What the......???

I've completely lost control.

I admit it, and I've even almost come to terms with it.

Black tufts of dog hair are building up along the hallways. My countertop has disappeared beneath an avalanche of Christmas cards, pencils, lunch boxes, and some weird green cornstarch-and-glue sculpture that I'm going to discreetly sneak into the trash first chance I get.

This is how I live -- with three kids genetically incapable of putting things away, a husband (who passed along that gene) and two shedding, black puppies.

I accept that nothing I own will go unstained, unchewed, un-peed upon. My house is.....a frat house. Without the Greek-lettered clothing and beer-swilling but still with all the unruly behavior, puke, burping and weird secretions smeared across furniture.

As further testatment to how un-in-control I am, I just reached down to roll down the uncomfortable waistband on my Christmas jammies and discovered a piece of masking tape stuck to my ass. I have no idea how long it's been there or how it got there.

Don't remember it in the shower this morning, but I only slept four hours. I've forgotten to use soap even when I've had a full night's sleep.

Anyway, there was enough stick left in the tape to hurt when I pulled it off my upper left cheek.

That's as bad as the time that we got new computers at work, and we were instructed to leave a Post-It note in the spot where we wanted our monitor. After work that day I stopped in at Safeway and the woman behind me gently tapped me on my shoulder.

"Excuse me," she said. "You, um, have something on your behind."

I reached back and pulled off a yellow piece of paper. "Put computer here," it said.

At least I know how *that* got there.