Multitasking

A key survival skill of adulthood - and especially motherhood - is mastering the art of multitasking. At work, when I am not wearing my "mom hat," I've somehow got this one pretty much figured out. But sadly, on the homefront, not so much. It is not for lack of trying, I just find it really hard to juggle more than one thing at a time.

Perhaps it is the mental exhaustion at the end of a long work day. Perhaps it is three males all talking to me at once - and for the most part all asking me for something. But in a nutshell, there just are days when I know my fuse is simply too short. I am too tired. And I get frazzled if you look at me the wrong way.

So I need to accept that I will never be *that* woman who can gracefully cook an elaborate family meal and have it ready every night at 6:00 p.m. sharp, while simultaneously helping the kids with homework and overseeing piles of laundry. The more likely scenario in my house: dinner never makes it to the table and we end up eating cereal, I lose my patience five minutes into the "practice spelling test," (convinced my son will never know how to spell the word "diary" depsite the fact that all he reads is "Diary of a Wimpy Kid"), and the clothes stay in the dryer too long and end up hopelessly wrinkled and unfortunately a little bit smaller.

So imagine my delight when it occured to me that I could effectively multitask during Alex's recent soccer practice. I was almost giddy that I had the brain cells left in my head at the end of the day to figure out that while he practiced nearby I could either a) sit in my soccer mom chair staring at my Blackberry, or b) get off my duff and run around the school track. I am so glad I thought of this a full 2 minutes before soccer practice started so I could quickly change into my running clothes - and then proceed to play it off like it was my plan all along.

Of course we were painfully late for practice, but I still managed to run around the track at his school (and by "run" I mean jogged a little, walked a little) for just about 2 miles. I can't tell you how great it felt to get these two things done at the same time. Could there be hope for me yet?

Miles run since last update: 33
Miles run total this year: 106
Miles to go: 259