Tomorrow I return to work. And here's the weird thing--I'm EXCITED about it. Sick, right? I mean, work is supposed to suck; by definition, it's enforced toil of some unsavory sort, otherwise we'd do it for free. However, my job is just not that awful. And, let's face it, I do it for pretty close to free. (kidding, sort of). I love the people I work with, the students I teach, and the general classroom thing. Paperwork, bureaucracy, and pissy people aside, my job is amazingly cool. I get to talk about things I enjoy almost more than sleeping--reading and writing--and I get to manage my own environment (for the most part). What more could a bookish slacker who doesn't do well with direct authority wish for?

One significant drawback to returning to work, though, is the total destruction of any semblance of domestic order I may have wrought in the last two weeks. Clean kitchen: gone. Tidy living spaces: gone. General sense of order and control in my house: a faint dream. This transformation will occur within seconds of my departure tomorrow morning. The kids will hear my car door slam, crawl out of bed, and proceed to wreak havoc on all of the organization and cleanliness I created, laboriously and with rubber gloves affixed--and they'll probably laugh and whoop while they do so. My good intentions of home-cooked meals and minimal frivolous expenditures will last a little longer, but if the past is any indication, all semblance of organization will cease within a few weeks. I weep for my clean counters already.

How can I stave off the encroachment of disorder and dismay? I can already see it in the alarming sway of the shelves of lovingly folded linens where a boy (unidentified, but probably naked and soaking wet at the time) has yanked the bottom-most towel from the stack. Sadly, there have already been a number of shrill and discordant outbursts in which phrases like, "Dear God, can't you just hang up the towel ONCE?" and "Does anyone else in this house ever pick up a dish?" have figured prominently. It's not something I'm proud of.

My mother, of course, is feeling the irony of all this from her faraway location and probably laughing aloud. This level of obsessive concern about dishes and towels from the girl whose adolescent room was condemned at least weekly by the parental inspector? Such domestic focus from she who never, ever hung up her towel while living in her mother's house? Karma does, after all, exist. And man, does it pack a wallop!

I'm glad to provide my mother (and others, many others) with such amusing irony, but the question remains: how can I maintain the tenuous toehold on household harmony I've gouged by the sweat of my brow and the tenacious wielding of rubber gloves and scrub brush?I feel the approach of anarchy even now...should I worry?