so i appreciate your on-going participation more than you understand.

my two core objectives with this site are:
1. to continue chronicling the funny, sad, curious, and note-worthy moments that occur in my home full of children.
2. to see that what i document is thoughtful, edited, and not being done for the wrong reasons (which has surely happened from time to time in the past).

most important to me is that i don't create an expectation that forces me to produce content against a schedule i can't maintain, well at least maintain and try to keep the content on point and thoughtful. because i find when we let such standards go, pride in the product being produced is not far behind.

people have long chided me that my kids would one day revolt towards this website. the below exchange between bella, age 13, and i affirms my choice, thus far at least. and, yes, i'm documenting this here in case her position ever changes.

over a decade ago i made the decision to close my kid's dedicated photo galleries after their fifth birthday (and one hundred photos). now that anthony has crested both of those milestones i find myself without an outlet to capture and share the occasional image of my people. while maintaining this website over the past twelve years has tortured me in a number of ways, it has also spoiled me in many more. my expedient ability to fix this sudden case of the jitters being one of the good sides. thus, allow me to introduce you to our family scrapbook.

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.

most guys obsess about fried food, hollywood starlets, first-person shooter games, fast cars and/or fantasy football. i used to work with a guy who obsessed about grammar, or more accurately, broken grammar. for this guy my site and its quickly penned material was like porn of the highest caliber. most correspondence i receive from him contains a bulleted list of errors he's found in my ramblings. that said, the latest message i received from him surprisingly did not contain a litany of my blunders.


first off, he's going to have a hard time convincing me he didn't pen that retort. and secondly, i for the life of me can't imagine why that banter would lead him to me.

you'll notice a new feature here on the monorail, an archive viewer (it will always be just below the most recent post on main monorail page). this tool, which allows you to quickly peruse entries made on (or around) the same day from previous years, is the product of my readership's schizophrenia. meaning, it is not at all uncommon for me to post something and then get feedback that covers the full spectrum of possible opinion. if i post a picture one person will comment on how cute it is. the next person will call me a cop-out for posting an out-of-focus picture instead of writing something original. if i write a long post people will complain that they've got better things to do and i'm an average writer and i should stick to shorter thoughts or pictures. and others yet will say i should delete everything from the site other than the troyscripts. so, you can see why i'm feeling a little off balance. and from this need to please i present the archiver. with this, if you don't like what was most recently posted, you can pop though and pick something from the last seven years in search of something that may more closely suit your particular needs.

and as for why i stop at seven years. it is my observation i was a complete bore before i had children. this is obviously not to say i'm still not a bore, it's just to say that now that i have funny, little humans underfoot, i have more, less boorish, things to talk about.

at a dinner party, one of the mothers in attendance approached me and said the children were downstairs having a debate about whose father had the loudest and smelliest flatulence. she told me that bella was delivering a very persuasive argument which the woman doubted anyone would be able to best. i smiled awkwardly and said 'kids' with a shrug of my shoulders.

on the way home i contemplated explaining to bella how some things are personal and my gas is not something to be shared publicly. i never got a chance to have the talk because i got distracted thinking about today's post where i would talk about her talking about me and me not talking to her about how it wasn't appropriate for her to talk about me publicly.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. uhhhhmmm

it's that time again. that time when i take a break from you and you take a break from me.

as is customary, i'm loading you up as i run out the door.
sassafras tea
what i'm reading
what i'm eating
june gallery

and, a monorail entry because how could i leave you without sharing a bella-creation. today is bella's last day of school. this year, bella's teacher was very into reading and writing so she and bella got on just famously. below is the thank you card bella made this very special teacher. and this afternoon when school is really done and this card has been delivered and school is shuttered for the summer, bella and i are off for our special end of school day where i take the kids out. alex who wrapped up a few weeks ago went go-karting. bella thinks she is going horseback riding (again) but instead we are going out for a big steak lunch followed by a day of roller coastering.

additionally, the below card is the first time bella every capitalized the A in her last name. for people without a middle cap in their name, this may seem trivial. for those that carry the burden in life, it is not.

this year it seems extra-fitting that i'm beginning my month sabbatical on the same day summer starts, for everyone in my home at least. it's got me feeling a bit childlike and giddy myself.

i'll be back with you on monday, july 6th.


click to enlarge

on the way home from having dinner out on saturday night walt and i dropped in on friend we haven't seen in awhile. in fact we hadn't seen him in so long we learned not only was he moving out of his house the next day (they were doing their last minute packing when we arrived) but he and his new girlfriend were expecting their first child in a few weeks. during the few hours we sat with them amidst a bunch of cardboard boxes and stacked art the guy mentioned to me that a mutual friend of ours recently bitched to him about my website, this website, saying that i should try writing about something other than my kids. while i have gotten my share of complaints and requests for different sorts of content (i.e. too long, too short, more pictures, more stories) i must say this was a first. no one had ever told me to stop talking about my kids and talk about myself more. if there ever was a common thread among readers of this site it is an agreement that my parental observations are the life-blood if not the only content of merit on this site.

of the rare instances i've meandered through my archives to the the pre-bella days, i'm embarrassed by what i find. truly. it is some really horrific and boorish stuff. so much so, every time i see it i consider culling the first few years out of the database en masse. what keeps me from doing so is the documented genesis in my life and written voice. for me personally it is noteworthy. most of all though when i look at that early stuff i wonder what kept my seven visitors coming back. i guess i have better friends than i thought. or more deluded perhaps. but ... to show i can be a good listener, this one time, for this one guy, i'm going to do something i've never done and deliver some on-demand, by request content and share something of myself instead of my kids or my wife.

as any routine reader of this site knows, i sleep naked. fact is anyone who speaks to me, lives near me or even drives by my house knows this. as for the people who live directly south of me, they really, really know this given their window's vantage points to my stairwell and kitchen (sorry about that one morning ann). the other day i overheard marty on the porch telling a neighbor-lady that since my surgery i was no longer sleeping nude. i heard both women express surprise. marty almost sounded concerned for my well being. not so much so that she addressed it with me though. curious, i drifted onto the porch and both women uncomfortably looked at me. the neighbor lady, who is charmingly forward broke down and asked. i took a seat and began to explain. first, i said that right after my operation there were a bunch of different people in and out of my bedroom where i was permanently laid up. at one point, even one of my female college students dropped by. obviously i felt quite vulnerable and helpless in this state so always made sure i was presentable to any audience. as i started to heal and could get around a little bit, i continued to always have something on. when the ladies asked if this would be a continuing trend i confessed that only as long as i remained on crutches. when they asked why the crutches mattered, i explained that i had already tried returning to my ways but the first time i crutched to the bathroom with nothing on i was struck, intensely, by how unseemly my swinging and hanging and slapping business was. it was so striking, i actually turned around before ever making it to the restroom and put on shorts before resuming my trek.

what i've learned is this. it is one thing to stand or walk cooly about your home with all your business out there, it is totally another to thrust it through the air in confident and sweeping arcs of your body forcing a daunting 3D experience onto any who have the misfortune of being between you and your destination. i wouldn't wish that on you, my children or the one woman in the world generous enough to sleep with me.

so there you go, a troy-story or as close to a troy-only-story as i'm able to give you. hope that slakes your unique need.

for about three years now i have had a line-item on my to-do list that read:

redesign 'what i'm remembering'

i'm finally checking that off and i invite you to visit the new and even more revealing version of what i'm remembering.