The mystery of sisters.

I'm working and the girls are singing.

This is a welcome change from their usual routine, which as of late has involved shrieking, stomping and fits of whining. They're playing a game I don't understand, and that involves dancing and singing a song about being sisters. The only downside is that Grace is singing in an ear-splitting soprano that is not exactly on key.

Grace and Lauren are mysteries to me. Virtually every day on the way home from school they get in a fight in the car. A fight about nothing. I understand it - they're tired, hungry, ready to get home and get into pajamas. I feel the same way. And I suppose that's the difference between adults and children, that I can feel that way yet somehow dredge up the energy to try to distract them with questions about who they sat with at lunch and what was the funniest thing that happened today. Honestly, some days I'd like to whine and moan just as much as them. But on the worst of those days I just pull over the car and wait for them to finish. It's either that or start screaming, which I'm working on not doing.

Work has been so busy these last few weeks that I'm quite sure I've been phoning it in on my mom duties. But no one seems to be suffering. Much. I'm working harder than I've worked in a long time, and it's good work. The kind where I'm learning new things, making lots of decisions and challenging my brain every day. The only bad thing is that by the time I get home I feel like I've taken the SAT for eight hours.

But somehow dinner still gets on the table, everyone seems to have clean clothes and I haven't forgotten to put anything critical into a backpack. And looking at the way they are playing together right now I think that it's not a bad thing for them to be out of my laser focus. Instead they are focused on each other, creating an imaginary world that - and I'm not kidding here - has moved Lauren to tears.

"I'm happy cwying, Gwace," she said just a minute ago.

So what's so mysterious about sisters who love each other one minute and want to kill each other the next?

Nothing I guess. It's just the way they are. Either way they're sticking together, which makes me feel like we must be doing something right.

The wisdom of Lauren.

Mama, I have to tell you a secwet!

What is it, Lauren?

When I get married I am NOT going to change my name, but my husband is going to change HIS name.

But don't tell anybody, okay?

# # #

Girls, you should never do drugs. They are very bad for you.

I won't Mama.

Pinky swear?

Yes. Pinky sweah.

(We pinky shake)

And also because I weally don't actually know what dwugs are.

One thing at a time.

The other day I left my frozen bread dough out on the table by mistake and went out for the evening. In the morning it was a fat, exploded bag of gooeyness, not to mention hilarious.

Last night I was making lasagnas for tonight's Christmas Eve dinner and by the time I got to the end of the third one I realized I had deviated from my usual method - noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese - and instead had done noodles, sauce, noodles, sauce, all of the cheese. It looked wrong at the time, but I didn't realize my mistake until I already had half the cheese spread across the top, so I just kept going. I'm going to call it "upside down lasagna" and assume it will taste exactly the same as the correctly prepared others.

I made toffee bars on Wednesday and forgot to put in half the amount of butter. My mistake was pretty obvious because as I was stirring the mix it just looked more and more dry. Sadly, I didn't really notice this until I was pouring it into the baking pan. Happily, I was able to pour it right back into the mixing bowl, add the missing butter and carry on.

You might think I'm losing my mind. Frankly, sometimes I think I'm losing my mind. But I think it's just proof that multi-tasking is a myth. I can go for a run and listen to my iPod, but that's about it for things I can successfully do at the same time. I've been reading about this, the idea that you can't really multi-task, you just think you are. But what's really happening is that your brain is rapidly switching from one activity to the next. I like to believe I'm a pretty quick thinker, but clearly I can't cook and carry on a conversation, pay attention to my kids, answer the phone and listen to the news on TV all at the same time.

So my new year's resolution is to do one thing at time. Or at least to work on doing one thing at a time. I'm starting by making a list on the days I have a lot to do. Even if the only thing I check off that list is "have lunch" I like feeling that sense of accomplishment. I can tell you right now I won't stick with it. That's the nature of resolutions, and also the nature of an attention-challenged procrastinator like me. So instead I'm going to consider it something to keep coming back to throughout the year. More of a goal than a resolution, you might say.

In the meantime, it's Christmas Eve and I've got to look up the NORAD Santa tracker online, wash Lauren's hair, turn on the oven to cook the aforementioned upside down lasagna, figure out what I'm going to wear besides the t-shirt and crocs that I'm sporting at the moment, and go give my husband a big hug and kiss. But first things first..... a few more minutes here in the massage chair!

Merry Christmas and thanks for another year of reading - and occasionally commenting on - my blog. I'll let you know how the lasagna turns out.

Spying on the other team.

One woman's son was baking the pies right as they were sitting down to dinner. He even put one of them in the oven at 8:30 at night. AFTER they had eaten dinner. Her husband did not like that.

Another's one daughter-in-law bought her dress just three weeks before the wedding, which makes her a perfect match for her son, who never plans anything ahead and can never get all the food to come out of the oven at the same time.

