Grim Richard's First Contest Ever...

Every now and again, I get into real trouble with my wife. Peculiarly enough, this trouble usually lasts exactly 48 hours, starting promptly on Saturday mornings and ending suddenly on Monday mornings.

It reminds me of an episode of “24”, the television show where each hour-long episode equates to exactly one hour in anti-terrorist Jack Bauer’s day. My personal television show, however, is called “48”, and each minute feels like an entire day.

That Jack Bauer is a lucky bastard.

If he was working with my wife during one of these “episodes”, here’s how life would go at the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU):

Jack (on phone to CTU): I’m gonna need you to cross-index the phone records of our plutonium-theft suspect with the phone records of the possible double agent secreted in our group.

Wife (at CTU): Do it yourself. I’m tired of cleaning up the database after you.

Jack: But I’m currently undercover with a Columbian cartel in another country. The CIA, unaware that I’m only pretending to be a double agent, has pinned us down with heavy weapons fire. Plus, my cell phone is down to, like, half a bar. And I’m pretty sure I’m running over my minutes.

Wife: That’s not my problem. Maybe if you showed me a little respect, things would be different.

Jack: Listen, for the sake of America and rest of the world, you and I need to work together on this. We can’t get into fights every couple of weeks.

Wife: Now you’re blaming this on my period?

Jack: What?

Wife: You said this happens every couple of weeks. You think I’m irrational because of my period.

Jack: Huh? Are you on your period?

Wife: You know I am, Jack. See, that’s the first thing a man assumes when a woman’s legitimately angry.

Jack: Omigod! I’ve been shot. The bullet pierced the thermos full of radioactive plutonium I’ve been hiding in my underwear. I need CTU backup, now!

Wife: Now you’re yelling at me? (She hangs up on Jack)

Like I said, Jack Bauer is a lucky bastard. This season, he’s even found a new love interest. I wish I’d seen that first date…”I’m currently widowed because I had an adulterous affair when I was separated from my wife. My adulterous lover turned out to be a vicious psychopath and she murdered my wife. But don’t worry, I’ve already killed her.”....

The Lenny Kravitz T-Shirt Conspiracy

Every morning at 6 a.m., my wife and I roust our three kids from their warm beds and dress them.

Mostly, this is not fun. Julian, our two year-old boy, starts to cry from the second he’s awakened and continues until we leave for the babysitters. Roughly, that means that he cries without cessation for an entire hour – every day.

His talent at nursing a whine would be amazing if it weren’t so irritating. My wife and I have dubbed Julian’s voice a frustrato – a high male voice incapable of shattering glass but fully adept at busting your last freaking nerve.

To combat this, we like to use a dash of Spock and a pinch of “The Super Nanny”, which means that mostly we’ve just begged Julian to stop and attempted to bribe him with Pop-Tarts. None of this works.

All of the preceding explains why my five year-old son, Gabriel, has been dressing himself lately. Often, Gabriel will mistakenly put on his younger brother’s smaller clothes. I will walk into Gabriel’s room to find the following scene - a really thin kid wearing tight pants that barely button and a tiny, two-sizes-too-small shirt that comes down to just above the kid’s navel.

In other words, my son looks like a really pale Lenny Kravitz.

Except Lenny Kravitz would probably be wearing his younger sister’s clothes, too.

I think a lot about Lenny Kravitz on those mornings while I dress myself. Why won’t anyone buy Lenny a shirt that fits? Is it some kind of shirt conspiracy? After America finishes freeing Iraq, should we consider a mission to free Lenny’s pectorals?

Usually, my thoughts of concern are broken by Julian’s amazing unstoppable whine and I look down to see that I’m getting ready to put on one of my wife’s t-shirts. She walks by in a pair of my boxers.

Lenny’s probably okay, I think.