I'VE BEEN CATCHING VIC up on the events of the day (face yoga, interrupted by cafe panic, emergency meeting and subsequent supposed fine-ness of finding myself central to an embarrassing viral hashtag). It's 11 pm, and the house is quiet and dark. Although it is pulsing in that way houses do when a teenager is skulking around somewhere in it, sleepless. I love our daughter, but I preferred it when she was skulking around Residence rather than here. I find it hard to sleep when children are awake in the house.

"Do you think she ever sleeps?" I ask my husband in the dark.

"I doubt it," he says. "At least not before 2 am. They have a different clock at that age. Why? Do you feel like making some noise?"

He can't be serious, I think. With all this on my mind?

Vic, who is a man and therefore ill-equipped to understand sex as something you can only do if your mind is unworried and your children are fast asleep, is already inching his way over onto my side of the bed.

"I guarantee you she has headphones on."

"You can't guarantee that!"

He's nuzzling my neck in that way that I like.

"I can guarantee other things..." he says, muffled, into my collarbone.

As he slowly pulls my camisole straps off my shoulders, my distracted mind locks onto a new concern.

"What if my parents see the video?"

"Please don't mention your parents when I'm trying to seduce you," he murmurs into my navel.

"But what if they do?" I gasp, not from sensual pleasure but the fresh horror of my next thought: "Oh my god, what if your parents see it? I would die of embarrassment!"

He stops his slow progression down my body and leans on one elbow.

"So what? You were dancing. How could it be that embarrassing?"

I shake my head in the almost-dark. He hasn't seen it, so he doesn't know. Vic spends almost no time on the internet and couldn't possibly understand how an innocent, private twerk could be recut into a hundred thousand animated gifs that will haunt me for the rest of my professional life. What might possibly remain of it.

"I think," he says with a sly grin, "That you really had better reenact this embarrassing dance for me. Possibly now?"

As if.

"No way," I say, yanking the covers back up over me and rolling away from him.

He sighs. "Okay, no private dancing tonight. Maybe tomorrow."

This reminds me to tell him that I promised to babysit Buddy's toddler tomorrow.

"Fantastic," groans my husband, who rolls back over to his side of the bed, leaving me alone again with my worries, which are many and leave me sleepless as a teenager.

THE NEXT MORNING, I tried to wake up when his alarm went off. While lying sleepless somewhere between 2 and 4 am, I'd decided that I would make up for shutting down his amorous advances last night and try to catch him before his morning run, aiming for a mutually-agreeable outcome in the guaranteed quiet of our sleeping household.

Unfortunately, those sleepless hours took their toll, and by the time I was finally able to crack an eye open, Vic was already up and off on his run.

I'd missed him. Oh well, I thought to myself before snuggling deeper into the warm duvet, I'll get another chance. That's the beauty of marriage. There's always more time, more chances. Things ebb, and they flow, but ultimately, so long as you don't let things ebb too far (forgetting birthdays, having affairs, mentioning your spouse's weight gain or committing any other serious relationship damaging offence), you'll find yourselves back in the flow eventually.

Safe in that knowledge, I had burrowed back down into sleep until my own alarm went off.

Remembering that Buddy will be dropping Angel off at some point today, and needing to get some baby-appropriate food in the house before that happens, I force myself up and out of bed, still wobbly after not enough sleep.

To shower or not to shower? I remind myself that as a substitute-mother-to-be, I should take any opportunity for self-care that I'm given, but it also seems unimportant to be perfectly clean with nicely blow-dried hair if one is only going to get thrown up on later. I decide, instead, to put yesterday's lululemon outfit back on (perform some yoga faces at myself in the mirror -- there! Self-care, check!) and use the headband to hide the fact that my hair is a worse than usual mess thanks to a night of tossing and turning.

Using time saved by my decision to skip the shower, I flip quickly through my makeup to find the eyebrow pencil. I don't wear all that much makeup generally, but I absolutely always pencil in my eyebrows. Compared to the current boy-brow trend, my natural brows leave me looking more like a surprised alien than a human woman — which is, ultimately, my makeup goal.

I've just finished darkening the first eyebrow when I hear a knock on the front door downstairs. I check the clock: 8 am. Must be a courier. As we close in on Christmas, a steady stream of brown boxes — I'm ashamed to say most of them with the Amazon logo emblazoned across the side — have begun arriving on our porch. Every year, I threaten to "right-size" Christmas. One meaningful gift for each person, I promise. Then by early December, I'm trying to figure how out where to hide the mountain of gifts I've collected.

"Maeve?!" I shout into the hallway. "Are you up? Can you check the porch?"

There is no reply. But now there's another, more urgent, knock at the door.

"Oh for..." I put down my pencil with an annoyed huff. It must be something expensive if the courier isn't willing to leave it without a signature.

I rumble down to the door in my lululemon and one eyebrow and am just unlocking it when I hear a distinctive, furious wail from the other side.

No! Surely it's not...

I open the door to find, yes, it is Buddy holding a pissed-off Angel on one shoulder and hefting a massive diaper bag and folded up stroller in the other.

"Buddy? It's only... you're so..." I try to hide my dismay. When I said I'd babysit Angel today so he could get some me-time, I had assumed his me-time would happen in the late afternoon and for a period of no more than an hour or two. Now that I think about it, I suppose I should have been more specific about the terms of my offer.

"We're not too early, are we?" he says, already chucking items past me into the hallway. "It's just that I've booked a spa appointment for 9 am, the works, then lunch with an old friend, then--"

"Oh!" I smile brightly, "That sounds amazing! Of course, of course, no problem! I was just about to pop out to the grocery store to get some supplies ... but, I mean, Angel can come with me. Why not?"

Hearing her name, Angel ceases her wailing and settles into a furious, red-faced pout.

"You're the best, Alice," Buddy says, eagerly handing the red-faced toddler over to me. "I've brought her stroller and everything you need, so you're good to go!"

And with that, he turns and practically runs down the porch steps and out into the street without so much as a good-bye wave.

Angel and I look each other over.

"Hello, Angel," I joggle her a little on my hip, trying to re-acclimatize myself to the whole infant care thing. She squints at me like we've never met, which, frankly, I find rude since we've been introduced on several occasions. Apparently, I haven't made much of an impression.

"I'm Alice," I say. "Shall we go to the grocery store and see if we can find some yummy treats?"

"Eye bow," she replies matter-of-factly.

"I bow?" I repeat as a question, not quite having the toddler lingo down yet.

"Eye bow!" she raises her voice, frustrated at my incomprehension.

"Sure," I say, determined to head off a tantrum at the pass. "Totally. You can bow. I'm good with that."

She shakes her head at me like I'm the problem and then smashes my forehead with a sticky hand.

"Eye bow!"

"Hey, I say. No hitting. That's a rule in this house, Angel, and something we feel very strongly about." I deposit her inside the house and haul the heavy bag and folded up stroller in behind us.

She goes meekly to the bottom step and sits on it, waiting for me to get everything inside. When I've got everything across the threshold, I catch myself in the hallway mirror.

"Ohhh! Eyebrow!" I whoop, finally getting it. She's telling me that I look like a crazy person with only one eyebrow pencilled in. "Thank you, Angel! You've saved me from embarrassing myself. What a good helper you are!"

She beams at me (the first time I've ever seen her smile) and gets up off the step.

"Bawassing!" she says gleefully and does a happy, little dance that looks just vaguely like my TikTok twerk.