It’s Spring Break season and Casa de Plate Spinner is open for business!

Guests can relax in our clean, but cluttered accommodations, sleep in cramped quarters, luxuriate on the overstuffed couch in the family room while bonding over video games not enjoyed since Christmas break, and consume delectable homemade meals and snacks provided by the doting staff around the clock.

Amenities include: maid service, clean towels, in-kitchen coffee pot, on-site laundry accommodations, no privacy whatsoever, car rental with driveway parking, and airport shuttle service.

All for the low, low, low, low price of – well, nothing – every single night.

For reservations, contact the Plate Spinner at www.goingoutofmymind.com.

I greeted the news that my college boys would be home for break with a potent mix of delight and dread. Meeting my day job and publishing obligations while being the hostess with the mostest seemed about as likely as winning an all-expenses-paid trip for one to Tahiti.

How to manage it all and still enjoy my visiting brood would take lots of planning, an understanding boss, some furniture rearranging, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

And so far so good. The week is almost over. I’ve kept things at work, and my word count, spinning. The house is not a complete disaster and there is still some food in the fridge. Negotiations over who can have the car and when have gone relatively smoothly and all major appliances are still in working order.

By this time tomorrow, my guest – er, kids, will be gone.

While I’ll be sad to see them go, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward, just a little bit, to getting back to my routine. Makes me wonder, though, how in the world I managed working full-time with a full house before a few of them left the coop.

Does adrenaline give us energy and amnesia?

And how did we fit these same boys comfortably in this same house before they left for college? Why is it when they come home we’re overrun with…stuff?

Oh well, these are questions I’ll ponder when I’m not so busy, because right now, I’ve got to fire up the burners on my stove.

Breakfast specials today include blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausage.

And don’t forget to hug the proprietor before you leave.