According to the lady in the pink turtleneck whose earrings looked like pink plastic shopping bags that say Barbie on them, her son and his wife cook three different turkeys and then the kids vote on which they like best: oven-roasted, cooked on the grill and some other variation I couldn't quite make out. Only thing is, the son got up at 4 am to get one of them started, but by the time they sat down to eat he had forgotten about it. I'm not clear whether it was cooked to death or just never served because I was too busy listening to the woman next to her complain about how she bought all these groceries for lunch on Wednesday and then traffic was so bad that her kids didn't arrive until after 3 o'clock.

These are the True Thanksgiving Stories of my workout buddies at Curves. 99.9% of the time I am the youngest person there by a lot. I don't come at a consistent time of day, so I see a different group of women all the time. But apparently they see a lot of each other because they all seem to know one another. They also all seem to have kids about my age, so I feel like I'm getting a sneak peak into how my life looks from someone else's point of view.

Aside from the fact that some of these people work out in dress pants and turtleneck sweaters, I find them pretty inspiring. They are active, engaged in their families and community, have lots of advice about cooking and share openly their affections and irritations with their offspring and their families. Today, working out the frustrations of a wrestling match with my Christmas tree lights (a long and yet stunningly boring story), I was thoroughly entertained by their tales of kids who are always late, kids who are too busy, kids who are totally disorganized, kids who think they know how to do everything, kids who don't plan for traffic, even a kid who got up with her 10-year-old daughter at 2 am to get the Black Friday deals and wound up abandoning her cart because the wait in the check-out line was two hours long.

They were hilarious. But I couldn't help thinking so that's what they think of us.

Who you callin' grown up?

I'm turning 38 today and I'm not gonna lie - it's freaking me out a tiny bit. Not the age. I mean, it IS a little hard to believe that 40 is right around the corner when you're still on this side of it. But I wouldn't go back to being in my 20s or even, necessarily, my early 30s. At 38 I know I've still got a lot to learn about life, but I also know a lot more about myself and that's a good feeling.

No, the things that are weirding me out are the crow's feet around my eyes that gather up make-up in them if I put my foundation on too soon after my moisturizer. It's that I bought comfortable shoes and talked myself into believing they're cute - and they are, but they are not the same standard of cute I would have applied even five years ago. It's that my wardrobe is one that belongs to a real adult. It doesn't include anything overly trendy, overly low/short and it definitely doesn't include a single pair of jeggings. It's the fact that the classic rock stations are playing music that I listened to in high school. I mean, what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is happening here!?

I'm now part of a generation who are the parents/grown-ups on TV sitcoms. I'm the target of ads for luxury cars and peanut butter and laundry soap.

Here's a good example of how shocked I am by my age: I'm working on a series of videos for Shriners Hospitals for Children in which I am interviewing nurses, surgeons, physical therapists, etc. Because these hospitals are such amazing places people tend to stay there a long time, so what I hear over and over again is that people have been there 15 or 20 years. My first thought is, wow that's a long time! My second thought is holy crap, they're my age!

What I've learned is that we all have an age in our heads that we really are, which has very little to do with the age we actually are. In my head I'm about 24. I'm certainly not a grown-up, much less the mother of three children with a mortgage and a business. I'm not sure when everyone around me - my clients, my parents, my employees, my children, my friends - is going to realize that I am not an actual grown-up, despite the crow's feet and slightly sensible shoes.

I'm not sure when I'm going to realize I'm a grown-up. And I'm totally okay with that. Because age is fine, but actual adulthood is totally overrated.

Little b, big B.

When I first met B he was a blond, cherubic, chubby-cheeked 8-month-old, so cute that he looked like a child who comes in the picture that comes with the frame. I was smitten. He was smiley. It was the first time I had met all of Chad's family - brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma - and B was a sweet diversion from the nervousness of meeting an entire family who are completely checking you out.

B was in our wedding, a three-year-old in a tuxedo looking like a ventriloquist's doll at his dad's side. He bawled his way down the aisle, then sat to the side of the altar during the cemetery, quietly running his cars up and down the carpeted step. When his parent's divorced he and his twin sister were regular visitors at our house. We'd play endless games of Monopoly, hike into the dunes and pretend to be animals, and he'd eat nothing but sausage for breakfast. He was always sweet, always one of those people who you just know has a gentle inner core, a good heart.

As he's gotten older he's still been a regular visitor. We'd get the occasional text message just to say Hi. We met his girlfriend. Talked about his first car accident - and laughed at how irritated he was that it happened to him and not his sister. When a difficult time at home led to him needing a fresh start Chad and I didn't hesitate a moment to bring him here. He's been here five months and it feels like forever, in the very best way.

