Sorry if the hash and rehash is getting boring, but I'm still away.

Is it a parent's job to worry about everything? Or simply our pleasure? Do motherhood and anxiety naturally go together? Does the primitive part of our brain ... that place in our heads where everything learned while our species lived in caves and ate raw bear meat continues to mold us into thinking animals ... automatically imagine the worst of the worst whenever we're called upon to fill in the gaps?

Maybe.

First, I must state emphatically that worry does no good at all. Action, clear thinking, decisiveness ... those get stuff done. But worry? It's nothing but an immobilizing, antibody crushing, itchy skin rash and insomnia-inducing waste of time.

That said, as a parent, I'm quite sure that our sun is going to burn out, an asteroid will hit us and throw Earth out of its orbit sending us spinning into the black and frigid infinity of space, global warming will turn our seas to sludge, genetically modified foods will reproduce at will and cover North AND South America in mobile monster wheat, and a war to end all wars will break out the minute my kids are draft age.

And if you think I have it bad, you should live with Mark's concerns.

He's only been a dad for three years, so hasn't anywhere close to my thirty-seven years of experience that armed me so very well for ways to deal effectively with all anxiety great and small. (See above.) The fact that Cj is eleven months old and still toothless has him picturing her as a four-year old in need of dentures. Sam trips over his own big feet and Mark concludes that something has gone terribly wrong with his legs, and that braces or something even more horrifying are in his future. Any trip to the beach that doesn't include Dad is assumed to be fraught with great danger. When the phone rings at work and he looks down to see our home number on the display, he's certain that one of us has met with a terrible fate. He's wired off our veranda so home looks like a gulag, jumps a mile every time one of the kids lets out an unexpected squeal, and is convinced we'll never be able to afford to send them to a decent university.

But, we're a team and have agreed in no uncertain terms that worry is a waste of time.

So, how do I sleep at night?

I'm really tired.