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

excerpt from tom wolfe's A Man in Full

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.

i believe all people get dealt one natural gift and one demon. the natural gift is something they can do better than 99% of people without even trying. the demon is some non-positive trait they will struggle with even when exerting great will against the vice. through these i believe one's satisfaction, success, and fulfillment in life comes from one's ability to (1) identify and leverage their gift and (2) tame and control their demon.

while in some regards it's too early to tell for sure, but if i were pressed to guess bella's natural gift, i'd say it is in someway leadership-related. i point to this because of bella's ability to orchestrate, motivate, and move individuals and groups of people, both young and old. i offer the following three examples in support:

bella's grandest demonstration of making things happen occurred two years ago when she put together a stage production of flipper in our front yard using kids from the neighborhood. there was a script, there were rehearsals, as well as (kinda) auditions. adults were summoned and lined up on the sidewalk to watch the drama. some brought lawn chairs to sit in while others leaned against trees. the staging area was in our foyer and mostly involved bella encouraging (and at times threatening) the actors to go out and do their best. it was about a twenty minute affair and i believe that no more than two of the performers cried from the pressure.

bella's most productive example of leadership can be seen in her impromptu selling stands which take advantage of a high traffic footpath near our home. if bella, or her friends or her siblings ever identify something they need money for, bella will have a selling stand in place within the hour. these stands have sold drinks, cookies, books, artwork and toys. bella is currently working on her most ambitious selling stand yet which involves knitting hats and scarves on her own and through knitting parties she plans to organize at our house in the summer months. she is building a stock so on the first snow day next winter she'll put up a stand and sell hand-knitted hats and scarves (and hot-chocolate i'm sure) to the underdressed college kids walking to and from class. she plans to use the money to buy animals for impoverished countries via the heifer fund and such. (ed note: if you don't know or are wondering, bella turned nine last month.)

and lastly, where you will see bella most often ply her powers of persuasion is getting her siblings, neighbors, and classmates to play a game where they (they, not bella) act like dogs. panting, scratching, licking, pawing, thankfully not urinating dogs. bella plays the role of the owner. everyone else plays the role of dog. whenever i see this game happening i completely marvel at how fully these children, these human, willful children give themselves over to this charade. it has now happened with such frequency that its specialness has even been moderately lost on bella. there are times when she appears to tire of the game and will go into another room to start doing something else. these temporary canines will awkwardly trail her, still in character and nudge her leg with their bowed head for notice and attention. bella absentmindedly pats their mane or coos at them for a moment before returning to her other more interesting distraction as if this child-dog has been in our home for years. given her proclivity and skill to make people act like domesticated curs, i predict that as an adult bella will either be a new york city dominatrix or a fortune 500 CEO. truth told, of those two i'm torn on which i prefer because it sure would be nice to have family in NYC.

as for bella's demon, i'd say it's too soon to call. obviously, marty and i still have plenty of years to mar and traumatize the child so the air is rife with possibility.

something i didn't mention about our neighbors recent departure from the neighborhood is that they offered us first crack at their house. it is a house that is several pay grades out of our reach but they said if we were interested, they would make it happen. interestingly, this is how we landed in our first house which at the time was also significantly out of reach for us. now here we are ten ye...

our neighbors moved into their home in 1962. this was six full years before i was born. or 47 years ago if you rather. last night was the last night they will sleep under its roof because at 10am today they are getting into a car and driving north to chicago to live in a retirement community near three of their daughters.

the couple, both widowers of previous marriages, have been together for many years and are well into their 80's. medicine-wise, the most either of them ever take is an occasional aspirin. they walk to church. they walk to the nearby university to hear lectures. they walk to our local business district to listen to concerts. they are both in great health but are just being pro-active.

