WEB 
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06.01.2009
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a man's gotta live
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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
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WEB, PHOTO
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05.29.2009
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more family photo fun
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i received several comments on the awkward family photos site i linked to a few weeks back. one person (thx dionna) even sent me a link to another, similar site.
i find the key factor to success for funny picture sites is not just the picture itself but the commentary the host attaches to a photograph. without the proper wit, the full potential is not met. here's an image/caption example from the site dionna sent my way:
It's a vagina, madam, not a clown car.
i don't know that you're going to do any better than that. if this were the olympics, that would be a solid 10.0. check out his other work.
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FAMILY
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05.28.2009
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ghost writer
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below is bella's journal entry regarding nate's demise.
it is important to note that this is not bella's journal entry in her own journal, but this is bella's journal entry in alexander's journal. it seems she has taken up journaling about moments of import in alex's life in alex's journal i guess until he is able to do so himself. a bit more time and she very well may take over publishing content to this site as well. which would make sense enough given forty percent of the content is about her anyway.
click to enlarge
transcript:
THE DAY NATE DIED
nate died may 26, 2009. it was a very weary day. the day nate died he would never move again except in heaven.
everyone came and said their goodbyes. ellie, big ben, molly, me, my dad, cate, and of course the owner
of the wonderful pet, my brother alex. we buried him under our favorite place to be, the swing that we all love to swing on. it was a sad, sad day. we all loved nate but we knew that he would die and the very next day he did. that is today.
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FAMILY
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05.27.2009
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now i see why people start with fish
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i was in my office. it was late afternoon. i was talking with my boss on the phone. my cell phone rang. it was a call from home. my cell phone ringing was rare. and a mid-day call from marty even rarer. i said as much to my boss and asked him to hold on.
troy
hello. marty? is everything ok?
bella.
this isn't marty. it's bella.
troy
oh hey bella. can i call you back in a minute?
bella
why?
troy (pause and smirk at the very fair question)
never mind bell. what is it?
bella
it's nate. he's dying. he's mostly out of his shell.
troy
oh. i'm sorry.
bella
we don't think he has much time left. you should come home as soon as you can. alex is quite upset.
troy
ok. i will. thanks bella. sorry.
nate is alex's hermit crab and our family's first (and test) pet. nate was a real character until about a week ago when something happened and he became much less of a character. no one knows, or is fessing to at least, what happened. in addition to the sadness that comes from losing a pet, the kids are concerned on what this implies towards future pets. i told them we wouldn't be discussing such matters before nate was even in the ground.
as for nate's time with us, he led an attention-heavy life here in our home. one day while reading on the porch i saw alex throwing what i thought was a ball in the front yard. after a moment though i realized i couldn't see a ball and asked alex what he was throwing. he said he was throwing nate. i scolded this choice to which alex immediately replied that he was only doing it because nate liked it and he was throwing him in the grass and not on the sidewalk like anthony did. at this last bit of news my head sagged and all argumentativeness left me. another time nate went missing. when marty and i worked with the kids (with great effort) to reconstruct nate's last whereabouts, his morning journey seemed daunting between rides in a toy car and trips down the slide. the last recollection was he had been given to anthony who threw him on the couch and no one bothered to retrieve him. nate was then found picking his way through some knitted afghan. fact is, every time i'd see nate pop out of his shell and start crawling up my arm or shirt, i was mildly amazed at the spunky crustaceans grit.
when i sank the shovel into the dirt, the boy from down the way started humming what sounded like the ceremonial music playing at the end of the the original star wars movie. i glanced at him to find him standing with his humming head bowed reverently. there was a small and motley group of neighbor kids standing around for our family's first pet burial. alex was holding the plastic container that previously contained the creamy white icing you put on top of freshly cooked cinnamon rolls that come in the cardboard tube. a neighbor girl had lined the bottom with blades of grass and after setting nate and his painted shell onto the grass we covered him with more grass. alex now held this makeshift coffin in his hands and was quietly standing next to the hole i was digging.
