One year, when I was old enough to protest but probably too young to be heard, my mother gave out pennies for Halloween (one per kid). Another year, she gave out little boxes of raisins (which I submit is the food equivalent of the penny). After that, all of my friends deserted me and ours became one of the two houses on the block where trick-or-treaters dared not tread on Halloween night (the other being the creepy house down the street with the giant weeping willow out front and the residents who were reputed to have once given out apples with razor blades embedded in them).*

Hard to blame the kids for not wanting to visit the Evans house, seeing as how they never knew from year to year if my mother was going to open the door and say, “Oh, hello, Cinderella. Happy Halloween, G.I. Joe. Would you like a cotton ball or a paper clip or this used band-aid from the time Danny had a blister on his pinkie toe?” It was clearly more fun for them to ring our doorbell, take off running before we could answer, and when they were safely out of sight yell, “BUY SOME REAL CANDY NEXT YEAR, YOU CHEAP-ASS MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Obviously, this scarred me deeply. I resolved during those dreadful, lonely late-October nights that when I grew up and had a house of my own, I wouldn’t give out any such shit. I’d drop some fuckin’ can-DAY, yo! Big-ass bars of sticky, gooey chocolate, jawbreakers, Hot Tamales… the whole megilah. I would single-handedly keep the dentists and Novocain suppliers in the ‘hood smiling. Who can take a sunrise and sprinkle it with dew? I CAN, BEEOTCH!

Then I met my wife and god dammit if that Freud dude wasn’t dead-on about them being like your mother.

It seems Hot Wife and my mother are cut from the same candyphobic cloth. Knowing my penchant for going balls to the wall on Halloween candy, Hot Wife pre-empted me this week and came home with a 200-piece bag of the smallest Snickers, Milky Ways and Twix imaginable, each so small that it would require a pair of tweezers and My First Atomic Microscope to be consumed (and even then the enjoyment factor would be spoiled by the fact that it would take two full bags to cop even the weakest of sugar buzzes). To borrow a phrase from my mother, "I have to live in this town."

When confronted, Hot Wife attempted the most pedestrian of defenses. “Danny. Seriously. By the time these kids get to our house, they will already have gobs and gobs of candy in their trick or treat bags. Do you really expect to give them a full-sized Snickers bar?”

My response to this draws from current events. “Honey. Seriously. If this is the attitude people took in regards to donations to hurricane victims – that everyone else has already done the ‘heavy lifting’ so we only have to give two bucks and a hearty pat on the back – the fine people of the American South would be living in refrigerator boxes and eating potted meat until the end of time.”

Predictably, my protestations fell on deaf ears. The bag of candy kibble stays.

But I have a secret plan.

When the kids come to the front door of Evans World Headquarters dressed as Power Rangers and princesses and axe murderers with blood squirting out of their eyes, I will distract Hot Wife by telling her there is an aerobics class that starts in two minutes. When she bolts for the gym, I will escort the fine children of our neighborhood to our garage, where I have a secret candy closet.

While they stand by, I will disarm the security system and open the secret compartment. There will be blinding light and that high-pitched, angelic “aaaaaaahhhhhh...” And as the children’s mouths water and they begin to cry, I will say, “Go ahead, children. Have an Abba-zaba. You’re home now.”

*It should be noted that when I called my mother to warn her that I would be sullying her reputation with a post about her questionable treat selections and using the word "motherfucker" in reference to our family, she claimed only to have given out pennies when she ran out of candy. If you buy that, you’re dead to me.

Life can be a funny thing. Some days you walk around with your head high and your chest puffed out and the feeling that you can’t be touched. And then there are days like I had yesterday – days when you find yourself at the confluence of so much bullshit and nonsense that you feel like the tiniest little peach-colored hair on the dark side of Satan’s butthole.

Our story begins Tuesday night when Hot Wife and I were out celebrating our anniversary. That night my in-laws babysat the kids. Wonderful people, my in-laws, but they’re not altogether wonderful about changing Barney’s Biggest Fan’s poopy diapers – and by “not altogether wonderful” I mean I’m pretty sure they put her to bed with a diaper full of the most caustic, noxious, not-of-this-earth poo-poo this side of that nasty tartar sauce McDonald’s puts on their Filet O’Fish.

