THE EVIL OF OLD MEN IN SMALL TRUCKS

It's easy enough to spot the old ladies who toddle along down the road maxing out at 45 - the powder-blue Buick with the tissue-box in a knitted cozy on the back deck is a sure sign, along with the presence of small stuffed animals next to the tissues. But there's a male equivalent: the small truck, almost always an old beater with a cap on the back. Like this:

It's one thing to settle in behind the elderly female driver - not a problem, set the cruise control at 45, turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. (And save gas.) But the geezers? Their move is to average 45 but never actually drive at 45, so everybody behind them is forever speeding up, slowing down, waiting for that one open stretch of passing-lane blacktop that never comes because that's the moment when the alte kacker opens up the throttle and gets it all the way to 53 for the few crucial seconds you needed. The moment an oncoming vehicle pops into view, you're back crawling again. 41, 40, 43, 45, 49, 51...say, maybe we'll actually make decent time for a--

37, 36, 40, 38...

I have not one, not two, but four such nemeses who vex me on my morning commute to Poughkeepsie - and I'm a guy who commutes at 4 in the morning, so when somebody's causing a traffic slowdown at that hour it tends to stick in the memory. It's also messing up my hypermiling experiment. No, I'm not doing some of the extreme things they recommend like overinflating the tires to reduce rolling friction, but with gas at $3.70something a gallon around here I'm trying to squeeze every last drop out of the tank by not driving like we got a big ol' convoy rockin' through the night. Alas, the hypermilers' feathering-the-pedal technique goes all to heck when I'm constantly guessing what the old fart in front of me is up to.

And so for serenity I chant my mantra through gritted teeth: blood, blood, blood, blood...

(BTW, gas mileage is up from 19 to 21 without really trying - and that's including some work covering the Minnewaska fires, and hilly country will really do a number on gas mileage.)

HE SAID HELLO GOODBYE

What? NO!

More than 100 million album sales into his career and roughly two thirds of the way through our interview, Phil Collins casually serves notice of his retirement. Having joined a reformed Genesis for a world tour last year, he says he’s through with the touring and there’s no album planned. He’ll write, but only because he doesn’t know how to stop writing.

I am most thoroughly bummed, but Phil's been known to change his mind before, yes?

ALL ARMS, LEGS REMAIN ATTACHED SO FAR

After this weekend's toil, I strongly believe that there is no more manly yard implement than the wood-chipper. In goes the tree, and after some delighfully loud chomping and grinding out shoots itty bitty pieces of former tree. OM NOM NOM NOM NOM. The kids have been spellbound, especially since they'll have a bit more back yard to play in once my labors are concluded.

Many thanks to Rhinebeck Rentals for helping me have a productive weekend of pure fun.

And so far no ticks have latched on to my flesh, although I do believe that Her Awesomeness will have to check me later this evening after a glass or two of wine.

IN WHICH DADDY WILL HOPEFULLY NOT MAIM HIMSELF SATURDAY

Postponed twice, the big brush-chipper is being delivered on Saturday, and I get to feed two years' worth of accumulated cut and downed branches into its gaping maw, and perhaps fill in some of the swampy spots in the yard at the same time. The whirling of the blades and spewing of wood chips would probably get a WHOA, FREAKIN' COOL out of Beast if he were but a few years older, but for now the little guy doesn't much care for the loud noises. Perhaps Noodle will like it, but in any case they'll be watching from a distance if at all. Her Awesomeness has disturbing visions of coming back from the park with the kids to find nothing left of me but my leg protruding Buscemi-like from the chipper.

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (DAIRY EDITION)

"How did that cheese get in your shoes?"

"Don't wash your cars in milk."

"Yogurt goes IN your tummy, not ON your tummy."

AL WILSON, 1939-2008

Here's "Show and Tell".

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.

FLIPPED

Last year my mom sold my childhood home in Rhinebeck, and while I loved growing up there with all the woods out back and so much countryside to explore, mom and dad were clueless on how to maintain it and whatever retro early-60's charm it had either fell apart or was long since painted/carpeted/built over. I barely recognize the place what with the improvements the new owners made. Looks like they added over an acre and a half to the property as well.

Nice.

So I'm buying lottery tickets here and there for as long as the place is on the market, and if I hit big you best stay clear because I'll be exercising my sentimental-doofus clause and buying it back, even if only to rent it to summer folk.

http://www.paularedmond.com/mlsListingDetail.php?MLSNumber=265047&propertyType=r&county

BLOGGING THE MINNEWASKA WILDFIRE

Yeah, the day job intruded today - a good hundred miles of schlepping about on some lovely back roads, none of which were close enough to the fire that's been burning since last week at Minnewaska State Park. Not being close enough is a good thing if you live there, but I wanted to gawk do my job as a reporter. The best view I got of the fire's effects was from 20-odd miles away on the Kingston Rhinecliff Bridge where you could see the haze slowly drifting more or less north. From places like Cragsmoor, Alligerville and Kyserike, you could easily smell the fire but just as easily see no sign of it if you were down in one of the deep gullies in the area.

Still. There's loads of fuel for fires in that part of the county this time of the year, and I'm quite surprised it's been 36 years since our region has had a fire this extensive. Next time your local fire department has the boot out for donations, drop a 20 in there if you can swing it. Chances are they've had somebody over at that fire this week, and that's some rough country to be working in.

And then to Target for kitty litter, over to Red Hook for Chinese takeout, and home to the tastiest cuddles on the planet. I shaved this morning, which always rates extra smooches from Noodle.

Tomorrow the kids' day care center is closed. That puts me on solo child-care duty...so if there's another three-thousand-acre wildfire burning by this time tomorrow, you'll have some idea as to why.

ARRH, 'TIS PIECES OF EIGHT

This week we've been introducing Noodle to the concept of money, savings, and delayed gratification, on the road to Allowanceville and Chorestown. And delayed gratification is hard to do for grown-ups, let alone a four-year old. Your first hurdle may be a lot like ours. We showed Noodle a dollar bill and demonstrated what it was for...and she was bored, because your basic one-dollar bill is even less flashy to a kid than it is to a grown up. Enter the Mint:

Oooh...shiny!

This the Noodle likes. It's so much clinkier and prettier than a grubby old crumpled-up bill.

That, by the way, is the flip-side of the dollar coins the US Mint has been rolling out since last year. The front sides depict the presidents, and so far they've gotten up to Monroe. Whatever. All she knows is that thirteen of them will get her the My Little Pony toy she wants so desperately, and to get a coin she has to go to bed promptly at 8 without any stalling or kvetching or melodrama.

Eventually, we transition this into her allowance for doing household chores. I have been waiting for this since the moment she was born. Get to work, kiddo - daddy is freakin' beat.

MERRY BRIS-LESS

Much to his delight, the urologist says Beast will not need any snipping or whatnot in the foreseeable future. We shall speak no more of this until perhaps his bachelor party many years hence.

SERVICE ADVISORY

Things might look a bit screwy here over the weekend. I'll be fiddling with new templates - because goshdarnitall, I've been trying to cram three columns' worth of idiocy into two columns here.

