Every Monday through Thursday, my cell phone alarm rings promptly at 4:30. This is L.'s "homework alarm" and, although I usually end up having to push the snooze button once or twice, the alarm system has helped make an unpleasant business at least more organized (although still not exactly pleasant). At 4:30 yesterday the alarm went off, and only five minutes later L. disappeared into the office to type out his spelling words. I used the time to engage in what a friend terms "horizontal parenting." This term describes the type of parenting you can do while lying prone on a couch or floor.

The other night I unwittingly created for my kids the "best dinner experience ever." Scott had a late meeting and wasn't going to be home until long past dinner, L. is still on Spring Break, and I had too much to do in the precious TV time leading up to dinner to even make dinner.

My sister and I used to have a Lundby dollhouse, acquired sometime deep in the 1970s. We loved it and played with it constantly. I still remember the voyeuristic thrill of peering through the doll house windows at the Lundby family as they moved from kitchen to dining room, or upstairs, enacting poses and scenarios my sister and I had carefully planned out. Anyway, the dollhouse didn't survive the years, but on Ebay last summer, driven by a sudden fit of nostalgia, I bought another replacement Lundby doll house roughly from the same

I like to keep a clean and organized house.  I also have a husband and two kids, a dog, a cat and a rabbit (although the rabbit is probably the neatest, cleanest creature in the house).  I have alway refused to give up the daily battle with organization and cleanliness mainly because it's connected so closely with my own sense of well-being; I just can't let things go, I really can't.  I know exactly how long I can make it before the spilled Legos, trail of discarded socks, and dirty counter top erode away that sense of well-being and I explode, turning suddenly into a grouch