My cat jumped on my keyboard and typed, “89ioooooooooooooocv8 `.” Then he climbed onto my neck. And before you say dogs are better pets than cats, let me just say that while the cat was typing his nonsense, my dog was barking at the UPS delivery driver for daring to leave a package on our front step. In the great scheme of interruptions, the dog caused more trouble. Plus, the dog offered no apology. The cat at least snuggled in, kneading my shoulder with his sharp claws until he found just the right position to drape himself over me–with his stinky end in my face and his head looking over my shoulder like a furry supervisor.

And that is the truth about cats and dogs.

With two kids, a cat, a dog, and two adults crammed into our almost-too-tight 1,600 square feet of house (and no yard), we are a well-oiled machine of chaos.

Our garage, for example, is so full we can’t drive into it–or even walk past all the junk to reach the trash can. So to take out the trash, we have to open the garage door (the big one, meant for cars), walk out the front door, around the house, toss the trash, and then walk all the way back around to go inside–at which point we inevitably forget to shut the big door. So it will often stay open for hours on end, inviting judgment from neighbors and sparking the raccoons’ curiosity. I do not know who is more startled when it gets dark and I finally remember to shut the door and a random raccoon makes a sprint for the door as it is coming down–me or the raccoon. And I have no reason to be surprised since this is not the first time I have found a raccoon in my garage.

Dinner time is its own kind of circus. My kids have outgrown the “take a bite,” years and have settled into the “I’ll make something for myself later,” years. We made a rule about eating together, but that just that means two surly teenagers staring at food while my husband and I eat. The only one enthusiastic about dinner is the dog–if she is not distracted by another UPS delivery. (Oh, wait, there is ALWAYS a delivery during dinner.) She doesn’t get table scraps, but that is only because her legs are short and she can’t reach.

When we do have conversation at the dinner table, it mainly consists of my husband teasing the kids relentlessly. Then they come back with, “Oh yeah? Well, all you do for work is draw lines. Oh, no, wait. You don’t even draw lines. You just tell the computer to draw lines! No… you teach kids how to tell the computer to draw lines.” And there it is: his life’s work as an industrial drawing professor summed up in the retaliatory words of a fifteen-year-old.

And around and around they go. The kids don’t fight with each other anymore; they each just have their own never-ending battles with their dad over who is the best and which one Mom loves most and who the dog loves most and who the cat loves the most and who Grandma loves most and who has more friends.

And then the next day arrives, and we do it all again—the barking, the teasing, the raccoons, the deliveries. It’s like living inside a sitcom no one asked to be cast in, but here we are, living the dream. It reminds me that this is exactly the life we built together, chaos and all.