Fast forward nine or 10 hours. Hot Wife and I wake up on the morning of our ninth anniversary. Birds are singing. The sun is shining. My beloved and I are basking in the afterglow of our anniversary dinner and our once yearly intentionally coincidental nudity (as required by law, or at least common marital decorum). Our precious daughter calls out from her bedroom: “Mommy. Come here. I wuv you.” And all is right in the world.

I finish getting ready for work and go to BBF’s bedroom to kiss “my girls” good-bye. As I do, as if she is trying to tell me that year number 10 is not going to be the cakewalk that number nine was, Hot Wife hands me the aforementioned Diaper Of Death and asks me to take it out to the trash can, which is sitting out at the curbside this morning.

“Is this my anniversary gift?” I ask.

She tilts her head, smirks, says nothing (and yet everything). (Funny how womenfolk can do that.)

Stinging a little bit, I begin to walk towards the front door. With each step, the stench from the diaper in my hand grows more unbearable. I begin to wonder what my daughter could have eaten to cause her excrement to smell like rotting human flesh, but the odor itself disrupts my ability to pursue that thread very far.

I need to discard this diaper quicklike, before my work clothes absorb the smell and my coworkers approach my desk wearing hazmat suits all day. I rush outside to the curb only to find that the trashman has already come and gone. “Mother fuck!” I shout to no one in particular. I could discard the diaper into the can anyway, but then that stench would hang in the can for an entire week until next trash day and by then whatever is inside that diaper is likely to have reanimated and killed everyone inside a 10 mile radius, and I just couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen.

At this point, out of shear desperation, and idea strikes me. See, in my neighborhood all houses have three trashcans: one with a green lid for “green” trash, one with a blue lid for regular trash and one with a gray lid for recyclables. The only one that has not yet been emptied is the recyclables. Now we both know that shit is not recyclable, but sometimes a man has to make a judgment call. So I looked left, then I looked right, and when I was convinced that none of my recycle nazi neighbors were out yet, I put The Diaper Of Death in the recycle bin.

I felt so small and ashamed. How did a day that started so wonderfully so quickly degrade to my engaging in borderline illegal, clearly immoral behavior?

But 24 hours have passed and I’m over it now. I guess my whole purpose here is to warn you that if you’re reading the USA Today in the near future and you find little pieces of corn and black beans embedded in Life section, that was me. Sorry.

Friday night, just before she got into the bathtub, Barney’s Biggest Fan went pee-pee in the potty for the first time ever. It was a surreally joyous occasion, one that found the entire Evans family joined in the kids’ bathroom, jumping and hugging and dancing around like idiots.

I suspect that the kids had no idea why Hot Wife and I were so overjoyed (probably because they have never had to shell-out two weeks’ salary for a box of diapers), but that didn’t dampen their urge to howl like banshees. But for Hot Wife and me, the cause for celebration was obvious. The thrill of discovering that one’s child is finally potty trained (and therefore no longer inclined to shit her clothes) rivals only the thrill of discovering that she was conceived in the first place.

“Do you know what this means?” Hot Wife squealed to me during the revelry.

“Yeah! It means you and I get to have celebration sex tonight!” I shot back.

“No! It means we have to call Barney and share the good news!” When she said this, her eyes stayed on me for a few extra beats.

Two things happened at that moment. Barney’s Biggest Fan, who was still seated on her little potty, heard the name of her beloved and began to squeal with delight. And I, having been married to Hot Wife for nine hot years this week, recognized her extend glare as her not-so-subtle way of saying, “You’re Barney in this scenario, pal.”

So the kids and Hot Wife skipped out to the living room and I sequestered myself in the garage and tried to summon the intestinal fortitude to imitate He Who I Hate With The White Hot Passion Of 10,000 Suns. I grabbed my soon-to-be-unleaded testicles in my right hand and squeezed them with all my might, and when I spoke, the sound that came out of my mouth was a pinch north of Barney’s voice – somewhere approximating the sound of a dying moose, or perhaps Chewbacca in the midst of a bad case of the stomach flu.

