NONE TO GO!!

You can probably guess how my morning went:

1) Wake kids up at seven
2) Drop kids off at seven ten with woman who will take them to school at seven fifty
3) Go to airport
4) Begin pestering desk personnel about whether or not the plane has landed
5) Get thrown out of airport
6) Put on wig and glass and re-enter airport
7) Begin pestering desk personnel about whether or not the plane has landed
8) Get thrown out of airport again
9) Draw fake mustache a la Mets manager Bobby Valentine, begin pestering personnel
10) Get beaten by police
11) Put on dress
12) Sneak into airport but this time leave the desk people alone

And who should come strolling out of the arrival doors but my very own Wifey, looking like she's been put through a washing machine. Curiously, her pants were open and slipping down as she vainly tried to keep them up with one hand while she fumbled with her luggage with the other hand and balanced a purse between the two.

However, I was immediately aroused and overjoyed to see that she had the exact same thing on her mind that I had on mine: getting re-acquanted after our long absence.

"So, sexy, bathroom or parking lot?" I asked.

In response she tried to roll the luggage cart over me and swore at me like a drunken sailor.

"Long trip, huh?"

"I'm never traveling alone again," she said. "Ever."

Being a good husband, I patted her affectionately and then led the way to the car as she struggled with cart, purse, and pants. "What's up with your pants? Going for the gangster look this season?"

"What do you think happened, ass-wipe?"

I shrugged. "You changed your mind about joining the mile-high club?"

"No," she said. "And why aren't you pushing this cart?"

So I took over the cart so she could hold her pants up, which was really a shame, because at least two skycaps had tucked a euro in her panties. Unfortunately, since euros are coins, they just rolled right on through to, uh, warmer climes, if you will.

Lucky coins.

"I was running through Atlanta trying to catch the damn plane, but they hadn't announced final boarding, and I had to pee, so I stopped at a bathroom right next to the gate."

This, if you didn't know, is big news, since Wifey only pees twice a day. "Wow!" I said. "You deigned to use a public bathroom?"

"So I'm sitting there, and all of the sudden you know what I heard?"

Suddenly the story took an interesting turn. "People humping? A congresswoman soliciting for gay sex? The sound of silence?"

"I heard the final boarding call for my flight."

"My story was much more interesting," I said.

"Well, I start hurrying, and my damn zipper breaks as I'm trying to get my pants on. So I had to go on a nine-hour flight with my pants unzipped with only male flight attendants leering at me the whole time."

"That's terrible!" I gave her a big hug. "If only I'd been there."

"Why? Do you carry spare pants for me?"

"No, but I could have taken advantage of the easy access to make it a sexy flight."

She punched me again, but you know what?

I'd missed it.

So I took Wifey home, propositioned her every way I knew how (flower, liquor, candy, etc) but ended up having to go to work frustrated, if you know what I mean and I think that you do.

But you know what? IT'S OVER!

It's official: I have survived this horrible ordeal. During the last ten days, though, I've learned quite a lot. I thought I'd share some of the more pertinent things with you:

1) Wifey is an exorcist, as no ghosts or goblins ever wander the house when she's there. When she's gone? It's like the freaking Haunted Mansion hosted by Michael Myers.

2) You can go through six towels drying the floor if you take a shower with the curtain open instead of closed. But if you shower with the curtain closed, the likelihood that you'll be stabbed to death by a psycho is significantly higher, which is why I shower with the curtain open when Wifey's not around.

3) Airport security in Europe is really lax about guys with fake mustaches in dresses loitering around the return area.

4) The Eurotrash men are not lax about this and will hit on said woman with wild abandon.

5) For best results when your wife is unhappy with where you live, send her on a miserable trip somewhere else. Becuase for the first time in our five years here, she said to me that she was glad to be back and not be in the US any more. So if I can just schedule one disastrous trip every six months I should be in business, right?

6) Haggis is awful. It makes you feel like your getting a colonoscopy with a microscope made from an elephant's foot.

7) If you shriek like a little girl when you find a balloon head in your bed, you can count on one of your children putting a balloon head in your lunchbox the next morning.

8) Neither one of them will fess up to the crime, though.

9) Wifey is sleeping with the mailman. How else can you explain that we got no mail all week while she was gone, yet on Monday morning there were several letters, packages, and a box of chocolates with no address on it waiting in our mailbox when we got home? They joke's on her, though: I put ex-lax in the chocolates.

10) To most children the threat of zombie attack is far less serious than someone having pee'd on the bathroom floor. In this, children are wiser than adults.

11) When Wifey comes home after a long absence and finds the living room full of plates, dirty clothes, and the sad remains of a shattered catapult, she will look at you and say "I don't even want to know what the hell you've been doing, so don't even try to explain."

12) The girl, being an affectionate little tyke, sometimes leaves candy for her parents when they come back from long trips so that she and them can share it that night. On a related note, four ex-lax cancels out the villanous impact of haggis-related intestinal backup.

I think that's pretty much it.