My wife and I share a bed. That’s what married couples do. But this could have something to do with our country’s current sky high divorce rate.

Don’t get me wrong, I like sleeping with my wife. But when I sleep, that’s what I do: I just sleep. It’s not quite that simple with my wife. She moves a lot. She mumbles under her breath. She piles pillows around her like she is trying to build her own Great Wall of China. And she wakes up in the dead of night and asks gripping questions like: Did you hear something?

My wife also has this thing about wrapping herself in blankets and rolling up like a human burrito. Every time my wife rolls in her sleep she takes so much of the bed with her it’s like trying to sleep through a seismic event. Each morning we have to account for the children and small animals lest they’ve been caught in the wrapping process and churned into salsa.

My wife does not cocoon herself because she is an ugly caterpillar trying to become a beautiful butterfly. She does it because she likes to be “warm and toasty”. When I say warm, I mean warm as in a temperature rivaling the surface of the sun.

Unfortunately, this desire for warmth was extended to the dressing of our children as well. Now the ski clothes around our house represent a serious health risk. We live in the South. If the thermometer outside drops below fifty degrees my wife bundles up our children like they are going on a polar expedition. There are days I have been forced to follow the kids around and douse them with icy water in an attempt to ward off heat stroke.

The health risks are only part of the problem. My sister’s half Scottish children across the street are perpetually naked, and these little natives go to great lengths to ridicule the tiny sweating Eskimos on our side of the road.

When our twins were little it was even worse. Winter or summer, my wife subscribed to the same dress code for them: Artic. She did this because she worried the twins would kick off their blankets during the night.

They did! It was an act of self defense! It was with a heavy heart that I’d go in there to kiss them goodnight, drawn to them in the dark by their short, hyperventilating breaths. The overdressed twins looked like tiny spacemen about to embark on their first space walk. I am seriously concerned these boys will grow up to be male strippers because they’ve spent every minute of their short lives trying to work their way out of the clothes they have on. People used to comment about how well our twins sleep. I honestly don’t know if they were sleeping or unconscious.

Of course, my wife will not let the children do what comes naturally, which is get out of those clothes.

Have you ever noticed that most of the people who want to be naked all the time are not that physically attractive?

I’m not talking about celebrities, who always have an angle with their nakedness. My favorite celebrity gambit is the stolen sex videotape routine. I personally keep up with all of these, you know, just to stay on top of current events. Maybe I’m missing something, but the bride and I just don’t have a lot of tapes of us having sex lying around the house. You can hear the celebrity press conference now, right?

“Yes, I do make my living wearing skimpy bathing suits, and, yes, I do have gi-normous fake breasts and yes I know that some people would like to see me naked. But for one of our employees to steal a videotape that we left lying in plain view with a little sticker on it that said, ‘Don’t steal, private naked sex videotape’ is something we never thought could happen to us. This is complete invasion of our privacy and a violation of the discreet love shared by a husband, a wife, and that third guy who professionally filmed it, I think his name was Eddie.”

So I am not referring to celebrities, so much as these nudist colony types. I have no personal experience with nudist colonies, but what you can see of the people promoting this life experience rarely inspires you to want to see more. (Think balding, beer gut, a phallus that resembles Dirty Harry’s .44, and a name like Eddie.)

When it comes to children, I have no problem with just a diaper. Do you see where I’m going with this? My wife refused, REFUSED, to let our twin boys walk around with just a diaper on. She equated this with them being naked, which in her mind is LOW CLASS and she insists that they be fully clothed at all times.

This did not make sense but I know it’s all about perception.

If it was called the “Ready-to-Wear Spring, Super Absorbent Outdoor Athletic Line from Pampers” then it would be fine for my wife. Call it “a half naked kid wandering around in a saggy diaper” and this becomes unacceptable.

Which means they have to fully dressed at all times.

Dressing a child is no different than trying to put Barbie clothes on a newly landed big mouth bass.

Not unlike the fashion industry for adults, the morons who design clothes for children seem to take everything into account except functionality. There’s no easy way to put this stuff on the kid. You can’t negotiate with them. So you hold the kid down, knowing that the child will require months of therapy during adulthood because of this event, as you try to manipulate the eighteen buttons on the INSIDE of the little shirt you’ve wrestled over his head. Then the shirt will get stuck on his head because, either your kid has an unnaturally large head, at which point you start to wonder at what age other children will start kicking his butt and referring to him as watermelon-head, or because there was a nineteenth button you could not find.

After a long struggle, you finally succeed in getting the kid dressed.

