Totally Tweaked-Out Tuesday, Part 1

I know we’ve already discussed how crazy Tuesdays are over here at Casa de Scratches (more than once, in fact), but holy halmalagueña, yesterday was epic.

First, we … wait, I can’t even remember. It all started about 40 hours ago, but as I try to recall the first few of those hours right now, it feels like I’m attempting to dredge something up from the mid-’70s.

Oh yeah, that’s right: Wonder Woman took Zan to school, and I played with Jayna for a bit until it came time for me to chauffeur her to preschool—which, I must confess, has been a piece of cake as of late. Once known for biochemically fusing herself to my body whenever I suggested that she part with me at the front door of the schoolhouse, as is the faculty’s preference, the girl peacefully acquiesced yesterday when I gave her a smooch at the front steps and handed her off to one of her teachers.

No, as unlikely as it may seem, yesterday was chaotic not because of any terroristic behavior on the part of the kids, but because of the sheer volume of activity we crammed into an all-too-small window of time.

After dropping Jayna off, I returned home and was able to complete a bite-sized portion of work before it came time to head back out and retrieve Zan from kindergarten. Because it was such a beautiful day, I decided to grab our baseball mitts and a ball before I headed to the school, and I was pleasantly surprised that he excitedly said “Yeah!” when I asked him if he wanted to play catch in the field across the street instead of running around the playground with his classmates. I’ll cling to that memory when, eight years from now, he asks me to drop him off a block away from wherever it is he’s going so that he won’t have to be seen with his doofus father.

A short while later, we picked up Jayna from preschool, and I then carted them both off to our daycare provider’s house, where they played for a few hours until Wonder Woman fetched them moments after squeezing in a post-work run to the grocery store.

When they arrived home around 4 o’clock, I did my usual attempt-to-carry-all-20-bags-of-groceries-at-once trick, which I do in the hope that less trips means I might actually get a smidgen more work done amidst the endless barrage of Tuesday’s interruptions. (Using my right pinky finger to carry a two-pack of half-gallon soy-milk containers proved to be unwise, but Zan responded to my plea for help just before disaster struck.)

But wait! Before returning to my desk, I humped the tee-ball gear into the back of the now-grocery-free Honda, because, guess what, campers? We’s gots us a game to coach in less than an hour! Yes indeedly-doodly, if there’s one thing I need on Tuesday, it’s more responsibilities … particularly responsibilities that involve managing not just my own two kids, but a bunch of other people’s kids, too! Yee-to-the-mother-f’n-haw!

And this wasn’t just any ol’ tee-ball game; this was the first-ever coach-pitch game. That’s right, I had to try to successfully toss a hittable ball to a bunch of kids who, by and large, have little to no experience hitting live pitching … an endeavor made exponentially more difficult in light of the fact that I, you know, suck at pitching. Fortunately, the kids were so focused on their own anxiety about hitting a pitch that they forgot to make fun of me and give me a wedgie. Oh, wait, I’m not 10 anymore. Phew.

And no tee-ball blog entry is complete without a little bragging about my All-Star son, whose latest bit of baseball bravado came in the form of his insistence that I pitch to him overhand, even though every other hitter on both teams was taking underhand pitches.

After he whiffed on a couple of underhand tosses, I switched to overhand and he connected.

Moments later, a scout from the Red Sox offered him a spot on the team’s 2024 roster, which he accepted, so we’re all looking forward to that now.

By the time the three-inning game came to an end, the majority of the other kids had also gotten a hit, and I’m pretty sure I managed to avoid making too big an ass of myself while pitching, so I’m considering that a big victory.

Now, normally, we’d have all headed home after the game and called it a day, because, hello? I mean, holy shit—enough already!

But did Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony and Joe Satriani and Chad Smith take into consideration whether or not Tuesday would be convenient for me when they scheduled their little club tour? No, they most certainly did not … which is why Wonder Woman and I had to suck it up and head out on a rock-and-roll adventure after muscling through the aforementioned 13 hours of chaos.

To be continued …

(My first-ever cliffhanger! How exciting! It’s kinda like that “Happy Days” episode where Fonzie is on water skis and he’s just about to jump over a shark and … oh, wait, that might not be the association I want to make here …)