SITTIN' ON THE DOCK OF THE LAKE

I got back from a grueling three-day business trip to D.C. yesterday. Wednesday night we had dinner at a restaurant on a marina on the Potomac, and I got hooked on the idea of buying and living on a houseboat. We currently live on a lake outside Dallas, and I absolutely love the view -- for a gal who grew up a block from the bay in northwest Florida, the proximity of water is a necessity to my soul these days. Every day when I leave the city for my almost-hour commute home I look forward to that final quarter mile when the lake comes into view and I start to shed the stress of work and the city. But watching through the windows of that D.C. restaurant folks on their decks sipping margaritas and basking in the sunlight, I started wondering if it isn't time to give up the big house now that the five kiddos are grown and on their own and retreat to a houseboat of our own, forget politics and the disaster that is the Bush administration and find some peace.

Then I woke up this morning and realized we're hosting 26 preschoolers today (plus parents) for our four-year-old grandson's birthday party. The Sage (the world's greatest dad) and our oldest son took the day off from work yesterday so they could assemble our newly purchased gazebo in time for the party (they finally went to bed at two a.m. this morning), but the new patio furniture is still in wraps in our living room. Since The Sage had to go to work at six a.m., I guess it'll be my job to put up the mosquito netting and arrange the patio furniture.

We couldn't do all this on a houseboat. But maybe that's the point.