Yesterday

I yelled at my daughter before 8:00 in the morning. She wouldn't give me a hug when I dropped her off at school. The egg I cracked for breakfast was rotten and I had to sprint out of the kitchen, gagging and shuddering and vowing to never eat eggs again. I always eat eggs for breakfast. After eating really well and working out *a lot* this week I weighed myself. I gained two and a half pounds. My preschool kids fought over the Legos. They never fight over the Legos.

It was shaping up to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I made chicken pot pie for dinner. "I hate chicken pot pie", Wilson said. At Target, I spent too much money. I didn't mean to spend too much money. I meant to bring a book and sit at Eliza's dance class, reading for two hours. I forgot my book and thought I'd go run an errand instead. My list said batteries, sun screen, sidewalk chalk, Armor-All and dryer sheets. That's not all that I came out of Target with. I missed the deadline for signing Eliza up for her much-anticipated summer class at the zoo. It's full, the zoo people said. No exceptions, they said. My sister, whom I adore, had planned to come to Boise with her five darling children for a long weekend. We were giddy with anticipation! Instead, she decided to stay home and celebrate her fifteenth wedding anniversary with her husband. Stupid anniversary.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

It rained really hard all night and made mud soup of my tiny carrot and green onion seeds in the garden. One of my piano students got mouthy. They never get mouthy. I left my running shoes out in the rain, the cat vomited on my bedroom floor and I'm terribly worried about this woman.

I thought about my first refuge when I'm overwhelmed. The one where I never got married, had children or became part of society. The one where I live in a cave in the mountains of northern Montana, throw rocks at anybody who comes near, and only emerge from the woods when I need to stock up on canned goods and toilet paper. I thought about why it might be that everyone I know has a tidy house and mine perpetually looks like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Or why, for a stay-at-home mom with "just" two kids, I can't manage to keep it all together.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. There's no getting around it.