I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock, as Steve kissed me good-bye. It was 5 am. He had to be in the city by 7 for a conference call with London.

I lay in bed going over the schedule for the day in my head. Then gave up trying to sleep and made a pot of coffee.

As I rushed to get Ian on the bus on time and urged him to swallow his "vitamin" instead of mixing it in with his apple juice, I hollered at Jonah to call the school nurse to tell her that he was going to be late for school. He had an 8:30 appointment with the dermatologist to deal with his plantar warts. 

Then I got a text from the real estate agent saying that someone wanted to come by at 11:00.

I pleaded for an extra 15 minutes. I was in a doctor's office, I explained. She texted me back, "Life gets in the way."

The dermatologist looked at Jonah's big toe. "How long has he had these warts," she asked with an arched eye brow. Bad mother. I explained that he's had them for a few years. We've been trying to deal with them with some over the counter stuff, but the warts had laughed it off. 

She beckoned me over to get a good look at his toe. "See how many there are? There is a cluster of them. They've been there so long that it's going to be hard to get rid of them. See those black dots? They have their own blood supply." Independent organisms on my kid.

Then she zapped him with a freezer gun. Half an hour later, he limped into school. I kissed him good-bye with a gallon of guilt.

I looked at clock. 9:45. I had an hour and 15 minutes to clean the house. 

Four baskets of folded laundry, goldfish crumbs on the coffee table, a snowfall of couscous under Ian's chair, plates of waffle crusts, three unmade beds, toothpaste stains in the sink, a row of 34a's on the laundry line in the basement, shin guards in the hallway, a week's worth of papers, happy meal toys everywhere. 

Finished with minutes to spare. 

I'm hiding out in Starbucks eating the first food of the day- some 1,000 calorie piece of garbage- wondering if I am ever going to get my own work done. 

In addition the hassles of selling a house in a real estate market that seems to have seized up like a rusty bicycle AND dramatically increasingly ian's after school therapies AND steve's new boy scout leader responsibilities, I've also been stealing a few minutes here and there to work on a book and a tentative small business. 

Yesterday, I told Steve that I thought I was wasting my time. Yet two more huge projects with slim chances of success. Perhaps I shouldn't waste time on this stuff. Who needs to keep banging one's head against the wall? Perhaps it was better to have fun in life than to keep chasing the false promise of a fulfilling career. I could spend more time planning over the top parties, taking day trips to the museums in Manhattan, just lounging in a hammock chair in the backyard. 

The trouble is that I want it all. I want the parties and the museums and the success and the paycheck and wart-free toes. Maybe that's too much to ask for.

(one finger iPad typing. Excuse typos)