This past Friday I took him on a college visit to University of Northwestern Ohio, an automotive technology school that I had never heard of before. What an impressive school. And what a truly fun day. B is not my son and I don't ever want to take away from his mother, who has raised a wonderful kid. But walking through campus with B, I felt the same way every mother who has prepared to send a kid off into the world has felt. That round-faced baby boy was towering over me, tall and skinny and strong. And at UNOH he was in his element. Cars are his passion, and it was a joy to see him take it all in - the tools, the technology, the cars, the single-minded focus on all things motorized. I asked him questions and he answered in detail, showing me things and explaining things that I have never seen before or come close to understanding about a car. He was the expert, I was just along for the ride.

We walked what seemed like miles in the brisk November cold, laughing at how all the kids in camouflage jackets and hats unloaded into the Ag building, eating pizza standing up in the high-performance auto shop, talking about everything and nothing. We saw drag racers and junky pick-ups, jacked up Hondas and a car that was two front ends welded together for use as a training aid. We watched the auto-cross club blaze black tire tracks into the asphalt as they raced through their course, and rolled our eyes when the un-tricked-out, un-jacked-up Jeep went the easy way up the off-road course.

It was a fun day. Circumstances have made it so that he spent it with me, instead of his mom or Dad, and I'm not going to lie - I was glad. It was a privilege and a joy. I can't wait to see where the next phase of his life will take him.

Escape with a side of meeting.

"Mama? Why do you have to go to the business meeting? Why can't someone else go?" It's early. So early that sun has not even broken above the tops of the frost-tipped trees and the sky is blushing with rose-flecked clouds. Grace's face is calm, but her eyes are big.

"Well honey, I'm in charge of this project. And it's a really big project. And also, this meeting is one of only one or two times a year that everybody who will work on the project is going to be in the same place at the same time," I say. "So it's my job to show them what their new web site will look like, and what kind of videos and stories it will have, and also what they will need to do when it's their turn to give us information."

She nods. Lauren is listening carefully, but says nothing. I am pretty sure what I'm saying sounds a lot like that old Far Side cartoon: "blah, blah, blah, Ginger."

I know the girls have mixed feelings about me going out of town. They are always good for Chad. He always finds a way to make things special. In fact, when he's alone with them he's - and this kind of hurts me a little to admit - way more hands-on than me, playing Chutes & Ladders, or HORSE out in the driveway, or tea party or whatever. Which explains why my return home is often prefaced by, "well, the house is kind of a mess..."

But I also know that they miss me a lot. And they kind of think that the world will somehow cease to revolve on its axis. Even B, when informed that I'd be out of town for a couple of days said, "What? You're going out of town? How long?"

I said, "Just a couple of days. What? Don't you think the household can run without me?"

He looked straight at me and said, "No."

Very flattering. But no matter. I don't travel much, just enough to make my job interesting. And I'm never gone for long. Rarely more than one night or two. And secretly, although I would never want my children to know this, I can't wait to go. I love good hotels. I love getting ready for bed without stepping on Barbies or finding tiny pairs of underpants on my bathroom floor. I love eating out at places my kids would hate and not having to get everyone else's food ready first. I love leaving the leftovers behind because I was never going to eat them anyway, but with the kids I feel somehow compelled not to be wasteful. I love having the news on in the morning, and every single light in the room on too, if I want to, instead of putting on my make-up in a nearly candelit dimness (which is flattering, but still....).

I love escaping. Even if only for a couple of days and with a business meeting thrown in.

The best part is, I'm always really glad to get home.

Schizophrenia and the power of sitting on the couch.

On Monday I took B and his girlfriend to a college fair. On Tuesday I went to Lauren's preschool open house.

Lately I've felt like parenting is an awful lot like schizophrenia, only the voices are on the outside of your head. My childrens' personalities are so completely different, so.... separate. You hear that all kids are different, but you can't really know until you've experienced it. Like, one minute you're yelling - or trying very hard not to yell, but sort of failing - at your 8 year old to quit whining, sit up in the chair and do her subtraction. NOW. And the next your 4 year-old is leaning over to kiss your cheek. One minute your baby is totally cracking you up scooting on her butt across the living room, and the next you're fuming over your 17 year-old's missed homework assignment in science. One day you're asking about college admission requirements and the next day you're praising a triangle.

My children switch gears so easily, their moods tossed and turned by what happened at school, how hungry they are, maybe even the current phase of the moon. Who can say? But I'm ill equipped to change so quickly with them. Sometimes they are coming at me so fast and furiously - happy, angry, giddy, hopeful, quiet, crabby, laughing, pouting. I hate when I let my anger at one diminish my joy in another, even when it's only for a moment. But I feel like a split personality in the creepiest way when I get angry at one, then turn and smile and use my "happy mommy" voice on the other.

The irony is that they forget so much more quickly than me. Even if I yelled at dinnertime, by bedtime they are hugging and kissing me, and telling me I am the best mommy in the world. I know I'm not, but I'll take it as long as they still think so.