I picked up the phone and heard my daughter on the extension.

“Huh-woe? Barney?” my daughter said tentatively in her precious little voice.

“WHY HELLO THERE! THIS IS BARNEY! HOW ARE YOU! [stupid, pussy-ass Barney giggle]”

“Oh, I’m fine, Barney. Um, Barney? Guess what! I go pee-pee on da potty.”

“YOU DID!? WELL THAT’S TEEEEERIFFIC! [stupid, pussy-ass Barney giggle] YOUR MOMMY AND DADDY MUST BE VERY PROUD OF YOU!”

“Yeah.”

[muffled noise, followed by my daughter telling her mother this: “Mommy, I no wahnu talkit Barney anymore. He scare me.”

“Hello, Barney. This is Barney’s Biggest Fan’s mother. She’s done talking for now.”

“SHE IS?,” I say, still in character, still clutching my junk. “WELL THEN WHY DON’T YOU BRING YOUR ASS OUT TO THE GARAGE AND GET YOURSELF SOME HOT BARNEY LOVIN’?”

“I’d love to, Barney, but the children are awake.”

“SHIT! KIDS ARE SUCH A FUCKING DRAG! [stupid, pussy-ass Barney giggle] HEY, I KNOW! PUT ONE OF MY TAPES IN THE VCR, GIVE THE KIDS SOME ICE CREAM AND MEET ME IN THE GARAGE. AND WEAR SOMETHING SKIMPY!”

“Barney, you’re starting to scare me, too,” she says, trying to keep her composure in front of the children.

“HEY, DON’T YELL AT ME, LADY! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO SUGGESTED WE CALL ME! NEXT TIME THERE’S SOME MOMENTOUS OCCASION, I’M GONNA SCREAM OUT ‘HEY, KIDS, LET’S CALL DORA AND TELL HER!’ AND YOU GET TO BE DORA!”

“Fine,” she says, getting huffy and indignant. “And what so-called momentous occasion might that be?”

“ HOW ABOUT WHEN SHE FINALLY REALIZES THAT BARNEY’S A FUCKING ASSCLOWN?”

One of the reasons I have elected to subject my precious giblets to the torture of a vasectomy is so that Hot Wife and I can finally revel in the glory of hot, steamy monkey sex with nary a boner-shrinking care about spawning another young’n whose need for diapers and strained carrots and hypoallergenic butt-wipes puts even further limitations on my already anemic Pop Tart allowance.

But my visit to the urologist the other day has caused me to look at that “Throw Caution and Condoms To The Wind” plan in a frame of stark, cold reality (as opposed to my previous perspective, which was not unlike that of a hormone-crazed 15-year-old boy). Through this newly adjusted viewpoint, I see that I will never again have monkey sex because I have completely lost my mojo when it comes to seducing my wife.

There was a time early in our courtship when I was – dare I say it? – en fuego. I was such a romantic sex god that all I had to do was raise an eyebrow or throw Hot Wife a little Blue Steel. I was unstoppable. I. WAS. KING!

But years pass and times change and now the only thing I can do to reduce my lovely wife to a shivering mass of putty in my hands is remember to stop for dog food on the way home and make sure that no one chokes on their tongue while she’s in the bathroom. There is an imperceptible difference between romance and domestication.

Back then, I’d leave little notes on her windshield that read, “Hurry home tonight, love muffin. I’ve got a big surprise for you. Signed, The Danimal.” And she’d rush home after work, spring through the door and find me on all fours, wearing nothing but a spiked dog collar and a spritz of Old Spice under each pit (and if you don’t find THAT romantic, well then you’re just dead inside).

These days, the effort and energy just aren’t there. I’m too tired. After we finally get the kids bathed and changed and read-to, the most I can muster is a holler from the back of the house out to where Hot Wife is watching America’s Funniest Home Videos: “Hey! Honey! Mr. Johnson wants to know if you’re feeling lucky tonight! … Honey? … Are ya?”

