A day in the life...

5:30 a.m. hear the alarm, hear the man hit the snooze, hear the alarm, hear the man hit the snooze again, cover my head with a pillow because I know that it's not the last time he'll hit the snooze, try to wake up, shower, wake up a little more, get dressed, search the medicine cabinet for Tylenol, put my face on, blow dry my hair, get clothes ready for the tots, make coffee, feed and water the pooch, let the pooch out to do her duty, straighten the bedroom and living room, start a load of laundry, put today's dinner in the fridge to thaw, wake up the tots, bathe the tots, feed the tots, curl my hair, make sure nothing is on or running...

7:50 a.m. Tell the smallest of tots 18 times to get his shoes on, leave the house to drop the smallest bundle of joy at school or daycare (depending on the day), try desperately to hide my face while I suffer behind the wheel of the noisy, dirty, embarrassing house on wheels that I'm forced to drive while I wait for my precious baby to get fixed while listening to the tot hum guitar hero songs as loud as he can in the back seat, making me wish I had found the Tylenol but loving the sound of his little voice at the same time.

8:15 a.m. Kiss the smallest of tots goodbye, head to work, running extremely low on caffeine, feeling the road rage start to taunt, cursing the people who don't need to be on the road that early and eyeballing the men with big trucks that think they own the road...do they not know I'm in a friggin hurry???? Learn how to drive it or get it out of my way, man!

8:30 a.m. arrive at work very much in need of more coffee only to find that I have to squeeze the boat of a van into the only space left in the lot, learning much to my surprise that the new tentants have been informed and are no longer parking in our spaces.

8:35 a.m. retrieve voice mail messages from all 7 voice mail boxes, most of which are the same person calling 80 times during CLOSED office hours, stating specifically that the expect a call back immediately; answer calls from the same people for 3 1/2 hours, waste time on Myspace, type, fix unruly machines around the office, cuss at the printer 28 times, test my typing skills to be sure I haven't dropped from my record 104 words per minute, pee 5 or 6 times, count down the last 15 minutes to lunch...

12:00 p.m. Lunch! Me time!!! Who's buying?

1:00 p.m. back to the grind...more phone solicitations, hang up calls and self important criminals; more broken machines or people that don't know how to work perfectly functioning machines, copy some files, take out the trash, do the dishes, clean off tables, entertain waiting clients, watch small children play while their criminal parents are paying way too much money for someone to lie for them and get them out of something they are 100% guilty of, explain for the 157th time how to use the postage meter; all while answering calls, typing documents and tweeking the settings on my computer.

3:00 p.m. run errands....finally, fresh air and 5 minutes of silence....fight for a parking space a block away from my office because I'm too lazy to walk and I don't want to tempt the muggers, drive around the block 82 times looking for an empty meter to use my fancy new meter key only to find that I have to use the new fangled jobies that they put in that don't take the key, return to the office to find another brilliant driver taking up 3 parking spaces on our side of the lot.

4:00 p.m.-ish Return to the work hole, call the bill collectors and wait on hold for 20 minutes to be told we don't owe anything, they just want to upgrade us to something less efficient but more expensive, deal with clients talking on their cell phones in the lobby and trying to act like I can't hear them as I get louder and louder on the phone to hear myself talk, water the plants, type some more crap...yadda yadda yadda

4:50 p.m. leave work, fight traffic, take mail to the mail box, head to daycare to retrieve the smallest of tots, stop by Peeler and/or the library to pick up the growing and slightly confused adolescent, stop at Kroger for some essentials, wait in line way too long, sing the "green grass grew all around" song with mini me on the way back to the gas hog, hope the annoying teenagers aren't standing around in the street asking to be target practice as I turn down my street...

5:30 p.m.-ish walk in the door, open the fridge, start dinner, clean up the kitchen while I wait for dinner to sizzle, tell the smallest of tots to stay out of the fridge 22 times because dinner is almost done, let the pooch out to do her duty again, start another load of laundry, straighten the living room again, feed the fam

7:00 p.m. sit down, eat my cold dinner

7:15 p.m. play with the tots, put the tots to bed (smallish tot at 8pm, biggest emo tot at 9pm), Tae Bo for 45 minutes, watch whatever's on while I do dinner dishes, follow the smallest babe around for about 20 minutes, repeating over and over that it's time to get ready for bed, finally....sit down around 8:30 p.m.....breathe.

10:00 p.m.-ish stumble into bed where I have 6.2 inches of mattress and a corner of my favorite blanket to sleep with thanks to the 75 lb. pooch who thinks she's a lap dog...

11:00 p.m.-ish finally fall asleep...

1:30 a.m. let the whining hog of a dog out to pee since she couldn't keep her face out of my toilet before bed, watch her do her duty because she's so smart that if I walk away from the door the bitch will jump the fence, cuss all the way back to the bedroom, try to fall back to sleep

3:00 a.m. wake up to the sound of the dog licking herself, whining because she has to pee again. Ever see "Click"? Where in the world is my remote? Can't she just go out, do her duty and go back to bed? Does she have to walk around in circles for 10 minutes first? What is that all about anyway??? Then she comes in hanging her head like she knows she made me mad or something. I love that dog. She makes me feel as guilty as my children do.

4:30 a.m. wake up, yet again thinking I hear the dog but she's fast alseep, check on the tot and he's sleeping too, silence in the house. So what woke me up??? Ugh!! Try to get back to sleep...look at the clock one more time and it's about 5:15 a.m....

5:30 a.m. wake up and do it all over again.

And I'm looking for a second job because ..........I'm not busy enough??? I need a vacation. Or a good therapist. And definitely another bottle of Tylenol.