And so I come to the power of sitting on the couch. At my house, it's just like all those families on Super Nanny - the more time I spend with my kids the happier and more well behaved everyone is, including me. Even if we just spend 15 minutes in the living room talking, doing a puzzle, watching TV, reading, or playing charades (which B refuses to participate in, but still kind of hangs out for), it's 15 minutes where I have stopped moving. Stopped cleaning. Stopped bossing around. It's good for them, but in truth it's better for me.

Tonight, I'm thinking of sitting on the couch for 30 minutes.

P.S. In no way do I intend to make light of schizophrenia. In fact, I have a friend whose son has struggled with the disease for years, so I have an idea of how hard it is on the families and victims of the condition. Schizophrenia is no laughing matter. But you've got to admit - it is a great analogy for parenting.

Packing lunches, cleaning up puke, changing diapers, reading books, fighting over homework, celebrating math victories, thinking about colleges, cooking dinners, wishing for a self-cleaning house, folding laundry, writing web sites, one conference call after another, worrying about my Grandma, laughing at myself, exercising occasionally, sleeping less than I'd like, playing Chutes & Ladders, watching movies, searching for jeggings, answering emails, feeding the baby, dinner with friends, vacuuming, loading and unloading the dishwasher, pondering fantasy football strategies, trying not to forget birthdays, throwing my cat's gifts of dead animals into the woods, listening to acorns hitting the roof like rifle fire, talking to my dog, stopping at the grocery store, de-cluttering my closet, remembering to floss, painting tiny toenails, eating popcorn with M&Ms, trying new recipes, checking out new cop shows, listening to thunderstorms, kissing sleeping girls, filling out school picture forms, giving baths, oversleeping on Monday morning, wishing I was still sleeping on Sunday morning, getting up every morning to do it all again.

A little bit of help here?

Sunday night Annie woke up screaming - SCREAMING - at 3 in the morning. She had a fever and was hitting me on the arm, sweaty and inconsolable. After a frantic phone call to her grandpa (who is also, thank-my-lucky-stars, her doctor) and a feeding, as well as a hit of Tylenol, she was semi-asleep. She fussed on and off so much that I eventually put her in bed with me, breaking my long-standing rule against letting my kids sleep with me. But a girl's gotta get some rest and this was the only way.

Nestled against her hot little body I apparently slept well enough to have this dream:

I'm in a corporate office that's not a corporate office. It's more like the living and dining room of a mid-century ranch house and all the executives are circled around the dining room table/conference room table having a meeting. There's a phone booth against the wall where the two rooms meet. I'm feeding Anne, but then she pukes all over me.

I go to the phone booth and it turns out it's a shower, so I lean in and start rinsing my arm and brushing off my hands and clothes. I keep glancing over at the table. Everyone there is dressed like it's the 80s, like a scene from that movie where Diane Keaton inherits a baby and doesn't know what to do with her so she moves to Vermont and makes gourmet applesauce.

The next thing I know, my hair is getting soaked and - wait! - I'm naked! Only the meeting is still going on. Grace is in the corner trying to comfort Anne, who's not happy at all. And I'm NAKED! But still the meeting toddles on, while I try to keep my back to the group. (As though seeing only my butt somehow makes my nakedness less embarrassing.) Finally the meeting ends and I am able to get out of the shower, like I had been trapped in there somehow. And then I'm wrapped in a towel and a smarmy, blonde woman with a Mary Tyler Moore hairdo comes over to ask me some dumb question about business stuff.

And this is where it gets good....

The next thing I know, I've grabbed her by the hair, a handful of blonde flip curl in each fist, and I'm shaking her, yelling, "YOU ARE NOT HELPING ME!!!"

Then I woke up.

So there's a glimpse into my psyche.

P.S. Turns out Anne had an ear infection.

Milestones and the joy of de-cluttering.

Poor guy. He's assigned to my house today, a house with a driveway that goes uphill, 21 stairs to the front door, another 17 to the upstairs bedrooms. It's 93 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. The dude is seriously buff.

He's here - finally - to pick up Anne's oxygen supplies. Two concentrators, one huge back-up tank, seven small portable tanks and a couple of little machines with oddly old-fashioned looking dials that do I don't know what. Annie has been off the sauce, so to speak, since late March, but the supplies have lingered. They don't like to let you get rid of those too hastily since getting them placed back in your house is much more costly and difficult than just keeping them around for, say.... an extra five months.

Finally he's done, having lugged all of this heavy and ungainly equipment down all those stairs by himself. I give him a cold bottle of water that's been taking up space in the back of the fridge then turn back toward the girls, doing a shamelessly bad running man-style dance in celebration. It's go-on, it's go-on... the oxygen is go-on! In the kitchen I yank out the garbage can and stuff it with endless yards of clear tubing and small plastic humidifier bottles. I jerk the rug off the floor that had been placed to keep the concentrator from vibrating on our wood floors, and tuck a dust-coated, unopened box of unidentified supplies under my arm. Now it's my turn down the 21 stairs, down the hill of a driveway that's white-hot under the blistering sun, down to the garbage can with my eyes closed to slits like a vampire peeking out from his coffin to see what the neighborhood humans could possibly be doing with all this daylight. With a soft thud, it's all gone.