NEW TO THE KIDS' PLAYLIST

We are currently getting again-again-again-agains for the following:

Loch Lomond - Dan Zanes and Natalie Merchant

Half A Mile Away - Billy Joel

TOMORROW IS SITUATION DAY

As in, we will hear from Beast's urologist up in Albany as to what's happening with the situation on his situation, if you dig my inflectation. (Look, I've got to at least make an attempt to be oblique so that in a dozen years or so Beast isn't quite as horrified to find that his dad was writing about his john thomas.) Will be a long day, but there's supposed to be ice cream at the end of it. In honor of the Pope's visit we're going to Holy Cow in Red Hook.

CORNHENGE

(I'll be dropping this one off at parenthacks to see what they think of it - they liked my first one about the headlamp very well indeed. Here goes...)

The kids used to really enjoy corn on the cob. It's a fun shape, it's noisy, it's good for them...but as with all foods for the little ones, sometimes you need to tart up the presentation to keep them interested. And what entertains the little ones more than druids, hm?

Tonight we had boiled up the usual ears of corn, but they sat uneaten at the table until yours truly got the idea to cut them into thirds, then re-stack them on the plate in the form of the place where the banshees live (and they do live well). After that came om nom nom nomsville, y'all.

Oh, of course. Here are the lads:



UPDATE: there really is a Cornhenge - in Dublin, Ohio. Not edible like mine, though. And not very hengey, if you ask me.

IT'S A SMALL GIRL AFTER ALL

Sometimes we wonder, what with Noodle demanding that she be carried around the house upside down (like bagpipes! she says) while being zotzed on the tummy, and asking for my really big scary troll voice when we read "Three Billy Goats Gruff", but tonight at bedtime I got

"I was playing beauty salon with my ponies, Daddy!"

Okay then. A girl she is.

CHOCOLATE THUNDER...KETCHUP THUNDER, TOO

As a two-year-old, Beast has long known the joys of dunking his food. This is a young man who loves his ketchup. It's a condiment! It's a floor wax! It's a body paint! It's a furniture conditioner! It's a shampoo! It's --

Dude. Duuuuuuuuude. Hold up. Are you dunking your chicken nugget in the chocolate milk. AFTER you dunked it in the ketchup?

SO not right, is what Her Awesomeness was thinking but trying to avoid saying, because here at Booger Manor we're all about celebrating the grand diversity of the culinary experience and introducing it to the little ones, and so be it if that means some odd things happen along the way.

Still, though. Nasty.

THEN THEY CAME FOR THE FAKE HILLBILLY TEETH

Yep, another lead-related recall, y'all.

DANCING CUPCAKES

It's only a minute or so you'll never get back. Go ahead and watch:

IN WHICH NOODLE PICKS UP POP CULTURE

Beast: "(belch that rocks the foundations of the house)"

Noodle: "Stay classy!"

VOICES IN THE NIGHT

"EWW - WHO DID THAT?"

Death betide the manufacturers of talking toys with motion sensors that trigger whenever a squirrel breaks wind in the next town over. Like this thing from the imps at Tonka:Cute? Oh, we thought so when Santa brought it to Beast for Christmas. But it won't. shut. up. At 1:30 in the morning...

"LOOK...GARBAGE!"

"THAT STINKS!"

Which naturally terrifies Herman, who's already inclined to flip out at the slightest provocation. Here's this skinny little ten-pound cat, who somehow makes the noise of a team of Clydesdales when he's running around in a panic. His chubbier sister? Stone feline predatory silence. At any rate, the end result of the toy-triggered commotion is the same - a rude awakening from another one of those dreams where I'm telling Katherine Heigl and Scarlett Johansson to stop fighting over me because I am very much already spoken for, thank you very much.

THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (CONDIMENT EDITION)

"Your toes taste like ketchup."

"Brand-new-baby poo looks like mustard!"

"Sooner or later, the mayonnaise is supposed to come OUT of your hair."

"It's not a loogey, it's wasabi."

"Paul Newman can still make Italian dressing even if he's not Italian."

"How did you get mustard in your ears?"

"No, dinosaurs did not dip their prey in ketchup."

MILESTONES APLENTY

Noodle went to sleep solo for the tenth night last night, so she gets her new ladybug backpack, and a soccer ball she does not want to share with Beast until we explained to her that you need somebody to kick the ball back to you, and who better than a two-and-a-half-year-old with boundless energy?

We're also done with her GoodNites, and hopefully for good!

BOTANICAL GARDENS: SOCIETY'S GREAT MENACE

I love it when smart people say fool things:

In a candid conversation with an audience here at the Aspen Environment Forum, eminent biologist/naturalist EO Wilson said soccer moms are killing off bio-education because they don’t let their children experience nature...In what he calls the “soccer mom syndrome” Wilson said the worst thing a parent can do for a child is to take him or her to a botanical garden where all the trees are marked and labeled. Instead, “Go to the seashore and give them a pail and bucket. Let them experience nature…and then come back and ask questions,” Wilson said.

Thanks, doc! This totally gets me out of taking the kids to the library, that horrible place where all the books are marked and labeled. Better to send them outside to experience nature by reading a candy wrapper some kid dropped on our lawn.

I will leave for others the deliciousness of an environmentalist telling people in Colorado to go to the seashore, regardless of how many Aspenites can simply hop their Gulfstreams back to Malibu to do just that.

BETRAYAL ON THE CHANGING TABLE

My poor little guy.

Beast was a little, um, grainy down below the other night, and it fell to me to change him since Her Awesomness was cleaning up after a truly stupendous macaroni-and-cheese-and-peas-and-hot-dog dinner entree. No problem, down comes the pull-up and wow, son, that's redder than a May Day parade in Moscow in the fifties. Gotta get the wipes and --

OWWWW!

This'll be over with in no time, big guy, just --

OWWWWW!

-- let me --

(beseechingly) Daddy, what are you doing to me?

Dude. Oh, little dude. You're gonna make me cry looking at me like that. My sweet trusting decent little guy.

(growling and glaring)

HONEY, COME BAIL ME OUT QUICK BEFORE THE KID HATES ME FOR LIFE.

Lord bless my wife, she came right quick and made the judgment call that this time it was okay if there were a few stray crudniks on the fundament, because those could be hosed off in the tub before getting the bath proper under way. A little oatmeal in the bath, a touch of ointment afterwards, and the lad was right as rain, and once mommy calmed him down he gave me one of his treasured run-n-hugs from all the way down the hall.

Which are only the best things in the world.

NIGHT NUMBER TEN

This is it. Noodle attempts to go for the big prize by falling asleep by herself for the tenth night.

I missed the success of night nine due to a voice-over seminar at my old high school in Rhinebeck - a place I completely don't recognize since its expansion a few years ago, even though I attended school there for five years and even ran the summertime paint crew for a couple years. The paint jobs are holding up nicely after 22 years, too. I wandered around disoriented like one of the grouchy alte kackers who only sets foot in the school once a year to vote "no" on the school budget. ("I don't have kids in the schools, why should I pay?" To which on the AM station's old talk show I would respond "My dad's dead and never collected a dime from Social Security - where's my 50% payroll tax cut?" Just to rile them and listen to them splutter.)

