NATURE ABHORS FREE TIME

(It might help if you envision me as Bob Newhart at this point.)

Rrring, rrring.

Yes?

Whothewhat?

Wrong bus?

But I'm NOT home.

It's Route 9. I can always make good time there... (/sarcasm)

4-1-1. It's what 555-1212 used to be.

Oh, hell. I'm a-s-a-p-ing it home, okay? Love you. Bye!

Half day at school today, see, and our best-laid plans to have Noodle spend the afternoon at her old nursery school and give me a hair of the ever-elusive Free Time were scotched when she wound up on the usual bus that takes her home instead of (as we requested) the bus that goes to her nursery school.

Worked out just fine in the end, though. Mrs. H down the street covered for us, and with her two daughters combined with my daughter there was a grand convergence of little-girl squealery from which it was difficult to extricate Noodle. Turns out both our homes are pretty much identical - and so if one of us gets the notion to upgrade the other finds themselves with plenty of spare parts!

I was looking forward to that nap, though.

RECALIBRATING THE CLOCK

At this time tomorrow morning, I'll be at work. Not on the air just yet, but getting the hang of things over at the new place. My first official on-air day is December 8

Which means I will have been up for around two hours already. So if any of the next day's posts are a bit off coherence-wise, I hope you'll understand that sometimes glarble forf penguin kershlump.

Hooray for once again being gainfully employed, but a month of putting Noodle on the bus while me and Beast waved her goodbye was tremendous wonderfulness, and now Beast knows a panoply of rock-star moves thanks to being home with me and accidentally switching on VH1 Classic while a Who concert was playing. My son is to pancake syrup and ketchup what Keith Moon was to alcohol, but aside from that his tastes are running more toward the keyboard-player end of things. Which is a relief, because when he gets to be my age and older I'm thinking you want to be living more like Tony Banks and less like dear Keith, who never did get to be my age.

And it looks like Beast wants to be back hanging with his pals at nursery school anyway. Dude's got a girlfriend. I can tell she's his girlfriend because a couple weeks ago when I took him to a special music day back at the nursery school, he glared at me when I called him Sweetness as I am wont to do on occasion because...

...if you're going to use a sports figure for a nickname you could do a whole lot worse, but Beast has yet to discover the glories of the NFL.

It's a shame John Facenda never did lullabies.

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.

MR. BRIAN WILL SEE YOU NOW

So this morning it was time for my initiation into the tragicomic world of Daddy Tries Making His Daughter Presentable For School All By Himself. Not quite all by myself. Her Awesomeness and the girl-child wisely consulted the night before and got her clothing picked out in advance, so that's one hurdle jumped for me already. Degrees of difficulty for the rest of it, mainly hair care: 1) I'm a guy, 2) I've had pretty much the same low-maintenance haircut since I was four, and 3) never has their been anything placed in my hair as decoration other than sticks and mud, and that was also when I was four.

And nine.

And this one time in college when I inhaled.

Noodle's new schedule means she gets an extra hour or so of sleep, so there wasn't hardly as much not-a-morning-person hell-on-wheels behavior to muddle through as when she had to be awakened at six.

It went...fairly smoothly. We were all done more than half an hour before the school bus arrived, she didn't look a bit like an escapee from the mines, so there was even time to make myself presentable for the bus-stop crowd. I hadn't noticed this since these hours used to pass at the radio station, but since September the end of my driveway has become the new neighborhood hangout, where all the hoods and greasers go to be seen.

Off to Albany with Noodle after this is done, and then tomorrow comes the true test.