norma, the lady of the duo, is more ready. she is the one driving the move. she said she knew she was done after having the gutters replaced. after the work she looked up at them said to herself she hoped to never do another repair to this aging home. additionally, her thinking is that if something happens to one of them, unexpectedly, she doesn't want the burden of a five bedroom home with fifty years of possessions to fall onto just one of them. while it is a fair point, wally, the male of the team, isn't done yet. he's still living and enjoying being in the zip code he's spent the lion-share of his life in, having grown up just blocks away where his father owned a corner pharmacy as well as his own career teaching german at the local high school.

watching the dismantling of a home over the last few months has been sobering. i can't help but think how that will one day be me. that one day i will be expected to step aside and let a younger version of myself step into my place, sleep in my bedroom and eat meals in my dining room. that my children will one day return, knock on the door and tell the current residents that they grew up here, and can they come in and look. all of this wrecks me.

yesterday after the moving truck had left, wally pulled marty and i to the side and said that bella had come over to their house, knocked on the door and said to them in a very heartfelt and official manner that they were the two best neighbors anyone could ask for and she was very sorry they were leaving. marty and i were both surprised at bella's initiative. and it was easy to see that wally was touched if not even moved by bella's gesture. i sincerely share bella's sentiment and will miss the couple who generously and kindly helped marty and i settle into our first home and teach us some of the history and ropes of the community we are now part of. farewell. your village will miss your presence.

everyone is chasing something. everyone that gets out of bed in the morning at least. what people pursue in life varies, but for most it probably falls into one of the obvious categories: money, status, fame, belonging, love, acceptance, comfort. it seems that when you reach a certain mature age, say forty or thereabouts, you look around and if you're still with the pack and feeling nourished, all is good and well and you bear down keeping your eye on the person in front of you and your ears tuned to the person behind. if you find yourself trailing too many in the group, or in the wrong race altogether, you pull up, winded. what a defeated contestant in this state does next is wildly unpredictable but most call the collective actions of these folks a mid-life crisis.

given where i'm at in this race i'm seeing runners throw in the towel in alarming numbers. the disintegration of an adult's life with decades of momentum behind them is a bewildering thing to behold. and when children are involved, a tragedy, for sure.

excerpt from american pastoral by philip roth

can i do your belt and tie dad?

that's how it starts. and it goes that way just about every work morning. alex asking if he can help put on my belt and tie. this has been a ritual for over a year now. i don't recall how it started, it just did. and it's always the same. the belt goes first, every time. he asks if we're doing the black side or the red (cordovan) side this day. it's usually a red day and he studies the reversible belt to make sure it's set up right and then he feeds it into the first loop. after he pulls the belt through he quietly says "turn". he says this after each belt loop and does so with an air of concentration and seriousness in his voice. to this instruction i spin in place one belt-loop worth at a time. when i've come full circle he grabs up the other end, feeds the belt through the buckle in his practiced way. if i reach to help him in any way he quickly waves me off saying he can do it. and he does. sometimes when he cinches it tight i make an exaggerated gasp to which his face darts up looking to see if he hurt me. when he sees i'm ok he many times will caution me to "be for real dad" which is kind of like when i'm clowning around reading books and he frustratedly tells me he doesn't want any of my funniness right now.

after the belt comes the tie. i usually pick it out and throw it around my neck. i'll then sit on a bed and call alex asking him if he's doing my tie today. he always is. here he climbs up on the bed behind me, pulls my collar up straight, exposing the inside corridor. he then feeds the fat end of the tie through the left button hole and pulls it straight. he then feeds the skinny side of the tie through the other side. after both are pulled through he lowers the raised collar and smoothes it out with his small hands leaning around both sides making sure it is properly flat all around.

then i stand up and begin pulling the tie back and forth getting it properly centered to be tied. here alex, with great excitement and anticipation in his voice, says "do that funny thing again". the funny thing i do is tell a story when i tie my tie. the story involves two characters. sometimes it is a bunny and a bear. sometimes a squirrel and a lion. and sometimes alex and i. but always one big and one small. to start, with each hand i grab a side of the tie. i hold the little one up and say this is alex. then i hold the bigger side forward and in a deep voice and say this one is dad. then, alex and dad were at lewis park when dad saw alex and said i smell biscuits so alex ran under the slide thinking his dad couldn't get there but his dad could and chased him under there. then alex ran up to the top and and said his dad was too big and fat to get up there but i did. then alex jumped down the slide and said his dad was too smelly and scared to go down the slide but i wasn't and i jumped down the slide too.

