At 8:20 am, I entered Beast Mode. Headphones in, music up, I blitzed our house in clean-up mode. Stashes of kid art, stockpiles of pencils, mountains of recipes, avalanches of things-to-be-krazy-glued — it was all swept up in a foot-stomping, house-storming assault, making up for all the nights we said "we'll do this later."

While I cleaned, I turned on …