I’m forty-one years old. According to the government, that makes me an adult. According to my children, I know everything. According to my husband, I own enough power tools to open a small hardware store and terrify a landlord. According to my brain, none of that matters, because I am still waiting for the actual adult to walk in, take one look at this house, and fix it.

You know the one. The person who knows what to do when the washing machine starts making that noise. The one who understands taxes. The one who can catch an escaped snake without narrating it like a nature documentary. The one who has an actual answer when someone asks what’s for dinner, instead of opening the fridge and offering a eulogy for the leftovers.

I have no business being the highest-ranking authority in this house. And yet, here I am, running it like a woman who definitely knows what she’s doing, right up until someone asks a follow-up question.

This week was a real audition for that role, and I bombed it beautifully.

It started with the new Minions movie. I braced myself, not for the movie, but for the children, because there is always one kid who’s decided the theater is her living room, sprinting the aisles, narrating the plot at full volume, while somewhere behind me a parent whisper-begs, “inside voice,” with all the authority of a substitute teacher on day one.

I fully expected Harper to be that kid.

Instead she sat there like a tiny, well-behaved stranger who’d been swapped in for my actual child. Watched the movie. Whispered when she needed something. I spent half the film watching her instead of the screen, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did. She was, against all odds and prior evidence, perfect.

Naturally, this had to be rewarded with the collectible cups, the collectible popcorn buckets, and enough Minion plushies to stage a hostage situation. Before anyone judges me, understand this was also the one-year anniversary of hitting “publish” on my first book, back when my only goal was ten sales. Ten. Not bestseller lists. Just ten strangers not legally obligated to love me. I looked at my numbers this week and younger me would’ve fainted. Older me celebrated the only reasonable way: not champagne, but yellow cartoon men speaking gibberish. Zero regrets. My wallet may disagree.

Then I came home and did laundry, because the universe likes to remind you that literary milestones and single socks vanishing into the dryer’s personal event horizon exist on the same timeline. Then I mowed the yard, and my Bermuda grass is, frankly, thriving in a way none of my other life projects are. Thick, green, soft as velvet. I did not raise my children this successfully, and the lawn requires zero emotional support, so at the moment it is my favorite dependent.

Naturally, none of that could happen before we added another reptile to the household, because god forbid we go a full week without an apex predator moving in. Meet the newest ball python: gorgeous, heart-shaped markings, an absolute delight, and a reminder that “welcome home” now includes a snake that could theoretically end me. Our pets have enough personality between them to warrant their own reality show. Someone call Netflix.

Tomorrow I’m out in the field instead of behind a screen, which always surprises people. Yes, I own the company. Yes, I write the books. Yes, I can also inspect a house and write an estimate that makes an insurance adjuster break a sweat. Will I be hauling refrigerators? Absolutely not…I have employees, and my back has already filed its complaints in writing.

Then Justin went to pick up dinner, a task that apparently now requires Area 51-level clearance. The poor kid got interrogated like he was smuggling out state secrets instead of chicken tenders. I’m shocked they didn’t take fingerprints and a note from mom. 

Speaking of parents, mine would have laughed themselves sick at this entire day. And that’s the exact moment it hit me: I haven’t watched television since Dad died. Not a decision. Just a quiet stop, replaced with books inhaled like oxygen and puzzles assembled by the dozen, and finding comfort in the tender notes a great friend mails me often, because apparently my brain decided fictional murder was more emotionally manageable than reality TV. It’s not wrong.

And I haven’t written a word of the sequel since Nanny died. Not for lack of wanting to, I want to, badly. But writing was always the thing I couldn’t wait to tell her and Dad about. Every chapter, every milestone, every small ridiculous win. They were proud of me before I’d given them a reason to be. Finishing this book now feels like crossing a finish line and scanning the crowd for the two faces that used to always be there, and they’re not.

Grief doesn’t always make you cry. Sometimes it just rearranges the furniture in your life while you’re busy buying Minion popcorn buckets and adopting snakes nobody asked for.

So I still don’t know when I’ll write again. I know I’ll inspect a house tomorrow. I know Harper’s newfound sainthood has an expiration date. I know another reptile will probably follow us home, because at this point that’s less a possibility and more a recurring subscription.

I haven’t found the adultier adult. I’ve started to suspect she doesn’t exist, that we’re all just out here running our households on caffeine, spite, and the vague hope nobody audits us. Buying stuffed toys to celebrate. Babying a lawn instead of ourselves. Collecting venomous roommates for fun. Trying to remember the laundry before it starts smelling like a personal failure.

If that’s the whole job, I’m doing better than I thought.

Now if you’ll excuse me…I need to go explain to my husband why the house needed one more snake. It didn’t. We got one anyway. That’s the whole system, really