And then a couple of the friendly students? teachers? pointed me in the right direction.

Bottom line from the seminar: voiceover work is a pretty sweet gig if you can get it, but it takes a lot of hustle to get over that first big hump and my area of expertise doesn't necessarily give me that much of an edge.

(Welcome to my Wall Street Journal forum readers! There are more than one of you, yes?)

MURPHY'S LAW OF FEET

If one of your ten toes is a bit banged-up, or is suffering a hangnail or whatnot, that's the toe that you will slam into a chair while walking through the kitchen barefoot.

Ratzafratzin' blankety-blankety poopyheaded YEEOUCH D'OH D'OH D'OOOOOHHHHHH is what I said, because the kids were there and if there's one thing I somehow manage to get right around the kids, it's not using so many cuss words. Her Awesomeness has slipped every now and again, but so far not me. (Jinx.) It's an area in which being an otherwise shiftless radio personality has helped me, since it's a professional responsibility to be aware of the seven dirty words and such.

Plus I figure cursing is like hot peppers - occasionally a judicious amount of spice is needed, but you don't slather the stuff all over everything unless you like having the as-- having considerable lower-intestinal issues later on.

THE COOLEST THING I'VE SEEN ALL YEAR

The people at Improv Everywhere are stone cold geniuses. CHECK. OUT. THIS. LINK.

(I'd post the video, but I'm having trouble making the video play nice with Blogger.)
(UPDATE: Made it work!)

THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAY "WHAT THE..."

Whilst clipping coupons this evening, I came across what may be the dumbest tag line in the history of Sunday coupon inserts:

NOT YOUR MOTHER'S EAR WAX REMOVER!

It conjures up so many images I'd rather not deal with so close to bedtime. So many.

THE PIGGYBACK WORKOUT

I wonder what the calorie-burning numbers are for hauling at various intervals 33 or 49 pounds of squirmy child on one's shoulders, because I did one heck of a lot of that today with Noodle and Beast at the gigantic playground which will be Noodle's realm come kindergarten in the fall.

After collapsing for a brief nap this afternoon, my legs and ankle have been giving me one long session of "what in Sam Hill was THAT all about?" But since I'm hoping to hit the golf course for the first time this season this week, I figure hoisting my own bag will be a breeze in comparison.

Golf. In my youth I used to work and play at Red Hook Golf Club from before sunup to after sundown - arrive at 4:30 with the earliest rays of the sun, get in a quick nine before opening up the pro shop, work there 'til noon, grab lunch and play another nine while eating, then work another couple hours, then play another eighteen at least before riding my bike home. And I had the tan of a five-handicapper to show for it - face, both arms, and one hand. Nowadays I'll be doing a jig if I manage to break 45 on the uber-easy north nine at Dinsmore, but I better have some sort of game if the suits at the radio station drag me off to an outing with clients or some such thing this year. The boss in particular has a vivid memory of me smoking a 7-iron to the back of the green on a 216-yard par 3 - which sounds impressive until you factor in that it was a pre-children 31-year-old me swinging like Hulk on meth from an elevated tee with a gale-force wind at my back.

I'd really love for Noodle and Beast to take up golf. Not that I'm ever going to be a "sports parent," although if they ever got good enough to land an athletic scholarship at golf or anything else, ain't no way I'm looking down my nose at that. I'd just like somebody to play with once in a while, however much I might prefer my own company on the golf course.

WELCOME TO CRACK E. CHEESE - THE PUSHERMAN WILL SEE YOU SHORTLY

So a co-worker of mine hooked us up with some freebies at Chuck E. Cheese, but we figured we'd never use them since we live 30 miles away from the joint, it's at the moribund South Hills Mall, and overstimulating Noodle and Beast while jamming them full of heinous pizza and high-fructose corn syrup drinks was not anybody's idea of fun.

On the other hand, it was free heinous pizza and high-fructose corn syrup drinks, plus just enough game tokens to suck us in. And as it turns out, Noodle needed eyeglasses, and they were ready to be picked up today, and since the eye doctor is just a few miles from Chuck's, well...

The first thing that surprised us was that the place opens at nine in the morning. To get the brunch crowd, don't you know. I'll tell you momentarily why opening at nine is a fantastic idea. The second surprising thing was that they serve wine. It's not like there's a wine list. The's just two small taps behind the cash registers, one marked red and the other marked white. Can anybody help me out on which one goes with cheese-and-tomato-flavored cardboard?

We got there at 11:00 when the place was still all but empty, and by 11:10 the Beast had taken so many rides on the Chuck E. picture-taking car thing that it ran out of paper, and aside from that his ride of choice was the Bob the Builder bulldozer, during which he would proclaim to all and sundry that I AM BOB THE BUILDER. I AM. Meanwhile, Noodle had racked up 79 game tickets cheating at playing Whack-A-Mole. I think you need two thousand tickets to earn the two-inch-tall plastic dog from China with a missing leg and enough lead in it to stop a charging Cape buffalo.

By 11:30 the place was jammed with people and kids arriving for the first parties of the day, and as it turns out one of Noodle's nursery-school classmates was one of the party-goers, and talked Noodle into being brave enough to climb up into the crawling maze that looms over the play zone and is actually very very cool for four-year-olds.

And then it got more crowded. Which brings us back around to my point about it being a great thing that the place opened at nine, because by noon Her Awesomeness was on the verge of hooking one of those wine taps up to a funnel and making like it was a Friday night in Plattsburgh some time in the early nineties. With Chuck E's first stage show of the day about to begin and suck the kids in for another half-hour of token-sucking hell, we fled in slow-motion like the crippled Enterprise trying to limp away from Khan's ticking-time-bomb ship in the Mutaran Nebula, hoping against hope that we'd get out the door before they saw anything and started howling. Her Awesomeness was magnificent as Spock bringing the mains back online just in time.

Next time, we're coming early so my darling wife can mix Chuck E's wine with some OJ and have herself a proper brunchtime modified mimosa. Even with the freebies it cost us 35 bucks. When you've got kids, the Man will win one every now and again. You cannot stop him. You can only hope to contain him.

Did I mention the godawfulness of the pizza?

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"Do NOT wipe your nose on the cat...again."

SIX DOWN, FOUR TO GO

Noodle's really getting the hang of this falling-asleep-solo thing! And that's even with the bummer news that the Memere had a bad cold and wouldn't be joining us at the Chuck E. Cheese or wherever it is we're going tomorrow.

We're also psyched here in Boogerland, because today I got my first hack posted over at the mighty parenthacks.com! Not that it's any amazing work of genius; I merely suggested a clip-on hat lamp would work wonders if you're in a situation like ours where the light from one kid's room keeps the other kid awake at bedtime, but turning out the lights straightaway would be a tantrum-maker. Here's the whole story, along with linkage to the one place I found that had the lamps if you're averse to grabbing them from the point-of-purchase rack at your local Wal-Mart.

