Attached

Well. It turns out I forgot to mention that tonight I'd be out spending four straight hours in the grippy, guilty embrace of Little League Baseball. I'm thanking whatever totally imaginary spirit it is that watches over me that the middle child turned out to be something of a nellie when it comes to sport, otherwise we'd have three playing at the same time. I don't think my social life, fragile as it is, could take a third more intrusion than I'm already getting with just two in. As it is, I'm thinking of getting my penis a subscription to Cat Fancy or paying for three months of banjo lessons just so it will have something to do until this scheduling monster dies and it's free to live again.

Plus, seeing as we both have DNA dibs on the children in question (and there's no practical or sanitary way to undo that. I did ask), baseball time means ex-wife time. I can say categorically that sittting in a group that includes a woman roughly your age and three children who look, from varying angles, like the both of you is no way to pick up chicks. They draw all the wrong conclusions. Sure, you can wander over and lean casually against the stucco wall of the snack bar all by yourself, drawing that downy, form-fitting single mom away from the pack of other parents for an easier kill, but it only takes one "Hey, dad!" from the stands 10 feet away to slather that ugly "Married, but Looking" stink all over you. That's an odor that lingers as well, especially when it goes off in a crowd. It's a long enough season as it is without being the Pervy Dad. Pervy Dad never, ever gets invited to the end-of-season pool party.

So until early June, as far as meaningful non-familial interaction goes, you people are basically it. There are the people at work as well, but things got weird there in the period between when I stopped wearing my wedding ring and the ring-finger tan-line finally blended in. I still get the occasional crinkly-nose look in the hallways farthest from my workspace, where the whisps of old rumors linger. I can live with it, though. Most of those guys in shipping and receiving aren't really my target demographic anyway.