We just back from a weekend at the beach. It was beautiful and sunny, and we spent every moment we could soaking it all up. The girls swam in the pool until they were shriveled little raisins, and I read an entire book in one weekend. There were three little blonde girls staying in the condo next door, each of them tanned the toasty brown of a perfectly roasted marshmallow. Seeing them brought on my annual Summer Denial, in which I think that maybe- just maybe- this will be the year that I tan instead of burn. Every year it’s the same. I’ll take it slow, I tell myself. Just a little bit of sun exposure at a time, just the right amount of SPF, and this time it’ll work. My ability to deceive myself is astounding. I exposed my sad, pasty thighs to the first sunlight they’ve seen in a year or so, and of course got a wicked sunburn.

(Just a quick aside, in case you doubt the pastiness of my pasty skin, a couple weeks ago I was wearing a snug, white shirt. I sat down in a chair and glanced down to make sure that it hadn’t ridden up. Satisfied that I was adequately covered, I relaxed and crossed my hands over my stomach. Instead of feeling the fabric of my shirt beneath my palms, I felt my bare skin. I am so freaking white that even I can’t tell the difference between my skin and a white shirt.)

Anyway, I’ve got an appointment with big gooey bottle of aloe vera that can’t be missed. Gotta run.

So, this one time? (At band camp?) The lovely Kathryn was here to visit, and she took her daughter upstairs to go potty. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because she was very polite and didn’t say anything, but later that night I was cleaning up the kitchen when I suddenly froze, the blood draining from my face. She had used the upstairs bathroom. The one that hadn’t been cleaned in, uhm, let’s see, I can’t even remember. I ran up there to check and sure enough, the toilet was filthy. My head hanging in shame, I plodded back down the stairs and picked up the phone to call her and apologize. She was so sweet about it, she said she didn’t mind at all and that Laylee was quite impressed because she thought I had let Babs color the potty. And then I died.

But then I came back to life, cleaned my toilet, and promptly forget to clean it again for a very long time.

Yesterday Tracey came over. She took her daughter upstairs to use the potty. Unfortunately, I think you know where this is going. But Tracey did say something. She came down, put her arm around my shoulders, and gently told me she was going to give me a present. She was going to clean my toilet for me.

Now, I may not be all that great at the howsekeepeeng and the kleening but I do have some pride. I told her no way! But that girl, she is persistent. I kept trying to distract her, but it wasn’t working. I offered my kitchen floor for her to mop instead, but she would not be swayed. I wouldn’t tell her where the cleaning supplies are kept, so she scrounged through every cabinet until she found them. She felt very proud of herself when she finally found them, and because I am dumb I decided to take a picture of her so I could remember this humiliating moment forever.

Next time I’m at her house I’m totally going to scrub her grout with some bleach and a toothbrush. Yeah. That’ll show her.

Lately I have felt like I have been teetering on the fence post that sits between sanity and one hundred percent nutter-butter-crazy. I’ve felt pretty together the last few days, which is new for me, but there are times when I feel like if I have to watch “Lady and The Tramp” one more time I’m going to pluck out my eyeballs and mail them to France.

So I’ve just been kind of hanging out up here on this fence post, watching the people walk by on either side. All the people on the sanity side are smartly dressed in their khaki pants and neatly pressed polo shirts. They all seem to have a destination in mind as they march by in straight lines, chins up and eyes forward. They have everything completely under control in their lives, I can tell. On the other side, the crazy side, things are a little more interesting. You’ve got that one guy who calls himself Lederhosen Joe who stands on one foot while trying to juggle three vicious looking raccoons. The lady in the green hat just wanders around until she finds a corner to wedge herself into so she can cry for awhile, and the little albino boy that trys to do handstands always ends up knocking over the stacks of tuna cans that mysteriously appear every morning. I watch these people, the Normals and the Crazies, from up here on my fence post and I wonder… which side is right for me? As we all know, I’m just not that into ironing, so I don’t feel like I really belong in sanity land with the Normals. But I’m also not that fond of tuna, so I’m not sure if I really fit in with the Crazies either.

One thing I’ve been learning a lot in therapy (ha! aren’t you so glad I’m in therapy?) is how to find my “gray area”. How to stop looking at the world in terms of black and white and find the middle ground, the magic “in-between” that works for me. In reality, I’m too spazzy to ever be classified as Normal. When I hear the phone ring it makes me have to pee, and I’m still semi-convinced that if I look up at exactly the right moment I might catch a glimpse of Santa on his way over my house on Christmas Eve. But I also don’t believe I’m a certifiable Crazy, either. I drive a minivan for Pete’s sake. If you look up “suburban” in the dictionary you’ll find a picture of my neighborhood, and I’ve been known to pontificate at length on the utter joy that is Papa Murphy’s pizza. I want to be different enough to be interesting, but regular enough to live a safe and stable life. Just because I might feel a little loony some days, that doesn’t mean the next logical step is a padded room and some Valium.

My therapist (who has two boys about the same age as my girls) tells me, “It’s not a matter of whether or not you’re going to lose your mind each day, just how much of it you’re going to lose.”

I love her.

Just now, at Target:

Babs sees the guy coming through the door bringing in all the shopping carts. She yells, loudly:

“Does that man work here?!”

“Yes,” I say. “Shhh.”

“Oh!” she says, still yelling. “Then he must be a SERVANT!”

So, I bought a dollhouse. A huge, monstrous, gargantuan dollhouse. As you can see, that is my fully grown cat sitting on the porch. My mom found this treasure hiding in the back of a thrift store, and eyed it for a week until it went on sale. I got this thing for $65! It’s made of solid, unfinished wood, with the creator’s pencil markings still showing, and the back side of the house has just as many doors as the front. It’s so big the kids can slide on their stomachs through the front door, across the living room, and out the back without getting stuck.

I am so excited to paint and decorate and furnish it! But I need help, guys. How does one actually go about painting and decorating and furnishing an enormous dollhouse? The only step I have taken so far is to buy a roll of contact paper with a wood print, which I plan to stick on all the floors to make them look like hardwood. I thought maybe I could buy a pretty linoleum tile sample for the kitchen floor, maybe a couple of those self-stick carpet squares for the bedrooms? I’m not sure. Has anyone done this before? Where do I start?