I swear, scientists are just making sh!t up, nowadays. (I hope it didn't have black skin.)

---

Two words describe my mood perfectly: "Please" and "leave". As the better half of the family left for their morning workout, I commented that if and when this family ever adds to its numbers, the straw poles that are holding this tent up are going to buckle, and everything is going to come crashing down. (Shoulda used stronger poles, I guess.)

It's just that I take a look around at the piles of unfinishedness around here, with the sullen cries of an empty bank account in the distance, and I think I guess I can't do it all after all. Makes one want to wrap their head in earbuds and their face around a video game, which some men do, I guess. Typical morning: Child enters office looking for attention. Child sees father at keyboard. Child begins randomly pulling papers out of filing boxes. Child gets father's attention, acknowledges it by screaming. Mother screams not to scream. Mother gives child banana. Child drops banana. One of us steps in it. Child looks for attention. Rinse. Repeat.

If I could ever get around to finishing these filing cabinets, there would be no papers strewn about, but it seems that there is a pile of something in every room, and you'd get to it if only the phone would stop ringing and everyone would stop screaming and Please. Leave. It wouldn't solve the banana problem. Robots would. Handy janitorial robots that spend their idle time disciplining your child. When are we gonna have Robots? (This might work -if only it could negotiate the stairs, lift smeared banana out from between the floorboards, and administrate a Time-out.)

(Note: The child handed me the sheet of paper that had the fire ratings on Aluminum -I'd been looking for that!)

So you let out a good Wilhelm Scream and trudge ever onward. I don't think it would be so bad if I'd had a decent amount of sleep in the past four nights. Last night I passed out on the couch after dinner and was Dead Out when my daughter trudged downstairs with her mom in tow. "Icky!" was stated, and I was summoned to fix the rank demons of the pipes. Seems someone clogged up the toilet when they last... well, you know. "Wasn't me," I declared, then realizing it was me, in fact, though twelve hours prior. I was handed the plunger and went to work, still trying to rouse out of the somnambulant fog. It was a perfectly horrid event, one of powerful odium, and when I was reminded that the Little Ditchman had flushed her little Elmo toothbrush down there, I relented. The toilet is now off-limits. We have two others to use. Put it on the list. Poor, poor Elmo.

Then spent the rest of last night in the room of my crying child, begging -nay pleading, for her to quit so I could get some. Not sure what it was this time. More teeth, maybe? CheeseandFries how many teeth is this kid gonna have? She greets you in the morning like nothing ever happened: "Hi buddy!" (New word.)

But that's life. I take some solace when I hear other kids screaming from inside their homes down the street. I used to feel neighborly sympathy for those parents. Now I just, kind of, smirk.

I almost threw my mug of coffee on the screen this morning when the news was covering "Taking Your Child To Work." Out the door, Mrs. Ditchman asked if I was going to do my fifteen mile run today. You kidding? (How does she do it?)

24 days to vacation.