Let me set the stage.

It’s Wednesday, 10:30pm.

“You” are me.

You’ve had a busy day. You spent a substantial portion of your work day thinking it was Thursday.

You dug into complex tickets on issues that were wholly new to you. You found out about HHVM, which — because it’s called HipHop Virtual Machine — sounded like an extreme edge case but then you find out that it was built by Facebook and Facebook runs on it, so maybe not so outlandish. You spend some time working your way up to knowing enough that you understand all the pieces of the customer’s support request, but you don’t understand it as a whole. It’s not that far from where you started.

You conduct one-on-ones. You communicate with your peers. You work. It’s a day (not the day you thought, but a day nonetheless). Hard. Rewarding. Interesting.

You take the kids to gymnastics. You’ve already committed them to another term of gymnastics, so Henry’s continuing decision to not participate in warm-ups is frustrating you.

You bring the kids home, and take over the little potato from the nanny; the potato is cutting two new teeth (on the top, which your quick Googling reminds you is usual — you had it backwards and kept checking the bottom gums). Your husband feeds him a pouch of puree. You bake a cake with the twins, which is fun and a mess. You run to the store. You come home and have dinner with everyone; it’s taco night!

Your husband gets in a little more studying while the big kids play in the bounce house, and you nurse the potato, hoping he’ll fall asleep for the night (he doesn’t). You play with him while your husband gives the big kids baths and changed into jammies. Everyone piles into the big bed for stories (your husband is reading them Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book). You take over the next part, and read Stuart Little to the kids and nurse the potato to sleep in their room. The little guy drifts off nursing, so you take him to his crib, and Henry appears in your doorway, scared. You go back and stand by his bed (it’s lofted) so he can fall asleep touching you.

You check on your husband (5 more minutes of studying), and head downstairs. It’s 10:30pm. You just want to watch 1.5 episodes of Orange is the New Black and relax, with no one touching you. You are touched out.

Across the room, in a distant fold of the couch, a pair of eyes pierces you. You have barely sat down when the cat appears on the arm of your chair. Tail waving aloft, he positions himself on the arm of the chair, sinks his hooks into the arm, and flops over sideways onto you. You thought you were going to get some no-touching time. But guess again. 🐱

It’s worth noting that Bob has tried to get Chester to cuddle with him instead but Chester is politely completely uninterested.