when the hole was ready i asked alex to set nate in there. he didn't want to so i took the round container from his tentative hand and balanced it in the dirt hole. i picked up the shovel to cover the hole when another neighbor girl stopped me and said we should say some words first. i set the shovel to the side. i asked alex if he wanted to say anything. he did not. the girl who suggested a prayer then offered several kind sentiments about nate and how lively he always was. the boy humming the star wars music then began,
star wars hummer
i knew alex's hermit crab a very long time and thought ... what was his name ?
troy
nate
star wars hummer
and thought nate was a fine hermit crab and good pet.
i then said our family would miss nate and was sorry he couldn't have been with us longer. bella interrupted me accusing anthony of being the reason nate died. alex then said it was my fault because i gave nate a vacation food pellet when we went camping and he didn't like it and starved to death. then the small band of neighbor kids began chiming in with their observations and memories of nate happenings. if there were a full-sized coffin involved i'm pretty sure someone would have thrown their body over it. i sternly quieted the crowd telling them that this was not the place to talk about what happened and that we were here to say our goodbyes to our friend. i then grabbed the shovel and filled the hole with dirt. alex put his face into my side. seeing this the others turned and respectfully walked away. when they were gone alex asked if we could take nate out now to say prayers to him. i explained that we wouldn't be taking nate out again now that he was buried. with this alex began to cry. he said we got to keep seeing grandpa when he died. i guessed that he was talking about the viewing and the wake and i explained that after the burial this did not happen anymore. i then carried alex to the front porch and held him in my lap while he cried, his face buried in my chest.
about ten minutes later the kids who attended the funeral came out the front door and started walking home. one of the girls a few houses away crouched down on the sidewalk and stood up with something cupped in her hand. she turned and ran back to our house calling out that she found a lightning bug, the first one of the season. hearing this alex sat up, slid off my lap and said, "i'll get the bug box." and that easily life moved forward.
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TRAVEL
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05.26.2009
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i'm not dead, i just smell like i am.
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sorry for the quiet days. i've been away camping. in evidence.
the below picture does not do a good job of showing i haven't showered or seen the indoors for three days but it's true. midway through the first day outdoors i thought i smelled pretty bad. the second day it seemed i wasn't so ripe. and by the third day i thought i smelled downright ok. if you could figure out how to bottle that sort of delusion, you'd be a wealthy soul. this picture also gives a sense (albeit blurrily) how many smores bella ate late into the night around the camp fire where she was one of the circle's favorite tellers of scary stories.
and you have a better chance of spotting bigfoot in the brush than catching alex in a foul mood on a no-work, no-school day.
and give anthony enough dum-dums and a big enough box of books and he could not be more sated, unless you could also get him a breast milk I.V.
and sorry we don't have a picture of marty. she was working too fast and hard to catch on film. moms always get screwed.
and for as good as we are getting at this camping business, the post-camping tick-check i get from marty still stands as the best part of it all.
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PHOTO
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05.20.2009
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a new GALLERY IMAGE was posted today.
May 2009
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QUOTES, MUSIC
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05.19.2009
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how i've been feeling lately
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if i'm so happy, i've got everything to lose
excerpt from i want to hear what you've got to say by the subways
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FOOD
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05.15.2009
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they're going after grapefruit eaters next
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 for breakfast i usually have a farm-style bran muffin topped with yogurt and fruit or oatmeal. it was recently suggested that i try steel-cut oats instead of the old-school quaker oats i usually have. the reason given was that the steel-cut oats are slightly more nutritious because of how they are processed. the classic oatmeal you and i grew up on is known, technically, as rolled oats because the grains are pressed and rolled to separate the good from the bad. this process burst the plant pod thus releasing much of its nutrients to the airy ether. steel cut oats are readied in a different manner which doesn't compromise the grain nodule to the same degree.
