I TWIST SWEATILY INSIDE the duvet cocoon that I'd spun around myself after Vic crept out of bed to go for his morning run. He's an avid exerciser, and no amount of chiding, mockery or eye-rolling on my part will ever convince him that it's completely ridiculous to work out EVERY SINGLE DAY. I'm a big believer in moderation — especially when it comes to things that I don't personally like to do.

I wouldn't care except that his daily, crack-of-dawn alarm wakes me, dragging me out of sleep hours before I need to be up. On weekdays, I just get up and open the cafe extra early, but this morning I was disappointed to remember that it's Saturday. I'm not needed at the cafe on weekends. In fact, I'm discouraged from coming in at all. Natalie, our cafe manager, and our part-time staff (all former street kids gaining work experience) take care of the weekend shifts. We have it very much in hand, she assures me whenever I drop in just to check up, needy as a helicopter parent. Go spend time with your family.

Only, the more years that go by, the less my family seems to need me. Vic has his run and a time-consuming interest in all televised sports. My son has a seemingly endless obsession with Minecraft and the many, many YouTube stars who discuss Minecraft in mind-bending detail. Maeve, of course, is supposed to be on campus.

Struggling to free a single arm from the covers, I grope for my phone and turn it on to discover that I must have fallen back asleep after Vic left. It's already 10 am! Weak winter sun blooms from behind the drapes. I smell breakfast and hear my children shouting at each other down the hall.

Pleased with myself for managing such an epic sleep-in, I throw the covers back and pull on my favourite sweatpants and PinkFloyd shirt (both threadbare and holey). As I lurch through my bedroom door, I see Maeve standing in front of the bathroom, arms crossed.

"You've been in there for an hour! What are you DOING IN THERE?" She shouts in a voice so barbed with arrogant hostility, I know it has to be her little brother on the other side of the door.

"Leave me alone!" I hear Tim's voice echo from inside the washroom, breaking adorably thanks to the puberty that seems to have come out of nowhere, turning him from a sweet little boy into a smelly, moody, shiny-faced proto-teen practically overnight.

"Maeve!" I wade in, both happy and annoyed to find myself back in the role of peacekeeper between my children. "Give your brother some privacy. How would you like it if we stood outside the door while you were in there?"

"Well, I don't lock myself away in there for an HOUR, do I? What does anyone do in a bathroom for an HOUR?"

I shrug, preferring not to consider what a boy with raging hormones might require privacy to do.

"Don't ask, don't tell," I advise her as I make my way down the stairs. "Just use the washroom in the basement if you're desperate."

IN THE KITCHEN, I find Vic leaning over a stack of french toast. Carb heaven, I think jealously. Strictly not allowed on my current eating plan. I recall the stern warning I received from the Weight Watchers program coach, who set me up on the plan I'm currently pretending to follow:

"So, you eat out 2-3 times a week, drink 1-2 glasses of wine a day, prefer not to have to track your food and you exercise—" she consults the form I've completed, "—Infrequently."

I smiled sheepishly. You don't want to lie on these things, but I couldn't admit that both the restaurants and wine are probably understated by half and the most truthful answer to 'how often do you exercise' would have been: absolutely never unless you count walking to the kitchen for another glass of wine.

They didn't have an option for that. Which makes me think that whoever makes these forms could do a better job of making us feel safe to speak our truth by offering honest options.

Do you prefer cooking your own healthy meals to having an Uber driver simply deliver whatever your heart desires?

A. No
B. Don't be ridiculous
C. Do I look like Nigella Lawson?

On which occasions do you not drink an entire bottle of wine once opened?

A. Never
B. If I'm sharing it with a friend (then we open two)
C. When I have to attend parent-teacher night and don't want to show up with blue teeth

If you were forced to exercise, what would your preferred form of physical activity be?