as i'm talking i'm flinging the tie around in the usual manner to manage the knot. sometimes when i finish the tie is wrong. too long, too short, sloppy knot, and i have to do it again. alex learned that if i mess up he gets to hear the story a second time and even though the second-telling of the story is always much faster and less animated, alex is always rooting to hear me say "doggonit! stupid tie!. ok here we go again. this here's alex. and this is dad ..."

and so our mornings go.

a new developer in my office is about to roll out his first project with our group. we delivered a preview to the core clients last week and it went very well. next his app goes into user testing and then into the wild world of production. yesterday i attempted to give him a pep talk to make sure he stays focused and diligent in these final hours of the project. this is what i said: my closer friends will easily recognize the move of me starting out talking about someone else but finding a way to swing the attention back on me. i'm old and savvy enough to know this about myself and if it could work for travolta in pulp no reason it can't work for me in my small world.

i believe the first half of your life should be spent learning stuff and the second half of your life should be spent teaching the stuff you learned to others. if you get any years beyond that, they're yours to do with as you wish.

as for when the halfway point is, forty seems like a nice round number to me. so pull up a chair and get ready to get your learn on.

the passing of marty's father represents the closest person to our children to have died since they've been old enough to absorb things. fact of the matter, ken is the closest person to me that i have known to die. for this reason there was a lot of processing going on in our house over the last few days.

minutes after breaking the news, i sent marty to be with her mother and siblings as this unexpected event fell on their family. this for the most part made me a single, stay at home dad. in between the gatherings and ceremonies i've talked to both bella and alex about what is happening and their thoughts on it all. alex asked about how we would see grandpa again. he asked if grandpa was in heaven. he asked if grandpa was sad. he asked why people were crying. essentially, he asked a bunch of normal and legitimate questions, many of which we talked through together because i didn't know the answers any better than he did.

as for bella, she didn't ask a thing. to a direct question asking her about her questions, she said she had none. while at the wake i asked her if she wanted to go up and say goodbye to grandpa. she said she didn't. when marty later asked her about it, bella said she already did say goodbye. i wasn't really sure how to interpret bella's reticence to talk about it but i gave her space because she didn't seem upset or withdrawn and just kept telling her that if she had questions she could come talk to me. she said she knew this but never asked a single one. the morning of the burial, bella drew this picture while eating breakfast.



after looking at it, i asked her about the third item in the legend. she said that she would have used that mark next to grandpa if he had been murdered but since he wasn't she didn't have to. still curious, i stood for a moment studying the picture in my hand feeling there was a follow-up question i was missing. my eyes focused on her perception of grandpa's face and i saw that he was smiling. i thanked bella for making the picture, told her i thought it was special and walked away. how bella portrayed her grandfather in her drawing tells me she has, like her mother, a healthy understanding of what transpired in this last week. in fact, i think she reached this point far sooner than i had. i would typically say i'm pretty good at not over-thinking a problem but perhaps i'm not as good at it as i like to think i am.

it was alex who woke me up. i had spent the night in his bunk bed. he had slept in my spot next to marty.

he told me it was saturday. he told me it was time to get up. finally relenting and beginning to move he told me that when i got out of bed he would be able to see my underwear. i agreed adding that the only reason he would see underwear at all is because i slept in his bed and not my own (i'm not devoid of respect). so the first thing i did on this particular saturday was awkwardly climb down a miniature wooden ladder while being taunted with a chant of 'i can see your underwear. i can see your underwear.'

what little energy i possessed at the moment was spent safely navigating the indiana-jones like ladder. once down the chant followed me as i groggily ambled to the bathroom. at some point i decided to see how long it would take for the taunting to die on it's own, naturally.