WHAT I'VE GOT TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 12 YEARS OR SO

This is how not to react when you get dumped:

While patrols were en route, police received information it was not a domestic dispute, but a dispute involving the homeowner’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend, who had allegedly forcibly entered the home armed with machete-style knives. When Sheriff’s patrols arrived at the scene, they found the girl’s mother and father suffering knife wounds, as well as the suspect — Nicholas Usuriello, 17, of Clinton Corners. Police said he was still armed with two knives.After a short time, Usuriello was disarmed and taken into custody without further incident. While the investigation is continuing, initial investigation revealed Usuriello had planned the incident, and had entered the home when he was confronted by his ex-girlfriend’s parents, police said. The girl’s father suffered a cut on the head and a severed thumb...

Best wishes to the girl's mom and especially the dad; looks like your daughter turned out to be rather a good judge of character and got out while the gettin' was good. This is the kind of situation I'm going to dread seeing my daughter in once she becomes a teenager, even though we like to think she won't be the type to take any guff from any boy - and on a selfish note, by the time Noodle is 17 I'm not going to be a spring chicken and was pretty well useless in physical confrontations even in my youth. Still, a kick to the groin will always work wonders with a violently intransigent failed suitor.

In the meantime, please - no Pope of Greenwich Village jokes until the dad's recovered.

WE'RE HALFWAY THERE

Five nights of Noodle falling asleep solo. Five more to go and she gets her prize. After that? Rut roh.

So she set foot inside her future elementary school for the first time today, and loved it. An hour of story-time, and since she's already taller than some of the second graders she looks like she fits right in. Her Awesomeness and I did the meet-and-greet with the principal and the head of the local PTA, and due to my goofy radio-guy schedule I was the only dad in the room. As a result, I could feel some of the moms' eyes boring into me from behind. At least that's what I think was happening, because it's highly unlikely they were checking me out. It could have been that the sunlight through the cafeteria windows was hitting my super-sexy bald spot at just the right angle and they were squinting from the glare.

SEVEN-FOOT-LONG RAVENOUS SQUID TERRORIZE CALIFORNIA

Just because squids are cool. And yummy, dipped in panko and sauteed.

THREE NIGHTS AND COUNTING

Noodle has done three nights out of four falling asleep without help, and as of bathtime she's psyched to go for four. We'll see.

In the meantime, the family has ditched the calming pre-bedtime routine favored by experts everywhere, seeing as it didn't seem to work in the least. Instead, there's the post-dinner wig-out, culminating in the march to the bathroom during which I pick up Beast and pretend he's a set of bagpipes, holding him upside down while making the loudest possible fart noises I can on his chubby (but no longer stubby) little legs.

I don't know what your household calls them, but here in Boogerland the fart-noise-on-leg (or tummy, or rump) is referred to as a "zotz". Is there another word? Inquiring minds need to know.

UPDATE: She's at four!

THE BRIBES, THEY DO NOTHING

We are NOT upping the ante on the Great Noodle Solo Sleep Experiment.

One tricky problem with having a sooper geenius four-year-old child is that they run rings 'round you logically. Or illogically.

"No, Daddy, I only go to sleep by myself on Wednesdays."

"But you did it last night and that was Saturday."

"I've got a deal for you..."

Where did THIS come from? Here she is pitching me, even though she has never met any of the suits from my job. I went back to logic:

"I don't want any deals, darling. You had your brand-new big-girl car seat put in the car today, and big girls go to sleep all by themselves, so --"

"NOOOOOOOO!!!"

Ah, jeez.

WHEN IN DOUBT, BRIBE

So we've hit on a strategy to get Noodle to fall asleep at night, minus freakout:

Baksheesh!

If she gets to sleep by herself ten times - and it doesn't have to be ten in a row or anything fancy - she gets an extra special gift from the Nana.

Tonight, Noodle bought into the deal after a few days of kvetching and what looked like it was going to be a hairy Saturday night. Out of the blue, she tells me "I'm going to try it myself tonight, Daddy."

Yeeeesssssss.

THANKS A BUNCH, TOYS R US

I haven't had a look-see as to whether this is happening in their local stores yet - so watch this space for updates, and if you're in the area of their Kingston, Middletown, Poughkeepsie or Albany stores, drop a line - but one Toys R Us in Sacramento is selling lower-back tattoos a/k/a tramp stamps a/k/a hag tags ... in their Stickers R Us vending machines.

One more reason to stick to my small local toy shops when it comes to Noodle and Beast. I am so hoping this fad is a leisure-suit level object of ridicule by the time Noodle's a teenager.

NO ROCK-STAR FACES, NO SEQUINS, AND NO CAPES

Happy 58th birthday to the world's greatest keyboard player, Tony Banks of Genesis. Bonus points if you can find any depiction of Tony showing any kind of facial expression while playing. He's the Mariano Rivera of keyboard players. Here's "It's Gonna Get Better":

IN WHICH I AM MOMENTARILY FAMOUSER THAN NOODLE'S CLASSMATE'S FAMOUS PARENT

I stepped in for Memere to take Noodle to dance class recently, which was a treat because my afternoon news work and Noodle's class usually coincide - but this time I was able to make the juggle work, and let me tell you that there are few things that will overload your cute circuits more than a dozen four-year-olds taking dance lessons. And few things that overload my I'm-hot-stuff circuts more than one of the other parents recognizing me from the radio, but not recognizing the world-renowned performer who was standing next to me doing their own daughter-watching.

JUMPING PIDER, DADDY

PIDER! DADDY DADDY DADDY DADDY PIIIIIDERRRRR! HELP!

Just what we need to hear from Beast's crib at 2:18 in the morning. The little guy is so brave...until he sees a spider, or even a bit of cat's fur on the floor, or the shadow of a piece of lint, and he stone cold wigs. Pure existential terror.

PIDER PIDER PIDER JUMPING PIDER DAAAAAADDDDEEEEEEE! DADDY MOMMY DADDY MOMMY HELP! PIDER!

And as I scoop the little guy up to comfort him, all I can think is that payback's going to come a couple decades down the road when I tell his girlfriends what a big scaredy-cat he was when he was 2.

IT HAS COME TO THIS

Girl Scout cookie scalping on Ebay. Noodle is totally going to be into this when she gets to be that age...

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (EASTER EDITION)

"Okay, there's a lot of chocolate on the floor and a lot of poo on the floor, so it's really important that nobody eat anything off the floor today."

"Jesus came back on the third day, and Herman came back on the second day, but Jesus is still smarter than Herman. And smells better."

"No, there wasn't any Home Depot when Jesus was nailed to the cross. They had to make their own nails."

THE CHOCOLATE CRUCIFIX AND OTHER UNHOLINESS

Um...I'm nobody's idea of pious, but is this over the line?

I would've snapped a picture of the originals that Noodle and Beast got from one of their grandmothers, but they've long since been gobbled up and the kids were so hopped up on chocoloate I have long since been through with being weirded out by a chocolate crucifix.

