Do you ever have one of those days when you seriously question your choices in life and start wishing you had applied for that Watson Fellowship, traveled the world and, finally, settled in the South of France to write novels?

I recently had this email exchange with an old friend of mine from college:

Her: Motherhood seems really tough, but I think that you seem to be doing an excellent job!

Me: You would not have thought so this a.m. Z didn't want to get dressed, so I packed up his clothes to take to daycare. I put on his jacket and socks and he put on one of his shoes before he noticed he still had pajamas on! He started crying and dressed himself in the mud room. Then we got to daycare, and E got mad because I unbuckled his seatbelt for him and he wanted to do it himself. So I said, "fine! Just stay in the car all day." Z and I started walking toward the daycare, when I looked back E looked all sad, so I went back and got him, and did that thing you see moms do, where I dragged him too fast by his arm and he fell on his knee. Ugh...work mornings are the worst!

Her: That sounds like a fabulous morning! I totally cracked up reading that. Our morning went like this- we woke up at 7 and had coffee on the deck and listened to the birds until it was time to get ready for work.

Wow...coffee on the deck listening to birds? Other than the fact that I don't drink coffee (but tea would be fine), and it's still usually too cold at 7 in the morning to sit on the deck, and if you did sit out there, the mosquitoes would devour you alive, it sounds pretty g-d fantastic.

I was daydreaming about a quiet deck morning again today, which started out like this:

6:30 a.m. Get out of bed to change and wash the pee-soaked sheets in the twins bed.
6:45 a.m. Throw one twin in the tub and wash dried poop crumbs off the floor (don't ask). Convince M to get dressed. Dress both twins (without incident), and clip one's nails.
7:00 Try to get self dressed while listening to tussle over breakfast downstairs. Go down to find E moaning over not enough cereal in bowl. Add more to his bowl and milk. Pour Z's cereal. E continues to cry, wail and otherwise carry on, "That not enough!" Take away his cereal and eat it myself.
7:15 Go upstairs to get socks and last-minute items. Hear further crying and breaking pottery. Go downstairs to find one of my polka-dot bowls shattered on the floor
7:25 Sweep up shards and get M out the door.
7:30 Put E (still crying), who is tearing the couch cushions apart and throwing them across the room, out on the front step and tell him he can come back in when he's ready to put the couch back together.
7:35 Get stuff together, let E (still crying) back in.
7:40 Give Z a banana. E puts couch back together and grabs cereal bag, scattering Mesa Sunrise flakes all over kitchen and mudroom.
7:50 Put cereal on plastic container and give him a banana.
7:55 Put his shoes on and send him outside. Drive to daycare.
8:00 Tell Z he can take the monster truck, the airplane and the batman into daycare, but not the two cars which are M's. Z starts crying and cries all the way up the stairs, into daycare and follows me back down the stairs still crying.
8:10 Drive to work daydreaming about drinking tea and listening to birds on the deck. In Maui.