|
HUMOR, VIDEO
|
(permalink)
07.30.2010
|
|
got nothin' on my manscape
|
|
|
|
|
PHOTO
|
(permalink)
07.29.2010
|
|
|
a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today.
July 2010
|
|
|
|
HEALTH, SCIENCE
|
(permalink)
07.28.2010
|
|
let's get crackin' folks.
|
yesterday i had a dental cleaning at 9am and my annual physical at 11am. i was for sure poked and prodded enough for two tuesday mornings.
for those wondering if the one-way sign staked by my rectum is still standing, it is. the streak survives, assuredly thanks to an uber-low psa count in my last blood work. although, my doc hinted that i should prepare myself because the sign's days are numbered. he even had the audacity to say the c-word ... colonoscopy ... which definitely makes a gloved pointer finger seem quite innocuous. and once you get into colonoscopy country i think the DO NOT ENTER sign gets replaced with a VISITORS WELCOME sign and tour bus parking lines painted around the entrance.
so ... prostate researchers of the world, i implore you to get your collective act together because it looks like you've got two, maybe three years to improve your diagnostic weapons to achieve my dream of you being able to tell me the state of my prostrate from the other side of the room ... and while i still have my pants on. as for the colonoscopy, well they use big drugs for that. they might just need to tackle me at work and start the drip there.
i'd be willing to pay extra for that.
|
|
|
KIDS, QUOTES
|
(permalink)
07.27.2010
|
|
people never knew the fountain of youth was actually just a pond, and in their own back yard
|
saturday bella ambled down for breakfast around 10:20 in the morning. she took her spot at the breakfast bar and professed to me, "i like sleeping late, reading for an hour and then eating breakfast five minutes before its lunchtime."
after she finished her proclamation, i stopped what i was doing to look at her. she could have passed for a preacher, prophet, philosopher, and truck driver, or all of them wrapped up into one which obviously looked peculiar coming from a well-rested, and mid-summer sated nine year old girl wearing pink pajamas with prancing horses on them.
|
|
|
FAMILY, TRAVEL, PHOTO
|
(permalink)
07.23.2010
|
|
summer 2010 vacation - photo vomit
|
fin
|
|
|
FAMILY, TRAVEL
|
(permalink)
07.22.2010
|
|
summer 2010 vacation - most enlightening
|
yesterday i talked about the what i found most surprising about my trip, today i wanted to share what i found most enlightening. the moment came in the last hour of the 208 hour vacation experience. we were almost home. the kids were playing in the back as they had the whole way there and the whole way back. marty, in the seat to me, had her head back on the seat rest, her eyes closed, feet on the dashboard and a pillow wrapped up in her arms as if it were a stack of books and she were walking to class. after glancing at her for a moment i broke the silence by saying that when i was younger i was always hyper excited for vacations and uber depressed to return from them. but now, while i still love and anticipate vacations, i no longer experience the extreme elation and even more extreme letdown i used to. i view this in a very positive way as a mark of my daily life and routines and i'm immensely appreciative to have reached a place as satisfying as this.
without opening her eyes, marty responded that the thing she disliked most about returning from vacation these days was the solitude of her life. confused, i commented that it seemed she got out a lot, through arranged, weekly events with other stay at home moms and friends and such. she elaborated saying she didn't mean solitude as in simply being alone but rather solitude as in not getting enough adult interaction and that spending the lion-share of your time with someone whose conversational repertoire predominately consists of the question 'why?' takes a dramatic toll on an educated and previously mentally challenged individual. she went on to say how she totally understood how not all moms (or dads) could manage staying at home with kids because the reality and rigors of just you and a child or two at home are serious. the occasional bouts of disbelief at the state of your life, rational or not, could be defeating. i thought of a new neighbor, fresh from philadelphia and at home all day with a thirteen month old while her husband is at work and her with no local network yet. then i thought of our friend e-love who teaches school full-time and then changes gears, dramatically, to care for their children full-time in the summer months. even though e-love has the advantage of nine months of diversity, i imagine his scenario has to be an even harder lifestyle than a straight full-time parent who has at least the consistency-crutch to lean upon. after marty expressed her sentiment she slid into her quiet reverie again. i let her be and drove on wordlessly.
