5:30 am. Wake up. Stay in bed for a 1/2 hour listening to music, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes.

6:00 am. Finally drag myself out of bed and take a shower.

6:15 am. Blowdry my hair.

6:30 am. Make coffee, an egg, and toast. Scarf down breakfast and take first sip of coffee just as the kids alarm goes off.

7:00 am. Wake kids up.

7:05 am. Wake kids up again.

7:10 am. Nicely wake kids up.

7:15 am. Scream that if they don’t get up right now, they’ll be sorry.

7:20 am. Give up.

7:25 am. Kids get up.

7:30 am. Give the kids cereal and spend the next 15 minutes trying to finish my hair, my make-up, and figure out what I’m going to wear today.

7:45 am. Ask if everyone is ready. Ask son to please get his shoes on.

7:50 am. Usher everyone out the door. Realize son does not have shoes on.

7:55 am. Pull out of parking lot and head on our way to son’s school first.

8:05 am. Drop son off.

8:15 am. Drop daughter off.

8:25 am. Stop at Starbucks for some coffee.

8:30 am. Attempt to start car. It doesn’t.

8:33 am. Still attempting to start car.

8:35 am. Give up and call my dad.

8:45 am. Dad attempts to start car. It doesn’t.

8:50 am. Dad drives me to work.

9:00 am. Get to work. Immediately barraged by co-workers that need various fires put out.

12:30 pm. Take lunch. Spend it at the bookstore searching for some magazine with glossy pictures of a Toucan for my son’s rainforest report. None exist. Settle on a book for fun on rainforests, but will not let kids near it with scissors if I can help it.

1:40 pm. Realize as I’m standing in line that I am extremely late in getting back to work and I’m about to miss a deadline. Call co-worker to bail me out.

2:00 pm. Oops. Back at work.

4:55 pm. Barraged by a co-worker with something to add to the work I just finished and turned in. Must do a revise. I have 5 minutes to do it.

5:05 pm. Mentally hack co-worker up with chainsaw.

5:30 pm. Turn off my computer and run out of work before anyone can catch me. Meet my mom waiting to pick me up.

5:45 pm. Pick son up from daycare.

5:50 pm. Pull into the parking lot of Safeway for some grocery shopping.

5:50 pm. Get a phonecall from daughter that she has a concert she didn’t tell me about before. Tonight. And she needs to be there at 6:30 pm for her 7:00 pm performance. Dressed in black and white.

5:53 pm. Finish yelling.

5:54 pm. Drive the speed limit to pick her up as fast as we can.

6:05 pm. Hem and haw about whether we should just eat at my parent’s house.

6:06 pm. Drive home instead to get a quick bite to eat, change clothes, pick up drum sticks.

6:10 pm Calm her down as she gets frantic about timing and decides that she doesn’t even want to do the stupid concert. Assure her that it will be fine.

6:55 pm. Drop her off in front of the school and find parking.

7:00 pm. Refrain from killing son as he throws a fit about having to watch a boring concert.

7:05 pm. Find a seat and sit back for some really great concert music in between squeaks of clarinets and random banging of drums. Amazed at the improvement from the last concert.

7:30 pm. Leave as the choir starts so that we can finally eat dinner.

7:40 pm. Pull into Coco’s.

7:45 pm. Get seated in a really cute waiter’s section who proceeds to flirt with me right in front of the kids, much to their amusement.

8:20 pm. Give waiter 25% tip for telling me I have pretty eyes. Realize that was probably his intention the whole time, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

8:50 pm. Get home and let son finish the dinner he was supposed to save for lunch the next day.

9:00 pm. Put kids to bed.

9:05 pm. Turn on computer, start writing.

10:00 pm. Finish up. Go to bed.

Tomorrow. Start all over again. But this time insert son’s school play in place of daughter’s concert.

Email me at winecountry.singlemom@yahoo.com.