A Happy Sprawlidays survival guide

For the past five nights, I’ve had a recurring nightmare that every trick or treater coming to my house was either dressed as Kate Gosselin or was actually Kate Gosselin herself.

She moves in with me. She brings her eight kids. Jon starts showing up to go through my drawers looking for money he can claim is his.

Worst of all, instead of having to ride herd over just two children through the week-long Mardi Gras of tooth decay that is what Halloween has become, I now have her brood and they’re asking if I’m going to be their new daddy.

I wake up in cold sweat.

I wonder if tonight any of the Gosselin children will dress up as the Gosselin parents. And I wonder if Gosselin neighbors had the puckish audacity to trick or treat at the Gosselin home dressed as the Gosselins themselves.

I’d do it myself but I’ve been consumed with trying to keep pace with just the latest example of what I’ve been calling the Sprawlidays.

Halloween used to be just one night. Now it consumes a full week even for those of us who are resistant to its pressures.

It’s everywhere. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing some juvenile talk show host or news caster dressed up to salute yet another holiday we’re determined to wrench from the kids.

It’s oppressive. We’ve already had about six kiddie costume functions in the community, at school and at church (the last has me for the first time wishing I belonged to one of those uptight fundamentalist sects that disdains the celebration because it prudishly considers it “too pagan”).

I’m sure I’d be a whole lot less curmudgeonly about Halloween and the other hollerdays if we could condense the crap out of them.

That’s not going to happen.

But because I don’t want my daughters to know I’m a mean, hate-filled misanthrope until they start dating boys, I’m going to try and focus on the positive. Here’s a short list key dates that’ll help me get through this annual unwelcome spread of enforced good cheer when mostly everyday I’ll feel like telling the good-will-toward-men crowd to just buzz the hell off.

• Nov. 1 -- Happy April Fool’s Day in November! I invented this holiday and I’m already looking forward to the malicious fun I can spread on Sunday. If we can have Christmas in July -- we do and it’s superior -- there’s nothing that say we can’t have April Fool’s Day in November. Enjoy!

• Nov. 25 -- It’s the night before Thanksgiving and that can only mean one thing: “3rd Rock From The Sun’s” Thanksgiving episode. I have the DVD for every episode of this hilarious show. Every night before Thanksgiving we watch the episode about how the aliens learn about Thanksgiving. It’s pure genius.

• Nov. 26. -- This day starts with the traditional playing of Ray Davies’s 2006 song, “Thanksgiving Day.” It tries hard to be cynical, but gives in to the sentiment of the one holiday that doesn’t have something infuriating about it (if you can avoid all the in-laws).

• Dec. 9 -- It’s Val’s birthday. Yes, it’s inconvenient for me having it smack dab in the middle of the sprawlidays -- and I suspect her parents planned it that way to add diabolical havoc to my already frantic calendar. But we always enjoy a nice meal out and it’s fun to give her the special treatment of which she is so deserving. Plus she usually goes to spend one day with her dad and takes the kids, an event I’m excused from attending that was addressed in numerous negotiated peace treaties.

• Dec. 18 -- I turn off the computer for the week and turn my office above the bar into a community wrapping station. Anyone can come in and we can wrap gifts together, drink beer and swap complaints about the holidays. This is the third year I’ll give my friends this option. If this year just one of them accepts my hospitality, he’ll be the first.

• Dec. 19 -- My Mom’s birthday. See what I have to go through? But she, too, is deserving of special treatment. Happily, her idea of a special day is us dumping the kids on her while we go out to dinner and movie. A Christmas miracle.

• Jan. 2. -- The day when we can all look forward to a string of pressure-free holidays like President’s Day and Groundhog Day. My friend/bartender/office landlord Dave and I invented this one. We celebrate it by not acknowledging it even exists.

Until then, I’m going to scrape by each day relishing the daily barrage of news involving Jon & Kate. God help me, I still can’t get enough of it. I read every word.

Now, that’s scary.

Jon, Kate, 8 plus me

I prepared last evening for a show that six weeks ago I didn’t know even existed on a network I never watch like it was the Super Bowl.

I cooked up a big meal. I prepared the snacks. I loaded the frig with beer.

It was time for The Learning Channel’s season premier of “Jon & Kate Plus 8!”

Reality shows register about a 15 percent approval rating from me. I love “Survivor,” tolerate “American Idol,” and won’t watch “Dancing With the Stars” the latest Trump nonsense, forlorn bachelor shows or any of the weepers about more sizable homes or less sizable homely contestants.

Most of it’s too low brow for even a guy like me, someone who, when it comes to TV viewing, has brows that rarely elevate above the belt.

But in the past six weeks “J.K.+8” is that rare show that can raise low brow fare to something that seems Shakespearean.

For me, it all started when I wandered through the living room and saw Valerie and our 8-year-old rapt before the big screen as a squad of runny-nosed toddlers demolished a department store while the parents tried in vain to rein in the squalling herd.

I didn’t care about that. I watch professional sports whenever I can’t make it to the ballgames, but I don’t need to import feckless parenting into my own living room. It’s on even when the power’s out.

What caught my eye was the cut away of the parents being interviewed about the chaos. The woman kept interviewing herself -- “Was it out of control? Yes. Did I feel Jon could have done more? Well, see for yourself . . .” -- and casting baleful glances at the husband.

The husband just stared off camera at some unseen producer. He looked like a prisoner who knew speaking up would lead to months of harsh treatment once the camera shut off. I felt an heroic impulse to round up my buddies from the bar and plan some kind of half-assed rescue mission to save an imperiled brother.

I was hooked. “That’s the most unhappy man on the face of the planet,” I said.

Val told me the show detailed the life of this eastern Pennsylvania couple that had twins and then apparently angered the fertility gods who bestowed upon them sextuplets five years ago.

Some would consider six on top of two a blessing, some a curse. But I know what someone in the Gosselin house -- and I think I know who -- considered it.

It was an opportunity. They conscripted their innocents into a promotional vehicle that would turn every aspect of their lives into reality TV.

I could tell from about 90 seconds of viewing that Jon absolutely hated what his life had become, and I don’t mean the parenting part. He hates that someone -- and I think I know who -- decided to embrace a perverted fame that eventually singes everything it touches.

Pointing a hi-def camera at anything distorts everything.

So I wasn’t surprised when I read a short note in the celebrity corner of the newspaper that said Jon was suspected of cheating with a some smalltown school teacher. That led to accusations that the prim and evangelizing Kate had been getting a little too close to a burly man described as a “bodyguard,” and that guy must take his job way too seriously.

Last night delivered all the bitter wreckage. The two barely spoke to one another throughout the entire riveting hour.

She said she’s always thinking of the kids, even when she’s away for weeks at a time promoting the new season, doing book signings and appearing on shows with guys like Larry King. She said she’s worked too hard to lose things like the free trips to Hawaii for flashy renewals of their wedding vows.

He said he enjoys being a Dad.

She said she doesn’t want to disappoint the multitude of fans who’ve come to consider her and her brood part of their own family.

He said he wishes he could make it all go away.

Both deny the allegations of infidelity. Both admit the future of the franchise is in jeopardy.

I’ve always said every bad marriage is a monster created by two Dr. Frankensteins. But I think the Gosselin marriage that is disintegrating before our eyes every Monday at 9 a.m. with encores throughout the week has just one person to blame.

And I think I know who.