… of the yeeeeeeeaaaar….

I’m feeling a little giddy. School starts this week.

I’ve had a great summer with the kids. I love having them home. I love all of the adventures we’ve had—camping, swimming, outings, lazy days at home, visits to relatives, various craft projects, endless Wii tournaments, and the ever-constant chant of “Mom, we’re hungry.” (And every single time, they were surprised when I responded, “Well, then, have a snack.” As if maybe I’d hidden all the food since the last time they’d eaten.)

I repeat: Summer has been a blast.

But it’s time for everyone to get the hell out of my office. Seriously.

Look; it’s not that I haven’t adapted to the thrills and chills of working from a home office while my kids are off school. This is the… third summer in Georgia, and either the fourth or fifth summer since I began freelancing in earnest (depending on how you choose to calculate it), so it’s not as though this summer was new or different in any way. We’ve done it before; we’ll do it again.

If anything, I do feel like each subsequent summer brings with it two distinct advantages over the one past: First, that as the kids get older, they are better at entertaining themselves when necessary. And second, that I’ve improved with general strategies on how to cobble a workday together in the cracks between meals and card games and outings and directives to “go wash your feet right now or I will do it for you.”

(My life is glamorous, y’all.)

My husband is a professor and as such he’s not exactly on vacation all summer long, but he has much longer stretches of time when he’s not needed at the office and can run interference here at home. It’s all the more impressive—the times he opts to load the kids into the car and head out somewhere to give me time to work in peace—when you consider that these are his stepkids he’s happily corralling. If not for him I’d have to enroll the kids in some sort of constant camp, even if only for a few hours a day, and I (and they, I think) much prefer the free-range model of summer where they get to just roam around inbetween scheduled trips.

My kids’ dad, too, has taken his visitation, leaving me whole weeks child-free and able to catch up on work while the kids are off having other escapades. As hard as it is having them away, it’s time when I can shore up my work responsibilities and be ready for their return a little less behind on my writing obligations.

All the same, I am a creature of habit. I function best when the days have a predictable order. I enjoy having six uninterrupted hours of times in which to enjoy my silent house, park myself at my desk, and get into a work groove. That is missing from my summer, and I’m ready to have it back. It’s time for the kids to go back to school, my husband to return to his office on campus, and for me to have my second cup of coffee in solitude, not amidst cries of “she touched me” and “what can I eat now?”

I’m glad we had the trips and the adventures and the popsicles and the fireworks. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. But I will not a shed a tear when the school bus pulls away in a couple of days.

I might even do a little dance. Right here in the middle of my empty office.

In my pajamas.