The kid will wear these clothes for about… twenty seconds. Then he will wipe his runny nose all over them, spill red juice down the front of them, and fall down and roll around in a big mud puddle.

Or, even better, he’ll take the stinkiest dump known to mankind, and you have a huge decision to make. You can either stop breathing entirely, or start the whole dressing process all over again.

What’s the point? Slap a diaper on them so they don’t make the same mess your wonderfully housetrained dog does, then turn the little half-naked monsters loose. No fighting, no buttons, less therapy down the road.

Perhaps going to church would be an instance where you should put some proper clothes on a kid. Unfortunately, we ratchet up the absurdity for God.  For this occasion, my wife or mother in law will make my boys wear little outfits that would have made The Village People blush.

You are destined to let your child down in life, but that still will not prepare you for the accusing look the kid will throw your way after his mother puts him in that outfit. Now he looks like a two foot, pissed off Liberace about to go sailing.

Heed this advice. Despite what the missus thinks, clothing is secondary to life itself. As a father, no one will blame you for opening the back door and discreetly directing the little sailor toward the first mud puddle you can find.

I just got off the phone with my dream agent!

I am beyond excited and I want to share this story with other writers!

This woman has blasted my head into the clouds. She said my writing was unique and visionary. She said it was full of wit, and delivered in a somewhat manic style.

Perhaps that’s where the conversation took a turn that left me a little pensive. She asked some of those personal questions that all writers dread. How are you supposed to answer them? Too much information and you might bore her to death. Too little and you might seem like you’re trying to hide something.

So I ‘fessed up. I can be a little manic sometimes. The doctors call it maniacal or clinical something or the other. Whatever.

Then she asked if I had any personal problems she needed to know about. Me? I’m boring 101. You know, there was that little dustup with the IRS, but who hasn’t had problems with them? In fact, outstanding IRS liens tend to make someone more normal in my eyes. Or normaler. Whatever. Then there was that stalking conviction, but I later got married to my stalkee, and if that doesn’t say a lot about my resolve then I don’t know what does. So, outside of that kind of thing, I’m just a regular Joe Regular. You know, a Joe Regular who likes to spend most of his time alone so he can make up stories in his head, and occasionally has loud conversations with the characters in his books, often when his mind is in neutral, like when he’s on the subway, or driving a church bus full of children or senior citizens.

And then I suddenly thought, how did this conversation with my dream literary agent end up in the third person? Or maybe I said that aloud? Whatever. But I was pretty sure I’d read something about keeping all phone conversations with prospective literary agents out of the third person.

So, then our non third person conversation turned toward her agency agreement and such. This was more comfortable conversational ground for me, except I was forced to admit that, as a temporary resident of the state of Illinois, I would not be able to enter into any kind of binding legal contract whatsoever for the next four to six years. But I had already put my bean to this issue before beginning the querying process, and had some options ready for her. I told her about my cousin, who’s into car detailing down in Miami. He’d already agreed to play me on book tours and do any television interviews. We don’t look very much alike, given that he’s from Africa and my side of the family hails from Norway, but surely some kind of plan could be hatched with the marketing folks when it came to the book jacket. You know, a picture with some serious facial hair, or lots of shadows, or something artsy like that.

As far as any book proceeds, or advances, or whatever, I think I earned BIG points when I told her she could just keep that money for the next four to six years. Talk about showing trust from day one. I told her I’d just come pick it up when we could arrange a mutually beneficial time, preferably late at night, and that I would rather it be delivered in small, non-sequential bills.

Whatever! I’m easy to work with. And that was one point I really hammered home. I am EASY. I accept editorial direction with the best of them. I’ve got like twenty three hours a day to write. So I have been producing reams and reams of material. And I can deliver it all electronically, you know, unless the warden is being a horse’s ass because some degenerate lifer started a riot in the shower. Turned out the poor, hopeless bastard had gotten smitten with some white collar mullet, and the rest of us were all screaming, “Stop wiggling, let it happen, let it happen,” but this tease of an accountant had to play hard to get and somehow things quickly escalated from a steamy shower room to bloody shanks, water cannons and tear gas.

While this wasn’t the kind of dazzling personal news I wanted to share with my new agent, she had to admit that you can’t buy that kind of writing material. How true that was, and I seized this time to inform her that after any sizable prison riot, getting material to write on is next to impossible, and would she mind accepting manuscripts handwritten in my own blood on the back of 64 oz soup can labels?

