LOS ANGELES - Life is a luggage carousel. Love is a modest black suitcase with no markings, 'round and 'round and 'round....

The little guy and I are standing in Los Angeles International Airport, having just returned from our mission of mercy to the Heartland, where we saved Grandma's house by hacking back the rosebush that was threatening to swallow the garage. Once upon a time, the Midwest was an agricultural hub with a can-do spirit. These days, it is wall-to-wall subdivisions with names like Foxglove Meadows or Whispering Willows. The cornfields are disappearing. And so are many of the willows.

Anyway, we flew to the rescue - Alpha Dad and his sidekick, Bongo. Now, we're back home, in time to slurp the last spoonfuls of summer and get uniforms out to Bongo's soccer team.

It's a busy time. Bongo's big brother is signed up at the local college, the little girl is prepping for her senior year of high school, and Bongo is readying for his first day of kindergarten. The Olympics may be over, but the decathlon has just begun.

"There's an e-mail for you, did you see?" asks Posh.

"Yeah, I saw," I tell her.

I am in denial. Much as I like fall, I hate to see summer end. The other day, I took two naps, woke up, rolled over, and took two more naps, one after the other.

A great thing, a nap, and I'm sorry to see them go away. Once September begins, there will be no naps till Christmas day, when we collapse into each other's arms. Me and Mrs. Claus.

"What do we have Sunday?" Posh asks. "I know we have something Sunday."

And so it begins. She sent me the schedule for September, and there were five or six activities just in the first two weeks. There were a couple back-to-school nights and a fish fry at someone's house.

So, the other day, we're headed to the beach for one last splash, one last walk on the sand before autumn consumes us. Posh says she has to shave her legs, which intrigues me, for I have never seen a woman shave her legs. It's the little intimacies that turn me on.

"Five bucks," I say.

"For what?"

"To watch you shave your legs," I say.

"Make it 10," Posh says.

We settle on $7.50, for which she offers to let me watch her shave one leg.

Keep in mind that we are married with four kids, and it's 11 on a Saturday morning. In broad daylight, we are both in the bathroom. Children are screaming and sending legal notices under the bathroom door. One painted another's face while she slept. That sort of thing.

"What are you two doing in there?" one of them hollers.

"Mom's shaving her legs," I explain.

"Her pegs?"

"Mom doesn't have pegs!" one of them screams, and runs to call the cops.

Our interlude doesn't last long, but I consider it $7.50 well spent. Next week, if the money holds out, I hope to watch her condition her hair.

"Twenty bucks," she announces.

That's a lot of money.

It's no wonder we're having trouble with the pumpkins. For two months, we have been getting these big yellow blossoms but no gourds. What gives?

"I read on the Internet ... " Posh begins.

Here we go. More witchcraft from the Internet. Posh explains that, since there is a shortage of bees, it is left up to us to cross-pollinate the pumpkins. Who says married people have no sex life?

According to the Web, pollinating the pumpkins involves identifying the male blossoms and the female blossoms and shaking pumpkin pollen from one to the next.

This feels godlike. But I'm game. If this is what it takes to get pumpkins pregnant, then so be it. I'll be bottling pumpkin wine before you can say...

"Um, we've got a problem," Posh says after checking out the pumpkin blossoms.

"Just one?"

"They're all boys," Posh explains.

"We have same-sex pumpkins?"

"Apparently so," Posh says.

Love is a modest black suitcase with no markings, 'round and 'round and 'round....

Contact Erskine at chris.erskine@latimes.com