for some time now, i've been doing an exercise on monday mornings. it is from the happier book i read last year. in the exercise you are to imagine you are at the end of your life and mere moments from death. you have the sudden ability to travel, via a time machine, to your present day self. you are asked to contemplate and answer the question, 'what is the one piece of advice your expiring self would give your present-day self?'. last monday, my first day back from vacation and the day after i had the above conversation with marty, my answer to that question was, "be more empathetic about how challenging my wife's job of raising our children is — and how extraordinary she is at this job."
|
|
|
FAMILY, PHOTO, TRAVEL
|
(permalink)
07.21.2010
|
|
summer 2010 vacation - most surprising
|
after a long family road trip and a week in a space that is not our home, the thing i found most surprising from this year's trip is how well our kids travel. they fare far better than i did as at their age(s) and i can't help but think they're better passengers than the seven kids packed into marty's family's wood-paneled station wagon, cage-match style. marty and i tried to dissect what it was that made our ilk so amenable to repeated twelve hour stretches in the car. i suggested that it was because they didn't routinely watch tv so their stimulus requirements haven't been unfairly "adjusted" thus making the notion of sitting in car for hours and hours untenable (we don't have a tv in our home so we obviously don't have one in our car, portable or otherwise).
but then there is also all the preliminary work marty does up front with their bins. here she goes out and buys a lot of dime store trinkets and activity books and travel games before the trip. she then sets each kid up with a bin or backpack of stuff they can do and throughout the trip sneaks new things into their stashes. although the older kids are now wise to her game and ask before we even leave if they can have a new thing now and if not when. also, with each new thing they get, alex is quick to ask if there are more new things or if the new thing supply has been depleted. hearing there might be another bauble or two in the wings creates a christmas eve like jittery anticipation.
this year i did something new and bought one thing to be worked into each kid's rotation. the one that got the most play was a license plate tracker game. it was a sturdy wooden plaque with the map of the us. on top of each state was a small block of wood that could be flipped. to start, you flip all the states to a text description of the state and its capital (after the kids learn the states, there is also a blank side option so you have to pick/find the state as well). when you see a car with a plate from that state, you call it out and whoever has the board will find the state, quiz the car on the capital and then flip it over, revealing a graphical representation of the state's license plate. the state capitals is something i never knew and would like to so i thought this would be a good way for me (and inadvertently my children) to learn them. it proved to be a great distraction and added a sporting element to our car time.
the other game i got for the trip and liked was a hangman game by the same company who made the license plate game, melissa and doug. although we only played a few actual games of hangman on it, it was mostly used by anthony to practice writing letters in the dry-erase part. what he would do is flip all the letters and body parts face down and then randomly turn the letters over one at a time. after flipping a letter he would draw it with the pen, and then erase it with his finger and go onto the next. i never quite figured out what criteria he used for flipping the body parts but there was some sort of logic at play in his head. in testament of how effective this was, before the trip anthony couldn't write a single letter, aside from the occasional, incidental capital i, and now the dude has written the entire alphabet many times, and with startling improvement.
another thing marty added this year, which i think started last year, was the kids get to pick one thing out at every gas stop. while the initial downside is it adds a small expense to the bottom line, the great upside is that they no longer clamor for mcdonalds which we only would ever eat at on vacation but have learned that they just want the toys and never eat more than six bites of the food and wind up starving again within the hour. and i've come to a point in my life where i can no longer stomach mcdonalds at all. and back in my work-traveling days, because of routine twenty minute lunches, there would be times i'd eat mcdonalds every day of the week, multiple weeks in a row ... and even liked it fine. but the best thing about the gas station allowance is watching the sorts of things the kids pick, the regrets they have about lesser picks, and how their choices fluctuate, sometimes wildly, seeing everything from bubble gum tape to a bottle of gatorade. the child's mind is a fascinating thing to watch, especially when it is confronted with selecting a single item in a labyrinth of florescent-lit of shiny, shrink-wrapped treats and eats.
