I am the mother of four.  They are all adults and are scattered like dandelion fluff all over.  One in in Ohio, the closest one.  Two are in Los Angeles, in film.  The youngest is engaged to a wonderful Canadian man and I am talking about grizzly bear country, mountain lions, and moose.  I stayed home during their growing up years, wrote, and tried to balance my maternal efforts as well.  My husband worked from sun up to sun down.

On Thursdays I did a mountain of laundry and was eighty percent successful.  It was bedding for five beds.  The free time I had was to pick up the flotsam and jetsam of of the week.  On Fridays I kicked myself and cleaned so my husband would see glimpses of our household in order.  I raced home from the bus stop and went from room to room like a madwoman on a mission from Hell.

We had a playroom in a finished basement.  After wrestling the kids to bed, I held my breath and went to the playroom.  The overhead lights were on and so was a small lamp I put down there for atmosphere to encourage quieter play.  I used up my last bit of energy to sort, sift and select all the toys into bins in shelving.  I vacuumed.  I had taught Kindergarten for some years, but four plus thirty kids was something I was not brave enough to entertain as an option.

Once done, I stood by the stairs by the shelves with a lamp on top.  The kitchen was clean, and dishwasher was chugging on its last load for the day. I smelled something cooking and raced upstairs to the kitchen.  I had been known to leave pot pies in the oven for a few days.  But, the kitchen was clean and the oven was off and empty.  I went back to the playroom to try to figure things out, too tired to really figure anything.  It smelled like macaroni and cheese.  I searched for the source of this phenomena and took the lamp shade off my atmosphere lamp.  There, on top of a sixty watt bulb was a slice of cheap American cheese.  It had melted, of course.  I yanked the lamp cord from the socket and brought the whole lamp, with cheese, up into the kitchen and set it on the counter.  I made myself a stiff drink of gin with ice and a tiny bit of tonic on top.  I stirred it with my finger as I sat down to calm myself before my husband came home.  I heard the garage door open, so I missed my chance.

My husband came in to an almost perfect home, considering a stained carpet and fingerprinted windows.  He set his briefcase down like a sack of shit and stood by the counter to examine the lamp.  It had cost me a buck at a yard sale.  But, it was my atmosphere lamp. He looked at it, and smiled, I dragged myself to the counter, grabbed the lamp, cheese and all, and threw it out in the garbage. I had done my chores for the day.  I drank my drink, my hair disheveled and dirty as were my clothes, and dragged myself to bed. The good thing was, that three out of the four kids were sleeping.  The fourth was drinking mouthwash.  That meant I had to call poison control for the third time that week.  He was okay, my little fire starter and atmospheric lamp killer.  By the time my husband climbed the stairs to bed, our son and I were in bed asleep and my husband had to scoot the youngest fruit of his loins over to be able to find a spare foot or so on the big bed to fall asleep from his long day of work.  Thank goodness, it was Friday.