I'm surprised at how quickly some weeks can pass, while others feel like an eternity. This week was a little of both.

This time last week, I was threatening my youngest that she wouldn't be going anywhere if she didn't get her room cleaned, the cat litter changed . . . chores my 14-year-old should do without reminders. But if that were so, then world peace would be a cinch, too.

She got things done. Well, most of them. After all, she wasn't about to jeopardize her trip to summer camp.

Lauren couldn't wait to go to Raintree Ranch after hearing so much about it from her friend Daryl, a veteran of the YMCA's riding camp in the mountains near Julian.

And the closer it got to Lauren leaving, the more we bickered. By the time I got her and her sleeping bag and pillow and suitcase into the car on Sunday, something told me both of us would enjoy being away from each other.

I had worried now and then, after signing her up last September, that my homebody would change her mind about going.

I worried for nothing.

She couldn't say goodbye quickly enough. And I was sad the minute she was gone.

Then, it hit me:

Hallelujah.

No Weezer on the CD player.

No cereal bowls, with souring milk in the bottom, stuck to the coffee table.

No sibling fights to mediate.

No whining, no smart-aleck remarks.

No phone ringing off the hook. No hunting for the phone when it did ring.

I'm sure she enjoyed the week with no nagging, no arguing with her older brother over whose turn it was to use the computer, to control the TV remote and, best of all, the smug feeling that I was cleaning the cat litter and putting her clean laundry away.

I suspect, too, the city girl learned a lot this week – about life on a ranch and about herself. That's the value of summer camp. Our children discover a little more about who they are, apart from us.

They get to see what they're made of as they face the challenges of a steep climbing wall, a deep lake; a horse galloping along a trail.

I could see some of that in her eyes, thanks to digital photography and a cool Web site called Bunk1.com (www.bunk1.com). There she was, sitting confidently in the saddle, smiling in a group shot with strangers who'd become friends.

I learned a few things this week, too: How quiet the house is without her; how much I missed Weezer; how I often think of Lauren as a child, the baby of the family and I need to think of her as the young woman she is, about to start high school; how I really should stop nagging so much about stuff that doesn't matter or I run the risk of pushing her away for far longer than a week.

Funny what a difference a few days make.