It has come to the time of year when it’s not abnormal for me to work 17 hour days; forcing my children to occasionally heat up my coffee, rub my neck as I sit at my desk to keep me awake, then walk on my back when I eventually collapse to the floor. Right now my meals mostly consist of licorice and Oreos and I’ve been wearing the same pants for three days. Enough said.

This is my busy season which means my husband and my mom take over childcare, the dog doesn’t get petted, and when my 14 year old daughter is asked…GASP…to do chores.

Of course, she doesn’t want to do chores, she wants to text, read, go to the pool, go to the movies, have sleepovers, go for bike rides, and sleep in.

And, I let her.

Why? Because this is likely the last summer she’ll have, for the rest of her life, without a job. She still earns money from babysitting and pays her own way on all of the above mentioned excursions, so she’s not getting a completely free ride. Occasionally she does the dishes and cleans the bathrooms, though the cleaning of the toilet by a 14 year old isn’t done nearly as well as it is by a 42 year old. There is an “ew” factor she can’t seem to overcome.

Even though I threatened her with laundry-folding, dinner-cooking, and endless vacuuming during my conference season, I’m really a total sucker for letting a kid be a kid. What do you think? Am I letting her off too easy while the mess piles up around us?

I can’t help but think the clock will soon strike midnight…and I want her to have just one last dance.

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I’ve mentioned before how much I hate winter. Autumn gets second place in the hate column, mostly because I know what follows, but also because of the yard work at our house. In case you get tired of counting, that’s 25 bags and/or cans of leaves. For this week.

Two days after bagging all of those? The back yard looks like this.

Even the bushes are shedding in preparation for winter.

But, as much as I hate winter, I’m pretty sure the yard waste people hate me more.

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Today marks one, full week since storms rolled through and took away my internet. I love my internet. I work online, all my friends and family are online and it’s what I do all day long. It’s kind of like when you eat cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for five years and then, suddenly, someone serves you soup. You’re all, “I can eat this, but it’s not going to be pleasant.” If I were 80 I would add, “This is really going to mess up my bowels.”

By the third day, you’re screaming for your Golden Grahams and when day seven rolls around, you would even settle for plain Cheerios, without sugar poured on top. That’s right. No gray, grainy spoonful of sweetness at the bottom of the bowl; just a big serving of whole grain O’s. But, NO! You’re still sucking down the salty, fake-chicken, soggy-noodle soup.

Of course, this analogy is awful, but you have time to think up good analogies AND really bad ones when you don’t have internet for a week. You also have time to look in the mirror and think, I wonder what is less attractive right now; my smudged eyeliner or the toothpaste I applied to the small, undetectable zits on my chin which the 95 degree weather turned into, what I now refer to as, my power-outage boils.

But that’s not all, because that soup you’ve been eating? It looks like you washed your hair with it. Except, not in a salt-water, ocean-kissed-wavy-locks way, but more of an I-just-washed-my-hair-with-chicken-noodle-soup way.

This is when I mention that you’re wearing the clothes that sat in the washer for two days because you forgot about them, and when you remembered, you had to hang them up to dry because THE DRYER NEEDS ELECTRICITY. So along with your toothpaste-covered chin boils and your chicken-noodle soup hair, you are wearing a wrinkled t-shirt with a slight aroma of must. Not, musk. Must. Big difference.

I kid you not that I saw a guy standing in his front yard, giving himself a baby-powder bath. I’m pretty sure his clothes had been in the washer for three days.

But, my electricity is back and once I get these boils under control, the only thing I want more is my internet. My sweet, sweet internet. Without it, I wouldn’t know how cute tealights look inside of mason jars, or if the power had been out too long to save the mayonnaise, or that you can tame your pimples with toothpaste (also, crushed up baby aspirin mixed with water…just sayin’).

The air conditioning sure is nice and having to hurl small children out of the way to get to the last bag of ice isn’t the most honorable thing I’ve ever done, but I can deal without electricity. Sure, it’s because our neighbors have a generator, but still…

All I know is that the internet needs to come back to me soon, because I am already a hot mess. Obviously.

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Just over 14 years ago, we purchased a house that needed some TLC. Or, we can call it what it really was; a complete tear-down and rebuild. Same difference. We replaced water lines, plumbing, wiring, windows, walls, the roof (twice), put in a new patio, put up a fence and refinished floors. At the end of the process we had a brand new kitchen, three new bathrooms and a mountain of debt.

Then I had a 2 lb. 9 oz. baby and quit my job. Our timing? It’s impeccable.

We didn’t use top-of-the line products as we went through our renovation, so things are starting to fall apart around here. As time, dogs and children have torn things down, we’ve had to put them back up as best we can. Buying new is out of the question and if any work has to be done, it must be done by us.

Therein lies the problem. I don’t have the time and my husband doesn’t have the desire. May I remind you of his microwave repair?

I recently attempted the tear-out and replacement of the caulk in my shower. I thought I did a pretty good job, but a few weeks later, it started to peel away. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon tearing it out again.

And, I feel that in the interest of self-disclosure I should show you that my husband isn’t the only one who takes short-cuts.

Because until I have the time to do this job right, it’s duct tape and trash bags for us.

Who knows, it may catch on?

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