so i tried them and my conclusion is this: if you were running a haunted house and wanted to give people the sensation that they just ate a mouthful of the cartilaginous plugs that squeeze out of blackhead infected pores, you could just have them put a spoonful of steelcut oats into their mouth.
an ancillary thought i had was who in the world picked the oatmeal eaters of america as the demographic that needed their diet improved because their breakfast wasn't as nutritious as it could be. i would think you might target the people buying stuff like OOPS! WE FORGOT THE CRUNCH, ALL BERRIES cereal (which had the audacity to add SPECIALLY MADE FOR KIDS!!! onto the box). that is a real cereal that came from the great and altruistic minds that initially graced our breakfast tables with captain crunch and crunch berries. they must have not been satisfied with the initial impact they had on the blight that is american health.
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WEB
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05.13.2009
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he's not copping a feel, he's holding her pants up.
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i can't believe i didn't think of this site first.
although, had i been the one to start it, i'm pretty sure i would have been sated and stopped after uncovering this morsel.
but if i bowed out early then i'd miss out on titling an image "Awklord of the Rings".
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KIDS, PHOTO
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05.12.2009
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i've got a bad-ish feeling about this
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saturday anthony, alex, a neighbor boy and i biked up to a local park for some ogre play. when we returned to the house i was approached by bella and a mess of neighborhood girls asking if i would like a spa treatment. slightly startled at the option i asked what the spa treatment entailed. i was told it entailed all sorts of things. things like back rubs, head scratches, uninterrupted reading time (that was a marty suggestion), cuddle time with stuffies (stuffed animals), pet sitting (which i think meant you got to have our hermit crabs sit on you). i asked how much all this cost. bella said six dollars for your pick of one. she then eyed me a little more closely and said it was nine dollars if the person was sweaty.
the spa's front entry
the spa's front entry detail.
the main sing reads, "SPA-GET-AWAY they are awesome because people come often / $3 child / $9 adult / activities: recreation space, stuffies, uninterrupted reading time / come right now (kids will love it!)". the handwritten supplement sign reads, "its free today because its mothers day, so you don't have to pay, so why don't you stay".
this is the first sign/arrow leading upstairs
second directional pointer
the front counter
the register/till
and last but not least, the spa. scary but not in the usual $9 spa kinda scary.
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WEB, PHOTO
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05.11.2009
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it really happened
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the everyman pro galleries open today. for those who don't recall or haven't been paying attention, this is the first year of the professional version of my everyman photo contest. in the end, i was ten entrants shy of my goal but ended up with twice the images i had in the first year of the amateur version of the contest. more importantly, i'm confident that next year will show increases in interest and participation given a couple of observations i've made through the process.
enough blather, go look at a small but neat sampling of photography and see if you can pick who you think will win the $1,000 grand prize.
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KIDS
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05.08.2009
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some days they seem blind and others they seem superhuman
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not too long ago while chatting with bella before dinner, out of nowhere she says, "you're just crazy about me dad!"
laughing, i agree, to which she adds, "that means you really like me."
"yes i do bell. i like you quite a bit."
the smile this innocent observation and exchange sparked in me makes me think the world would be a happier place were there more positive moments of candor bouncing around our society and world. to do my part, i'm going to employ bella's antic at work, reminding my colleagues that they too are just crazy about me. i'm sure it will go over just as swimmingly as it did for my precious isabella. how could it not?
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WEB
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05.07.2009
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the problem is the house is so nice you never want to go to work.
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a friend of mine is moving out of saint louis and i recently built a website for him to help sell his house. so if you're in the market for one of the three most amazing houses i've ever walked through, now's your chance.
