It’s cold here. I need to get a sweater or something.

Dane’s been out of town on business this week. (Since I wrote this essay, he’s been travelling more often, though I have yet to improve my only-parent-in-the-house skills.) He’s home now. I realized, though, that pretty much every time he’s gone, my week goes the same way.

First, everything goes well. The dishwasher gets loaded regularly, we eat actual meals on a logical schedule, the kids go to bed on time (early, even). I look around at my clean house and my happily slumbering children and think: I am so freaking competent, it’s amazing. Obviously I am asking for trouble here.

Next, then, comes the “the sky is falling” stage, wherein either the house falls apart or the children do. Occasionally both. This week one of our sliding doors leaked during a rainstorm, Sadie got a new tooth, and we were invaded by ants (again because of the rainstorm). Awesome.

And then comes the “I no longer have the energy or sheer will to pretend to be a fully-functional adult human being” phase, in which the house falls apart and I feed the children English muffins for dinner. This phase coincides neatly with Dane’s homecoming, such that he walks in to find the couch covered in laundry, train tracks and blocks covering the living room floor, the children sticky with honey (from the English muffins), and me sitting in a corner, sobbing about how I haven’t bathed in four days.

It’s a routine, anyway.