Nana let slip over the weekend that the Easter Bunny used to hide eggs with candy in them in my slippers when I was a lad. DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT NO. We were hoping to minimize that aspect of Easter, just because the kids have had candy shoved at them at every turn for the better part of a week and it's all a bit much, especially since St. Patrick's Day has also been converted into a sweets-hoovering opportunity for kids. At least an early Easter means the next sugar-bombing doesn't happen until the Memorial Day parade. Here, kid - have a Tootsie Roll in memory of my Uncle Pete who died at Guadalcanal.

Or maybe Her Awesomeness and I should simply be glad that there's no Martin Luther King Day candy yet (ooh - a big rock candy mountaintop! And I have a Dreamsicle!).

This much is clear: next year, the Bunny is showing up during Easter Mass and not the night before, so that Mommy and Daddy can have their pancakes in relative peace.

STATIONS OF THE BUNNY

We've been trying to explain to Noodle, and eventually to Beast, that Easter isn't all about candy and eggs and those mall bunnies who always look like they spent the previous night in an epic blunt-off with Willie and Snoop, e.g.:

Duuuuude. Whoooooa.

So getting beyond the bunny-stuff means explaining Jesus Christ as best we can, and handling questions like "what's spurged mean?" Er, that's 'scourged', my little love. Like we really wanted to go there with a four-year-old. Thank you for that charming contribution to punitive history, Roman Empire.

Then came "They put NAILS in his HANDS?!"

Yes, and this is why Daddy tells you to stay away from his tools.

This kid and her powers of observation, I swear. Next time we're in church we're not sitting anywhere near that particular Station of the Cross.

How come other Catholics with four-year-olds get way cuter Good Friday questions while we're stuck with a three-foot-nine Helen Thomas asking about hyssop? Noodle might be taller than the actual Helen Thomas at this point, but I digress. We tried to distill Easter down to the basics and gently steer away from the gruesome bits, but no.

Maybe it's best to give up while we're behind and let the lads handle the issue:

HO, HAHA, GUARD, TURN, PARRY, DODGE, SPIN, HA, THRUST

And once again my trusty buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff bends my beak up into my face.

Noodle is a fiendish bedtime duellist, you see - always on the look for an angle to stay up just a few minutes longer, and now she's got me trapped by means of the "I'm scared" card. Scared of what, she will not say - if I could pry that info out of her I'd deploy the monster-spray and such - but should I get any farther away than her bedroom door the caterwauling begins.

Or she lays on the cute, real thick-like. "I want a cud-dle, Dad-dy". Chin-quiver and all.

We had a nice thing going for a while, where she got two or three stories tops, and if she wasn't tired enough at that point she could play quietly with her Leap-pad and let us know when she was tired, which usually only took a few minutes and out she went. But now she calls me in under the pretext of wanting to go to sleep, then springs the one-more-story, one-more-cuddle on me. Tricksy.

Her Awesomeness can't help, because she's putting Beast to bed...and if he's still making noise, then Noodle hears it and doesn't want to miss out on the fun.


On top of all this, Noodle has learned that if she has to go potty in the middle of the night and wants to be rid of those ghastly overnight diapers, she has to get up and actually go to the bathroom...but instead of asking quietly for help she goes right to freak-out mode, a true joy at 2 in the morning. Today, she's home with me with a bit of a cold, and has enjoyed kicking my butt at Candyland and of course has used the markers to draw all over her feet to make footprints because we don't have a stamp pad big enough for her size-12s.

Long as I got all the footprints cleaned off the walls, nobody need be the wiser.

DUMB QUESTION

Is a toothpaste tube fit for recycling?

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"You poopied just like the Easter Bunny!"

(I'm on vacation this week...catching up on all the household stuff that didn't get done thanks to pressing matters like, um, posting here at this blog. Does that count?)

CAREFUL WITH YOUR KIDNEYS

I mention it because Thursday was World Kidney Day, which sounds like a bizarre observance unless somebody you love has had something gone wrong with their kidneys - like our sweet Noodle, who contracted an obscure type of autoimmune-triggered vasculitis called Henoch Schönlein purpura a couple of years ago and had it get to her kidneys, doing who knows what in the way of damage. That's my girl, picking up the condition whose name is in German and Latin. She's still on blood-pressure medicine and probably will be for quite a while to come, and every time she gets any kind of rash...like yesterday...we wonder if it's her immune system going hinky again and the HSP coming out of remission, and we get busy collecting urine samples for the doctors. We collect sterile urine-sample cups the way other people collect beer steins.

I mention all this a day late because yesterday wound up being yet another one of those aww-crap schedule-blown-all-to-hell days as a result, and I completely spaced on posting this. I did remember the post about telling Beast not to put poo in his toy shopping cart. (Nice priorities, Dad!)

SOMETHING ELSE ONLY PARENTS SAY

"The poo does not go in your shopping cart."

POST 100

8:03ish, and both kids are actually asleep with no kvetching. The reaction from Her Awesomeness?

"They must be coming down with something again."

THANKS FOR THE TSURIS, GOVERNOR SPITZER

Thanks for jamming up my entire week because of your damn fool appetites. Last night at dinner Her Awesomeness and I got stuck trying to explain to Noodle who the governor was, and what his job was and so forth. It was the "why is he quitting?" question that stumped us - because even the smartest four-and-a-half-year-old girl on the planet doesn't need to know what hookers and money-laundering are. Not just yet, anyway.

We were having enough trouble with Noodle asking "daddy, what's a reptile dysfunction?" thanks to those advertising idiots. Now this.

SPITZER

O, how I was hoping to avoid politics and my day job intruding here, but this is too big.

(Hang on. Noodle and Beast are hugging each other. "Awwwwww" break.)

The analysis I'll leave to the chin-strokers. From me, a quick rundown of some other things that Eliot Spitzer could've done with his money instead of hiring a hooker:

• light up every high-school football stadium in Texas for one hour ($4200)
• an hour on a really sweet private jet ($4200) or a tank ($5000)...or Air Force One (Reagan-era) ($5200)
• an hour's billing for a tobacco litigator ($4000)
• a car that goes 180mph in a wind tunnel, without moving ($4000)
• one hour of a typical cheesy wedding ($5000...more in Jersey)

It's late, and since the governor didn't up and quit yet, I'm to bed.

SPRING FORWARD, FALL FLAT ON FACE

Not for a moment do I envy anybody with an infant this time of year. All that work to get the li'l critter on a schedule and WHOMP, you lose an hour. Here's a trick that worked well for us yesterday. Two words:

Road trip.

Since your kid's schedule is screwed anyway, might as well accept the inevitable and make something of the day, thus:

An hour or so after breakfast, pile the kids into the car and head for a destination that's about a nap's length away. They'll have their zonk-out in the mid-to-late morning, wake up in time for lunch, have a bit of fun, not nap in the afternoon, and with any luck they'll be sleepy an hour early.

It has to be better than trying to noodge the kids' schedules by 15 minutes every week for a month, twice a year.

Bonus: if you take the kids to a museum or a zoo and spring for a membership, the two trips a year generally pay for themselves and then some, plus you get a tax deduction.

