Screw the fourth. I didn't have an independence day. I had a whole independence weekend! And my oh my it was glorious. Dude took the girls to my mom's for the weekend - leaving Friday afternoon and coming back Monday around 1pm. That whole time, I was fancy free. I got up when I wanted. I made coffee and toast for breakfast. Nobody yelled at me, was rude to me, made unreasonable demands of me. I set out to accomplish absolutely nothing. And that's exactly what I did. Except..... something inside of me snapped. Something strange. If you know me, you know there is pretty much nothing I hate doing more than cleaning. But my house was crazy messy and the toy tornado twins were nowhere in sight. I cleaned up all their kitchen stuff. Then I tackled this big pile that ended up having the kitchen table underneath it. Then I took a break. Then I decided that I wanted to read in the sunroom, but there was too much crap everywhere. So I cleaned it. And then I read on the floor in there. This is how I meandered throughout the whole house and before I knew it, I'd cleaned the entire thing top to bottom. Let me assure you that this is unlike me to the nth degree. But I was sooooo happy to spend the weekend in a clean house. I even entertained some girlfriends on Sunday evening, just like a real grownup - drinks and snacks on the back deck and I didn't have to say, "Please excuse the kid mess. You know how it goes...."