Bad day

[This should probably be a journal entry--not a blog entry--but I'm gonna leave it up for a little while anyway.]

My mom sent me an early Mother's Day card today. The inside, in typical Hallmark fashion, reads:

How do you do it all?
It's got to be difficult
finding a balance
between your work
and your role as mom.

I realize it's not very easy
to do what you do
day in and day out--
but somehow you do it,
and you do it really well.

Oh, geez.

I know my mom means well. (Backstory: this weekend, when I was visiting my parents, I mentioned how difficult the whole parenting thing has been lately. My mom's initial response: "Can't you just work part-time?" I took offense to that suggestion, she back-pedaled, and now she's making up for it--and, I'm sure, communicating her genuine concern--with today's card.) But the card--and its hollow sentiment--could NOT have come at a worse time.

Today was absolutely hellish. With Anna, that is.

From the moment I picked her up from after-school care until she went to bed tonight, she whined, cried, threw fits, argued with her sister, fought with me...the works. She was upset that I wouldn't let her have a friend over this afternoon (she had one over yesterday); she was mad that Kate and I had gotten a snack at our favorite coffee shop before picking Anna up; she didn't like what we were having for dinner--that kind of stuff. And I hate, hate, hate to admit this, but we just set each other off sometimes. I bark back at her. I sulk. I blow up.

She's only seven, but sometimes my relationship with her reminds me of my own relationship with my mom when I was a teenager: volatile, on-edge, strained.

How can that be? She's only seven.

I, however, am the exact same age my mother was when I was sixteen. It must be a problem on the mother end of things, right?

Of course. It *is* a problem on my end. Because, again, she's only seven. And because of my work, to a large extent. I mean, *the* reason I was so damned on edge with Anna today was that, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "I've got a boatload of student papers to read, two conference proposals to write, an annual self-appraisal that's overdue, etc., etc., etc. " I was, as I often am, thinking about all the work stuff that I just can't seem to get done during the hours the kids are at school or daycare.

So what happens is this: My physical self is with the kids, but my mental self is worrying about all the work shit I still have to do. So, of course, that's not good for the kids. Or for the work. And the worst part, for me, is that when I'm right in the thick of it--when the kids are acting up--I find myself feeling way more attracted to the job stuff; I'd *rather* be writing that conference proposal or whatever. Then I feel horrible guilt about my parenting.

Oh, F. This sucks. This situation, this day, this post. If you've read this far, thanks for putting up with me.