Welcome to my 100th column!

Writing this piece wasn’t all that different from writing the previous 99—except that the first one was absolutely terrifying. Now, writing has become as natural as breathing.

In honor of this milestone, I will address the question I hear most often: Is it hard to find something to write about every week?

I’ll answer by sharing 10 tiny peeks into my life over the past seven days. It helps to explain why I’m rarely short on material. Often, the hardest part is not finding something to write about, but narrowing it down to just one thing.

1. Homeschooling my kids is my top priority. I was up until the wee hours last Sunday working on lesson plans. It wasn’t a convenient time to discover that we were out of printer paper. My kids thought it was odd to receive worksheets that had been printed on the back of their dad’s student loan statements. A lesson on recycling was born.
2. I’m not naming names, but the week was overflowing with stress due to several extended family members needing big things from us in the near future. I love them, but does it all have to hit all at once? If they weren’t from different branches of the family tree, I’d swear they were conspiring to drive me crazy. And that’s not a very long journey as it is.
3. That said, I’m excited that my sister-in-law and nephew are moving here today. They’re renting our old house for a while. It’s a nice house, but they’ll soon understand why we urged them to spring for a professional housecleaning service before moving in. We did our best, but that place needed the pros.
4. My husband spent a few hours updating my website. I think it’s pretty. Go register at www.kariapted.com and tell me what you think.
5. It was a week of trauma and drama for my kids. Eli’s been very stubborn about cleaning his room, so we’ve had to confiscate some of his toys. Make that most of his toys. And the Xbox 360 died, making the boys cry and Mama rejoice—both over the temporary absence of that dreadful thing, and the promise of a free repair.
6. The free repair is good because the person who was supposed to pay us for a web design job has gone missing. I spent an hour each day scanning ads for freelance writing gigs. Need a writer? I’m for hire.
7. One day my kids had corn dogs for breakfast and dinner because I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping. We ran out of paper towels, too. Eli tipped over a pot of hot tea on the stove, knocked over the Coke I shouldn’t have let him put on the coffee table, and dumped half a jar of peanuts on the dining room floor. One of our dogs got sick inside the house—twice. But I made the worst mess of all when I shattered a full glass of water on the kitchen floor—at 1:00 in the morning.
8. The next day, I left Kroger with an overflowing cart, including some new hair color for me. Guess who’s a brunette again? After being a redhead for the past five years, I’m afraid I look like a Goth mama. The aftermath of the dyeing process was pretty scary, too. Tiny droplets of hair color splashed around the bathroom, and the stains didn’t wash away. It looks like a murder scene from “CSI: Covington”.
9. We finally took down our Christmas tree. I figured we should do this before Zach has friends over to celebrate his birthday later this month.
10. It snowed! It was beautiful! We played outside until dark. Later, in an unusual display of helpfulness, Eli volunteered to vacuum the mess we tracked in. But he really just wanted to use the hose as a microphone to perform an improvised song about passing gas.

And that’s just life. Some might read this and think, wow, she stays busy. Others might wish for their own problems to be so simple. Whatever your perspective, I want to thank you for joining me for this 100th installment. I hope I’m here for 100 more.