I woke up early this morning because it's SAT day for my poor, cold-ridden son and I wanted to offer him a hot breakfast and good cheer, both of which seemed to go over well. He might be the sweetest kid in the world. Being his father's son, however, he is also adept at sarcasm and irony. Today, this surfaced in banter about the "totally bitchin' score" he's about to achieve and his pleasure at the thought of arriving at the the test site with a number-2 pencil heavily decorated with shiny hearts. Nothing says "I love you" like a compulsory standardized test.

So now I have about 45 minutes of quiet before I need to fork the other son out of bed. This one is less liable to be overflowing with sweetness and good cheer, despite the fact that I will be making him get up so that we can go shopping for baseball cleats that will fit his enormous feet, not so that he can participate in a career-path-controlling, college-admissions-manipulating, worried-teenager-tormenting scam. His day will come for all that, and he'll still be hard to wake up.

Tomorrow, though, everyone will get up easily. That's the morning we all go to Fenway to watch the Red Sox lose. What a horrible season. Good thing we're prepared for the worst. Paul plans to wear his Montreal Expos hat because the paraphernalia of an extinct ball club is a fan's best friend.