|
|
|
FAMILY, PHOTO, TRAVEL
|
(permalink)
07.20.2010
|
|
summer vacation 2010 - personas
|
on last year's vacation, you may recall, we issued vacation moniker's to the kids based on a prominent behavior we observed given all the time we spent in and around each other. this year we did the same. this is the result:
- isabella 'bella daddy say whhaatttt??' walter dearmitt because of the mannerism she picked up from her hannah montana/miley cyrus marathon on one of the five televisions at our house rental. this is apparently something miley/hannah says at least once in every show using a funny, sing-songy affect which bella seemed to have perfectly captured.
- alexander 'nuts and weiners' walter dearmitt because of how silly he got running around with a friend close to his age that stayed with us in the house. these games rapidly devolved into the boys (via alex's tutelage) constantly referring to, singing songs about, or threatening to karate chop everyone's nuts and weiners in the house. i couldn't be prouder that my boy was the one to teach their boy this lovely and becoming mannerism.
- anthony 'pee-face' walter dearmitt because this is how he tries to keep up with his nuts and weiners older brother by calling everyone a pee-face. in mulling this over i've come to consider this an impressively effective and entirely under-used phraseology and one i will be introducing to my corner of society in the near future. which i guess ultimately means that in this cycle alex influences anthony and anthony influences me and this would be just about where i've always fallen on the trend-setting train my entire life.
and i reckon if we can brand the kids with personality-illuminating nicknames, there is no reason the courtesy shouldn't be extended to the parental units that allow the obnoxious behavior noted above to happen.
- marty 'twin bed' jean walter because even though our room had a spacious and inviting king sized bed with an expansive ocean view, marty slept on a twin mattress on the floor (with an obstructed view of the window) because she couldn't deal with sleeping with more than one person in the bed (anthony and i) regardless of its size. by the end of the week, marty was blissfully alone on her twin mattress on the floor while i slept with not one, not two, but all three of our children in what proved to be a veritable tangle of humanity and limbs.
- and i think i would have been branded troy "georges" lane dearmitt in honor of the book i was obsessively reading every free moment i could steal. the severity of my condition was fully exposed when i was caught reading in the corner of the toilet nook in our master suite's bathroom. i could see how an outsider might call it a bit off but this stool sitting beneath a skylight even if smack between the comode and the two-head, walk-in shower was made for a private moment and a good book, which georges by dumas so completely was!
|
|
|
KIDS, PHOTO, TRAVEL
|
(permalink)
07.19.2010
|
|
summer vacation 2010
|
you hopefully didn't notice but i was away last week. as for where i was, i was at the beach. as for which beach, it was one south carolina way, just south of myrtle.
as for the week ... simply put ... it was great. it was eight days shorter than our 2009 outing but in the
end proved more relaxing. i only left the beach house, for non-beach business, once. i never pulled my laptop out of its bag. i only had to respond to three emails (via an iphone). and, i read an entire book with days to spare. for a guy who enjoys time at home with family and who predominately sits in front of a computer and never gets as much time in his books as he'd like, i'd say the week was everything an over-committed, into-his-kids, introvert could ask for.
oh, and marty and i got some ok minutes together as well.
|
|
|
COMEDY, VIDEO
|
(permalink)
07.16.2010
|
|
one of my favorite ever stand up shows ever
|
|
|
|
FRIENDS, SOCIETY
|
(permalink)
07.15.2010
|
|
it's my "that's what she said"
|
i was talking with neighbor on the sidewalk in front of my house. she was walking her dog. a woman approached on the other side of the street. she was also walking a dog. when the dogs saw one another they started whimpering and making lunges against their leashes towards the other dog. the other-side-of-the-street woman seeing the dog near me, crossed the street directly for us. when she arrived the dogs began twisting and sniffing and jumbling up together mixing and crossing the two leashes crazily. no one said anything. then the woman extricated her leash from the mix, said good day, and continued on her walk.