And I’m sure I’m reading WAY too much into this, but this was where she went kind of silent on me. You know, I’m sure she was just weighing it all before making that last second commitment to my literary superstardom. Probably just imagining which magic button she’d push that’ll rocket my name up there with the Browns, and Rowlings and Palins.

At least, that’s what I think was happening.

I don’t know, because at that unfortunate moment our call was cut off. It appeared I was out of time and change. Maybe I could have bummed another dollar and gotten the guys in line behind me to wait, but that shower room Lothario with the monstrous loofha was the next man up, and that was not the kind of grief I needed right then.

Besides, I’m sure my new literary agent accepted my silence as acquiescence and vice versa. Great minds think alike and all that. She’s the best, right? I’ll probably be able to call her back next week and find out we already have an offer. Multiple offers. From the biggest houses.  In fact, I’m sure we will. After all, she’s the best literary agent out there and we are now ONE.

Gosh, by next week, I guess the only question will be whether our relationship will have reached the point where I can call her collect.

Whatever. I’m easy.

Bethany had to leave town suddenly last night. I’m not one of these hopeless dads who have no real role in the day to day upbringing of their children. But this morning I had the whole “get ready for school” routine to myself. Perhaps I have the children by myself a lot, but I guess most of the time it happens on a Saturday.

Our morning started with a somewhat plodding version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I made coffee and listened to Wayne practice his piano. Sure, it was just after six, but he’s an early riser and it was so much better than Sponge Bob screaming at me from the TV. As Wayne continued to play, the other three children wandered out of their rooms. The music might have caused some confusion on their part. They weren’t sure where to go or what to do, and kind of stood around sleepily rubbing their eyes. I think they were looking for a Christmas tree or presents. For me, it was a little bit of heaven on Earth.

I’d decided to make pancakes for breakfast. Not microwave pancakes like my wife makes. These were real, instant pancakes, where I had to mix the water and the batter just right. I served them piping hot with the drinks of choice, two milks, one OJ, and a water.

Beth, my daughter, said, “All right, everyone tell us about the best part of your night.”

This was a variation of what my wife does at supper when she has each child tell us the best part of their day. With her mother gone, I guess Beth felt it was her job to pick up the slack. Her effort was met with derision.

“Our night! Our night! Well, let’s see, all we did was SLEEP. There’s nothing great about that.”

That was Jacks. Then Wilkins chimed in, “Hey Dad, I know we’re not supposed to talk about the food and all, but these pancakes got, like, runny guts coming out of them. Look! Look at this pancake’s runny guts. That’s kind of disgusting.”

My morning deteriorated after that.

Somebody cut on Sponge Bob.

I was doing an underwear check on the twins, they’re big on going commando, when Beth walked up.

“Does this match?”

I looked at her. “How do I know? It looks pretty good.”

“I know it looks good, Dad, but does it match?”

“You’re wearing a school uniform. How can it not match?”

Then I had to help Beth untangle her hair and the twins, who were now wearing underwear, started playing a tackle football game in the living room, from which I heard little gems like: “You know there’s no stiff-arms allowed inside the house.” And. “Ugg, I think you broke my leg.”

Then Wayne appeared wearing shorts, which would normally be fine except it was forty degrees outside. I told him to go find some pants, and he came back in pants so short they could only be called knickers. When I told him to try again he informed me that he had no more pants.

Then a twin ran through the room yelling. “I gotta go! I mean I really, really, got to go!”

I sent Wayne back to get the shorts then had him wear two sweatshirts, like maybe that keep Child Services off my back.

The clock was ticking and I knew Bethany’s only measures of success would be whether homework was done, and if the kids got to school on time.

I herded the other three out to the car and returned to the little man having his morning constitution. I tried to move him along and he said, “I can’t go to school, (grunt) I got so much poop in me I don’t know if I’m ever getting off this toilet.”

We made it to school on time, but it was a close thing. Wayne’s legs were a little chilly. One twin was complaining about his bathroom time getting cut short, the other was saying he had a broken leg. And Beth wasn’t sure if her school uniform matched.

Maybe my day started quietly with singing angels. In real life, my angels are loud, active, and their halos rest just the slightest bit off center.

Conversation between 7 year old twins overheard at my house…..

“Yes! Dad went to the grocery. I hope he got some good food.”

“Yeah,” said Jacks. “I hope he didn’t get just beer.”

“He always gets beer,” said Wilkins. “That’s cause he is da-dicted.”

“He’s da-dicted to beer because of the nicotine.”

“There isn’t nicotine in beer,” Wilkins said.

“Yeah huh,” said Jacks.

“No there isn’t,” Wilkins said. “MOM! Is there nicotine in beer?”