At first I just wanted to sneak out of town. Between having to rent out my place in L.A., garage my lovely car, find a place in New York, find a school for my kids, figure out how my girlfriend and her Labrador can come over from Milan and figure out how to actually teach screenwriting, my days are quite full. Oh, and I'm behind on turning in my new book, "Father of the Year," a project I've been aching to work on ever since my ex-wife moved out four years ago. It's 9:23pm and I'll probably keep working till eleven.

But my daughter is going to be eight, her birthday is in the summer, and since I am ripping her away from all her friends here in the city where she was born and she will be celebrating her official birthday while we're on a plane for France, the least I could do was throw her a going away/birthday party. So we drove to Party America and filled a shopping cart full of plastic luau acoutrements. You would not believe how many things they can put a Hawaiian print on.

My daughter wanted to rush home to see how many people had responded to our evite but daddy doesn't really cook so I had to feed them something. Sunday, we went out for brunch then all they had the rest of the day were peaches and strawberries from the farmer's market (first of the year and amazing but still, not a real meal). I tried to order them to bed hungry but relented and made us all peanut butter sandwiches. Today, after Party America we went to the Urth cafe. Soup for them, an iced mocha granita for me. My son was literally salivating over my mountain of frozen chocolate coffee ice. I tortured the poor guy. He begged for just a sip but I know that if even a milliliter of caffeine ever touches his four-and-three-quarter-year-old lips the next step will be crystal meth. He'd turn into Pacino in Scarface.

So afterwards I consoled him with one of those boba drinks. Decaf, of course. Those chewy tapioca balls give me the creeps but the kids love them. And then home to stuff gift bags for the party -- which is still five days away.