the woman i was talking to me looked at me and asked if i knew the woman. i said i did not and that i assumed she must have. the woman scrunched her face, turned to look at the departing woman, turned back to me and derisively said, "who does that?"
the phrase "who does that?" and the intonation it was delivered with at that moment became my favorite quip and i've used in no less than five times since hearing it.
|
|
|
QUOTES, BOOKS
|
(permalink)
07.14.2010
|
|
move you ass!!!
|
"A textbook case. Trust you me, young man. Go after your girl. Life flies by, especially the bit that's worth living. You heard what the priest said. Like a flash."
"She's not my girl."
"Well, then, make her yours before someone else takes her, especially the litle tin soldier."
"You talk as if Bea were a trophy."
"No, as if she were a blessing," Fermin corrected. "Look, Daniel. Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it."
excerpt from the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon
|
|
|
FAMILY
|
(permalink)
07.13.2010
|
|
taking bella's notion of togetherness to an all new height.
|
last week i talked about our time dog-sitting. there was an oscar detail i forgot to share.
in our current games of musical beds in the night, most days puts me and alex waking up together on a futon in the ping-pong room (anthony having made my usual and expected spot his place of choice). one morning when i woke up alex was staring at me with bright eyes. this was my first conversation of the day:
ALEX
good morning dad.
TROY
good morning alex.
ALEX
dad.
TROY
yes.
ALEX
one time oscar was licking his nuts and then i saw a red thing come out of his privates and it was shiny and it was soooo gross ... and he was licking it.
people often comment on how calm and passive i come off at work. when your day begins with colorful, and wide-eyed descriptions of aroused, self-stimulated male organs, there ain't a lot life can throw at you that will sound alarming or disturbing.
|
|
|
WIFE
|
(permalink)
07.12.2010
|
|
modern day archie and edith
|
once a year marty and i pick a show to watch together. we start at the beginning or wherever we left off and watch one episode a night until we are all the way through or caught up as much as is available. we watch at my desk, each in an office chair pushed up side by side in front of the laptop.
many of the nights i'll pop some corn. one night i noticed we each had a way of selecting our next piece of popcorn from the bowl. i watched her pick a piece or two and then sedately asked her how she selected her pieces. flatly, she said it was based on size. she then asked me how i picked mine (i guess i wasn't the only one that noticed our technique). i told her based on butter-coverage. then without further commentary, we returned to watching our show. this is marriage. knowing how and why your partner selects the pieces of popcorn they do from a bowl full of corn.
the show we are watching right now is lost. in a recent episode there was a scene where a woman had to leave her child, never to see him again. as the moment concluded i commented that i could never do that, walk away from my child knowing it was possible i'd never see them again. without looking away from the screen and between bites of popcorn marty replied that she could walk away at three in the afternoon. still without looking at me, she added it would be harder at night when they were sleeping and still and cute.
i was only momentarily shocked by this answer because i've heard people comment to marty how cute her kids were and they wish they could take one home. marty would tell them to come by tomorrow afternoon after two and before six because odds were fair that they could take one, two, and possibly all three home. this is another facet of marriage. knowing what time of day your spouse is most likely to give your children away in a fit of exhausted rage.
|
|
|
WEB, VIDEO
|
(permalink)
07.09.2010
|
|
if this doesn't incent you to buy this book, i fear nothing will
|
|
|
|
QUOTES, KIDS
|
(permalink)
07.07.2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAMILY
|
(permalink)
07.06.2010
|
|
somebody shut the front door!!!!!
|
we've been dog sitting for the last five weeks. he is a small, light-shedding, black and white terrier of some sort named oscar. he was obtained from a shelter by the family of a friend of marty's. he is very mellow and easy going which can be mostly seen in how he shoulders the unpredictable life of sharing living quarters with anthony.
