You just look at the piles. Stare them down. The longer you look, the more tidy the room gets, right?

I'm faced with the piles. I went to my sister's to help with a whole-family birthday party. Teenagers everywhere, kids aged sixteen down to about four, with the total kid number somewhere in the mid-twenties. Then my brother and his wife arrived with my cousin Steve, and wow.

Volleyball. Soccer with the little kids. Five toddlers driving around the yard in a 4HP John Deere electric truck. A fire pit with mellow grown ups around it, drinking adult things and talking adult talk.

The 'tweens threw things out the upstairs bedroom window. The teenagers read manga and played video games. Everyone sang karaoke.

I crashed early (in my book, early is before 9pm, but in party terms, early is 11:30). I woke to cook breakfast for all. There were Swedish pancakes as well as buttermilk, with milk or juice or water. I hate paper plates and plastic forks, but when you're feeding 30 people, so be it on the rare occasion.

My brother in law was pretty happy with my ability to organize, feed, and generally direct the whole lot while my sister went on a fun run.

It rained the whole way home, even in eastern Washington, and I'm here now, ensconced in my pentshack with the fake woodstove and the kitties and ST:TNG and black cherry soda and the desire to both putter and pass out.

The only real down side was to arrive home and find that raccoons had figured out how to open a plastic tub that I have trouble opening. I was unwittingly feeding expensive dry cat food to the neighborhood while I was gone. The clever little bastards.

Kind of have to admire them.

And now it's time to get ready for yet another week in the trenches: studying, making lunches, puttering.