SOMETHING ELSE ONLY PARENTS SAY

Overheard just now from Beast's room:

"Don't pee on your friends. Your friends don't like it when you pee on them. Trust me on this one."

The sad thing is, once Beast masters toilet skills he'll be the neatest person in the entire house. Soon to come: extensive photographic evidence of Beast cleaning.

If he keeps this up, and maybe learns a little cooking, every mother in a four-county area will want him for their daughters. Looks, brains, charm, and he cleans? There's got to be a catch. Maybe his dad is dysfunctional.

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!

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (BLADDERCENTRIC EDITION)

"Real pirates don't pee in their pants."

"No, we can't clean the floor with your pee."

"Even Herman goes in his cat box, and he's not too bright."

"Either we're going to run out of pants or we're going to run out of pull-ups, and the only thing we'll have left is the princess pull-ups Noodle used to wear."

"Toilet paper is NOT for bowling."

"There's no such thing as too tired to pee."

"...and they're called kidneys. No, no, not there, those are kid knees."

VICTORY IS MINE

So the bus with Noodle on it is scheduled to arrive home at ~3:43. It's her first time riding the bus home instead of to the day care center to be picked up by mom, and I do NOT want to screw this up.

At 3:00, I set the kitchen timer for 33 minutes to allow myself enough time to get myself and Beast out the door to greet her with ten minutes to spare, and set about swiffering the kitchen and living room floors.

At 3:25 I notice out of the corner of my eye my neighbors walking back into the house. Thinking I'd gotten the time wrong and they'd just gotten their son off the bus himself, I metaphorically soil myself and run outside. HEY, DID I MISS THE BUS? And the flop sweat pours forth. I've gone and screwed up the simplest and most important thing to get right all day.

From across the street: NO, EVERYTHING'S OKAY. JUST BE OUTSIDE AT 3:43.

Me: SO I'M JUST AN IDIOT, THEN.

WELL, YOUR WIFE DIDN'T USE THAT WORD, BUT CLOSE ENOUGH.

Then it was the sweet sweet scent of cleaning chemicals that must've (additionally) addled my brain. 3:33 comes, the beeper beeps, I gather in the Beast to take him outside to meet his big sister and

DADDY, I MADE PEE.

Between the cleaning fragrance, me shvitzing like Patrick Ewing, and now the fresh and copious wizzination, it's getting quite...piquant...in here. Run to his room, get fresh pants, forget fresh underwear, go back to his room, get the underwear, forget the wipes, go back to his room for the wipes, and ohlordohlordohlord why is he fighting me now?

(s0b) BAYBAW (s0b).

His baseball. Back to his room yet again for the ball, throw open the front door to listen for the bus (and to get some fresh air in here), off with the moist, a flourishing of the wipe, a bit of the old how's-your-father for the undercarriage, on with the fresh underwear, the fresh pants, the fresh socks and shoes, and out the door we

It's raining.

Of course, since it was raining he didn't want his raincoat, oh no. Had to have the winter coat. On goes the coat, out the door and down the stairs to the driveway to go, here comes the bus and

Why is there a baseball rolling out into the road? (Let it go, man, 'cause it's gone.)

Oh, so it's my son who's got that arm. Nice to know, what with the Yankees not picking up Pavano's option and all. So the rain stopped the moment we unfurled the Barbie umbrella, we got Noodle off the bus and into the house safe and sound, and

And nothing, finally. We crashed on the couch in front of some Yo Gabba Gabba and that was that.