i thought using the restroom might put me over the hump but all that achieved was having alex pause to lean around to watch me pee. then the lambasting changed from 'i can see your underwear' to 'i can see your penis'. my penis was surprised by this early-morning audience. it certainly hasn't happened enough in its meager opinion. the cry continued until my penis went back into its quiet house on its even quieter cul de sac. back to the underwear chant.

things surely got to the point of intervention. i wanted to. needed to. three minutes in the morning are like two hours after seven pm. but i gritted my teeth. then i brushed them. and before my electric toothbrush pulsed marking the end of my brushing time, the chant was magically done too.

i was off to a good dad day.

the advice i give to young technologists who work with me.

i began my first day of forty sick. i'm not in tune enough with my body to know if it was rebelling against leaving my thirties or being pissy about entering my forties. either way, the coughing and hacking kept me home. i wasn't about to go in public on my first day in a new decade sounding like a feeble old man.

marty spent much of her day out and about giving me an unusually quite house to recuperate in. i puttered about trying to catch up on my chores which piled up given my on-the-couch state the day before. intermittently i sat down at the piano. i'm learning to play jingle bells so i can support alex while he sings 'jingle bells, batman smells' on christmas day.

my folks were coming down for dinner. when they arrived marty and the children were still out. we sat and caught up for a bit. when marty and kids did arrive my dad told bella that it was thirty-nine years a some months ago that they went to the pound to get me. i added it was good they were ok with taking home a mutt. bella gave the two of us a practiced eye roll.

we went to my favorite eatery at the moment. it's a persian place on south grand called kabob international and their food is ridiculous. the maternal owner seems smitten with our children and dotes on us like we were kin. anthony was drawn to a ramp connecting two rooms that had beads hanging in the doorway. he kept animatedly running through them with his arms waving until he lost his balance and face-planted into the bar. also eating there was a neighbor with his two sons (a week earlier i saw his wife eating there as well). we exchanged pleasantries and our adoration for the food. when i said i was here for my birthday he said he was here a month earlier (nov 7th) when he turned forty. crazy little world.

for dessert we went to ted drewes. drewes sells custard year round and custard and christmas trees during the holidays. the place is a scene straight out of christmas story with old-school traditionalist on the hunt for that perfect christmas tree. they have everything but the barrel-fire to keep the workers warm. no matter how cold or late it is our kids always fight to eat their various concrete mixtures in the parking lot, lazing about on the car. this night we went home.

when we walked in the door the house was richly decorated with helium balloons. there were scores of them throughout each room. they weren't there when we left. marty and the kids had spent much of their day down the street at a friend's house. they were drawing my cards and readying these balloons which the mom agreed to decorate our house with while we were at dinner. these are the touches in life that let you know you are part of something.

after eating dessert and sending grandparents home and getting children to bed, i called my friend snake in colorado. he had sent me an email earlier in the day and i was months overdue in returning a call to him. we caught up and compared our thoughts on the boons and bites of aging. i ended the call by saying "see ya dave" which is probably the first time i haven't called him by his snake moniker since our friendship began some thirty years ago. this could be one of the bites of forty.

marty and i then sat in front of the fire, each looking minutes from bed. instead we held our comfy spots and talked for over two hours about when we were young and re-visiting how we met and the nuances and fortunate twists that surrounded our coming together. this more than any other component of my life makes being forty not only ok but actually better than being thirty-something or twenty-something. i think i'm going to be ok with this leg of the marathon.

i'm a voyeur. but of a very innocent and pedestrian type. that is, i like to see the parts of life no one else feels is interesting. i like hearing about people's hobbies, their proclivities, their favorite toys when young, what they do when they get home from work, odd surgeries they may have had. essentially i like learning about things that do not deal with education, profession or relationshi...

one of the few downsides of loving your family, work, home and life is that it is extra-hard to do things you don't like doing on the rare occasions such things sneak into your world.

