I am standing at the top of the slope, my skis edging out over the plunge. 

I’m not, really. I haven’t skied in years, and I have a friend who assures me my quarter-century old skis will identify me to the Helly Hansen set as the infrequent skier I’ve become. 

That plunge is the one into empty nesting. By summer’s end, both kids will be away at college. Even now, they don’t need me, not really.  

As I write this, my oldest is at a clinic getting a rabies vaccine, and my youngest is dropping college paperwork off with his doctor. 

Is there a story to the rabies vaccine? I’m not sure yet. I’ll get back to you. 

Sure, I occasionally hop onto the chairlift, take it back to the peak — my peak — when I was an everyday mom. My son is currently on an internship requiring parental supervision; my daughter’s two-day drive home from college has become an annual shared event. 

But mostly, I am slaloming that slope of me without them, my husband by my side, matching me swish for swish. 

“Well, that’s what kids do,” Willie said, in her octogenarian wisdom. “They leave you. Then your husband dies!” 

I don’t know about you, but I feel a whole lot better. 

Given, then, these circumstances, I am baffled by my inability to get anything done. 

My current situation can be described as hewing close to the plot of “Armageddon” — I have a major event in a few weeks, with much to do before that event, and not a lot of time to do it. 

Would I be happier training a crew of muscled oil drillers to become astronauts so they can stop a planet-killing comet? 

Wait. I’m thinking about it. 

Eh — no. My happiness begins and ends at “muscled.” 

My family and I are vacationing in Ireland to celebrate, well, the end of our parenting as we know it. 

Our dog was rejected by his kennel for being too elderly. His wonderful dog walker is staying at our house to care for him while we’re gone. Which is great. Truly. 

But. 

You guys know how I feel about houseguests. 

And you know of my refusal to repair or replace anything in the house until the kids are in college and our dog goes to Marion’s bar in Nepal. 

I will never stop referring to death that way. It just makes life so much easier. 

Also, you know my kitchen ceiling has rained toilet water more than April brought actual rain. 

The damage to the house has, of course, amplified my houseguest anxiety. Compounding it is the utter lack of time I have to make the house presentable before our dog walker’s stay. Compounding that is what little time I do have getting occupied by my children, asking me to ride that chairlift back to active parenting. 

Take May, for example. 

Between work, supervising my son’s internship, and driving my daughter home from college, I was out of the house for a minimum of 10 hours — and a maximum of 24 — for 28 days. 

Out of 31. 

I mean, really. 28? 

One of the three days I was home in May was way back at the beginning.  

Listen. There is zero point in cleaning for a houseguest when that houseguest’s stay is more than a month away. Not when living with people who, for example, make sandwiches directly on the kitchen table. 

Yeah. No plate. 

Also, they don’t cut their sandwiches symmetrically.  

The psychopaths. 

Or people who shed crumbs from kitchen to final destination like they’re Hansel and Gretel making a trail back home. On any given day, I can tell you what everybody ate and where they ate it.  

And before you ask, just stop. I have never generated a rogue crumb in my life. I can’t even tolerate hair in the shower. Do you really think I’d tolerate self-made crumbs? 

Or people who put things in the refrigerator all willy-nilly, like there aren’t designated places for every item in the fridge.  

Husband’s stuff on the top right, because he’s tall and right-handed.  

Nut butters on the top left because where else would you put them? 

Middle shelf is, obviously, bread on the left, eggs on the right. 

Bottom shelf is for leftovers, because they’re gross. 

But I live with people who put nut butters in the door, bread on the top shelf, eggs on the bottom shelf. 

I mean, are you all monsters? Lopsided sandwiches and bottom-shelf eggs? 

When I do clean, or toil at the spring landscaping, I’m tapped for questions. Or stories! I have to hear! Right now! Or lights turned off in rooms I’m clearly in and out of as I tidy, doors closed in those same rooms, dishwashers and washing machines run when I’m about to clean them. 

“You don’t have to clean dishwashers, Mom,” my son sighs. “They clean things so they’re already clean.” 
 
Can you hear the eyeroll from where you are? 

Worse than all of this are two things I know deep in my soul. One, that my dog walker does not care about the raining ceiling, the dishwasher perpetually flashing an error message, the sofa with the splitting seams. 

Which, by the way, was fine for years in my mother-in-law’s living room. But six months in my house? The cushions are splitting away from the back, a layer of dog hair sits beneath the cushions, and a mysterious stain removable only by actual Armageddon is embedded on the arm. 

The other thing I know is, six months from now, I’ll clean the house in peace, my chin trembling, my breath short, as I think about the sticky hands, muddy feet, adolescent stories formerly hindering my progress. 

Good thing I have Willie to cheer me up. 

Yes. 

That’s another eyeroll you’re hearing.