Picture it (said in my best Sophia from The Golden Girls voice): the year is 2018. The setting is my bedroom at midnight. I had just gotten up to pee for the fifth time that night, and as I round the corner to go into our bathroom Troy appears from a dark corner of our bedroom wearing a stethoscope yelling that I scared him.

Yes, crazy man in your boxers at midnight standing in the corner. It is I who scared you.

It turns out he heard a noise in the wall or something and used his stethoscope to see if he could hear if it was a critter. Something is wrong with that man. Wrong I tell you!

We are almost one week into summer break and I’m still trying to find a good balance of work and kids. Bennett decided that waking up at 5:15 is now what cool kids do. I count on the quiet time between 4:30 am and 6 to get blog crap done. Little punk is effing with my workflow.

Each summer for the past three years our summer plans were dictated by and around my mom’s health. As long-time readers know, one or both of my parents would have a major health trauma at some point in August. It has been like that for over nine years.

With her passing last August (of course. August), I am working hard to try to give the boys a semi-normal (read as: drama and medical-stress free) summer. We’ve never been in the position of doing pretty much what we want and when we want to.