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QUOTES, BOOKS
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05.05.2009
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do or die
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Why did football bring me so to life? I can't say precisely. Part of it was my feeling that football was an island of directness in a world of circumspection. In football a man was asked to do a difficult and brutal job, and he either did it or got out. There was nothing rhetorical or vague about it; I chose to believe that it was not unlike the jobs which all men, in some sunnier past, had been called upon to do. It smacked of something old, something traditional, something unclouded by legerdemain and subterfuge. It had that kind of power over me, drawing me back with the force of something known, scarcely remembered, elusive as integrity—perhaps it was no more than the force of a forgotten childhood. Whatever it was, I gave myself up to the Giants utterly. The recompense I gained was the feeling of being alive.
excerpt from a fan's notes by frederick exley
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PERSONAL
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05.04.2009
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life's excerpts
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i believe i can summarize alex's birthday weekend with three snippets of conversation:
-- CONVERSATION 1 --
MARTY
and what's the other hermit crab's name?
ALEX
sleepy.
MARTY
why sleepy?
ALEX
because he hasn't woke up since we got him.
-- CONVERSATION 2 --
ME
hi luke. what's up dude?
LUKE
i punch myself in the face whenever someone says dude. (he does so here)
ME
really dude?
LUKE
yes. (another punch to his face)
2ND 5-YEAR OLD BOY STANDING TO THE SIDE
dude. dude. dude. dude. dude. dude.
LUKE
(good to his word, luke delivered repeated punches to his own face, one for every uttered dude)
-- CONVERSATION 3 --
ME
i think luke peed his pants.
MARTY
no. i thought so too and asked him but he said he was just sweating.
ME
and you believed him?
MARTY
if he really peed, there'd be a lot more than that.
ME (after a long pause and repeated looks at luke)
that has to be one of the most unfortunate male-sweat patterns i've ever seen.
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KIDS
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04.30.2009
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the best dressed boy in town turns 6 today
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QUOTES
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04.28.2009
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your reputation is what you're perceived to be but your character is what you are.
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never mention winning. my idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game and you can win when you're outscored. i've felt that way on certain occasions at various times. i just want my kids to be able to hold their head up after a game. i used to say that when a game is over and you see somebody that didn't know the outcome that i hope they couldn't tell by your actions wether you outscored and opponent or if an opponent outscored you. that's what really matters. if you make your effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be, not necessarily what you'd want them to be, but they'll be about what they should be.
excerpt from john wooden ted talk titled Coaching for people, not points
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KIDS
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04.27.2009
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anthony's latest.
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when marty first saw it, she said she felt she knew what people with difficult pets, like marley (?), must feel like.
moments later she added if anthony were a dog she'd get rid of him.
i asked how she'd do that. via a dog pound or a country road.
she said a pound.
as she started getting into the real messy parts of it, i said i didn't believe her and thought she'd go the country road route.
she didn't respond.
if there's a silver lining, because it is during moments like this you most need to look for silver linings, it is that now when anthony gets wet, because of the non-water-soluble, expensive, medicinal (for exema) lotion he smeared all over himself, water now beads up on his skin like he were a newly waxed sportscar.
this is especially true of the foot that is sitting inside the tub. when i first saw his foot submerged in the container i thought why would he do that. then after pondering it a moment i thought, at this point why the hell wouldn't he do that.
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HEALTH
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04.24.2009
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at any cost
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traversing life successfully usually means doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. living in saint louis, there is extra truth in this statement twice a year. the first is doing what needs to be done to stay cool in august and the second is doing what needs to be done to get through allergy season.
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SPORTS
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04.23.2009
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what you could be doing instead of manscaping
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HYGIENE
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04.22.2009
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i guess
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some latent observations about yesterday's post dealing with male grooming:
i guess i may be the last guy walking around who didn't know that male grooming is better known as manscaping.
i guess it's only fitting that the girl who cuts my hair be the one to tell me that.
i guess i shouldn't have been surprised when i googled manscape that a word like 'boyzillion' would appear in the results.
i guess i should have remembered sooner that when bookpimp got married, as a wedding gift to his wife, he got his back waxed. when the hair lady looked at his naked backside she explained that what he paid her wasn't enough to do the whole thing and asked if he wanted to pay more or wax less. the wife was still touched that her man got a large rectangle of hair removed in her honor.
i guess i should have known an images search on the term manscape would have produced something as depressing as this.
i guess after seeing that photo my advice to hair-conscious men everywhere would be stop shaving and start running.
