First of all, can I please just mention that I am enjoying finding the time to write every day during the month of November but that it leaves little time to actually have the life I want to live and write about? Geez. It’s exhausting to just finally sit down at 9:53 to write after a full day’s work that began with an administrative meeting (where I licked the maple frosting off a donut in front of a colleague and didn’t feel one bit of guilt about it) followed by a full day of working on projects (where I continued to work on decorating my new office with a gorgeous antique desk that my co-workers asked “Hey, does Ben Franklin work here?” and I didn’t stab any of them NOT EVEN ONCE) and then ended with attending a party at my friend Krista’s house for Arbonne products (where I came home smelling like a freaking orange I am not even kidding).

See? That paragraph just there took a full three minutes out of me. And I’m dying to be finished writing because my youngest son has decided to pull out all the episodes of “Dead Like Me” on DVD and now I really want to watch it with him.

But that’s not the guilt I’m here to write about right now. It’s mainly the guilt of being BUSY. The guilt of having a long list of To Do items that never seem to be fully crossed off the paper. The guilt of being a working mom who forgot to buy toilet paper on the way home or even pick up something to make out of that hamburger meat that I fried up the other day. The guilt of handing my mom some money to take the boys out to dinner with so that I could do supervisory duty and make it to the party where everyone smelled of citrus by the end. A mother’s guilt is never done. A wise woman once told me that every mother has a scarlet letter – it’s a giant G stamped on her forehead for the guilt she always feels. But isn’t it the point to find the time for the things that matter? Isn’t it worth something that my children are well-adjusted and healthy and lead relatively happy lives? Of course it is. It’s the measuring of that time that leaves much to be desired. Noticing the gap of where things have fallen is where I get caught up and where I need to stop myself.

The guilt goes away or finally finds a place to rest but it’s not going to be with me if I have anything to do with it. I’ll have to, as a mom, remember the good times and be satisfied that my kids are ok with the ship-in-the-night parenting that I sometimes do when the To Do list is getting Done. What eased it tonight was getting home late and seeing the whole family in the living room. For the last week and a half my oldest, Mallory, has worked two jobs, been to visit friends in St. Louis for a concert, and babysat in her spare time. When she can, she squeezes in time to see her boyfriend. To be fair, I’m sure I taught her to be this way. She’s not lost any of her sense of humor while crossing off items on her own To Do list. When I walked in the door I teased her as I noticed her sitting on the couch. “Oh. Is that Mallory? Is Mallory here? Hmm. Where have I seen her before?”

“Coming out of your vagina.”