As a stay-at-home-mom, your day is measured in very tangible increments. Before your feet hit the floor in the morning you know exactly how many minutes remain until breakfast, snack time, nap time, and lunch. Your internal clock goes off five minutes before Sesame Street comes on, and moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer is part of a well-choreographed routine.

Albert Einstein wisely stated, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." This is the essence of motherhood, the comfort of a routine becomes insanity until you get out of your normal environment and things really start getting out of control.

For the last two weeks, my children and I have been out of our routine, and I am beyond thankful for the flexibility that working from home gives me, but trying to survive in someone else's home has been an exercise in insanity. At home, if one of my kids goes missing I know exactly where to look. Aubrey is lying in the bed playing a game on my phone or reading a book. Emma is climbing shelves in the pantry as if they were a ladder, attempting to get to the junk food I keep out of her reach, and Sadie is reaching blindly above her head into my makeup drawer to give herself a toddler makeover.

They may be getting into trouble, but we are on our own turf, and I don't have to worry about the noise level or the level of destruction. At home practically everything of value that isn't already broken is at least out of reach, and I've refused to buy new furniture until everyone in my house is consistently using the bathroom on their own.

One of the scariest moments of my life happened while we were in the process of moving from our home in Mount Pleasant to Greenwood, Miss. I walked outside right before the movers loaded my 12-year-old sofa into the moving truck and saw it in direct sunlight. I opened my mouth in a silent scream. It was like seeing myself in only my bra and panties in a department store fitting room for the first time after giving birth, every wrinkle, ripple and roll exposed to my horror. I knew my sofa could use a good cleaning but I had no idea how bad it was until I saw it sitting on my front lawn at high noon.

My sofa probably has more body fluids and spills on it than a CSI crime scene. The only thing I can think of that would be more horrifying than seeing my couch in direct sunlight again would be seeing it under a black light. But because my furniture is not-so-gently-used, I didn't lose my mind when my four-year-old poked a hole in the sofa arm a few weeks ago. Don't get me wrong… I was mad and she got in trouble, but I disciplined her because she shouldn't have done it, not because my sofa is worth more than a gallon of gasoline and a lit match.

Things are different at someone else's house. If I'm not at home with my kids, the next best place to be is my mom's, but her furniture doesn't look like Exhibit A in a television crime drama and she generally frowns on climbing on shelves and poking things with scissors. (She's old fashioned like that.)

And although my mother has been running interference, cooking meals and practically tap dancing to keep my children entertained, there is the neverending pressure of trying to control the uncontrollable- namely, my three little girls. Every scream seems louder, every spat seems more intense and every pair of scissors seems potentially more dangerous when you are in someone else's home. Not to mention that when my kids disappear, I have no idea where they will turn up.

My mother's house is in ruins and I have no idea how my daughters ended up with one clean pair of underwear between the three of them. I'm hoping no one's done any damage that will be discovered after we leave, (although that might be preferable to discovering destruction before we leave.) But I'm ready to scratch out of my mother's driveway on two wheels and not stop until I can throw myself willy-nilly on my sofa, also known as Exhibit A in the case of Robin O'Bryant versus her sanity.

(Robin O'Bryant is a former Mount Pleasant resident and mother of three. Read her blog online at www.robinschicks.com or e-mail her, robinschicks@gmail.com.)