My wife and I only have five offspring, but it's always seemed like so many, many more. At one point, the gas meter man came into the house, looked at all the kids chasing each around the house and asked whether we were running an orphanage. Between TV, guitars, video games and the occasional bare-knuckle death match, our house has been anything but quiet.

But after years and years of dealing with a house full of children, last week, by some miraculous alignment of the stars, my wife and I found ourselves at home for an entire week — all by ourselves. Our 12-year-old twin daughters were visiting my sister in Philadelphia for a week, our 14-year-old son was at camp, our 19-year-old boy had elected to spend the summer at his college working, and our oldest son, 22, was off on his own, having just gotten a job. The end result was that for a whole week, it's just me, my wife and the dog.

Sunday: The first thing my wife does is clean the house. For years, she'd been saying that she'd like, just once, to straighten up a room and not have someone come in five minutes later and turn it into a complete wreck. As she arranges pillows on the couch, she predicts the living room will look great all week. She's right, but now I'm afraid to touch anything. For the first time, I can't blame a mess on the kids.

Monday night: We both come home from work, look around the house, completely lost. My wife sits at the kitchen table paging though a magazine, while I wander back and forth, looking for something to do. I start to wonder if this was what "empty nest syndrome" is going to be like, when the kids fly the coop and the parents are left to stare at each other and wonder where the heck everybody went.

Tuesday night: The dog is starting to get a little creepy. For the past year or so, all he's done is eat, drink, sleep and chew on parts of his body that make me queasy. Suddenly, he's following us around the house, tripping us up as we move from room to room, looking over his shoulder and jumping at the slightest sound, a pint-sized Scooby Doo. He clearly thinks he's in a horror movie, where one by one people are disappearing from a haunted house, and that he's next.

That night I go to bed slightly uneasy, and at 2 a.m. I wake to a blood-curdling whine and jump out of bed. I find the dog crying and shivering outside our bedroom door. I tell him, in the nicest way possible, that if he doesn't get a hold of himself, he actually will be next.

Wednesday night: We come home to a perfectly clean house. There's nobody to cook for or clean up after, so we turn right around and head off to the movies. This empty nest thing is starting to look like fun.

Thursday night: We come home to a perfectly clean house again. My wife and I shrug, look around and decide to head out to a baseball game. Nobody calls to find out where we are. When we get home, the house is dark, and the dog rushes up to us like we've rescued him from a deserted island.

Friday night: We stop home for five minutes, and then head out to a party. When we get home, the dog is almost suicidal, worrying about his fate. Maybe he's right. The house is just a little too quiet. Suddenly, the house isn't just clean and orderly, it feels (and it kills me to say it) just a little lonely.

Saturday night: Within the space of a few hours, everyone has returned, like shoppers rushing into a store holding a 70 percent off clearance blowout sale. I can't hear myself think, because three TVs are blaring at once, and my son is playing Guitar Hero at top volume. I can't find a seat in the living room, with the girls sprawled across the furniture like throw quilts. Somehow, in a matter of minutes, they've cleared the kitchen of everything remotely edible. The dog is relieved, but only because he had assumed he'd be dead by now.

Somehow, though, it feels just right.

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