the first week oscar was with us alex kept a small supply of dog food in an R2-D2 toy clipped to his belt-loop. every time alex would pass oscar he'd stop the dog, hunch himself over, pat the dog on the head, and ask if he wanted a treat. the first few times oscar would sit there jittery with excitement, his tail swishing erratically behind him. alex would then fight to open the small toy given it's awkward position at his waist. once open, alex would pluck a few pieces of dog food out and lovingly say, "here you go oscar-boy" holding his palm out to oscar who would nudge and push the small bits around with his nose before tentatively pulling them into his mouth with a lapping tongue. after oscar discovered these seemingly sacred and hard to get to treats were no different than the dry food he was already neglecting downstairs, oscar's body language emanated an "are you kidding me" affect and the impromptu R2-D2 snack breaks waned.
a few weeks in, the dog's owner, marty's friend, called to check on things. alex was the one to answer the phone. before marty became aware the call was for her, alex had told the lady that oscar threw up on a rug and pooped in the basement and that these things made his mom yell. by the time marty intervened, alex had the poor woman on the brink of packing up her family and returning home early in attempt to salvage this maimed relationship. marty, using all of her skills and grace, demoted alex's apocalyptic descriptions as mere transition pains and said everything was good and fine.
because i nickname everyone and everything, i took to calling the dog osky. one morning when i passed through the kitchen for breakfast and bid osky a good day, anthony told me not to do that and that osky was a bad word. before i could defend myself, bella jumped in, telling anthony that osky wasn't a bad word. after a pause and a reflective grunt from anthony bella added, "that is unless you change the 'aaww' to an 'aahh', and remove the 'skee'. then you had a bad word. and if you added the word 'hole' on the end of that word, then you would have an especially bad word." there is something to be said for getting what you know will be your most terrifying and surprising moment of the day out of the way before you have even have pants on.
two days before oscar was to leave, i asked bella what she thought the best thing about having oscar was. she thought for a moment, just a moment, and said the best thing about having a dog was it brought our family closer together. i asked her to explain why. she went on to say that since oscar needed lots of walks it caused people in the family to go out together; she and mom, she and i, anthony and i, she and alex. and also, there were several times where we'd gather around to see how someone was playing with oscar because it was cute or funny. i will give it to the girl, she can make a solid on-the-fly argument that is more cogent than i've seen grown men make in the heat of debate. in thinking about her observation, i would say that in the last five weeks just about the only one on one time i shared with anthony was while he and i were out walking oscar. although i guess i should also count the numerous times when i was explaining to anthony, one-on-one, that a dog's anus is not its GO button even if it looks like one and pushing it does, without fail, make the dog go.
in the end, we've learned the kids are closer to being ready for a dog than they were a year ago. we've also learned the same could be said of their father even if my progress hasn't been as significant. and we've learned that when all is going well, marty could possibly be caught petting and loving on the dog. that said, we've also learned that when marty's not feeling the life with a dog, the dog and whoever is responsible for bringing the cur into marty's home better sleep lightly until marty's funk passes.
|
|
|
WEB
|
(permalink)
06.01.2010
|
|
peace out
|
it's that time of year again when i join the rest of blog-free america for a month. this year, i almost decided to not take my usual sabbatical but then a few things happened, three things to be exact. the first thing i wasn't around for personally, i just heard about it afterwards but when i heard what i missed i was beyond bummed. i thought if i had more time perhaps i could have seen it first-hand. the event in question dealt with a mother's outing (yeah, i know i'm a natural fit for that group) from the neighborhood. one of the women, who was quite drunk, turned to another one of the women, who is a hard-bodied, personal trainer, and told her that if she were a lesbian she'd be really, very attracted to her (the personal trainer lady). why can't the drunk people i'm around ever say classic, sexy stuff like that. instead, the drunk people i see say nothing but inane, bumbling, and predictable nonsense not worth remembering or repeating.
