My brother thinks I'm too lenient with my children. I love him, but he and his wife never had kids. They've been married 28 years. Each has had the same job for nearly 20 years. They live in a home where you can see where the vacuum cleaner made its last stroke.

This is not the real world.

I live in a world filled with a dining table that serves as a place to put everything — bills, toys, drawings, reading glasses, books, clothes. My floor by the front door has a litter of shoes on both sides: tennis shoes, a pair of high heels, sandals, and flip-flops in sizes 7, 8, and 9.

My wooden floors are scuffed.

There is always some sort of sheet covering two of the three cushions of the only new purchase I have made since moving here after Hurricane Katrina — my lovely, comfy couch. The sheet protects my sofa from my dog Brittney's claws and hair and doggy smell, or so I think.

(Oh, and as a matter of reference, the dog came with her name — I rescued her from an abusive 26-year-old male neighbor — and that was the name she'd had for a year and a half.)

We run out of milk. There is often no bread, and we've actually had Edy's Rich & Creamy mint chocolate chip ice cream for dinner. Yep. That's the truth.

And when my son got in trouble for threatening to hurt another boy that he's been in and out of fights with since the beginning of school and got two days of suspension, I punished him with five licks, (not in anger), and no supper.

I felt bad for him because I know that the boy in question is a pain in the ass and has been for my son all year. But, my 11-year-old son has to learn to live within the confines of society, and there is a zero tolerance in schools for hitting or threatening to hit.

Around 10 p.m., I was walking through the house turning off lights and when I came into the kitchen, I felt a presence, not malevolent, but a presence nonetheless. I struggled to reach to turn on the light to see who it was, and there he stood. My Joseph, frozen like a statue, trying to hide.

He looked at me, holding a plate with two sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly and said to me, "Mom, I'm starving, I gotta eat!"

He turned and ran away from me out of the kitchen and to his room.

I didn't chase him. I didn't go into his room and take the sandwiches from him. I let him have them and eat them. I even brought him a glass of milk.

So, I'm not as strict as my brother thinks I should be. So what. We do what we can as we can, and sometimes we have to bend the rules. This is real life, and that night when I lay down in my bed and closed my eyes, I smiled and felt happy. My boy was fed — all was right with the world.