If a man that doesn't want to grow up is called Peter Pan.....

It occurred to me, as I was helping Cap'n Crunch locate his sled dog this morning on the back of my cereal box, that I might be regressing.

A little more than a year ago I was a de facto wife and mother. At 5:50 am I would likely have been putting in a load of laundry and starting lunches. When I left the Tricky Man, I left behind all but the most basic of responsibilities.

So this is a shout out to all of the women who have careers and kids and husbands, and who manage to do it all. What I remember about those years with the Tricky Man is a feeling of utter exhaustion and a simmering resentment. It didn't help that my partner was, well, useless. It seemed like the work was neverending, the appreciation sparse, and the house was just plain gross, no matter how hard I tried to keep it up.

I remember doing 14 loads of laundry one Saturday. I painstakingly folded and put away the Tricky Offsprings' underroos and grey-looking socks.

Almost immediately following the last load, I walked into the youngest Tricky Offspring's cave to find that, in looking for a favorite pair of jeans, the Offspring set off a laundry bomb. Clothes were ground into the chip-crumb covered floor by careless feet. I could no longer tell what was clean and what was dirty.

I grabbed a leash, I grabbed a dog (we had 4), and I hit the road. I don't know how far I walked. All I knew that if I stayed in the Pink House of Stress one more minute, the news story would end with "and then she turned the gun on herself."

When I walked back into the Pink House of Stress, I took a look around with fresh eyes. The dogs had shed with impunity, clearly having ignored my efforts to sweep that morning. The stove that I had scrubbed the day before was caked with a brown scorched substance that was unidentifiable. The sink was filled with dirty dishes with food still in them, despite the fact that I had unloaded the dishwasher and announced this loudly to the inhabitants of the Pink House of Stress. There was a wide debris field of kid's clothing, video games, chip bags, half-finished cans of pop and dog toys that stretched the entire main floor of the house. Alot of the debris field was left by a then-40 year old man.

I cried.

So fast forward to today. I woke up to a clean house. i woke up with only 1 shedding dog. I have sat here leisurely checking my emails, blogging and sipping my morning coffee. I will take the dog for a stroll. I would like to think that if I do settle down again and have a family, that it would be different. That my children would joyously stow their toys away after they are done with them in Ikea cupboards in their shiny and sunny playroom. That I would awake every morning with my loving and supportive husband in sheets that smelled like sunshine.

All I know is that the Pink House of Stress seems like a distant nightmare today. Thank goddess.