the second thing making me decide to take the month off is the last few days. usually i say i need time away because i'm getting hammered by life and am tired and burned out and spent and fed up. but this time it is the complete opposite. i'm none of those things. i'm stoked about my work, my kids, my wife, my days, my challenges. and i feel like i'm making ground and progress on all fronts and spending my days as i want to. this can very much be seen in my last four days which saw the following:
- i made big ground on a long-standing work to-do
- i received multiple, disconnected professional kudos and compliments
- my kids began their summer break
- alex and i went on a great end-of-school adventure (go-karting)
- three great-weather days (!!!) at our community pool (a pool i love to spiritual degrees) just opened up
- i made amazing progress on my mission to swim a mile (a goal currently two-years overdue but not forgotten or dashed)
- a family tennis outing
- great quality time with family
- time with friends i haven't seen much of
- time with marty (someone i also haven't seen enough of recently)
simply put, life is crazy good at the minute and i want more, more, more of it and want to live as distraction-free as possible for a bit.
and the third item is a blend of the above two and deals in time and in family. yesterday anthony was helping me do laundry and, more importantly, i had the time to let him help. he's actually a surprisingly good assistant. to begin, i deliver the laundry to the upstairs laundry chute. anthony's job is to send it all down the chute to the basement. granted you get a couple of bonus items like alex's shoes and anthony's train cars and bella's books but you also get all of the soiled clothes through his efforts. then downstairs anthony climbs into the laundry chute collector and pushes the clothes out onto the sorting table. when done there, he stands at the end of the table where i hand him the clothes an article at a time and say 'near one' (whites), 'middle one' (lights), or 'far one' (darks) and he throws them in the designated basket. the proper delivery of each article is met with great celebration and i can assure you a more exuberant laundry-man could not be found. during yesterday's laundry sorting when anthony was in the laundry chute pushing the clothes out, he paused for a moment to look up the hole as if something caught his attention. after a moment and as if he was speaking to someone he saw, he yelled, "if you're up there and can hear me, you are a pee-face."
it was at that precise moment i knew i needed to take my monthly sabbatical to BE with my family because while i'm always present i'm not always there and that is the very last thing i want to be remembered for. as always, i leave you with the monthly vomit:
what i'm eating
what i'm reading
sassafras tea
june gallery
i'll be back on tuesday, july 6th hopefully with many great stories and experiences to share and tell
|
|
|
WEB
|
(permalink)
05.28.2010
|
|
|
a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today.
May 2010
|
|
|
|
KIDS, PHOTO
|
(permalink)
05.26.2010
|
|
From way back in September of twenty-aught-four
|
a friend and former neighbor sent me the below email and pictures she recently happened upon.
Troy,
I was combing through my photos in search of candidates for 8x10 frames. This series made me pause. Not sure if you've seen them before. I think they capture your spirit to a tee. Appropriately, I named this section of photos "Fun with Troy". Not your typical dad. Most would never dream of letting kids climb on top of their vehicle. It's no surprise that you still make time to play Ogre with the kids at school.
this moment happened as i was driving home from work. a mess of neighborhood kids, including my two, were playing a few doors down from our house. all the moms were in huddles and sitting on steps chatting and commiserating. i pulled to the curb to say hello to the group. with the alacrity of a military operation, my car was besieged by the little ones (which was most likely set in motion by a war-like cry from bella). as suggested in the above note, my now-twenty-year-old car was (and is) treated as a playground apparatus. much of the coolness of this was lost on my children who climbed on my car in front of our house all the time, the same could not be said of the other kids who weren't allowed to climb on and in and around their parents cars so for them it was still pretty cool stuff.
i thank miss anne for (1) capturing these images back in the day and (2) taking the time to pass them along now. taking them in, and seeing a mini-bella and a tiny-aleo, reproduced the smile seen in the first image below. thank you miss anne.
and as a side note, i think had she told me she was in possession of a directory of images titled FUN WITH TROY that was from my past and didn't tell me the nature of subject matter, she may have been able to blackmail a pretty penny from my uncertainty. i guess i owe anne another thank you for not cleaning out the $64 in my savings account.
allow me to direct your attention to the girl in the passenger seat, who is not my child,
who is taking a giant pull from my water bottle.
the only surprise here is that drew beat bella to the top of the car,
via the sunroof of course.
that roof-spot is for a number of reasons, considered the catbird seat
i don't know what they're are pointing and laughing at,
but odds are it is not something in my favor.
good money could be put down on it being vomit or feces related.
one look at bella's face confirms that children come without guile or deception.
kids come to us clean and pristine. the uncertainty and insecurities come from the adults.
while i was fully prepared to do a lap with them glued hooey-blooey to all parts of the car,
a few of the moms thought that may not be prudent.