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.

YEAH, BABY, I'M MOPPING...YOU LIKE THAT, DON'T YOU?

What gets the lady in your life in the mood, lads? A gaggle of researchers at the Council on Contemporary Familes say it's when you're reeking of Murphy's Oil Soap and dirty diapers:

American men still don't pull their weight when it comes to housework and child care, but collectively they're not the slackers they used to be. The average dad has gradually been getting better about picking himself up off the sofa and pitching in, according to a new report in which a psychologist suggests the payoff for doing more chores could be more sex.

I'd read the article in greater detail, but the gutters need cleaning. Nudge nudge wink wink say no more say no more...

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!

O, THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF A CAMPAIGN REPORTER

There are times when I don't feel so bad about having spent many an evening sitting glazed-over at a local zoning board of appeals meeting, waiting to get that soundbite from the board chairman on why the arch signs at the proposed McDonald's can be 24 feet high but not 28 feet high. I feel pretty good about the dues-paying days of my broadcasting career when I see pictures like these grizzled veterans, from the Hillary Clinton press office in Austin, Texas:

You must forgive me, I'm not used to seeing men's rooms in a political context without wondering if there's a senator behind stall door number three, trolling for a bit of strange.

Hat tip: Gawker.

RALPH TRIFECTA NOW IN PLAY

This time it's Noodle who went for the 11:30pm visit to the temple of the porcelain god, plus the 2:30 follow-up. Except she didn't quite get to the church on time, you know?

The one good thing about this is that once the mess is cleaned up, I can be totally juvenile about it and use all the different words for vomit I haven't used since I lived in a fraternity house way back in 198neveryoumind.

Key phrase there being "once the mess is cleaned up". It's paper towel for the bulk of the bootage, followed by disinfectant wipes for the minutiae. I turn the aforementioned suddenness of the reverse peristalsis to my advantage by making sure the kids hurl in a different spot every time, and by the time I'm done pointing their gack this way and that, I get the floors nice and clean and can put off mopping for another week. Ha!

Honey? Sweetie? I was totally joking about that, you know that, right? Right?

...AND YOUR MANTRA SHALL BE "MOOOMMMEEEEE..."

Problem: Clowns at kids' birthday parties freak kids out.

Solution: The yoga clown.

The 39-year-old Plattekill resident incorporates creative posturing and meditation along with juggling and music into her program to teach others how to improve their lives.

I say give her a try - and then your kid will be the serene one at the next party where all the other kids are freaking out because mom cheaped out and hired the regular clown.

THE KIDS' PLAYLIST (latest entries)

Noodle:

I Don't Want To Be Alone - Billy Joel

A Trick of the Tail - Genesis (she calls this one the "horns and tail" song)

Beast:

Iko Iko - Dr. John

THREE-YEAR-OLDS, DUDE

Gaaah. Like those of us with daughters need another suck on our ever-shrinking disposable income:

ONE recent rainy afternoon, Eleanor LaFauci, 7, sat with her feet in open-toed foam slippers, admiring her toenails, freshly painted watermelon pink.

“Look, we’re reading an adult magazine,” Eleanor told her mother, gleefully waving a copy of People with a desultory-looking Britney Spears on its cover.

Eleanor was in the bubble-gum-colored pedicure lounge of Dashing Diva, the Upper West Side franchise of the international nail spa, with her 3 ½-year-old sister and a half-dozen or so friends. The girls were celebrating her birthday with mani’s, pedi’s and mini-makeovers with light makeup and body art — glitter-applied stars, lightning bolts and, of course, hearts. Eleanor’s mother, Anne O’Brien, stood watching and shrugged. “What can I say?” said Ms. O’Brien, whose husband suggested the party. “She’s a girly girl. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I didn’t get my first manicure until I was 25.”

The eyes, they roll. The hands, they make sure the wallet stays right in its pocket - besides, it's way cuter when Noodle and Her Awesomeness do their nails together. At home. For lots less.

JUST WHAT WE NEEDED FOR BREAKFAST

Yummy, Albany Times-Union. Just deeee-lish for a Monday morning:

Still, if you notice you don't have to clean up your yard because your dog has taken matters into his own mouth, you should mention the behavior to your vet. It could be a sign of something more serious.

"Every now and then we meet a particular dog that is just hard core on this, and they will even eat it right directly from the oven, if you know what I mean," Lucas says.

...

"The other thing that it can be is a little bit of a behavioral issue," Lucas says. "Especially in female dogs that will clean up after their puppies, and some females that are unspayed may have a potential behavioral desire to clean up."

That's right, they're used to keeping their dens and their puppies poo-free, and some dogs just don't lose that instinct even when the puppies are grown.

I am never going to complain about cleaning the Beast's diapers ever again.

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.

NOODLE MOVES UP

She's gone and gotten too tall for the old child seat, and so we're pouncing on this here deal because Britax stuff goes on sale about as often as Cincinnati Reds pitchers throw four-hit shutouts.

Sale ends Saturday 3/1 or thereabouts.

THE KIDS' PLAYLIST (FIRST IN A CONTINUING SERIES)

Since I spend a lot of time on the road in spots with crappy radio reception, I put together lots of mix CDs for my trips around the region - and the kids will occasionally seize on one and demand it again again again again. Maybe they work for you too! (I'll make links available ASAP)

Noodle: Pretty Flamingo - Manfred Mann

Beast: Junco Partner - Dr. John

IN WHICH I DATE MYSELF AGAIN

Trek meets Airplane. Whoa:

STILL WEAK FROM THE CUTENESS

Noodle was out sick Monday, so we had a tea party. It was every bit as adorable as it sounds.

And she's four-and-a-half now, which means don't you be coming in here with that "four" stuff any more. Nuh-uh.

(Watch this space for pic)

THE VERY FIRST "HER AWESOMENESS SEAL OF APPROVAL" GOES TO...

Tidy Cats small spaces cat litter - in the orange container. And not the blue container. The distinction between orange and blue is tremendously important. Sez our reviewer:

"It really keeps the stank down!"

My wife. She's all about class.

FUN 'N SAFE MAGNETIC DART BOARDS TURN OUT TO BE NEITHER

A toy made in China you'd find at the dollar store - recalled? Say it ain't so! My favorite bit is at the end of this passage:

"Made in China" is embossed on the back of the board. The sets were sold exclusively at Family Dollar stores nationwide from January 2001 to January 2008.

Consumers should immediately take the recalled toys away from children and return the board and all of the darts to a Family Dollar store for a refund.

I wonder how many people are actually going to go to this trouble to get their dollar back. If you don't have all the darts, then what - will they stiff you on the refund?

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (PARTIAL PRINCESS EDITION)

"You, keep your hands to yourself. You, keep your feet to yourself."

"It's 14 degrees out. You need pants."

"Princesses do NOT wear stockings to bed."

"Princesses can go potty all by themselves."

"Princesses keep their bottoms on their chairs and don't go crawling under the table like wiggle-worms."

