Tomorrow I�m off on an adventure. I could use a good adventure right now because I�ve been working very hard. The best part of this adventure is that I�m going off on my own and will only be responsible for me. I�m headed to Washington to judge the national We the People competition, a high school civics competition.

It�s not that I don�t love my family. I do. It�s not that I won�t miss my family. I will. There are rewards to all the responsibility of having a family and they are very rich rewards. My family is a blessing�but so is occasional alone time where I�m not Mrs. Philately, I�m not Mom, I�m not the laundress or the lazy cook, I�m just me.

There is a luxury to getting up on my own schedule and not having to find clean jeans for one child or lunch money for another. I can putter to my heart�s content as long as I�m ready on time. I won�t have to wait to get into the bathroom. I won�t have to fight at the mirror to see if I�ve brushed my hair correctly. I won�t have to share covers. I can be my own only child.

If I know me, somewhere around Sunday I�ll get a bit homesick. I�ll want to know what everyone is doing and thinking. I�ll miss sharing the covers and the mirror. But I�ll have to wait until Tuesday to do all the sharing again. Still, if there�s enough adventure, and I expect there will be, I�ll be okay.

I plan to come back refreshed and with a renewed appreciation of my family. I don�t want to leave and never come back. It�s more as though I want to hide in a treehouse for a while. Washington is an expensive treehouse but someone else is footing the bill and I�m taking my favorite airline, Midwest Express.

But for now, I�m taking off�on my own.

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