*crickets*

So go ahead and take it, Dr. Gardenburger. I’m not using it anyway.

My dick doctor, my fertility assassin, has a funny last name. It’s a name that fits into the all-too-familiar category of witzes and steins and bergs – names that make abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that you are Jewish. At some point during my appointment yesterday, I decided that I would call my dick doctor Dr. Gardernburger.

These are the kinds of things a man thinks about during a visit to a urologist. Perhaps they are a defense mechanism – a way of distracting one’s terrified brain from the paralysis that could set in were he to pay complete attention to all this talk of scrotal incisions and burning vas and frozen vegetables. “Go to your happy place, Danny. Don’t think about Dr. Gardenburger’s man hands on your manly bits.”

When I arrived at Dr. G’s office, the Christina Aguilera wannabe behind the counter handed me a clipboard stuffed with forms. I controlled the nervous shaking in my hand long enough to answer all of those ridiculous questions about my health history and allergies to medication and who they should contact in the event that I totally fucking freak out on the operating table (my words, not theirs).

At the bottom of the stack was a Xeroxed form titled “VASECTOMY.” There was a picture of a dick and some balls, with little arrows pointing to various parts of the package. Some highlights from the form:

• “Bleeding into the scrotum is a serious complication, which can require surgery to correct.”

• “Keep an ice pack on your scrotum for 24 hours. Bags of frozen peas or corn are inexpensive and mold to the area well. DO NOT EAT THEM AFTER USING THEM FOR ICE PACKS.”

• “You will have swelling of your testicles, up to 50% bigger than normal. A SUDDEN, DRAMATIC CHANGE IN SIZE CAN BE A SIGN OF BLEEDING OR INFECTION.”

After I signed the forms, I was escorted to Exam Room #1 and left to sit there with the incredibly disturbing image of someone eating the frozen peas he’d used to control the swelling in his post-op junk. My temporary horror was interrupted by the entrance of Dr. Gardenburger, who reached out to shake my hand and left me further horrified that I had just shaken the hand of someone who touches sweaty balls and sticks his finger up hairy asses for a living and there’s just no amount of Purell hand sanitizer that can disinfect that.

“So, no more kids?” Dr. Gardenburger asks.

“No more kids,” I repeat back.

From there Dr. G went into a well-rehearsed shpeil about what will happen during my operation – something about hacking his way into my bag of tricks, snipping a little piece out of my vas deferens, taking a match to the ends and sewing me back up. He bragged that he had done over 700 of these procedures and that the whole thing should take no more than 10 minutes.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“Just one,” I said. “Can I keep the little pieces of vas you cut out? I was thinking of making them into a nice set of earrings for Hot Wife. You know, a little something that says ‘You complete me’ like no diamonds ever could.”

Blank stare. Urologists are such a humorless bunch.

With that, Dr. Gardenburger uttered the words that strike fear into the hearts of men everywhere: “Stand up. Let’s have a look.”

I stand up and drop trow. Dr. G snaps on a pair of rubber gloves and without so much as blowing on his hands to warm them up, he begins to fondle my shit as though he was looking for that one special penny at the bottom of a coin purse.

He finds what he’s looking for on the right side almost immediately. Awesome. Hurray for me. But he spends an inordinate amount of time squishing and maneuvering around on the left. After a good 20 seconds of fishing, I ask “What’s the matter, doc? D’ja lose your keys in there?”

“All men are different,” he says. “Sometimes the vas are right out in front, but sometimes their shy and you have to go get ‘em.”

He continues to fish. I’m getting nervous. I break the tension with a joke. “You know,” I say, “I generally don’t let people do this without taking me to dinner and a movie first.”

“Aha!” he says. “There it is. OK. You’re fine.”

Relief. I’m fine. My balls have passed the inspection and all systems are “go” for them to be put down like a dog with distemper. Oh, happy day.

