Most of my weekends revolve around three things: teenagers (and their consumption needs), cleaning, and running errands.

The teenagers are the best part, invariably, since they are all at once hilarious, endearing, and a little absurd. We are lucky in that we don’t have two sullen, silent boys glowering at us over their game controllers, turning their nose up at any and all snacks or comforts or entertainment provided, and slowly pilfering cash out of my purse… all things that people I know did, or had done to them around that magical mid-teenage phase.

We have dedicated noisemakers, frequent comedians, lengthy storytellers, possessors of clear (and reliable) soda and chip preferences, and one goofball in particular who tends to leave money in his pockets (the cash he makes for chores in our backyard and beyond) for me to find when I pull freshly washed and fabric-softened twenty dollar bills out of the dryer.

Beyond life as the Only Girl in the House, the cleaning and errand parts of my weekend keep our household humming to the degree that it’s rare that I will find my husband wandering around, searching aimlessly for a clean pair of boxers.

I think it’s a pretty normal life, though we add our own quirks to it.

And it’s what I’m used to now.

This weekend, Gradon was working at an event sponsored by his employer from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon, on and off… though mostly on. I saw him at the beginning and end of the day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and went with him on Sunday. Since we usually spend most of this time together with the guys, or in close enough proximity to feel togetherishness, it was a really odd set of days.

Upon learning of his plans, I figured this weekend would provide me with hours to do even more errands, even more cleaning — I know, I’m magically OCD — to sleep in excessively, to bachelorette it up with an eyebrow-threading-and-manicure extravaganza, to watch some embarrassingly idiotic TV picks, and to create a strange menu centered around my favorite comfort food: the mighty baked potato.

But I found myself feeling awkward most of the time… and wondering why the heck that was the case.

Me, who lived by herself many times over the years, and rarely felt lonely? Me, who never understood why single people hated cooking for one, because it gave me the chance to experiment? Me, who was 35 before she shared a home with someone of the opposite sex? Me, who had to adjust to life with twice the people in half the space when I moved to Boston? Me, who can fill life with errands and to-dos and checkboxes ad infinitum?

It was weird.

I got up both mornings before he got up, just to ensure he got out the door without setting his half-asleep self on fire, and dropped by to see him on Saturday, bringing a giant bottle of water.

I stayed up until he got home, and got irritated when he didn’t text that he’d be late (despite the fact he’d told me so.)

I put off making dinner most of the nights, since the end-times of his evening responsibilities might shift, and perhaps he’d be home for a late snack — which was nothing he’d asked me to do, but I did it.

I didn’t do indulgent things I’d been looking forward to, because I could think of better places to spend that cash than on a Sephora trip.

I didn’t watch much trashy TV because I kept adding to my to-do list. And I did actually do all the cleaning and laundering and organizing I normally do, because that felt normal. It sounds as crazy to me as it likely does to you, until I consider the reality that I do that stuff because it’s fun for me. I don’t think Gradon hopes for anything but fresh underwear, and he’s happy to load up the machine himself.

By the end of the weekend, I was irritated at myself for being both weird and dependent. Exactly why was I dysfunctional when I had a couple of hours to myself? Exactly why could I not just fill the time as I did on countless weekends when I was single and in a city 3,000 miles away? Exactly why was I worried something had happened to him when his schedule changed? Exactly when HAD I BECOME INSANE?

Then a few things emerged:

This was the first weekend we’d truly spent apart since I moved here. We don’t really travel much independently for work, and while we’re not homebodies, per se (we can drive for hours and not get bored), we spend our “off time” together, unless we’re with friends.

This was also one of only a couple of weekends without the boys in the last year or so. When a bottle of Mountain Dew rolled unceremoniously onto my toe from the second shelf of the fridge, I realized that usually, that bottle would be sitting in the living room somewhere, half-sipped, waiting to be nearly knocked over by a giant teenage foot.

And this was literally the ONLY weekend since I’d moved here that I didn’t have anything to do for anyone else, whether that was a bit of work or freelancing or a project of some sort.

The absence of all of these things likely added up to whatever weirdness I was experiencing, right?

I think that’s part of it.

But the real answer is a bit more complicated.

