The weirdest thing happened to me this week. The Wonderful Husband, G, and Duncan were hunting. E was spending some time with her grandparents. I dropped a masked A off at one of his few socially distant extracurricular activities, and I pulled into the driveway, walked into the house, and realized that for the first time in months, I was alone.

I resisted the urge to strip down and turn cartwheels through the house, although I will confess that using the bathroom facilities without having to pull a dresser in front of the door and put on my noise canceling headphones was a serious temptation. Knowing how well Murphy enjoys messing with me, I decided that the minute I had the bubble bath drawn, the phone would ring and I’d have to fly out of the house to address some sort of emergency.

I also resisted the urge to log in to my computer and catch up on some of the paperwork that had been abandoned while I broke up fights over who needed the mobile hot spot more and proofread final essay submissions and tried to start up a mold growing experiment for the fifth grade.

I took a deep breath and said a small prayer that our drastically reduced lifestyle was helping to keep our budget on track and decided it could wait another day to be reviewed.

I contemplated baking myself an entire pan of brownies and then eating them all myself, cleaning up all the evidence, and pretending like that didn’t happen. I quickly abandoned that plan when I realized that it would involve washing dishes, since the ingrates had left me an empty brownie pan filled with crumbs earlier in the day.

I thought maybe I would try to sit down on the couch, alone, without a 70-pound dog inserting himself on my lap, and watch some of “my” shows on the big screen of the TV, instead of watching them on mute on my cellphone as I usually do. I’ve been re-watching “Seinfeld,” and the Philistines that I live with don’t see how that show is funny. I also started watching the “Gilmore Girls,” which draws a lot of “eww grosses” from the male contingent of the family. After spending 20 minutes searching for and then trying to figure out how to operate the spaceship landing capable remote control, I abandoned that plan as well.

I felt like Cinderella at 11:30 p.m. The clock was ticking and the magic was going to come to an end soon. I retreated to my old standby: books. I searched through my pile for something frivolous that I could get lost in quickly, but also walk away from without any guilt when the time came.

The giant biography of Teddy Roosevelt that I’m three-quarters of the way through, and have been for the last two years, was on the top of my “to read” pile, mocking me. I uncovered a few beach reads that hadn’t been touched, since I haven’t been anywhere near a beach this year, and a few other slightly serious recommendations.

Since nothing really tickled my fancy, or had any chance of not depressing me further, I ran down to the boys’ room and looked through A’s “to read” pile in the hopes of finding some YA tome that I could whip through in 20 minutes. The first book in the Game of Thrones series, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” and an old Rick Riordan that I’d already read were not what I was hoping for, although I did add a mental note to start paying a little more attention to how A was navigating the sibling battles and the parental negotiations.

As I ran back down the hall to possibly take a 20-minute nap in my own bed, I tripped over a basket full of laundry that needed to be put away. I debated whether it was better to just put it away myself, or just wait until they started throwing the dirty laundry over it and I had to wash it all and fold it all and put it away myself anyway in a week. I took a few minutes to deliver everyone’s pile directly to their pillows, willing myself to believe that they’d put it away before they went to bed and not throw it on the floor.

Cursing myself for wasting a valuable five minutes of quality alone time, I ended up back on the couch, staring at the wall. Finally, I hit upon it. I quickly texted a long-distance friend and asked if she had time to chat. “Sorry, in the middle of something, call you l8r?” “Sure,” I sent back, knowing that both of us would forget that message in a few minutes, and it would be weeks until we touched base again.

So, I sat, quietly. Enjoying the sound of no one fighting or complaining. Appreciating the fact that two of the kids, and the dog, were getting some quality outside exercise, and the other one was spending some much-needed time with family. Waiting to start dinner so that I could pull the kids into helping prepare the food. Ignoring my phone and my laptop and all the other bells and whistles that ding and beep all day long. Watching the leaves falling off the trees, without a psychotic puppy barking at every last one of them.

Eventually, I dozed off, for about five minutes, before my phone started going crazy. A and E needed to be picked up, the other boys were on their way home with some game to prepare. The dog had gotten himself full of burrs and who knows what else and needed a good brushing and a bath. And once again, chaos reigned supreme.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.