Making up for that time in a past life when I pillaged the Russian steppes and enslaved countless thousands of peasants, I'm spending this holiday season entertaining my mother. She flies in next week for a six-day visit.

I've been taking notes on things other people do when their parents come to visit: send them off to the city for the day to go sightseeing on their own, take in a movie or three, maybe a spa excursion, maybe a day in Napa. These apparently are parents who lead gracious and refined lives on their own and view their offspring's locale as a convenient pied a terre in the bay area while they pursue their own interests.

This is not my mother.

My mother, to be very clear, will be here to see me. In clear line of sight or, better yet, clutching physical contact, for every last second that she can manage it. To be near me, to marvel at my every breath, to gasp in awe at my every daily activity. No pressure or anything.

I'm saving up things to do -- Christmas shopping, landscaping, paint the bathrooms, anything to keep her busy and deflect her probing questions.

A coworker called this morning and was bemoaning his own batty matriarch and offered what I think is a genius solution: a mother swap. A national registry and exchange of parents, in which we agree to ship them, their issues, their idiosyncracies off to some other unwitting children in exchange for taking on another set of unknown parents for a few days. Think of it: the stories are fresh, everyone is with strangers and thus on their best behavior, and the offspringly duties are fulfilled. Who's in?