Where am I, you ask?

Sorry I've been away for most of the week. Every day I plan to sit down and post a thoughtful entry about this or that, but, quite frankly, this last week of summer is getting the better of me. The kids are racing to the finish, with bickering and whining and, to top it off, head colds all around. Let me just give you a brief snippet of how this week has been going:

Yesterday, at 7:30 a.m., I went to take laundry from the washer and put it in the dryer. When I opened the machine, there was so much wet tissue stuck to everything that I was tempted to call Sears and just tell them to haul the thing away and bring me a new one. It turned out that one of my children -- names are being withheld to protect the guilty -- left not one tissue but one PACK of tissues in a pants pocket. I have never seen so much shredded tissue in one place.

As I was cleaning up the tissue and muttering under my breath, I noticed that I had not shelved all the groceries that go in our basement "pantry." So I walked over to do that and noticed popcorn loose and spread all over the middle shelf. Hoping this was just some spontaneous popcorn explosion, I picked up the open package and looked around. Nope. Nothing spontaneous about this. Apparently in addition to Charlotte building a web out front, we've got (or had) Stuart Little feasting on food in our basement. Popcorn, pasta, stuffing, hot chocolate and coffee were all sampled and sprinkled about. He even tried to get through the seal on a glass jar of chunky peanut butter. Not a good morning. After removing everything from the pantry and setting a trap, we waited for the greedy little guy to return. He did, lured in by the sent of fresh peanut butter.

Anyway, today we are trying to get the rest of the back-to-school stuff squared away -- sneakers to buy, soccer shoes and shin guards to track down, pencils to sharpen, cheers of joy (from me) to rehearse. We are all very ready for school to start on Wednesday for the big kids and Thursday for Chiara.

So...That's where I've been. I hope to post something a little more meaningful later today, but you never know what might sidetrack me along the way.