Dr. G sends me back out to the reception area where Christina Aguilera checks her schedule and says she can squeeze me in during the first week of December. I ask for something sooner and as soon as the words leave my lips I get paranoid that if I’m too pushy or demanding here there’s good chance that Dr. G will pull the equivalent of a waiter spitting in the food of a rude customer’s grits, which in this case would be something like leaving a scalpel in my scrotum or accidentally forgetting to anesthetize me or sticking a tongue depressor up my ass.

“Actually,” I say, “December will be just fine.”

I have an appointment first thing tomorrow morning with the urologist who is going to perform my vasectomy. I have no idea what to expect from our first encounter, although one imagines he will ask me to kindly evacuate my pants, he will fondle my junk and I will make some post-visit joke to Hot Wife about feeling so used. I assume we will also coordinate our schedules and determine the exact day and hour when my virility will be euthanized.

Since the conversation about my subjecting my package to this voluntary nadslaughter, I have been canvassing men I know about whether they have had the procedure and, if so, how it went. The majority of these men, each of whom seemed surprisingly unreluctant to discuss the experience of having their packages ripped open, said being vasectomized is really no big deal. A few went back to work the same day. Some were thrilled that a high volume of masturbation is prescribed shortly thereafter.

But last weekend I made the mistake of querying Hot Wife’s older brother, David, who went on to describe a scenario in which his post-op balls swelled up to a circumference approximating Uranus, necessitating the rather embarrassing act of having to carry his scrotum around in a wheelbarrow for three weeks. Some idiots will do anything for the right to drive in the carpool lane, won’t they?

I have also been advised repeatedly that I will have to shave my entire crotch before my vasectomy, which shouldn’t be a problem – although I did here one story about a man whose doctor gave him a videotape detailing how his package area should be shorn. Trouble was the video was shot by the doctor himself as HE SHAVED HIS OWN MANHOOD. So let me just say that if my doctor give me a tape tomorrow containing images of his own unit and undercarriage, I’ll vomit long and loud and colorfully.

I have never subjected myself to voluntary surgery. I had a hernia when I was nine and had four wisdom teeth pulled when I was a teenager. Otherwise, I have managed to stay clear of scalpels and local anesthesia and retrofitted solder irons that sear the ends of semen-delivery vessels like they were chunks of ahi. Naturally, given my lack of experience in all things surgical, I’m a little nervous about my impending sterility.

Is it worth it? Clearly. I’ll gladly go under the knife if it means never again changing a diaper loaded with partially digested black beans or having to eat another bite of strained okra to convince a baby that its actual food or realizing that I have mistakenly poured defrosted breastmilk into my morning bowl of Fiber One.

I admit to you now, however, that I’m having a little bit of performance anxiety. I know myself and I know how shy my junk can be and I know that if it’s cold in that doctor’s office tomorrow morning he’s going to take one look south of my belt and direct me to the OB/GYN down the hall.

The weekend is here and it’s time for all of us to vent our spleens so we can enjoy two days off.

Spleen Vent No. 1: Reproductive Chaos
There was a story in yesterday’s newspaper about a woman from somewhere in middle America who had just given birth to her 16th child. There was a picture of her virile, masochistic husband (Jim Bob) and their brood of 15 gathered round the hospital bed of mommy and little number 16. Beneath the picture was a caption that mentioned something about mom and dad being especially joyful because little number 16 is a girl and they hadn’t had a baby girl in six years. OK, folks. Uncle! Stop now before you run out of money and have to start selling-off the older kids for parts.

Spleen Vent No. 2: When Is An Out Not Really An Out
That call in the Angels/White Sox game the other night was pure bullshit. When an umpire raises a closed fist – twice! – baseball fans everywhere know he is either signaling an out or inviting the bat boy to join him in the showers for a slippery round of “Tickle my prostate with the business end of a Louisville Slugger” after the game. Hot Wife was bitchen enough to help me get my hands on a ticket for game three in Anaheim tonight and I intend to come home hoarse and exhausted from heckling that blind-ass umpire all night long.