(and look at how close the side mirror is to completely capturing aleo's adorable little face.
how perfect would that have been.)
thanks again anne! you made my day!
you also made the day's posting much more colorful than what was originally planned. hat tipped.
|
|
|
QUOTES
|
(permalink)
05.25.2010
|
|
it's those pesky little things, the very little things.
|
Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a 1000 guineas. The money may be soon spent, and the regret only remaining of having foolishly consum'd it. But in the other case he escapes frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, & of their sometimes, dirty fingers, offensive breaths and dull razors. He shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.
excerpt from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography
|
|
|
KIDS, HEALTH
|
(permalink)
05.24.2010
|
|
fire in the hole
|
if you ever wondered how skittish marty is about letting one get by the goalie allowing for an accidental/unexpected pregnancy, your curiosity would have been well satisfied when alex mistook her birth control patch for a big-ass band-aid* and motioned towards it, offering to take it off for her. the way marty jumped and twisted away you would have thought alex was about to mistakingly pull the pin from a live grenade, which when you consider spending all day, every day keeping anthony alive, a pin-less hand grenade may be an astute and reasonable comparison.
* since the patch is larger than a conventional band-aid and was placed on her ass, calling it a big-ass band-aid was quite perfectly perfect. but please don't mistake this as me saying it was a band-aid on a big-ass which i think would be written as a big ass band-aid. perhaps grammar dave can set me straight because if i botch that and people misinterpret my message, the need for birth control in my home could become a moot point.
|
|
|
PHOTO, SOCIETY
|
(permalink)
05.21.2010
|
|
that reflective shield almost gave us more than we bargained for
|
someone who knew i adored this picture, was kind enough to send me this picture.
|
|
|
BOOKS, QUOTES
|
(permalink)
05.20.2010
|
|
fact once again schooling fiction, even internationally best-selling fiction
|
excerpt of an email i received from a second year law student and in regard to my Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review:
I had never heard of Stieg Larsson or his novels until I wrote a paper about him earlier this year. He died intestate and his live-in girlfriend of 30 years received nothing from his estate. Everything went to his "estranged" father and brother (at least his girlfriend claims they were estranged). Larsson was a heavy smoker and died of a heart attack after walking up five flights of steps because the elevator was broken. He died before any of his novels were actually published so he never lived to see literary success. His fourth and final novel is on a laptop that his girlfriend is holding as ransom. So maybe it's only fitting that the technology reference remains...it probably references the computer that holds Larsson's last novel.
|
|
|
WEB
|
(permalink)
05.19.2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
KIDS, ART
|
(permalink)
05.12.2010
|
|
deprived to the point of not being deprived
|
i came home from work yesterday and asked if the kids wanted to go hit tennis balls. bella had a friend over so declined. anthony only likes hitting things that are not tennis balls with the racket so he was out. alex was at a friend's house but due to come home. i called over and asked if i picked him up if he'd like to hit tennis balls. he said yes so i picked him up and we headed to the courts. on the way there he said he forgot something at the house and we had to go back. almost to the courts, i said we'd stop on the way home.
then we played tennis, which means i fed him balls while i stood at the net and he hit them back. i initially got the kids interested in hitting balls by saying the object of the game was for them to try to hit me. when i reminded alex of this yesterday he said we couldn't play that game. when i asked why he said because if he hit me, he would break my glasses and i would be mad. i like this kid quite a bit. so i fed him balls and he returned them not hitting me once.
