THAT'S RIGHT (UH!) THE WOMAN IS...SMARTER

We both get tired, my wife and I.

She, however, can stop herself before pouring Ovaltine into the coffee machine.

Noodle had herself a midnight hurl last night, and so she has a day with the Memere and the Pepere to be pampered and spoiled and otherwise coddled. The girl is just shy of four feet tall at age five and a half, and the charts say...well, just look for the black dot.

For those who didn't click to enlarge, she's still 97th percentile for height. And 99th percentile for wisenheimery.

ONLY THING MISSING IS THE CAKE LEFT OUT...

...in the rain that's falling. My least favorite weather, this cold blatting rain. Six or seven degrees colder and we'd have a proper snowstorm with wife and children all home from school and rolling around in the snow before snarfling down some hot cocoa. But this? Bleh. And just 25 miles away as the crow flies, up on Slide Mountain in Ulster County, there's 10 inches of snow so far.

Why of course this would be the day the minivan door refuses to shut when I'm trying to get Beast out of the car at the doctor's office. The good thing about this is that while I was trying to figure out what was stuck in the door, Beast was madly stomping through puddles and getting his pants soaking wet, which would not normally be a good thing except that he had just had an accident (#1), and by The Guy Code we can consider the puddle-stomping a pre-rinse.

We shan't breathe a word of this to the lady of the manor, mmkay?

So.

Dislodge stuck toy from door, finally get Beast inside, change pants, check in with front desk, into the bloodletting chamber to show son how brave Daddy is when he gets a needle pinch, back out the door, into the car, stop at the CVS, of course the vitamin/fluoride pills the boy needs are common as dirt everywhere else in the universe but here they're on six-month backorder as they are at every other pharmacy in town, back to the car, oh NO don't fall asleep YET little guy...

The heck with it. Beast and I are both feeling vaguely coming-down-with-somethingy, and that cinches things. It's officially the kind of day to veg on the couch - and we'll be making that cocoa anyway, snowlessness be damned. Take us away, Backyardigans!

THE NOW-YOU-SEE-IT NOW-YOU-DON'T FEVER

It would appear that Beast has a bizarre mystery ailment of his own. Nothing as scary as Noodle's case of Henoch-Schonlein purpura, but plenty unusual from where we sit.

The scenario: Beast wakes up ready to roll, but about three hours of the day he's cranky and irritable with a low-grade fever. Mid-99 to around 101, something like that. Then it gets odd. He has his lunch, takes his nap...and without any medication the fever's gone and he's his feisty old self again, but not before the day care center calls to let us know what's up and get us wondering if this'll be another week where the precisely calibrated schedule gets blown to bits.

THE SNIFFLE SHUFFLE

Thought the week was sussed out pretty well. Home with the kids on Monday since their school was closed for Passover, so I shoved all the yard/house/office work into Wednesday, my second and final usual open day for the week. Weather's great, so as long as nobody gets sick we should be --

(cough cough cough...mommy? daddy?)

Aw, heck.

If you guessed that one of the kids up and got sick on Tuesday afternoon, shooting my finely-honed plans all to heck, congratulations! Have a cookie. You must be a parent, too! Okay, plan B. Play-Doh, drawing, lunch, nap. Are there any day games on so I can at least introduce Beast to the wonders of televised baseball? Nope, not a single one. Thanks a bunch, Lords of Baseball. Thanks for going the extra mile to help me bond with my boy. Way to introduce new fans to the game. Morons.

When I'm elected benevolent dictator, I shall decree there be at least one day baseball game for each day of the season so that daddies and their sniffly baby boys can recuperate the proper way.

WHAT DAY IS IT AGAIN?

Six days out of the last seven there's been somebody here whose stomach has been in open rebellion - starting with Beast, then Noodle, then yours truly. The schedule? Blown to smithereens. But the floors are looking lovely, seeing as there wasn't a spot in the house that wasn't within the blast radius of somebody's gastric eruption this week. We went through a load of paper towels and Lysol wipes, but now the mopping can be procrastinated upon for an extra week seeing as we scrubbed the bejesus out of the place this week.

The good thing about lying on the bathroom floor in a nauseous haze is that there's plenty of time to inspect the infrastructure while waiting for the inevitable call on the big white phone from Earl in his Buick. For instance, the caulking by the base of the tub needs re-doing, and I also found an essential missing part from one of Noodle's bath toys.

A toy we threw out two years ago, but still.

Me, I'm still fuzzy clammy wobbly from the bug. You can tell me by the way I walk.

OPRAH VIEWERS ARE CHUMPS

That Airborne "miracle cold remedy" stuff the Queen was plugging? Quacksville, baby. Good news for those of us who bought into the Oprah-hype about that product: you can get your part of the $23 million class-action settlement by clicking here.

Bottom line: the stuff isn't bad for you, but any claims that it'll short-circuit the cold that's brought you to your knees are a load of hooey.

Between this and the rough time Barack Obama had on Tuesday, we have an Oprah-failed-plug trifecta in play!

HURLACIOUSNESS

It's truly amazing how the kids' illnesses fit neatly into what you had anticipated to be free time. And thus has posting been light here, seeing as yours truly has been spending a lot of time on his knees with the paper towel and the Lysol. Beast spent much of Saturday into Sunday technicolor-yawning, see, and the fracas woke Noodle up and sent her sleep schedule all to pot as well. The belly of the Beast was in a much better frame of mind (so to speak) by this morning at 1:30, except for the small matter of 1:30 not being the time he's supposed to be up and ready for the day. Her Awesomeness and the Memere are stepping in to mind the Beast until he's cleared for action again, which should be tomorrow.

THE DREADED LOW-GRADE FEVER

That's what Beast's got today. Could go away in a few hours like it did last week, or it could peskily linger, or intensify, but what it definitely means is that posting will be light because I'm heading to Castle Lovelybooger soon as I'm off the air.