last week i had my second annual review at work. it was favorable. and it came with a raise. just as my first review at the new job did. some folks may consider a raise mandatory but my last job taught me that this is just not so. while at the bank, one of the largest in the country, i went several years without a wage increase. this trend came after the bank i worked for was purchased. the new co...

i didn't post yesterday because i was fast asleep by 8:30pm sunday night and didn't wake until 7:45am the next morning. i slept stupendously. i was finally stirred by the only guy in the house who got more sleep than me, anthony. he was three minutes into his day and already on fire, walking around pushing things over, opening dresser drawers and flinging delicate objects against the wall. he came at me with a toothy smile thirsting for a tickle fight. and you know what i did? i smiled back. i smiled before my morning shower, tinkle, coffee or bran muffin. it was at this grinning moment i saw the secret to his blissful existence ... sleep. well, that and not taking any shit or voluntarily doing anything he doesn't want to. and well, there's also his screaming like a wild man when he is hungry and the food item of his choosing is not immediately before him. but aside from those few sticking points he's quite a happy chap.

in fact he's so happy, he doesn't even care if he's got a marbled ball of feces tumbling around his diaper pushing and contorting against his miniscule butt cheeks. if you can have that mess going on and still crack a smile, i think it's clear you've got your world figured out.

i stopped taking vicodan on saturday. i'd been on them for a week an a half and they certainly handled their business. after leaving the hospital, i never experienced discomfort except once when i got lazy about my pill schedule. reason i had to quit them is they were clouding my thoughts and to my great pleasure i have a job that requires unclouded thought. what i didn't account for was the lingering effects of the narcotic.

when i arrived to work on monday i was still a touch foggy. in my addled and unproductive state, i somehow stumbled upon this guy randy pausch. mid last year randy, a college professor, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 3-6 months to live. he has three kids, his oldest being one year younger than bella. the stir about him stems from how he has shouldered this tragic development. how everyone found about him was through his Last Lecture. last lectures are a university-ritual and occur when a long-standing prof finally steps down and delivers their final official lecture. randy's last talk, titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, focuses not on his field of study, virtual reality, but instead on his life experience. my favorite bit in there was something a female colleague told him about dating: the hour long talk was worth those twenty-seven words alone. intrigued i dug a little deeper and found another, subsequent talk randy gave at another university on time management (he does get to claim a bit of authority on the topic after all). also very informational and inspiring. and if you're still jonsin' for more randy, as was i, there's a diane sawyer interview that is not great, but ok.

his experience is surely adding some perspective to my current state which in comparison would barely rate as a head cold, or maybe even a festering whitehead.

marty woke up 20 minutes late. i woke up 30 minutes late. what we were waking up late for was sunday brunch. guests were arriving in less than an hour and we were still bleary, un-showered and food-less.

marty made it to the kitchen first but was slowed down because alex wanted to help her make the custard french toast and bran muffins. after getting the fire going, i was soon hobbled by anthony nipping at my heels while working on the bacon. bella was yelling something indecipherable down the stairwell. the phone rang. it was marty's mother calling from florida. marty left her food station to gab ... for twenty minutes .. while i juggled food and humans. bella appeared in front of me seemingly out of thin air. she stretched her hand out forcing on me a full-size sheet of paper. once in hand, she turned on a heel and marched back upstairs. i read enough of the page to see it was a set of demands. i tossed it to the side and continued my circus act. marty hung up the phone minutes before our guests arrived and when she walked them into the kitchen made some crack to the room about how i should be cooking the bacon differently. our new audience was about to get a marital show-down, and i said as much, but comically announcing the point brought enough levity to pull us out of the spousal nose-dive and we went on to have a wonderfully homey and smiley day with friends.

after stomachs were full and the general fervor ebbed, i noticed bella's note on the counter. she was now beyond her funk and running about the house with her visiting playmates. i took the moment to read her text in full.


translated:
i decided that my webkinz is being cramped in their bed so until i can play webkinz again i'm staying in my bed and i will only come out when a movie is in or to play on the computer.

p.s. if you want me to come out you'll have to let me play webkinz again.

i'm hungry.