Finally.

Tomorrow it will be one year since I was hospitalized with my cervix inexplicably dilated to 5 centimeters. I was, literally, hours away from giving birth to a baby who would have been too fragile to survive. I wasn't in labor, but in the end my body couldn't keep her in. The seven days of bed rest gave Anne just enough of a boost - in the form of lung-building steroids and simple time - to get her over the hump to viability. This is just a polite way of saying that she would have a chance at survival. Viable. Survival. They sound alike, but the difference between the two is a vast chasm.

This has been a life changing year. A year of decluttering, both literally and metaphorically. Our priorities have come into crystal-clear focus, our needs pared down to those most simple and treasured. Our worries sorted into Things That Really Matter and Things That Kinda Don't. I mean, yeah, I'd still like to have a VW bug convertible for my 40th birthday (as Chad promised to me long ago) and I'd also like a couple of those awesome cashmere sweaters from J. Crew this fall and to go on a cruise for our 15th anniversary in November. That would be cool, but it's also cool if we stay home in our old non-cashmere sweaters.

I'm going upstairs to do something with the wide open space at the front of my closet where the oxygen concentrator used to be. I'm going to try to leave it open, like a breathing space in a sea of clothes and shoes and belts. That's how I feel getting all that equipment out of the house. Like I've come out of a fog and found a breathing space after a year of worry, fear, doctor's appointments, unwanted medical knowledge and breathless waiting as Annie has grown.

On August 20th she'll be 1. What a year.

What dog barf? Part 2.

"Eewwww! Mom! What is that?"

Grace has spotted the dog barf.

"It looks like a giant earwig."

She is pointing to the wad of regurgitated grass lying just so next to the actual barf/bile part.

I pretend to glance back as I'm wrestling Anne's car seat through the door without hitting Lauren in the head.

"It's dog puke," I say. "Not a giant earwig." Now I'm laughing. "But that's pretty creative, Gracie."

"We need to clean it up, mommy," she says, looking back furtively as I urge her to keep moving.

"We've gotta go, honey. I don't have time. Daddy will get it." I hope I sound convincing, but I'm really just thinking there is no way I'm cleaning that up. I'm not.

Tuesday night the puke was gone.

What dog barf?

This morning my dog puked in the basement, near the door from the house to the garage. I noticed. But when I left at 8:40 (leaving Chad to get three girls ready and out the door on his own) I pretended I hadn't. Noticed, that is.

I mean, a girl can't do everything, ya know?

Of road trips, blueberries and laundry.

I just went to the back room to fish my cell phone out of my lunch bag in the refrigerator.

And now that I'm back at my desk I don't remember what I needed my cell phone for in the first place. Which is a little bit alarming.

One of my grandmothers has dementia (caused by hardening of the arteries) and I'm fairly convinced my mother is on the verge of early onset Alzheimer's, although not from hardening of the arteries. Alzheimer's is really not the way to go, so I'm hoping that today's brain fart - not the first one I've had today either, I think – is more about brain overload than the beginnings of cottage cheese brain.

I haven't written in what feels like forever. This is partly because it's summer and I tend to hurry through stuff at work to get home and do something more fun. It's also because work has been screamingly busy. And it's also because I've been on brain overload. Here's what I've been up to in the last, say.... three weeks.

• One daytrip to Riley Hospital (three hours one way) to get Anne's g-tube replaced after it fell out of her belly while my stepmom was feeding her. Putting it back in took approximately 2.5 minutes and then back in the car for another three hours.

• One trip to Tampa to make a new business presentation that included a lovely few hours of lying by the pool, reading a magazine UNINTERRUPTED.

• Two trips to the high school to get B signed up for this fall.

• One impromptu pool party that included the largest marshmallows in the known universe

• One baby shower for two moms.

• A trip to the blueberry patch with all three girls and no sunscreen (duh)

• Another pool party that was originally scheduled for a completely different day.

• One really fun White Sox game that kept me up waaaay too late for the second new business meeting I've had this month that was the following day.

• Umpteen trips back and forth between daycare, my sister's house, the office, the place that repairs our car, the grocery store, the beach, my own laundry room.....

I don't know.... looking back, we've been having a blast. Lots of time with friends, lots of beautiful beach days. But too often it all seems to happen in a rush. Too often it seems like one thing gets pushed to the back in favor of another, whether it's keeping up with the laundry, reading bedtime stories too instead of just singing a goodnight song, getting that ongoing web content project actually done, cooking a real meal with real food, spending time just hanging out with my husband who is really fun to hang out with or cleaning the desk drawer that is starting to look an awful lot like my phone drawer - not good.