Spleen Vent No. 3: Be The Sneeze
The cold and flu season is upon us again and with it comes the age-old struggle about whether to stifle a sneeze or open my mouth and spray everyone within a 50-foot radius with germs and boogs and little chewed-up pieces of meat. I used to be a regular sneeze-stifler, but I just got so tired of people telling me I was going to blow out an eardrum or an eyeball or my sphincter by doing that. So I started to cover my mouth and let it fly, but then I just ended up with a handful of snot and spit that I’d have to wipe on a chair or my pant leg or Hot Wife’s back. This year, I resolve to “Be The Sneeze” and let the monkey pox fly. Open mouth, open nostrils. And this year I am also reverting to one of my favorite childhood sneeze hobbies: when I sneeze, I try to yell the words “Hot Fuck!” instead of “Ha-Choo!” Try it. It kills at parties.

Your turn. Vent.

The night before Yom Kippur is the closest we, the Chosen peeps, get to Christmas dinner. It’s a time when we gather round the matzah balls and exhale a tzuris-laden collective groan about the fact that we’ll have to fast tomorrow, and that means no lattes, no Cliff Bars and not even so much as a small handful of green clover marshmallows from the Lucky Charms box.

It’s the kind of a ceremonial meal you might see in one of those foofie Hollywood movies about Christmas or Thanksgiving – the kind where the kids come home from college and everyone is happy to be together and while the rest of the gathering is engaged in familial banter about the time little Becky and the kid down the street got their braces locked together, the father (under a musical interlude that fades in as the banter fades out) wistfully reflects on what a lucky man he is to have this family, warts and all.

I was that man tonight, except instead of the banter about Becky’s braces I had a son who was trying to set his tortellini alight by wafting it back and forth across the flickering candles and a daughter who for some reason determined that her little bowl of brown rice needed that little extra flavor kick that can come only by drowning it in two-thirds of a bottle of Emeril’s balsamic vinegar salad dressing.

While the rabbis will tell you that Yom Kippur is about atonement and seeking God’s forgiveness for one’s sins, any run-of-the-mikvah Jew knows the holiday is actually about misery. The misery of hunger. The misery of sitting in services all day in a hot wool suit. The misery of being implored by the temple sisterhood, men’s club, youth group, bingo committee and janitorial staff that now is the time to reach deeply into your pockets and GIVE! GIVE! GIVE! or else the congregation will never realize its goal of building that nine-story parking-structure-slash-finger-painting-hut it so excruciatingly needs.

So as I sat there are dinner tonight, engulfed by the chaos of a setting that combines two small children and an open flame within two feet of each other, I realized that I was, as Jews from Jerusalem to Poughkeepsie are on this day, miserable.

The only other thing I can add is that I am writing to you now from my garage, where I am sitting in the open side door of a minivan, watching the baseball game, drinking a warm beer and trying like the dickens not to be discovered by those pyromaniacal kids. See? Miserable.

I have a moderate case of something called Restless Leg Syndrome, which at first blush sounds about as legitimate as Finger-In-Nose Syndrome or Those Shoes Don't Go With That Dress Syndrome, but I swear to God it's real. Look it up. The symptoms are that sometimes I have trouble stopping my legs from shaking or moving and involuntarily doing The Cabbage Patch dance. See? Syndromes can be fun.

I recently saw my doctor and asked him if there was something he could prescribe that would make my legs stop syndroming so my wife could get to sleep without thinking I'd just stuck another quarter in the bed. He said yes, there is something new and somewhat experimental available for sufferers of RLS (what's a syndrome without an accompanying acronym?). Then he paused and said he was hesitant to prescribe it.

Why, I asked.

Becuase, he said, all of the preliminary evidence shows that those to whom it had been prescribed showed a great propensity for becoming problem gamblers.

Interesting quandry, no? Either shake like an epileptic lepper whose naked in sub-zero temperatures for the rest of my life or bet the mortgage on a horse named Boxersorbriefs in the third race at Churchill Downs.