A. Hamstring stretches in front of the snack cupboard
B. Energetic no-strings-attached sex with good looking celebrities
C. Have electrodes stimulate my muscles while I lie on the couch, eat snacks and watch good-looking celebrities on Netflix

I was amusing myself with this more honest intake form in my head when the woman broke my train of thought:

"Alice. I asked you about your ideal weight. You've written 'french' on the form. That's not a weight."

"Sure it is," I replied. "Have you ever met a French woman who cared about her weight? When a French woman reaches a certain age, she gets a chic bob, an arty pair of glasses and transitions to a flowy but still elegant wardrobe while continuing to enjoy baguette and triple creme cheese."

She cocked her eyebrow severely and said, "Well, I would suggest that this isn't France, and you'd do better to reduce your wine intake, forget the baguette and buy a Peleton."

My new coach, who I was beginning to get the feeling wasn't really on my wavelength, further cemented my loathing for her when she went on to ask: "And are you open to removing dairy from your diet?"

To which, I'd responded proudly, "Oh, I hardly use any dairy. I've transitioned to Oat Milk."

This only elicited yet another of her now-familiar eyebrow arches and a snarky, "I see. So, you've found a way to drink carbs."

There's no pleasing some people.

In the end, she put me on something called, enigmatically, the 'Blue Plan' with a stern warning that I might have to switch to 'Green Plan' (a more barbaric form of torture allowing only celery and a great deal of spinach, I assume) if I wasn't able to self-regulate my carb intake.

Which is why Vic's brunch is making me irrationally annoyed with him.

Why does he get to eat french toast right in front of me when all I'm allowed for breakfast on this stupid eating plan are foods made mostly of water?

I turn away from him huffily and busy myself with the espresso machine.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," Vic says around a mouthful of sweet, syrupy, eggy bread.

My stomach gurgles hungrily in reply.

"Want some of this? I can't eat it all. Maeve made too much." He says, oblivious to the power struggle that's going on between my basest desires and my shallow moral reserves.

I turn to him and say stonily, "I would prefer some grapefruit, thank you."

He shrugs, assuming I must actually mean what I've said even though WHO WOULD PREFER GRAPEFRUIT TO THICK CUT FRENCH TOAST DOUSED IN MAPLE SYRUP??!?!?!? His obtuseness just irritates me further.

"Well," he says, bringing his plate over to the sink but not disposing of the leftover pieces or rinsing and putting it into the dishwasher, which he's normally pretty fastidious about. "I'll just leave this here. Whatever happens, happens."

Unwilling to let my crankiness go, I favour him with only a small, tight smile.

"Alright, what's got you in such a bad mood this morning, Al?" He pulls my stiff body into a warm, nuzzling embrace, spending an indecent amount of time on that spot behind my ear ...

"Stop, the kids are both home," I say, even though I'm de-icing pretty quickly under the steam of his breath.

He sighs and presses his forehead against mine. "I liked it better when there was one less human being to work around."

Don't take from this that he doesn't love his children. He does. But it's a commonly accepted fact that children ruin your sex life. Before kids, you can do it wherever, whenever the mood strikes. You can lounge naked in the living room without getting called gross. Inevitably, all that freewheeling fun leads to getting pregnant and, eventually, having a baby in the house. For the first year, everyone's insane with sleep deprivation, and you're lucky if one of you stumbles into the other at the right angle. Then, you have a blessed year or two where you're only half-dead with tiredness from running after a toddler, and you can manage to resume at least some semblance of a sex life. Which, of course, is when kid number two shows up, setting the clock right back to zero again — where it basically stays until they leave the house.

For years, Vic and I have been waiting for at least one of the kids to move out just to get a tiny bit of privacy back.

But here we are again with a full house. It wasn't fair. We'd done our time.

"Can't we just send her back?" He groans as he leaves the kitchen.

"Not until we understand why she left!" I call at his back, my hand darting toward his abandoned plate and ferrying a heavy, sticky lump of french toast toward my mouth.