Fever!

Hmm, so I just dropped the two oldest kids off at school, parked the youngest in front of Sesame Street and now, here I am, all alone on a perfectly serviceable autumn morning in Southern California, with the whole world of intellectual, personal and entertainment options laid out before my toil-free feet and here I am... in front of the computer.

Did I really used to do this every day?

It just, you know, seems like a lot of work.

But the great and goodly fortune of epidemiolgical inevitability that is kindergarten has afforded me this one-day reprieve from the shackles of the Protestant Work Ethic, which is quite a relief, especially considering that I'm not Protestant. As a Catholic, my natural Work Ethic tendencies tend to run in the more episcopal "You all do what I say without question, on pain of eternal damnation, while I sit here draped in ostentatious finery," but, sadly, the Puritans got here first, so we're stuck conforming to all this dour, dogged drudgery. All we Catholics got was Maryland, which is a) no longer dominated exclusively by Catholics and b) weird and snakey-looking. Not much of a base from which to launch the cultural re-education of a people.

In my old blogging mode, I would have had nearly-instantaneous Presidential Debate reaction. These days? Didn't even watch the thing. Apparently John McCain was feisty and spunky in the beginning, took a little nap in the middle, then was all cranky and bug-eyed when he woke up. I didn't have to watch the debate to follow that storyline. I have a grandpa.

Well, actually that's not fair. John McCain is much older than grandpa.

Now, I'm going to indulge markedly non-Protestant non-stick-to-it-iveness and go watch Ironman with my sick boy. That's the other thing about being Catholic: we can watch PG-13 movies with 5-year-olds. We believe in Free Will, which means we do these kids a favor by corrupting them as much as we can before they attain the Age of Reason. That way their total acceptance of all the cockamamie vagaries of our show-business faith will be that much more dramatic. It's our own version of rumspringa, except without the meth.