It's hard to admit it, especially to myself, but I am NOT superwoman. So I'm working on tackling one thing at a time. Paying real attention to that thing. It's amazing how much less pressured I feel when I make a list and do one. thing. at. a. time. It's also amazingly liberating to realize that no one is judging me more harshly than myself. So I've been working on talking to myself in my head the way I would talk to my friends, which is with kindness and a for-god's-sake-give-yourself-a-break good humor.

I think I'm finished here. Time to move on to my next task - scouting a garage door to see if it will make a good shooting location for an upcoming project. Then I have to come back and locate an actor who can juggle while wearing a mail carrier's uniform. Maybe he'll have some tips for me on keeping all these balls up in the air.

My cart runneth over.

It's amazing how often people feel free to comment on some aspect of your life, whether they know you or not, whether it's appropriate or not. I was incredibly, alone at the grocery store, my cart piled high with everything from Flamin' Hot Cheetos (B's rare request - he's either the least picky kid on earth or afraid to ask for what he wants. I can't decide yet.) to baby formula, dog food, laundry soap and coffee creamer. The guy behind me in line had, like, five items and I felt badly that he had gotten stuck behind me.

"I'm sorry you wound up behind me," I said. "It's going to be a while."

He laughed. I laughed. He said, "well you certainly have all ages represented there," and nodded toward my heaping cart.

A flash of annoyance raced across my brain, and then I thought he's right. The kids in my house range from a 17 year-old with a hollow leg to a 10 month-old experiencing sweet potatoes for the first time. There's also me, my husband and our neighbor/grandmother-in-chief, Grandma J., a dog and a cat. Our dietary and personal grooming needs are varied and many. We eat at home a lot. And we go through toilet paper like, well... water.

And so my cart runneth over. And my view of grocery shopping - a chore I once hated - has changed. Now, every time I lean into the cracked plastic handle of the cart, heaving it around the corner by pushing my own body weight against that one wobbly wheel, I realize that I am blessed with abundance. Blessed with the ability to afford it all, to be sure. But blessed completely with an abundance of people to love, feed, groom, do laundry for, read stories to, laugh with, fall asleep watching a movie with, share my life with. What I give to them I get back, and more.

Now if someone would just help me put it all away.....

Guilt, with a side of guilt.

Monday - Anne to daycare; Lauren to swimming lessons, then daycare; Grace to basketball camp and - ooops! - a make-up softball game that hubby has known about since last week but forgot to mention. Get to work at about 10, leave at, oh, 3:30.

Tuesday - Lauren to swimming; Grace to camp; at home with Anne for PT appointment. Got to work about 12:30. Left work about 5 and still had to do daycare pick up. Home. For dinner. It's a miracle.

Wednesday - Anne to Auntie's house, Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, get to work at about 10:15. Pick Grace up at 3 and go straight to Auntie's to round up the littles for another softball game.

Thursday - Lauren to swimming, Anne to daycare, Grace to camp, to work at 10, left for hair appointment at 11:30 (General Sherman's army could not have stopped me from making this appointment), pick up Grace at 3, back to office for an hour then off to Auntie's and daycare to round up the littles for softball game #3. Please God, let us pick up pizza for dinner tonight.

Friday - Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, Anne may or may not have a speech therapy appointment and/or a 6 month evaluation by Early On - my calendars are conflicting. Honestly? Not sure if I can squeeze this work thing in tomorrow.

Some weeks, if it's not one type of guilt it's another. It's also hoping like hell I can remember where everyone needs to go and actually get them there on time.

Do as I say, not as I do, or something like that.

"You are soooo busy! I just don't know how you do it!"

I hear this a lot, usually when I'm in the middle of buckling the baby into her car seat, instructing her sisters to help each other into the school-bus-sized Suburban without fighting, telling my lovely and priceless daycare provider what the schedule is for next week and talking to my sister (whose kids go to the same daycare - awesome!) all at once. My gut instinct is almost always to think I don't know how I do it either.

So I decided to think about it while I had 45 seconds of relative quiet in the car. That's the real beauty of the Suburban, a.k.a. The Refrigerator On Wheels: when you put the loudest kids in the third row seat it gets a lot quieter. Here are the results of my deep thought, in no particular order.

1. Go to bed early.
I know, you feel like you won't have any time for yourself to read a book, take a bath, paint your toenails, stare at the ceiling, whatever. But getting to bed on time is critical to your ability to cope with whatever is coming your way tomorrow and you know it.

2. Get up early.
This is only possible if you also do #1. I mean, you can get up early from a late night once in a while, but not on a regular basis. Especially if you're over 30. Plus, the quiet time in the morning, where you can put on your make-up without interruption or whatever it is you need to do, is - without question - worth it.

I should clarify that I do not do either of these things on a regular basis, but I regularly try. A girl's got to have a goal.