This weekend taught me two lessons:

The way I’d built my weekend up to be a Megstravaganza was a little silly. If I wanted to do any of those things when Gradon and the boys were around, I could easily do them. But I’ve been telling myself that being a great wife and stepmom revolved around me being eternally less Me, and more Us (instead of both.) That somehow my “late start” with this whole family thing meant I would have to try extra hard at having cohesive domesticity and checking all the boxes. That being a stepmom was about being a TV mom from the 50s.

The reality is that the Me and the Us co-exist just fine, nobody minds if I take time for myself, and if they DO care, it’s more about ensuring I actuallt do it now and then. Nobody is asking for perfect or sacrificial, not at all. And the boys? To them, I became a great stepmom as soon as they realized by sitting behind my seat in the car, they’d get a lot more leg room.

The second lesson?

I missed my family.

MY family.

My FAMILY.

Not because of a sense of duty or routine… but because they’re just, well… great.

I’d never missed them like this before, because I was physically with some portion of them all the time. This was new, by default. And it wasn’t a bad thing to realize very tangibly that, outside of loving them, I also cherish and enjoy time spent with them simply because… they rock.

So, to summarize:

I’ve been trying too hard to get everything right… and I have a fantastic family that’s worth every minute of it.

Life is funny, huh?

Anyone want a baked potato?

As a little girl, then a less-little girl, and then a not-little girl growing up, I had dreams and ideas about who I could and would become someday, and what job might fit me.

Maybe a nurse? I like to help people and make them feel better. I’m not squeamish.

Maybe a police officer? I like to fix situations, and help people when they’re scared. I can be confident in a crisis.

Maybe a lawyer? I have strong convictions about what’s right and what’s wrong. I need to dig in and find out which is which.

Maybe a journalist? I love climbing into a story. I want to know everything, especially the why.

Ultimately, after all that dreaming, I became none of those things.

I became a writer, because that’s the thing that shouted the loudest, and the thing that really fit.

But when terrible things happen, I often wonder — once I’ve gotten past incredulity to horror, and past horror to sadness, and past sadness to whatever shade of normal you’d call me — what I’d do if I was doing the work I’d wanted to do as a kid… but in a horrible moment that never would have occurred to my ten year-old mind.

At ten, there was no way for me to know just how bad jobs could really be, so I cherry-picked what I liked about them from the little I knew.

But now I do know — at least a little more — so I wonder:

Could I do what was called for?

Could I be a nurse in the ER, seeing things that are impossible to fathom unless you’ve been a nurse already? You deal with it in the moment because you have to keep going, but does it stick with you? Do you go home and cry? Do you panic when you see your kids cross the street because you know what it looks like when they don’t make it to the other side?

Could I be a police officer on the scene, defending people from people who are doing things for reasons I don’t understand, but who won’t stop until I stop them? Could I watch people suffering and stay focused on the person I was supposed to catch? Could I look even a little bit into the mind of someone who did monstrous things and not take things into my own hands?

Could I be a lawyer, putting so much faith in the justice system that I could sit next to someone — someone who could be crazy but perhaps was just evil, and perhaps knew how to fake either one beyond what I was capable of recognizing — and defend them to the best of my abilities? Could I sit on the other side of that same room and not end up yelling at the accused to stop talking, how dare you talk when your victims can’t… even if I hadn’t yet proved they had victims?

Could I tell the story in a newspaper or on a screen or on the radio or on a website without refusing to put up one more picture of that person’s face, that person accused of doing things they’d planned for months and took only minutes to accomplish? Could I chase down leads and put up details people were scrambling to hear, whether they were right for them to hear, or respectful of the people I was covering? Could I make up clever headlines for events that deserved nothing but shock and horror and punishment for anyone who would dare do such a thing? Could I push when a devastated family wasn’t giving me what my editor thought we needed to tell the whole story?

When James Holmes killed 12 people in a theater in Aurora, and injured dozens of others, all of these people had to step up to do what was expected of them, for better or for worse.

The nurses and the police officers will be revered for their tireless efforts to save people, and their attempts to wrest some order from the chaos. And that will be the right thing to do, because they will have seen and dealt with things most of us can’t imagine.