BREAKFAST ORDER:
oatmeal
mcdonalds
waffles
toast
pancakes
daddy cereal

for mom and troy
from bella

the true source of her angst is apparent given her use of "mom and troy" in the closing. bella lost her computer privileges a few weeks back and has been fretting for the webkin horse she received for christmas. for the uninitiated (read spared), you care for your webkin pet in this online environment, routinely giving it love and food and toys. after meting out the restriction i had a premonition that when bella did again log onto the website, she'd be met by a decaying, fly-covered horse carcass with cartoony fumes coming out of its sunken abdomen. another parent told me this is not possible in that the site is quite liberal with children's oversights and the worst she'd find is a pouty and tearful version of her horse. i think this is just another example of how our society is coddling our children to unhealthy degrees and years from now when bella finds some neglected real-life-pet molding in the bottom of an aquarium she will surely express surprise if not complete shock. and when her crest-fallen face turns to me for answers i'm going to be the one that finally delivers her the truth, "you should have stuck with those bullshit webkinz."

lately marty has been sending anthony in to wake me in the morning. reason is he is better at it than anyone else in the house. in trying to get me to play with him he hits me about the face, perches himself on top of my head hoping i'll try to make him fall and/or buries my face with books, toys and clothes. yesterday he woke me by trying to force a plastic car into my mouth. very effective that. i groggily sat up, patted him on the head and moved to the bathroom.

i mindlessly turned the shower on and walked to my office giving the hot water a chance to start its day. anthony waddled behind me at each stop hoping i'd toss him in the air or read him the book he held in his hand. as i leaned over my desk typing my password i felt something on my foot and looked down to see an arc of pee coming from beneath his unbuttoned onesie and landing on the top of my foot. he looked up at me proud and smiling. from my up-high view i didn't notice that he was diaper-less. my mind tried to remember if before cramming the matchbox in my mouth if he had sat on top of my head that morning. i couldn't be sure. while still watching the stream i let go a throaty "AAAAAAHHHHHHGGGGG!" hearing my exclamation marty innocently called from downstairs, "is anthony peeing?"

on the good side, i couldn't have been in a better place in my day to get pissed on. i was already naked and the running shower should have reached a steamy state by now. when i finished washing my foot five times (and my head twice just in case), i pulled the curtain back to find alex standing in the bathroom. his pants were around his knees and he was fumbling with the front of his underwear.

hey dad! look at this?

what am i looking at alex?

i can pull my penis out of this hole in my underwear.

well yes you can. and it's only 8:12 in the morning.

do you want to try to pull my penis out of my underwear?

not today pal. i gotta get ready for work.

standing in the kitchen, i quickly ate a bran muffin, got dressed and headed down to take the kids to school. as i descended the stairs alex was standing in the foyer with his pants, again, at his knees and showing his new trick to the rest of the family.

look mom. look della. i can take my penis out of my underwear through this hole.

(the girls bend and crouch to see the action)

i see that alex. now can you put your coat on for me.

no. wait. one minute mom. do you want to do it?

no. i don't need to do it alex.

della? do you want to do it?

yes!

no. bella doesn't need to do it either. please put your coat on alex. you're going to be late.

i wish i had a penis. (bella said in her saddest voice)

while not as noteworthy, this day held like surprises for me throughout. but i absorbed them all with a broad grin thinking at least these humans weren't smilingly dousing me in fresh urine, nor were they offering to let me bend and contort their penis through a too-small and not-straight-enough passage in their jockey briefs. you can't keep a man with this outlook down. it just can't be done.

it was on a thursday, August 23 to be precise, 5:42pm to be even more precise, that i carried our home's only television from the tv room to the basement. this was the first thing i did after arriving home from work. i did this namely because when i walked in the door and dropped my bag marty appeared before me and said, "i want you to put the tv in the basement" to which i said, "now?" to which s...

excerpt from hyrum smith's ten natural laws of successful time and life management ... a book i've read this time of year for seven years now.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. old