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HYGIENE
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04.21.2009
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turnabout
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 shortly before i stopped being a corporate whore, i had an unusual-ish lunch. two things made it odd. first off, i went with five guys, colleagues, i didn't know all that well, only one of which would have even rated as an acquaintance (i usually eat lunch alone or with one or two people i like pretty well). the second curiosity was the conversation itself. it dealt with, of all things, male grooming. when the topic was first floated, and it was not raised by me because such matters aren't even on my radar, i scanned the table thinking in a group of people who push ones and zeros around for a living this subject might have a life-span of 36 seconds. but as i studied the five expressions i didn't see disdain and disinterest but instead mild intrigue and readiness. i almost yelled at the whole lot of them saying they can either like network gaming parties or shaving their genitals but not both.
seeing the subject had legs i turned my attentions to the conversation's sponsor. you groom? down there? unabashedly he said he did. he then asked me. you don't? at all? unabashedly i said i didn't. he asked me why i cut the hair on my head. i said because it would be unprofessional not to. he asked why i shaved my face. i admitted that even though i was still as of yet unable to grow cheek hair if i could i would still shave because i felt face pelts were also unprofessional. he then started asking about marty. and if she shaved and groomed. i said she did but certainly not at my demand. and frankly, i could care less if she did or not. the whole table groaned loudly and recoiled like slugs to salt. what's the big deal i asked. are they afraid of a natural woman? it seems they were afraid of the potential. a few of them had seen movies and were witness to what was in fact possible.
seeing i was getting nowhere with the first guy, i sought support from the rest of the table. one by one i asked them if they owned a male epilady or some such device and one by one they confessed they did, my acquaintance included. i saved my sure bet for last, a contractor straight from the india homeland, arranged marriage country and all. he said to me in the most classic and quintessential accent, "i am sorry troy, but i am unable to help you here." even the indian guy was sitting on the closed-lid toilet, with his knees flayed apart, tweezing groin hairs with his free time. does he know how to tie a slip-knot? has he read the the count of monte christo? can he spin a pencil in crazy ways on his hand? no, but he doesn't have a body hair on the outside of the elastic leg band of his underwear. how admirable is that? as weak as it may appear, that last guy really took the wind out of my sails and in the end, i quit the fight. there were too many of them and they proved immune to any powers of persuasion i thought i may have had. sad to find myself spending time with such a lot, i became morose.
perhaps my despondency drove the guy who started the whole preening debate to share the following story about a friend of his who was uber-manic about his hair removal. it seems this guy's appearance was a real house of cards given his hirsute genes and required more routine care than a fertilized lawn in portland. after he moved in with a girl he'd been dating, he was finding it difficult to find enough private time to keep the hedges at bay. he was having to go to work late or come home for lunch to get his primping time in (sheesh!). one day his girlfriend wasn't feeling well and left work early. after walking in the door and setting her keys and purse down she heard something coming from the bedroom. she moved to the door, listened for a moment and then opened it. she saw her boyfriend lying on the floor, on his back, naked, and with his legs pulled over his head. he had an electronic thing in his hand but she didn't have time to make out what it was or what he was doing with it before he sprang forward into a sitting position, and started yelling at her through bugged-out eyes to get out of the room. she slammed the door shut and stood there with one hand still on the knob and the other covering her mouth. some minutes later he came out of the room fully clothed and aside from a huffiness about him, acting like nothing had happened. seeing that he wasn't going to volunteer an explanation she asked him what he was doing in there. he exploded saying it was none of her business and she should learn to knock on closed doors before entering rooms (her own bedroom included it seems). he never told her he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks and she never recovered from not being told that he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks so they broke up shortly after the incident. if i recall the story correctly, she let him keep the apartment.
i rebounded from the evil outing by imagining the guy in the story was the guy pushing the topic at my lunch table (he was reasonably hirsute). i had to do that because that meal happened four years ago and i still hold an image of a slightly overweight naked guy rolling around on plush carpeting contorting a braun razor in his hand fighting for the last, perfect angle. typically, i'm the stamper of such imagery and not the one having uninvited images pressed into the walls of my brain. call me a sore loser.