The lawyers will face tremendous pressure to prove that punishment is merited, that they have the right person, and perhaps even that the person we’re looking at is too disturbed to really understand what he’s done. And they’ll deal with the idea that it might not matter either way, because the why is overwhelmed by the what, and the what can’t happen again.

The journalists will feed us the facts we’re seeking or tell us stories that honor people we’ve lost — people who deserve to be remembered. But they’ll also put a garish face on evil that is both maddening and frightening… and also not as straightforwardly recognizable beforehand as we would wish evil to be. They will push stories too far, and pragmatically pursue the ones that grab eyeballs over the ones that elevate grace and goodness… because those things are too difficult for people to believe right now.

And I will be a writer: a writer who cries at pictures of exhausted nurses and thinks about what they’ve seen and who they’ve comforted; a writer who hopes for safety and sanity for police officers who wade through terror and chaos to deliver someone alive who they likely wished were dead; a writer who could accept life on one side of the courtroom and not the other, who doesn’t believe enough in the system to trust it to work; a writer who yells at the television when they turn the villain into a star, but who also craves words written about those we lost, and those rare moments when a journalist brings a life back to life… if only for as long as it takes to read 800 words.

I am not fit to do the things they do.

I am fit to do this: to honor those who walk through nightmares because that’s what they feel called to do, and because they want nothing more than to turn those nightmares around; to pray for those in need of wisdom to deal with unimaginable questions; and to read and share stories that deserve to be pulled into the light.

Doesn’t seem like enough, but in moments like this, nothing ever does.

I’ve known my best friend, Catherine, for the better part of a decade. The first time we met, we hit it off so thoroughly and completely that everyone thought we’d been friends for years.

Now that we’ve actually been friends for years, I can’t imagine my life without Catherine in it.

If I tried to make a list of all the private jokes and joint obsessions we share, I’d easily end up using all the space left on the internet… but a few commonalities stand out from the fray:

Our shared love of singing, especially while driving
Our shared love of freshly brewed coffee, sipped on the deck on a Saturday morning
Our shared love of true crime shows, especially the kind Bill Kurtis used to narrate
Our shared love of the beach and the ocean
Our shared love of two layered tank tops, jeans, and flip flops as the ideal summer outfit
Our shared love of 31 flavors of eye shadow
Our shared love of a pristine home, cleaned from top to bottom
Our shared love of changing into “soft pants” immediately upon arriving home
Our shared love of slightly trashy (and quite trashy) pop music
Our shared love of hot wings
Our shared love of big earrings, big hair, big laughs, big personalities, and big dreams

Big dreams are something we’ve never run out of, whether we were pondering the husbands we’d have someday (both American, both incredibly kind and sweet, both handsome, both prone to forget to clean things), the homes we’d have someday (still in progress, though you can bet they’ll be filled with love), or the children we’d have someday.

You can’t really know how anything is going to turn out until it happens, even as you plan and pray.

And though the road to where we’re at in each of our lives has been filled with the (cheerfully) unexpected, I am beyond thrilled to say that we both have the exact families we’re meant to have now: me, as of October 22, 2011, when I became a very lucky stepmom, and she, as of 5:17 am, July 23, 2012.

This is Ariana Kate.

She’s perfect, naturally, as all babies are… although she is just a little more perfect than the rest of them.

I can see that she’s going to have an amazing head of hair, which is no surprise, given that both of her parents could donate half of their follicles to the poor and still have more than most people.

I bet she will sing beautifully in no time, like her mama.

I bet she will tell wonderful stories in no time, like her dad.

I bet she will laugh in no time, like both her parents do, given any opportunity.

And she will always — as she was before she was even conceived, when she was just a hope, and also while she grew from the size of a lima bean to her current fighting weight of a mighty 7 lbs and 3 oz — be loved completely, fiercely, joyfully, and happily by two of my favorite people on this planet.

Cath and Eric, you are going to be amazing at this. You already are.

Even when Eric has been up for 24 hours and accidentally puts a fresh diaper on a box of wet wipes, and when Catherine is trying not to zonk out while rocking her baby (and herself!) to sleep, you will be the best parents Ariana could hope for.

Auntie Meg LOVES you, Ariana, and she always will. Your Uncle Gradon loves you, too. In fact, everyone does.

Welcome.