Everything Smells Like Lysol. It's Disorienting.

Can someone remind me again at what age it's acceptable to enslave your children? I just spent FIVE hours cleaning my house and I never want to do that again, but have no intention of changing my slob-like behavior. Plus, what did I have these two for if I can't get at least two decades of dish washing out of them? It's about time I got some return on my investment.

Doty and I are going to a Halloween party tonight hosted by some college buddies out of town. This means my mother is coming to stay at our house and watch the kids for the night. I expected that she would keep them at her house, but since Dani has become such a destructive and mischievous force of nature of late, my mom thinks it would be safer to watch her at our house. You know, where we've bolted everything that can be pawned down and all the sharp objects are stored in the trunk of our car until they are needed.

I've got a scale for cleaning the house for visitors. It's starts with only removing my dirty underwear from visible places when my youngest sister, Kala, comes over and tops out at my oldest sister, Anne, coming for a visit at which point I burn the house to the ground and rebuild anew.

My mom coming over falls somewhere in the middle, but having someone come for a visit is a little different from having someone spend the night at your house when you aren't at home. There's no telling what doors she might open and I guess that means I can't do my usual. Throw everything in the entire house into the master bathroom and lock the door.

Anyway, it's pretty clean in here and I'm ready for an adult beverage. I hope everyone has somewhere to get wasted in costume this weekend, but if you don't I suggest you spend your Saturday evening reading the things I've written on Babble this week.

- I talked about how much needier preschoolers are than infants. 

- I also invoked the wrath of complete strangers over this topic.

- I found this pretty hilarious video.

- I told you about how Anders is preparing for his first trip to Vegas.

- Also, my arms are pretty sore from this.