3. Do as much as you can the night before.
Make lunches, load the car with the sports gear, make your logistical plan with your husband/mother/sister/teacher/whomever in your village will be roped into your plan for the next day. This will dramatically reduce your stress the next morning.

4. Do one load of laundry a day.
Any more than this and you can't realistically be expected to get it all folded and put away. I learned this little trick from FlyLady, who has many other great ideas that will make your life easier.

5. Don't feel guilty about pancakes for dinner.
Or hot dogs. Or pbj. Or cereal. Some days dinner is just impossible, but everyone still has to eat. Make your life easy and make something fast, filling and that everyone likes. Don't guilt yourself about the lack of a green vegetable.

6. Have excellent child care.
This one is hard. Really hard. And can be expensive. But having your children in the care of someone you trust completely, who is patient and loving, provides structure and meals, and generally allows you to focus on what you need to do during the day is priceless.

7. Get a great husband.
One that does laundry, makes breakfast for everyone while you're upstairs running around looking for the shirt that's plain but with two flowers and the pink bows mama, who patiently shuffles car seats and strollers and sports gear from one car to the next, makes you laugh every day and always makes you stop for a hug and kiss no matter how big of a hurry you're in.

That last one is critical.

And now that I've put this down it turns out the list is not so long after all. Maybe doing this - juggling three kids, a full-time job, a husband, a house and a life - is only as hard as you make it. Me? I'm just trying to make it fun.

T.G.I.M.

It's Sunday afternoon and I look like something the cat dragged in. I am wearing a t-shirt three sizes too big, a hoodie sweatshirt and black yoga pants that have been washed 79 times too many to still be identified as black. My hair is knotted up in back and my bangs - which I foolishly cut myself about a month ago in a fit of impatience and knowing it would be at least two weeks before I could get into my stylist - are in desperate need of a shampoo. My eyes are smudged with Saturday's makeup and my chin is in the midst of a five-alarm breakout, the likes of which I haven't seen for 20 years. I look worse than one of Stacy and Clinton's befores and even though it's Sunday I feel like I'm letting myself go.

But I'm tired. I've been up too late all week. And I'm going crazy. My kids are actually making me go crazy.

It all started out sort of okay. Grace got on her new bike to go pick up the mail, a small voyage of independence and pride. The baby napped. Lauren watched a movie. When Grace got back she brought the mail upstairs to the baby's room, where I was, I don't know.... doing baby stuff. In a flurry of nonstop, excited chatter she dumped the mail on the bedroom floor, sorting it into piles and opening "two things from Auntie Meg, mommy!" Then she ran out of the room, on to the next thing, and the mail was left behind. But now I know what I was doing - feeding the baby via her G-tube while she slept so that she doesn't miss a meal, or the calories that go with it. They measure these things like Nazis and while I may not get everything right, this is one that counts so here I am.

Hours later my nerves are frayed by a nuclear meltdown over a t-shirt for this picture:

repeated refrains of "I'm huuunnngryyyy," even though they eat like birds no matter what I put in front of them, fights about whose Littlest Pet Shop Bobbleheaded Freaks are whose and way too much TV. Oh yeah, and after the baby had diarrhea I got her all naked for a bath and she peed on me between the changing table and the tub. Of course.

And this was just Sunday afternoon, an improvement over Saturday if that's possible.

Now I'm in the bathroom with my littlest peanut in the tub and Grace comes in to tell me something. I listen. Then calmly ask her to please get the mail out of the baby's room and take that, and her backpack, downstairs. Put the mail on the table. Backpack by the front door.

She says, "no."

No? No!? What? Are you freaking kidding me?

I went all the way to the edge of crazy in that minute, telling her in a voice just short of a yell that she had better get the mail off the floor and down to the kitchen this minute and she'd better not come back into that bathroom because I. have. had. enough.

Fast forward to nearly dinnertime. I'm in a clean outfit that is just a variation on the previous one minus the baby pee. My hair is still gross. My heels are starting to look like I've walked a thousand miles barefoot. My acne is still happening. But thankfully the older girls are outside playing together peacefully. I see them from the upstairs porch, rounding the fence at the end of the driveway to play under the neighbor's tree, creating an imaginary world that is theirs alone. The sunlight is golden and warm, the breeze just a whisper in the leaves. The house is quiet and I can take a deep breath.

I look out over the liquid blue of the lake and I fantasize about my desk at work. My newly re-potted plant with the pretty blue ceramic pot on a tray that is too big, but that I will fill with beach stones. I imagine the pink ceramic jar that holds the oil that smells like Valencia oranges, and how it has a lovely relief pattern that reminds me of octopus tentacles, but not in a creepy way - more of a life-is-a-circle-that-never-ends way, and my jar of beach glass.

