Last night was my birthday and I crashed (real early) from a hard...week of entertaining.

Kids. Everywhere.

In my class, engaging 46 students and teaching them becomes a Late Night Skit with no laugh track - although, oddly, I did get several applause yesterday. (Literally, I they laughed and cheered and clapped. I've had the laughs plenty of times, but the applause?)

AND they learned masculine, feminine, plural, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, and relative pronouns in the process. Yes, there are way too many pronouns, at least 85 more whose names I don't know but pretend to do when teaching.

And then Kids. When I get home. Everywhere.

A wife mugging me to have a conversation with someone who she doesn't have to talk about wiping butts, putting wet pull-ups in the trash, washing hands with soap (soap! damn it), not peeing our pants at school. She wants a good-ole fashioned adult conversation. Once a proud AP student, and a High Honors graduate at the University of Illinois, she struggles to hold dialogue of any intellectual merit during the day.

So, when I get home, and she has her chance to speak to a real person (because kids are like fake little dirty puppet things that don't even know how to write the letter "h") this is what she talks to me about:

Wife: Easten isn't wiping his butt. We need to courtesy wipe him. I didn't think we had to but you need to see his underwear. Let me show you. It looks like he's literally shitting all in his pants and digging his fingers in his butt.

Me: It probably itches.

Wife: And Ember can't have her radio at naps or bedtime, because she keeps leaving her soaked, 20-lb pull-up in the middle of her room and not in the garbage like she's supposed to.

Me: Maybe we put the garbage in the middle of her room.

Wife: And Jax pissed so bad during nap today you could literally squeegee his pillow. His pillow! How do you pee on your pillow?

Me: I'm going to get a beer. Want one?

But I digress. Last night, the night I hit the Big 3-3, I was lights-out before the clock struck eight.

I crashed for a solid seven hours before I turned over and saw the clock.

The clock read 3:09am and my body felt like it had been pummeled with a baseball bat the entire seven hours I slept.

But I had options here: 1) go back to sleep and wake up with kids fighting, beds soaked, and Ember crawling in (or lately UNDER) our bed, or I could 2) Wake-up and have three hours of quiet.

Yep, I got up at 3:09 - made myself instant coffee that tasted like road mud (we were out of the regular stuff), and sat myself down in front of my computer. Rogue followed, laid at my feet, and wondered what the hell I was doing.

"Weekend, gaming, baby," I said. "It's just me and you girl." She obliged, and tucked herself under my desk.

My students love that I'm a gamer, and they want me to play Borderlands, and Call of Duty, and Battlefield, and Bioshock - oh and Deadspace, they say, is a good one. But, damn it, I tell them, I have three kids, a fried brain when I get home from Playing Conan O'Brien at school, and a wife who wants to talk about skid marks in underwear.

People, I choose my games carefully - because I don't have an eternity to play them. I have two hours and 19 minutes, starting at 3am, before kids storm the castle; angry, loud, and wanting chocolate milk. NOW!

By 3:17am I had loaded up the turn-based slash real-time strategy giant, Total War: SHOGUN 2, and escaped to feudal Japan. Good thing I'm not a real Commander, of real Samurai Warriors (or anyone for that matter) - because my reactions were slow. I sacrificed needlessly. I advanced too early when I should have held back. I exposed my flanks. Didn't provide cover for my poor bowman who were slaughtered in seconds by opposing cavalry.

At 3:29am, with Mud Coffee in hand, and a quiet house, I realized I was no Ender Wiggin. Just some tired teacher, an exhausted dad, and a man who had to poop from downing two cups of Instant Sludge in eight minutes.

On weekends I let Kristie sleep in, it's the least I can do - I'm up at three anyway.

By 6am the house was overrun, my flanks were exposed, and instead of the air reeking of the blood from my fallen bowmen, it reeked of urine and dirty kids.

I did the only thing a good dad could do to regain control of lost ground: I made them popcorn - don't worry it was all organic - and chocolate milk for breakfast. Next, I sat them in front of the television, put on an episode of Little Einstein, and followed it up with a two-mile walk to exhaust them.

(Even though, by this time, it was only 7am.)

The two-mile walk became one-mile, because, "Daddy, I really need to poop. Can we just stop and I go here?" asked Ember.

Ah, what the hell - it was a Saturday morning, nobody would notice.

About a month ago I reconnected with a couple of old athletes of mine. It wasn't much of a re-connection, in the sense that we had actually talked a handful of times over the past few years. But it had been sometime since I'd last seen them.

They were, after all, my first experience (and challenge) into coaching: a hard-nosed, no nonsense female who had speed to back up her big mouth. And her complete opposite, a soft-spoken boy with Romeo looks and a steadfast work ethic.

I inherited them as a coach, but they quickly became my kids. My Captains. I had earned their trust.

My male Captain went on to play Lacrosse at the University of Reno. While up at the State Championship two years back when I was still coaching (and sending kids to State every year - no hard feelings), he and I toasted over a cold one. He had just turned 21. He's on the five-year college plan, and still playing Lacrosse (which, not surprisingly, he is the Captain of the team).

