Welcome to my life: My wife and I are padding around the bedroom this morning trying to avoid stepping on the little piles of clothing and half-assembled alebrijes that are the residue of a recent trip she made to Mexico. (She is a big fan of the Oaxacan wood carvings and our house, as a result, is full of them. Of course, those from the most recent trip came not only as contorted and fanciful as usual but each carrying a different strain of swine flu which makes them even more frightening than usual for our big, stupid cats.)

The bed is unmade. The blinds are down in the full blackout position that produces the crypt-like conditions my wife demands in order to sleep. (Although as I write this I wonder if sleeping with me is what has led her to require conditions that would have a bat demanding a nightlight and calling for his mommy.) Morning Joe is burbling in the background, the inside-the-beltway equivalent of one of those Sharper Image white noise machines.

So are we discussing her trip? The day? Her upcoming visit to the eye-doctor to have her faulty laser surgery fixed? How nice I look in my running shorts and polo shirt that still features remnants of last night's delicious dinner of Lean Pockets?

No, we're discussing blogging, bane of my existence. She was dead-set against it at the outset. But now she loves it. She says it is because people she meets talk about the blog all the time but that is implausible unless she travels in an even smaller, weirder circle than I thought. Instead, I am pretty sure it is because that when she does meet the odd Joe (or Jane) who reads the blog, she immediately gets waves of sympathy from them for having to put up with such a deranged curmudgeon. ("Do you really have to pretend to laugh at the jokes around the house?! You poor muffin...")

So I say, "I'm thinking of doing the blog today about Uribe." Yesterday there was a vote in the Colombian legislature that rekindled the prospect of President Uribe running for a third term. While I happen to think Uribe has done a pretty terrific job, all things considered, in one of the world's toughest jobs, I don't think it will enhance his legacy or Colombian democracy for him to run again. There are plenty of other talented Colombians and plenty of ways for him to continue to play a leading and constructive role.

She responds that many of my Colombian friends will be angry with me for this position because they think so highly of Uribe. She also notes that other people have made the point before and in so doing I might inflame discussions here that have some folks on Capitol Hill arguing we should go even slower on the approving the Colombia free trade deal if Uribe makes the decision to run again. Admittedly, she is the head of the Western Hemisphere Department at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, although she is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, she is also one of those old-fashioned advocates of free trade that you used to read about in business magazines before they were all forced to go underground and live in basements and practice their secret rituals of promoting global government and worshipping a border-free globe in secrecy. (Ok, I'll admit it. Me too) But she makes a good point. And she is my wife who brought home many beautiful alebrijes. So I drop the idea.

Instead, she suggests, I should do the piece on the insanity of the vetting and approval process that has left us with scores of gaps across the top levels of the U.S. government here in late August of the first year of the Obama presidency. As she puts it, we've got "local Kentucky politics" resulting in not having senior officials in place to deal with vital issues. "Here we are in the middle of a crisis and some of the most important jobs in the whole government are vacant for no good reason," she says while slathering herself in some strange cream that although it makes her look temporarily like a creature from a Roger Corman film actually smells pretty good and seemingly makes her immune to the effects of time, gravity and continental drift.

You don't argue with a woman who seemingly has discovered a cure for physics. And again, her argument has, as my old boss Kissinger used to say, the added benefit of being right. She lists a group of ambassadors, assistant secretaries, deputy U.S. trade representatives and others who are cooling their heels while Congress is at the beach or out trying to scare old people with "death panels." I jump on her bandwagon by reminding her of the story of the very smart, capable and talented Lael Brainard who is still in limbo despite the fact that:

• She has been nominated to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for International, one of the most important jobs in government in the best of times and even more important in times like these, which are not (you may have noticed) the best of times.
• She has already served with distinction at a high level in the government before.
• And, as noted in the Washington Post earlier this week, her husband with whom she shares a tax return, has already been confirmed as an assistant secretary of state. In other words, her tax returns have already been confirmed by the Senate but somehow she has been left behind.

That's it, I think, I'll write a "Free Lael Brainard!" piece. But then my wife reminds me the Post did that a couple days ago and I would look like a copycat. So that idea is also ditched.

What about doing a decline of America piece based on the quote I saw while reading U.S. News during a private moment this morning, I suggest? She says I shouldn't mention that I read the story anywhere in the vicinity of the loo because that would be tasteless. I promise not to. Then, I get to the thrust of the story which was a quote from former West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton, a good guy I spent some time with once on some Clinton foreign mission somewhere who has since gone on to even greater power as head of the College Board. His observation was something to the effect that about a quarter of SAT-takers in 1989 said they had a GPA in the A range (A plus, A or A minus) but that today that number has climbed to well over 40 percent.

No wonder we've got problems, I thought. But then I thought the last time I wrote a piece about some of the intellectually-challenged citizens of America I got accused of being elitist and anti-American and a traitor and a Jew. And two of those things aren't true, one I feel bad about and the fourth one would probably be disputed by my rabbi who hasn't seen me since my youngest daughter's bat mitzvah. I've taken enough abuse this week and it's Friday, so maybe I'll just...and then I looked up and noticed my wife had quietly, like a Blackwater assassin going after an al Qaeda target, gone to work. So I decided not to write a post for the blog today. It's a summer weekend. And if I wrote all this stuff it would probably be way too long anyway. Why not give the readers a day off.

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