NOW FOR THE PRE-SCHOOLERS: THEIR VERY OWN MOLA RAM DOLL COMPLETE WITH FRESHLY YANKED-OUT TICKER

Joy! My transition to Humorless Old Fart continueth:

Yes, that's our old pal the high priest Mola Ram from Indiana Jones fame, with a freshly-extracted human heart in his hand there. No way Noodle gets this, no matter how much Her Awesomeness digs Harrison Ford.

Noodle would love her little Mola Ram during the day and have hellish dreams about it at night.

September 2008, if you're an action-figure geek.

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.

MY TUCK-TUCKING SKILLS DON'T SUCK AFTER ALL

Her Awesomeness and I just got back from the Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt show in Kingston - amazing, with Garth Hudson showing up for the encore on accordion, and Garth's wikipage has been updated to note the blessed event. And when we got back at around 10:20, Noodle and the Beast had only been asleep for 20 minutes - despite the very best efforts of the Memere and the Pepere to de-bounce the little savages, that's how long it took before they finally conked out. A good solid three hours of cajoling, reading, snacks, cuddles, and (gasp! we're the worst. parents. ever) a little bit of TV.

We no longer feel frustrated that it sometimes takes us an hour to wind down our spawn. An hour looks pretty damn good from here.

So, who's on tour in 2013?

ROCK ON, LITTLE DUDE

Na, na na, nanana na...

HER AWESOMENESS INSISTED I POST THIS

So she can sneak a peek while at work, you see. This much I know: I've got a date on May 22nd:

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"Before we leave, does everybody have a sticker on their forehead?"

"I think I only have to tell you once - that's not chocolate."

"The toilet seat is NOT a hat."

WHAT IS THIS "FOUR-DAY WEEKEND" OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?

Time off? Har. Snort. It's errandry and banking and filing and chauffering the Nana and ten things I'm going to forget and catch grief for later. Luckily, at the end of the weekend there's the Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt show with Her Awesomeness at UPAC. (Tickets going fast! Seriously. Go to bardavon.org already)

An actual date. I forget what those are like. I haven't brought Her Awesomeness to a show since before Noodle was born.

Do I have to comb my hair? Okay then.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, SWEETIES

A man-hug for the Beast. A smooch for the Noodle. And continued disbelief and joy that Her Awesomeness shares a life with the likes of me.

FAREWELL, CANON JOHN HESTER

A most unusual clergyman, immortalized (er, so to speak) in the Telegraph:

"A striptease performance," he declared, "is a display of beauty, sipped and its bouquet savoured, as one might do with a rare and delightful wine."

We'll put aside for now the issue of whether using that line of logic is going to work with the wives and girlfriends in our audience. Fare thee well, holy man. Hope you brought some twenties for the girls, just in case.

TWO MORE HOUSEHOLD HOLIDAYS

Happy birthday this week to Steve Hackett:



And Peter Gabriel:



Now get on the horn with the rest of the band and set up a tour already.

IS THERE A DARWIN AWARD FOR DOGS?

Certain among us will be ashamed they laughed at this story. Others, not so much.

Freddy, it could be said, was a brave dog. He saw the alligator in a pond near the pedestrian trail...

He barked.
He jumped in the water.
And the alligator ate him.

This is why we in Castle Lovelybooger are cat people.

FLABBERGASTED I AM

Fred Astaire...on the drums:

THE MAN IS KEEPING US DOWN

Here come the diaper price hikes, as warned:

Last week we started seeing higher shelf prices on both Huggies and Pampers, and today we're seeing a "sale"price of $9.99 per jumbo that used to be $8.99. For size 3, that dollar increase amounts to an increase of just less than three cents per diaper--about 13%! Most families will need to add between $5 and $10 per month to their diaper budgets, or $60 to $100 for the year.

Click the link to find out ways to get around this fiendish diaper-industrial complex plot. The comments are particularly interesting, with several commenters claiming that Wal-Mart is refusing to honor manufacturers' coupons from customers who stock up on diapers and use multiple coupons. I vaguely recall a Target clerk mentioning this policy to me while stocking up for Beast a few weeks ago, but I will have to test the claims for myself when I head out to buy another couple packages of GoodNites and Pull-ups later today. I'll report back...but if you know anything in the meantime, feel free to drop a comment!

UPDATE: No coupon hassles at Target. Wal-Mart to follow after the snow/ice/rain/muckstorm moves through.

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (INTESTINAL EDITION)

"Lots of food that's good for you makes you toot."

"Leave Herman alone in there. He wants privacy too."

"There's another potty song?"

"Yes, dinosaurs tooted too. Especially the ones that ate all their veggies."

"Ask your mommy why it comes out that color."

"That's your tummy telling you it wants more cauliflower."

"Did you leave that brown line on the couch or was it Herman?"

THE OBITUARY THAT HAS IT ALL

The Telegraph has the world's finest obituary section, and they've proved it again with a fantastic piece on somebody I'd never heard of before, Charles Fawcett. Here's how he spent World War II:

When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 Fawcett joined the Polish army but had been in barracks for only a week before escaping from the advancing Nazis and hitchhiking back to Paris. When the French rejected his application to enlist, Fawcett joined the Section Volontaire des Américains - the ambulance corps.

He was sharing a studio with another young American, Bill Holland, whose mother was a German aristocrat. One of Holland's relatives, General Otto von Stülpnagel, had been appointed commander-in-chief of occupied France, and when Holland introduced Fawcett to senior German officers he was able to pass important information to the French Resistance.

In Paris Fawcett also took part in the rescue of a group of British prisoners-of-war who had been placed under French guard in a hospital ward by the Germans. By impersonating a German ambulance crew, Fawcett and a comrade marched in at 4am and ordered the French nurses to usher the PoWs out into the yard. "Gentlemen," he announced as he drove them away, "consider yourself liberated."

"You're a Yank," said a British voice.

"Never," came Fawcett's lilting southern burr, "confuse a Virginian with a Yankee."

Cameo appearances by Louis Armstrong, Warren Beatty, Hedy Lamarr and the mujahideen of Afghanistan.

The whole thing. Read it.

OUR PINK FLOYD MOMENT

It actually happened tonight. Her Awesomeness made some yummy shepherd's pie, but Beast and Noodle weren't having any of that. At least Noodle picked around the ground buffalo and gobbled up the mashed potatoes and corn - but still, it was frustrating enough that out came:

If you don't eat your meat...um...

(at this point we realized what we'd said and that we might as well bring it on home)

...you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

And then a "stand still, laddie!" for Beast just for good measure, even though he was by now happily plowing his way through the shepherd's pie. For our next trick, we'll have breakfast while a giant inflatable pig soars over the kitchen table.

HOT DIGGITY, I GOT A DATE

For the first time in the five years since Her Awesomeness was carrying Noodle around in utero, we're going to a concert next weekend - Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt at UPAC in Kingston, which is going to be undergoing several months' worth of renovations later on this year. The Amazing In-Laws will be taking care of Noodle and Beast while the missus and I experience the joys of trying to find a parking spot in midtown Kingston.

I've been practicing the old fake-yawn-stretch-arm-around-my-date move, because I'm rusty.