I think about how tomorrow I will have freshly shaved legs, clean hair, nice make-up, clothes that fit and don't make me look like a before. At work I will be productive. Check things off my list. Talk to adults who make their own lunches. Have a chai first thing in the morning. On Monday I will return to a neat, relatively tidy world populated by mostly rational people. And then I laugh at myself, because I also know that as much as I love work, love the problem solving, the creative energy, the shared humor and the desk that is mine alone, I will also spend my day thinking often of my kids and anticipating their sweet hugs, sweaty, baby-fatted hands in mine, their breathless stories of the day's adventures.

I know I'm not alone with this weekend craziness. I know other mothers are having this too. Personally, I think it's the adjustment into the rhythm of summer and the change in structure. My kids anticipate summer eagerly, but also mourn the loss of their school routine and teachers they love. They are settling into new daycare routines, different sleep schedules. And I am too.

Some days, especially in summer, I wish that I worked less. Or maybe I wish I didn't work at all. But this week... this week I am just feeling Thank God It's Monday.

And then there were four.

Just a few minutes ago I went down to the kitchen to put some breast milk in a sink of cold water to thaw. When I opened the freezer I found a bowl inside with approximately one tablespoon of ice cream in the bottom. It was put there by my mother-in-law, who also happens to be my next door neighbor and babysitter-in-chief. I muttered to myself under my breath, "this woman is insane," and what do I hear but her voice coming through my second-story kitchen window...."are you throwing away my ice cream?"

She must have those extendo-ears dreamed up by the Weasley twins because she was a story below me, outside, trying to get through to her sister on her cell phone and I was talking really quietly.

"No, I'm eating it."

I lied without hesitation. Because discussing why or why not one should preserve one tablespoon of ice cream, even if it is the expensive kind, is not something I feel like doing tonight. And also, because even though Hillary Clinton was laughed at, it really does take a village and this woman is critical to the functioning of my village.

And my village has just expanded.

No, no more babies. Instead our 17-year-old nephew has moved in with us for the summer. B is sweet, easy to get along with, mildly moody in that teenagerish way, loves to fix things - anything really, doesn't like sandwiches (how is this possible?), up for just about anything - he is kayaking with his uncle right now even thought it's 10 at night and the lake is just a slightly lighter shade of indigo than the weather that's coming across it in a few hours - and tall. As in, adult sized.

For someone who has been living with three girls, three small girls, B's arrival is like having an alien dropped in our midst. Not only is he a fully formed teenager, but he's a BOY.

He's here because we are part of his village. And suddenly we are parenting four. Each one at a different stage, with a different temperament, different needs. My wish for him is that being here will help him realize that his village is bigger than he thought. That he is truly part of it and that he belongs in the truest sense of the word.

He has landed in chaos. In fact, he arrived the day we brought the baby home from the hospital where she had surgery to put a feeding tube in her abdomen (which went perfectly smoothly and she's fine). Since then it's been a flurry of getting his bedroom set up, relocating Chad's office and everything that was in it, end-of-school projects, softball games, weekend pool parties, dinners on the run, little girls in overtired meltdown, occasional thunderstorms blowing rain into the windows and onto the carpet, misunderstood Facebook posts and multiple job schedules. Oddly enough, he seems to like it.

Only the good parts. Mostly.

Every once in a while I really lose my cool at my kids. Like, I yell so loud that I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins and maybe my throat even hurts a little.

I hate doing this, but at the same time if feels kind of good in the moment. One minute I'm breathing deeply telling myself that the best way to hold my kids together is to hold myself together, and the next minute one of my children has completely ignored my request to put on her shoes - for the fifth time - and the yell just explodes out of me in a torrent of bottled up frustration and impatience. It scares the crap out of them and the shoes are on in a jiffy. The tears take a little longer to get under control.

And then I just feel like a jerk.

But I'm hopeful that in the big picture they won't remember this. (Especially since I work really hard to not do it.) I'm hopeful because they ask me to tell them stories about my childhood all the time and I'm kind of shocked by how little I remember. And what I remember. Here's an example - I can recite the telephone number of my best friend in 4th grade right this minute, but I don't remember a single thing about any birthday before about the age of 13. I remember that I went rollerskating almost every day after school, but not how I learned or when I even got my own pair of skates. Considering that I once aspired to be a professional roller skater you'd think that the actual getting of the skates would have been a big deal.

Memory is a funny thing. Undependable. Easily revised. Precious in its ability to transport us to a different time and place, or show us ourselves as a completely different person.

It's okay if my kids remember I yelled at them. But I also hope they remember that I loved them fiercely. Kissed them greedily, even when they were pretending to be too old for it. Let them lick the spoon when we made brownies. Hugged them every day. Genuinely loved the necklace from the dollar store.

And let's just hope they forget about how I flatly refused to make guacamole for the 2nd grade Cinco de Mayo party, picked the mold off the edge of the bread because the other loaf was frozen, pretended that we were too busy to have a playdate with the kid I don't really like, yelled at them to stop yelling.

Because those parts just don't make me look so good.