My female Captain, on the other hand, was the first athlete I coached who went on to run at the collegiate level. She ran Division I, locally at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. (So did another female athlete of mine who graduated with her.)

She finished the year as their #4 runner, and then after an all-out battle with her phony coach the following winter - she quit (and so did the other female athlete I coached who graduated with her). Invariably, she lost her scholarship. She went on to graduate a year early with a degree in Anthropology.

The following weekend, after they had been to my house to see my kids and eat some grub, my old female Captain comes knocking on my door dressed to run.

I've been on over 100 runs alone now, ever since I lost my team, and my best friend (my dog) lost her health. Every morning I debate on whether or not I should go. Every morning it's just me, the lonely desert, a stray car or two, a sore back, and tired legs. But I do it regardless.

But on this day, when she came to my house ready to run, and even though I was feeling like doing anything but hitting the road, I obliged and laced up as well. And that run, a simple three mile scamper through the trailed desert behind my house, was the best time I had on a run in a long, long time.

I had life in my legs. The desert, normally void of everything except rock and shrubs, was suddenly alive and thriving with life. My back and neck pain dulled to the point where I hit I pace I hadn't come close to in a long time when running - every morning - alone.

And today I hit 33 years of age. And like I have been doing every morning since school started, I fed Rogue (my best friend, and one of my old running partners) her 7 morning pills, took a pre-run dump, laced up, waved to my pooch who slouched on the cool tile by the front door to wait for my return.

It took me a while to trudge the measly two-mile loop. But when I eventually made it back, my girl struggled to her feet and greeted me like she always does now. And that was enough to make today a beautiful one.

A couple things I have noticed this year so far:

1) My class sizes are monstrous - apparently not as massive of some who claim to have 50-plus kids. Mine average 44, with 41 being my smallest and 47 being my largest. But my classroom is large (despite only having 38 desks). So, despite what the tone of this post (and posts to follow) may suggest: I am not complaining. I am simply stating a fact.

2) In 1999, roughly 12 years ago, an additional wing was built to accommodate the growing student population at my school. Despite still being in its pubescent years, my particular hallway still doesn't know what 70 degrees means. As a teacher in my wing, you have two choices: 58 degrees, or 83 degrees. (Again, this is a fact - dispute it and you will lose in the court of law.)

Just recently, however, a Dean brought a cooler filled with ice cold drinks to 'thank' us for teaching in volcanic temperatures. I drank my first Mountain Dew - chilled with precision - for the first time in ages.... even though it was actually 58 degrees in my class at the time.

3) I continue to dress nice, and impress the ladies. I don't do it for the ladies, of course. I do it because I want to become relevant again. No, that's a lie. My wife likes it, so I do it for her. "Don't wear jeans, babe," she says to me each morning when I attempt to dress down. Sorry Powers That Be, the only person who has control over me is She. You never will. And I will forever "Toe the Line." Great teachers always do.

4) I jinxed the best runner my high school has ever seen. I did this because I wasn't the one who coached him. After writing an article about him a few weeks back for the local paper, his season officially ended because of over-training, or so the story goes. I received some compliments on the article, which was nice for a change. Next time I will write a feel-good story on a runner from an opposing school, instead.

5) I have been out of coaching for two years now. And while I beat that to hell, I'd just like to say that I keep winning conference titles even though I'm not coaching. That makes six in seven years. Next year, when there is a team I actually never coached, a team I didn't initially establish good running habits with, a team I didn't continually counsel, cheer, support, follow, and write about through the season - then we'll see if the streak continues.

And, really, after having talked to the new coach several times - I do like him. He means well, looks out for his kids, and is dedicated to the sport. All the shit that went down wasn't his fault - the blame goes to me. But I'll be a casual observer next year when, finally, all the kids I coached (save for one) are gone. And that includes his entire Varsity Girls' team.

6) I'm teaching grammar. Someone give me a raise.

7) I'm not sure the school counselors know what they're doing. But I'm not a school counselor, so the things they are doing - for example moving a kid from Period 2 English II and Period 6 Biology to Period 6 English II and Period 2 Biology - with the same exact teachers - never fails to confuse. But I'm cool with each course in my grade book having 63 kids, 22 whited out from withdraws/transfers after only seven weeks of classes.

Jesus, I feel like I need to make these disclaimers. So I will. I like the counselors, save for one who thankfully I don't deal with. But if I catch him talk down to the counselors' secretary one more time, or tell a student that a particular college is out of their reach - and this is said in front of me - i'll be sure to put on a show.

8) If I were going to Carnegie Hall I would be able to sell chocolate.

9) If construction is on time, and I'm moved to a 10x10 portable in January, I will be conducting classes in tent on the adjoining softball field, instead.

10) Rumor has it that God, in the name of some church, is coming to my school to argue our institute's lack of religious curriculum. It must be some impostor - because this said God can be found teaching three-paragraph essays in room 431.