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"You'll have to use the Cinderella underwear without the sparkles."

"Those aren't raisins."

"How many of them are in your nose?"

"Did you wipe?"

"We'll just go outside without our pants, then."

CEASEFIRE

The big end-of-the-day timesaver is to get Noodle and Beast into the tub together so we can hose 'em down and get them ready for beddy-bye time more quickly. Lots of luck getting that to happen; there's usually crying and howling and mishegoss and Her Awesomeness and I can't figure out why for love nor money. Nor can we figure out why the fighting doesn't happen sometimes. Like last night. Beast had an appointment with the otto...oto...otolaryngi... ear doctor, which due to its scheduling necessitated dinner out (a whole other project right there), so there goes our militarily precise schedule.

And yet...

We drive home and the Noodle asks nicely for the "horse and tail song" instead of howling for it when she hears something she doesn't like; instead of the usual transition battles the little ones marched smartly inside, put their boots neatly into the tray, and since they weren't getting their hair cut they didn't have to move each other's clothes down to the lower peg and report to Mr Viney that they've had their chit signed. And into the tub they went. Adorableness and splashing ensued...and not the usual squalling!...followed by butt-nekkid toddlers tear-assing into the living room because they were so good we figured they'd earned a bit of TV while they got their jammies on. Beast likes The Incredibles, as it turns out.

Most amazing of all, they went to bed with only a bare minimum of grousing, and the Noodle even deigned to give me a smooch before dozing off in her pile of stuffed animals.

We have no idea why it went so well.

Today we will return to our regularly scheduled chaos and madness.

UNSURPRISING ELECTION SCREW-UP OF THE WEEK

Had some folks 'round these parts calling the radio station all atwitter because their polling places were closed on Tuesday - that was because most polling places in New York didn't open until noon. I remain gratified that there are New Yorkers with shorter attention spans than mine.

Look. Shiny! What? Oh.

I also remain gratified that there were voters in Wisconsin, Virginia and Texas who showed up a week or two early for their primaries, and positively delighted that Florida remains our champion for electoral cluelessness. Great job showing up a week late there, Floridians:

"It's funny that they want to argue with us about it," said Janet Olin, assistant elections supervisor. "We absolutely have had more than a handful, and they are a handful."

Many thanks to Florida elections officials for keeping these folks occupied, and thus less likely to come up here where they might (gasp) drive.

STUPID RATZA FRATZIN' BRAIN

It finally came together today.

I got out of work at a reasonable hour. Didn't get stuck behind an oblivious menace on 9G. No messages on the machine at home, nobody calling me from work with questions that could just as easily have waited or been asked and answered by email, no wrong numbers, no workers crawling around in or on top of of the house...and so for the first time in weeks, I was able to take an uninterrupted nap. A proper, three-hour Dagwood nap. With drooling, thank you.

Refreshed, your warrior did the dishes, attacked some of the mess in the living room, finished my PM newscasts, threw some wash in the laundry, had another go at the living room...

...and forgot to make dinner because I lost track of time, which flies not only when you're having fun but also when you're sorting out Candy Land cards from GeoTrax toys.

HEINOUS BABY-NAMING TRENDS TO CONTINUE IN 2008

Oh lord, no. The idiocy continues:

2008 is the year to break with tradition when it comes to baby names, says Suelain Moy, author of Names to Grow On. That means if you love Irish names -- but don't have an ounce of Celtic blood in you -- go with Aiden anyway. "Parents are also really starting to play around with language," says Moy, creating Nevaeh" from "Heaven" spelled backward or the funky "Semaj" from the traditional "James," for example. Miss your maiden name? Consider turning a surname, like Addison, Miller, or Carver, into a totally unique first or middle moniker for your kid.

Trend Tip: Road-test an offbeat name by using it to make restaurant reservations.

And here's my trend tip: road test offbeat names by writing them down on a piece of paper, then set that paper on fire and compost the ashes and never ponder a "unique" name again - because tens of thousands of other parents are making the same "unique" choices you are. This is how we got a generation of now-mortified ten-year-old girls named Britney. Still feeling good about that pick, moms?

After you've disposed of the trendy and shallow and the stripper names, go three generations back in your families and find out what names worked for them. If you're lucky enough to have a great-grandparent-to-be still alive, you'll both honor and delight them by using their name (or their spouse's). By way of example, the Noodle is named after her late great-grandmother, who died suddenly shortly before the Noodle was born. And to this day her great-grandfather keeps pictures of his two favorite girls by his bedside and gives them both a kiss before tucking in for the night.

Awww.

DOUBLE THE MOMMIES, DOUBLE THE BABY-SHOWER SCHWAG?

One baby, one dad, two moms:

Ten human embryos each containing the DNA from one man and two women have been created in a project that within three years could lead to the first genetically altered babies being born in Britain.

The form of gene transplant proposed in Newcastle will be bitterly opposed by pro-life campaigners but offers the first realistic hope of an effective treatment for an entire class of serious genetic diseases.

And then comes the science, which is quite beyond me especially at this hour. The opportunities are limitless, and not just for lawyers, stand-up comics and talk-show blowhards.

THEM LOST WALLET BLUES

Lost a credit card? No problem, they'll express-mail a new one and it'll be there in a day or two.

Lose your health-care card? Not a biggy, there's another one coming in a week and in the meantime you can print a temporary card off our website just in case.

Lose that adorable little booklet of the kids' baby pictures? Can of corn; we print one up again on Shutterfly and it's all good.

Lose the driver's license? You'll be waiting four to six weeks, sonny boy. And if you're pulled over in the meantime, deal. Love and kisses, the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles - Now with 1978 service at 2008 prices!

18*-1

Heh. Heh. Heh.
Congratulations, Giants.

PETER GABRIEL: MUSICAL GENIUS, WORLD STATESMAN, CRAPPY SKIER

Peter, you klutz:

Peter Gabriel is recovering after breaking his left leg while skiing in Switzerland.

...

"I hit a rock and I could feel a loud snap as I broke my leg, and then I skied down to the piste, which was a bit stupid."

While laid up, Peter received a package from his old mates in Genesis. It was a fruit basket. And a set list and rehearsal schedule for the 2009 tour. (A man can hope, yes?)

THE KIDS' FIRST BALLGAME(S)

When the Noodle and the Beast came into our lives, I was hoping to be able to show them the wonders of Yankee Stadium and of...well, the 7 train on the way to Shea, at least. Was hoping to wait just a leeeetle bit longer though, but up go those two spiffy new ballparks, and what's more my beloved Reds are coming to both Queens and the Bronx this year, so there's no better time than the present to indoctrinate brainwash let them experience a big-league game for the first time.

Trouble is, the amenities for kids at the two old ballyards have never been much, and having seen that baseball palace in Philadelphia I'm thinking we're doomed if the game turns out not to be to their liking.

Would LOVE any tips on keeping a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy occupied at the game.

In the meantime, it's seven hours and counting toward the deadline for the Johan Santana trade to go through. Tick...tick...tick...don't you panic now, Mets fans. Really, just stay relaxed. Deep breaths.