(As an aside, I'm hoping someday to develop a syndrome whose cure makes it likely that the prescribee's children will listen to him when he asks if they will please, for the love of all creatures great and small, stop running at him at full speed and using his "teste stachel" to stop their momentum.) (Which is considerable.) (As my testes can independently verify.) (And by "independently" I mean they can verify it without prompting, not that they can do it one teste at a time.) (That would just be silly.)

So I have opted NOT to take the meds, but the RLS has opened a door to a new career path. I throw some OJ, some protein powder and some pureed fruit into a cup and stick it in my pocket before I go to bed. When I wake up...SMOOTHIES!

One of the reasons why Evans World Headquarters runs like such a well-oiled machine is because Hot Wife and I have very distinct and specific roles – roles defined by a certain set of gifts we each possess. For example, Hot Wife is very good with math – so good that she even knows what that “COS” button on the calculator is for. Conversely, I have to take my pants off to count to 11. Naturally, given her clearly dominant command of all things numeric, she gets final say on our bills. See? Easy.

There are other well-defined roles, too. She’s the saver and I’m the spender. She cooks the meals and I do the laundry. She flosses and I, ahem, watch her floss. And so forth.

But the one area where our roles are most distinctly different is in the way we parent our children when the other is away. When I work late or go out with the boys after work, I am greeted when I get home by two children who have eaten a good dinner with each of the four food groups represented in clockwise order on their Care Bear plates, bathed in a tub filled 16.3 inches high with water not to exceed 84 degrees, had their hair brushed 18 times on the left side and 18 on the right, and have been dressed in clean pajamas that smell (thanks to their father’s aforementioned prowess in the laundry room) of a fresh spring meadow.

On the other hand, there are nights like last night – night’s that remind me that when it comes to parenting, Hot Wife is a bejeweled princess in a white gown and I am a caveman with a unibrow and a whole tuft of shit matted into my ass hair.

Hot Wife called to tell me that she had had it up to her perfectly magnificent blue eyeballs with (paraphrasing here) our children’s bullshit and that she’d need to go to the gym when I got home to aerobicise off some of her pent-up homicidal ideation. This request was in stark contrast to my preconceived image of how a night with an Angels playoff game and the Mighty Ducks’ season opener would go. I imagined myself sitting on a couch with a beer in one hand, a remote control in the other and a steady stream of expletives spewing forth from my mouth. With the kids, the plan would have to change, if only slightly.

After Hot Wife left for the gym, I attempted on several occasions to pull myself away from the TV to execute critical parenting tasks (like feeding the children dinner and removing The Champ’s right index and middle fingers from his sister’s eye sockets). But every time I left, something happened: a power play goal, a big strikeout or a beer commercial with big tits in it. So I decided that I would remain in front of the TV until approximately five minutes before Hot Wife returned from the gym, thereby also deciding to let the household chips fall where they may.

Ninety minutes later, I emerged from my sports-induced haze to find the following:

• The Champ was asleep, face-down on the couch. Judging by the quickly expanding pool of drool under his cheek, he was dreaming about Haagen Dazs.

• Barney’s Biggest Fan was watching (wait for it… wait for it…) Barney on the little TV in her brother’s room. During the show, she had peed so intensely that her diaper had swollen to the size of a full-grown chocolate lab.

• Both of their dinner plates sat untouched on the dining room table, nary a chicken tender or a baby carrot disturbed.

• The Champ had written his name in chalk, complete with the backwards N and the upside-down A, on the red wall in our foyer.

You might think such a scene would have terrified me, but I was just happy that the little rascals hadn’t raided the Jose Cuervo while I was looking away. Still, if Child Protective Services had seen this I’d be writing to you from the county lock-up.

In a fit of Angels/Ducks victory energy and mortal fear that Hot Wife would come home, see this and crush me like a cockroach, I got the kids changed into their PJs and into bed in what would have been world record time if such records were kept. And you know what? Hot Wife never had any idea. As far as she knew, the kids took a bath, ate a nutritious dinner, sold their spleens on eBay and donated the proceeds to charity while she was gone.

God, please don’t let her read this.