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KIDS
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04.17.2009
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equal-opportunity employer
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at a recent family gathering, anthony walked by his fifteen year old cousin, emma. she was wearing a skin-tight, vintage-looking rolling stones t-shirt with the gaping mouth on the front. as he jetted by, she snatched him up and placed him onto her knee. she greeted him brightly. he looked at her face, then he looked at the large graphic on her shirt. he then raised his hand placed it under her right breast and gave it a few light lifts as if appraising its heft. after just a second of awkward looking at one another, emma lifted anthony off of her knee set him back on the ground and he resumed his journey as if nothing had ever happened.
it appears anthony is a believer in the "it doesn't hurt to ask" philosophy. i'm of the same ilk and have historically had about the same level of luck.
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SOCIETY
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04.16.2009
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infestation
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it seems nick-naming everyone may have a genetic component in that bella has taken to applying monikers to her own world. most notably last week a group of kids at school she calls the hannah montana girls. and for added bite, not all of them are girls.
recently bella made a comment about going to another school. when marty asked why she wanted to change bella said it was to get away from the hannah montana girls. marty paused from what she was doing, turned to bella and explained that there was no getting away from the hannah montana girls because every school had them. they are everywhere. by the dour look on bella's face you would have thought marty just told her there was no santa, cuddly puppies, or music-playing ice cream trucks. she was struck completely dumb.
and as i think i've noted before, bella calls grown up hannah montana girls, decorated ladies. and like their younger counterparts, there's no getting away from them either.
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PERSONAL
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04.15.2009
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please allow me to elaborate
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for the person who commented on my easter day silence while dealing with anthony as well as for any others who may have lacked the testicular or ovarian fortitude to comment on my easter day silence, allow me to address why i didn't take a moment during anthony's trespasses to share a teaching moment with him, kneeling down by his side, putting an arm around his shoulder and chatting with him in soft, loving tones while my hands floated through the air accenting my message. as children we're taught if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything. the parental version of this tenet states if you can't say what's on your mind without bouncing your child off a plaster wall, it's probably best to keep your notions to yourself, however illuminated or educational or necessary they may prove in the end. but now that we have some ticks of the clock between then and now, let's revisit the points one at a time.
the first incident where anthony presented himself to me looking like a medical doctor about to perform an invasive exploratory procedure or like some deviant about to engage in a sexual act illegal in thirty nine states. this item falls into an area of human interaction i call the too late-too soon bucket. that is, if i have to say it or comment upon a certain obvious behavior, the person is beyond assistance, either because someone already missed the boat with them, or in this case, because they are not yet ready to be helped. and we all well know what they say about helping people before they are ready.
as for the laundry chute. i had just sorted laundry and more than half of what was in the basement receptacle did not qualify as clothing or things that should have been transported to the basement via the laundry chute. additionally, the last thing i threw down the chute before the bike bottle was deposited were my five brooks brothers work shirts. i throw them down separately from the rest of the family clothes given they are wrinkle free variety and reasonably expensive. as such, having random things and liquids thrown on top of them does not really fit into my plan of preservation.
and the kitchen. yes, my kitchen. my kitchen which looked more like a crime scene that a room where a two year tried his damnedest to make some show-pop for the movie his family was watching upstairs. there were just a few missteps in his process, like, for instance, i typically pour the popcorn kernels into a pot and not onto the floor. relatedly, i usually don't empty the whole bottle out at once, into the pan or onto the floor. and the same goes for the oil, meaning the whole container was not necessary, and it's not the olive oil i use but instead the vegetable oil. but if there is a good side to what went down in the kitchen it is that he did use the olive oil because that container was only about a fourth of the size of the vegetable oil thus making that the only positive thing that happened down there.
so this might give a little more insight into my lack of verbosity when dealing with anthony during this twenty minute span on easter sunday. i assure you if i did choose to speak, and you lived within three zip codes of me, you would have known i had chosen to speak.
