It's back to school time, and so for many parents it's time to resume normal (or even semi-normal), pre-summer living.  Southland parents resoundingly agree that having the kids (and their friends) around more frequently during the summer pretty much puts the kibosh on a lot of honest and unbridled adult fun.

The top activities that parents desired to resume after dropping off the little beasts at school include:

Catching up on sex with the spouse.  Unless your bedroom is constructed like a bunker, and with kids infesting your house like termites you've probably had very little "quality time" with the spouse.  Besides, even with a bunker the kids are now old enough to see through the ruse of "mommy and daddy are taking a nap." It's time to break out the suitcase of S&M gear and take back the bed!

Catching up on serious TV watching.  At some point in the summer you likely caved in to the bored kid who promised to leave you alone if s/he could just watch just one movie.  One became a thousand and at some point you may lost the cherished hold of the sacred TV remote.  School's the perfect pretext to assert Draconian TV laws and unequivocally take back the hallowed screen sceptor.

Catching up on summer reading.  Whatever happened to that unrealistic stack of summer reading you were going to churn through?  What about even a simple section of the newspaper?  Now's the time to finish what you started — or at least to get through even one good book.  Take back the stack and steal some precious downtime for yourself!

Catching up on sleep.  Remember sleep?  Chances are that the kids got to stay up later, and as a result you lost some precious Zs this summer.  But now it's your turn.  Get those little buggers off to school and come home and crash! 

Decapitating squirrels.  Kids get all soft and weepy if you harm animals, but they'll soon be too swamped with homework to notice that you've brought out your favorite secret hobby.  Break out the squirrels, invite the neighbors, knock back a few gallons of whiskey and have at it.  The holidays are coming up and the squirrel bodies make great cushy pencil holders - now that's thinking ahead! (Other people do this, too, right?)

Reclaim the computer. It's been a few months since you've crawled the net looking for some solo love action and, man or woman, have you've missed some good times. Rejoin your midget friends at www.toothlessdwarves.com, close the drapes, and say hi to your best friend.