Monkey Business.

“I’m going to have to get right up into your business. I hope you don’t mind – this will only take a minute.”

I had a plan for this evening. And this … this was not in the plan.

We are t-minus 17 days away from needing a new place to rest our heads. Somewhere in between a job that is anything but 9 to 5, shuttling between hockey practice and gymnastics and squeezing in my own sparse allotment of sneaker time, I am doing my utter best not to drive our realtor to the edge of insanity. Or maybe I’m doing my best to drive her over the edge. It’s hard to tell at this point …

The kids are on edge. The dog has cabin fever. I need a drink. Or a very long nap.

Or both.

Driving in the dark this morning and then again this evening, I turned the radio down and let my thoughts ebb and flow with the traffic around me, slowing with the heaviness of the world around us and racing with the immediacy of our own.

I’ve been on my feet since 4 a.m. this morning. A day of debating coupled with a 3-plus-hour commute that I was looking forward to burying with an aggressive hour at the gym before settling in for another evening of shopping for rentals and schools and school districts from the comfort of the couch, armed with the hot tea that enables the meager sleep I find.

Instead, a tiny woman is crawling all over me armed with olive oil as the clock closes in on midnight, peering and picking at me like two monkeys in the wild.

“How much longer?”

“I’m done, dear. You can go wash the oil off now.”

“And?”

“Nothing to be found on that pretty head.”

Unless you're looking for somewhere to lay said head.