No twins were drowned in the writing of this post

My mother is back doing her clinical trial, and her 36-hour absence is palpable. My daughter is wearing the pjs she wore to bed Saturday night (it's Monday evening), a raincoat (her choice), and purple sparkly shoes (again, her choice). My four year old is in the same clothes he wore Saturday as well. Only because he continuously shits through his clothes is boy twin in clothes not old enough to walk by themselves. The laundry pile is starting to groan ominously. We're eating take out and leftovers whenever hunger occurs to someone, and there's no apple juice. The living room looks like Legoland in California meets Jackson Pollack, but with more dirt. My car has such unspeakably foul and ancient crusted takeout containers on the passenger side floor that I'm afraid to even tackle it.

Okay, I got the twins in the tub and relocated the laundry heap down a floor. I am sitting outside the bathroom, where my rotten daughter is deliberately and with malice aforethought throwing water onto the floor and yelling NO when I tell her to stop. Defiant pig. I have a classmate babysitting in the morning, and more classmates coming for a study group in the afternoon, so I have to put a veneer of clean on this pit of disorderliness. But first, I have to listen to the 6 year old read his homework, which always feels like doing penance for some unremembered but obviously very serious sin.