Around this time of year a tune that keeps getting stuck in my head comes from a TV commercial that first hit the airwaves a few years back.

In the commercial, a dad is shopping for school supplies for his kids. It’s near the end of summer, the kids are getting ready to head back to school, and the dad is singing the Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

The clear message, of course, is that dad is more than ready for the kids to be getting out of his hair at home and spending more time where they really belong — in school.

I wonder if the guy in the commercial worked primarily from his home office as I do. If so, then we’re definitely singing from the same sheet of music.

Today, for example, in between trying to finish the laundry and crank out this column, I am also trying to convince my two kids to finish the chores that, technically, they were supposed to have completed yesterday. But I know exactly what kind of game they’re going to play with me today.

My 15 year-old son will remain in the basement twiddling his thumbs on some kind of computer game controller until I remind him a few more times that he is running out of time to finish his chores.

In a couple of hours, it will be time for me to deliver him to soccer practice. He will delay getting off the computer game so long that he will only have only a few minutes to complete his chores before he points out it’s time to go, or he’ll be late. If he does his chores at all, it’s highly likely they will be done quickly — and poorly.

(Please excuse me for a moment while I head down to the basement to make this point to my son in person, and move one load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. Thank you.)

Meanwhile, my 17 year-old daughter is sprawled out on the couch, watching some insane reality TV show that focuses on the lives of people that I would be generous to describe as “ tacky” if not “repellent.”

Less than an hour ago, I got back from picking her up at a girlfriend’s house where she spent the night and probably stayed up until the wee hours doing whatever it is that teenage girls do together at 1 a.m. Last night’s slumber party, accounts for her lethargy today.

Of course, she’ll be well rested by the time I need to drive her to her job at the candy store later this afternoon — but she darned well better have those chores done before I don my chauffer’s hat once again.

But right now, Mom the Nurse is leaving home for yet another interminable shift at Munson. She does me the favor of barking a few orders at the kids on her way out the door that more-or-less echo what I’ve been telling them practically all day so far. Thanks, Mom! Bye!

So, my daughter’s chores today include vacuuming the main floor in our house and cleaning two bathrooms, including scrubbing the toilets. Her kid brother, meanwhile, has to vacuum the “man cave” and the laundry room in the basement, do the trash, and scrub two other toilets. That had all better happen soon.

And it all does happen, eventually.

At soccer practice, a fellow parent comments to me that summer just seems to be slipping away from us. Indeed, the kids who have already begun practicing for fall sports definitely feel that way, she points out.

It’s true. Time flies. And I’m grateful that these are the worst of my problems — if one can even call them that.