then i said we had to wrap up and head home because dinner would be ready soon. he reminded me about stopping at his friend's house. i said i didn't think we'd have time and would have to get them later. he stopped and scolded me, firmly reminding me that i said we would go and i can never break a promise. never! i paused, looked at him and said, ok, but he'd have to be quick because we were late for dinner. and, i told him i wasn't even fully stopping the car. on the way to the house, i asked him what he forgot and he said his ds lites. since alex doesn't own a ds, lite or otherwise, i figured i misheard him but didn't bother asking him to clarify. when we got to the house, alex jumped out, ran in and came running back with a sheaf of papers in hand. when he returned to his seat, i asked what he had. he said his ds lites. upon inspecting the pages, he and his friend had drawn games on the pages as if they had ds lites. all i got to say is nintendo ain't got nothing on hangin' out at a bud's house after school, with a well-worn set of crayons spread between you at the kitchen table while you try to best each other's hand drawn games in the pre-dinnertime hours.
although the scene laid out in the below image looks eerily similar to the climax of the gimp escapade from pulp fiction, and i'm not entirely sure how i should feel about that.
|
|
|
QUOTES, BOOKS
|
(permalink)
05.11.2010
|
|
|
What the hell happened to all these sons of the rich in Wally's generation, these well-brought-up boys who went off to the private schools? These damned schools were producing a new kind of scion of the elite: a boy utterly world-weary by the age of sixteen, cynical, phlegmatic, and apathetic around adults, although perfectly respectful and maddeningly polite, a boy inept at sports, averse to hunting and fishing and riding horses or handling animals in any way, a boy embarrassed by his advantages, desperate to hide them, eager to dress in backward baseball caps and homey pants and other ghetto rags, terrified of being envied, a boy facing the world without any visible signs of the joy of living and without ... balls ...
excerpt from tom wolfe's A Man in Full
|
|
|
WEB
|
(permalink)
05.10.2010
|
|
drip-drip-drip.
|
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.
|
|
|
WEB
|
(permalink)
05.07.2010
|
|
i don't mean it in a bad way, but ...
|
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.
|
|
|
FAMILY
|
(permalink)
05.06.2010
|
|
how we roll
|
the third thing marty said to me the other morning was, "tonight i think you should get an erection at the dinner table and then show it to everyone."
if you're wondering how such a request comes to pass, this is how.
- it begins with an unfinished patio project in the backyard.
- this is followed by a two-hour game of boats and moats which involves the muddy patio pit, a running garden hose, and my three children (as well as a few neighbor kids).
- then comes a dinner call.
- before children may enter the home, they must be hosed off. for the older children, this can be done by them holding hands out and pulling pant cuffs upward. for the three year old, nothing is salvageable and he must be stripped of everything and hosed down like a reluctant prisoner being processed for incarceration.
- next comes the three year old's very usual reluctance to put a diaper back on which results with him eating dinner naked.
- shortly after thankfuls, the three year old looks at his lap and says his penis is 'giant'. to this, his biology teacher mother flatly says, "that is called an erection anthony which means a lot of blood has gone to your penis but you don't usually see it because it is usually hidden in your underwear" to which he says a reflective "kewl" and to which his brother who is already keen to the giant penis condition says nothing but his sister (who is not so keen on the condition) says, "neat, can i see."
- to this anthony says sure, stands up on his chair, juts his groin forward making his miniature staff hover over his prepared dinner plate of french toast and syrup.
- alex and marty paid him no mind. bella craned forward to see better. i sat taking the whole scene in and guessed this very scenario had probably never gone down in our eighty year old dining room and thought it was super cool (kewl) it was unfolding (pun prop) right before me.
standing there as he was, he looked like a miniature gladiator home from expanding the empire, and for me conjured images of roman decadence and pride.
- without looking up, and while stabbing a few bits of french toast marty said (again flatly), "boys at my dinner table don't show off their penises while the family is eating so please sit down and finish your meal."
- and once again, marty earns our home's title of 'spoilsport'.
|
|
Monorail Archives
View A Random Post
|
|
