1. When spring rolls around with her warm breezes and gentle rain, and the air outside is rich with the scent of lilacs, my old house starts to smell like wet dog and rotten wood.

2. When school softball, summer softball, track, baseball, going away parties, graduation parties and weddings all start to overlap, I begin to think I should increase my dosage of Zoloft.

3. Throw in a spring musical and it’s time to get my Ambien refilled too.

4. But, taking Ambien makes me get on Twitter and say things like this: ‘There is missional impossible musci blarking behind my head and it makes me want to put on black leggies and snaek around nmy houser’.

5. And, this: ‘Now t here ‘s a baby crying and it’s making my ovaries hurt. If I start lactating, that will just be weired’.

6. Then people named AmbienRehab start following me on Twitter.

7. My family likes to spend time playing the Wii together, but Super Mario Bros. was invented by someone with a sick and twisted view of family togetherness.

8. My son jumps around on his Hippity-Hop so much that he looks like he has a permanent, blue hemorrhoid.

9. If you go to a wine tasting and the Sommelier starts talking about “shoulders” in your wine, you may think you drank too much.

10. And, if your husband hasn’t had dinner and attends the same wine tasting, he may eat half a cheeseball made of Jarlsberg cheese.

11. So when next year’s invitation doesn’t arrive, we shouldn’t be all that surprised.

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My eyes are burning. My cheeks stained with tears of exhaustion. I can’t remember the last time I got a good night’s sleep. I have to wait for our new insurance to kick in before I can talk to my doctor about my insomnia. Again.

My legs are cramped from standing on a hard floor for the past five hours, my hands are dry and cracked. My heart, heavy. I worry about my kids, my husband, our health, our finances, my parents.

Looking around the house makes me anxious. There are dishes, laundry, dog hair. Piles of papers, kids’ projects, things needing my signature or my response, volunteer work, writing assignments, insurance nightmares. I feel buried.

I need to work on math with my son. I need to take my daughter to practice. I need to find babysitters for upcoming events. I need to buy birthday presents, a sweater for my daughter’s choir performance and I need to send in her camp forms. I have to find a new therapist for my son. I need to change the sheets.

I want to set up piano lessons and swim lessons. I want to take the kids out to play catch. I have to call the pediatrician’s office. Maybe I can get to that after I start making dinner.

I need a minute. I collapse on the couch and let out a sigh. My head flops back against the olive-green chenille. I close my eyes and rub my forehead. I have had a headache for three days.

I rest my hand on my thigh and feel my young son’s fingers grab mine. He reaches up and brushes my hair from my cheeks. He tells me I am “so, so, so, so pretty”.

I muster half a smile and say, “I love you, buddy.”

He says, “I love you too.”

Then he hugs me.

And just like that, the dread is gone.

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Almost every night, at roughly 9:30 PM, I fall asleep on the couch. My husband and I are usually in the middle of watching TV and let me just go ahead and say thank goodness for our DVR, or I would never know what the heck Jack Bauer is up to.

The lights are on in the living room, the television is loud, the dogs are playing and yelping at each other, the coffee table is leaving deep indentations in my calves and my laptop is burning a hole in my thighs. But, boy can I sleep! All I have to do is set my head at an extremely awkward angle so that when I wake I’ll barely be able to move my neck, and I am OUT.

Sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 my husband will tell me to go to bed, at which time I rub my eyes, mumble something about being “so tired”…you know, because it isn’t obvious…then head upstairs.

When I climb into bed I begin, what I refer to as, my ballet.

This little dance starts with me on my right side as I notice that my top pillow is too close to the edge of the mattress. Then the top pillow is too high in the back and too flat under my head. Then the bottom pillow has slid toward the back of the bed. I simply can not get comfortable.

I flip over to my left side and start again. Tossing, turning, fluffing, adjusting, and flipping over and over again. For real, it’s like Baryshnikov up in here.

Last night this went on for many minutes and when I finally got settled just so, I realized that I had forgotten to take off my socks.

One of these nights, I’m just going to stay on the couch.

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There are a lot of things you give up when you have children. You simply have to learn to let some things go. Like a good night’s sleep, disposable income and liquid assets.

You also have to accept the muddy floors, juice stained school uniforms and beds that don’t make themselves.

You have to understand that the bathmat will get soaked, that little children like to smudge up the television, the computer monitor and the car windows, and even though a backpack has come home without the slightest remnant of a snack for over a month, it doesn’t mean you won’t look in there one day and suddenly find a small container full of moldy strawberries. Hypothetically.

However, since I started my new job I’ve found it really hard to let those things go ignored because I just don’t have the time to deal with them. It’s one thing to see a load of laundry sitting on the floor in the basement and think, “I’ll get to that later” and it’s something else entirely to actually get it done.

It didn’t used to bother me if I saw a pair of socks on the living room floor or dishes in the sink, because I knew I would have time to take care of it. Now, I simply don’t get that chance. It’s frustrating and I have been letting it drive me crazy.

Yesterday, in the midst of cleaning the house, my daughter asked me to stop and listen to her play a song on her electric piano. As I sat on the edge of her bed and listened to her play Pachelbel Canon, I realized that I really need to stop worrying about whether the floors need swept or if the blinds are dirty.

Because as she played that beautiful music all I could think about was how dusty her keyboard was.

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