My husband wants to know what I did with his wife. I’ve been cleaning. We lived in this house for eight years and I promised to clean out drawers, cabinets and dressers, but I never did it. In fact, I moved stuff here in drawers, cabinets and dressers from my old house. On New Years Eve, I forced myself to part with the memories that were in all those drawers. Kids’ artwork, notes from their classes and pictures.

It was the day that my oldest hit the road on a two-day trek to Florida, his home until April. Nervous energy wrapped me in a wave of cleaning. This time, it was our basement he vacated. He is the third of the five boys to have lived in that lower-level bedroom suite with a family room attached.

I even cleaned the 15-year-old treadmill that is honestly losing its tread. The cleaning stopped once my oldest arrived safely in Florida on Sunday. Now, I’m back to mastering the new electronics. I’m getting better at using this laptop. I even beat the computer at chess. The Nook went back after three of us spent three days trying to setup my hubby’s e-mail. And the Google TV? It’s back to that snotty message-setup screen every time you turn it on. Look out TV, if I can get the white queen and team to beat a computer, I can master the setup screen!