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PHOTO
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04.14.2009
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GEEK
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04.10.2009
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riddle me this
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you're in a room with two doors. if you walk through one, you'll die. if you walk through the other, you'll live. there's a man in front of each. one of them always lies. one of them always tells the truth.
you can ask one question.
what question can you ask to figure out which is the safe door to walk through?
i.e. what color is your shirt would work to figure out which one is honest if you could ask two questions. but since you can only ask one, you need a question that is more encompassing/revealing.
and, don't bother asking me for the answer. i don't know the answer. this morsel dances into my head for a few minutes every few months to tantalize the workers in my brain. while it's there they all lean on their shovels and push back from their desks and look at the show until they get headaches. then they resume the ditch-digging and paperwork causing it to leave the room. now i pass it on so your brain's workers can be occasionally distracted (and annoyed) too. no need to thank me. i can see it in your eyes.
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FAMILY
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04.09.2009
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will you pause this so i can go stuff pop-tarts down my pants
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a few sundays back we had brunch at a friend's house. in addition to the usual fixings, the host made a two pound platter of bacon that was wicked good and that my people fiended on like we had never seen the food product before. that night while doing laundry, i found a soggy piece of bacon in the bottom of the washer that one of our children had stuck into their pants pocket. i was only mildly surprised because the week before i found the decimated remnants of three strawberries after doing a load of darks.
the one thing that saves marty and i from having everyone think we are starving our children is that they, our children, don't steal more food from people's tables and pantries because they are too glued to people's television sets to make the effort.
remember, not having a television doesn't make marty and i better parents, it makes our kids better kids.
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TRAVEL, PHOTO
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04.08.2009
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while we're on the subject
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click to enlarge
in stumbling upon the latest anthony pic (beach tough), i found the above image of the family at the beach last summer which somehow never got pinned to the wall. and given these teasing glances we're getting at warm weather, it felt doubly right to share now.
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PERSONAL
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04.03.2009
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doing more before 8am than the army, navy AND marines
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1:30 i stood up from my desk to go to bed. marty was sleeping diagonally on the ping pong room futon. anthony was sleeping diagonally in my bed. i chose my bed. anthony is easier to push around than marty.
2:22 i woke up to anthony lifting my head with great effort and saying, "no you! ma-ma. no you! ma-ma." squinting my eyes, i lifted my head and had the following conversation with my blonde-headed 2 year old.
anthony, what are you doing?
no you. mama.
no me? no you. i'm sleeping here. mom is in the ping-pong room. if you want to sleep with her, go there. (with this i laid my head back down)
(anthony starts wailing and continues trying to push my head out of the bed) no! mama. mama! MaMa! MAMA!
i get up, carry him like a sack of potatoes under my arm to his crib and leave there wailing. i return to my bed, collapse in and am back asleep within 20 seconds.
2:50 alex whispers in my ear. he says he scared in his bed. wordlessly i lift the covers inviting him into my bed. he crawls in and snuggles into me.
3:43 alex wakes me again and says he really wants to sleep in his bed. i tell him to go sleep in his bed then.
3:47 alex wakes me again and says he still really wants to sleep in his bed but he's scared to alone and wants me to sleep in his bed with him. i tell him i can't because i'm already sleeping in this bed.
3:53 i'm climbing a bunkbed ladder with a sheet and comforter draped over my back like a deranged batman.
7:40 i stir to the sound of bella asking why she doesn't have any shorts in her drawer. as i open my eyes i realize i'm not lieing flat on my back. alex's head is under my right shoulder blade causing a large void beneath me and leaving me propped at an angle and pinned to the side safety railing of the bunk bed.
7:47 i gingerly rise to a sitting position and feel bones i never knew i had in my back rub together abrasively. a new day is underway.
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