Much as I love spring, I hate the endless work that it brings. This weekend was anything but relaxing -- in fact, it was downright exausting. It started with weeding all the flower beds (I've got a TON of them) and vegetable garden on Friday until nightfall forced me to call it a night.

Woke up early the next AM and did my long run (10 miles). The girls and I went to a few garden centers to buy a few flats of annuals for the beds and for the pots around the pool. When we got home, I finished weeding the flower beds, dragged out all the pool towels/toys, etc. and got the pool area all set up for summer -- all the while throwing loads of laundry in the washing machine and feeding kids and picking up after them.

Sunday was spent cleaning out the closets -- three of them (I do the girls' closets, too). I worked on those from 2 p.m. in the afternoon until 10 p.m. at night -- I'm not even kidding.

Today I took the girls to do a marathon shopping session.

If ever there is a recipe for disaster -- it's two tired kids and one tired, overworked mom hell-bent on checking off every single item on the list. It wasn't pretty and we all said things we didn't mean (but, you know I accomplished everything on that list).

This morning, I had spent a good hour sorting clothes to take to Once Upon a Child to sell. I'd never sold clothes to them before -- and I won't do it again. I had a big laundry basket full of cute, clean, nice clothes and shoes. They bought about 10 items. I made $8.50. Woohoo. The icing on the cake? The clothes they didn't want -- my nice, neatly folded clothes -- were thrown back into the basket carelessly. So, when I got home I had to fold and sort them all again. Insult to injury.

I folded and sorted while I let the kids watch the video they borrowed from the library four times. Normally I wouldn't let them watch that much TV (even if it is Veggie Tales), but at that point, two kids sitting slack-jawed in front of a TV was just what I needed so I could get the house clean before they had a chance to destroy it again.

So, there I am cleaning the bathroom when I notice one of those big black ants scurrying across the floor. Normally, I'd pick it up with a tissue and squish it humanely -- feeling awful for killing it.

But there was no mercy or compassion left in me today. I stomped all over that little sucker. Stomp, stomp, stomp -- taking the entire weekend's frustrations out on that poor hapless insect who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's a scary, dark part of me that enjoyed obliterating that ant.

I left his carcass there as a warning to the others.

... ants and otherwise.