Ellie who is now napping woke up this morning wanting to play make-believe. The game was to go as follows. There is a mommy and two daughters. The mommy does everything for one of the daughters and nothing for the other daughter. Ouch. Point taken, I am spending way too much time with the baby and not enough time with Ellie. I better put writing on the back burner for another day at least and yet, I made a promise to myself to write something every day. I found myself becoming impatient with Ellie’s guilt trip. She spent the morning testing me to see if I would try to squeeze in a moment at the computer so she did everything she could to keep me away. Even wiping herself after peeing took thirty seconds too long. She stood up from the toilet and asked me, “How many squares again Mommy, three?” I told her that three squares was a good amount so as not to clog the toilet. She detached one slow square after the other making sure she didn’t fray from the perforations in the seams. I looked on with the baby in one arm while burning myself with my metal walk-around tea cup. I feel as though I have no patience for anything these days. I took the two girls to Starbucks this morning to pick up a donation for the preschool dance and walking back to our vehicle made me almost lose whatever marbles I have remaining. I was armed with Chloe in her car seat dangling from my locked, right elbow, two, tall, tazo chai lattes with soy stacked one on top of the other in my right hand, chin resting on top of those, my enormous purse stocked with a spare diaper, wipes, wallet, hundreds of rogue receipts, chapstick, and a corkscrew over my left shoulder and the Starbucks donation in my left hand. I’m not sure how I fished out the car keys and had enough strength in one of my fingers to press the unlock symbol but the lights flashed in victory and I knew the doors could be opened. Now wedged in between a dirty silver mini-van and our even dirtier, silver mini-van, I requested that Ellie pull on the lever and the door would slide open. She stood sniffing the box that housed her chocolate cupcake that I treated her to and I’m sure reached for the door when she processed my instructions but it was never going to be fast enough for me. I politely asked her a second time to try to open the door. The lattes were swaying, the baby started to kick rocking her chair and I could see all of the pyramids I had built collapsing around me in a parking lot of onlookers. “Ellie, try again, just pull the handle out.” Again, she sniffed her cupcake. “Ellie, pull the lever towards you.” She pulled it towards the back of the van rendering the handle useless. “Ellie, try pulling the handle out and then back.” She pulled it back, brown icing dipped nose and all. “Try again SWEETHEART,” this time, my voice shaking. I was looking less human and more like the waiter on Sesame Street who always dropped everything he was trying to balance, crashing to the ground. She pulled it back, as hard as she could, almost enjoying the feeling of being able to swing her entire body from the handle and have nothing happen. The door remained closed. I squatted down and back trying to steady the coffees but to no avail. The cups tipped, the donation fell and onlookers did nothing to even pretend to help. They just scurried ahead, one step closer to their double, decaf, mocha madness while I stood sighing and slid open the van door with nothing but my coffee breath. Later that evening, my six year old stepped into the bathtub and yelled, “Mommy, that’s freakin’ hot!” Where the fuck would she have heard that? The wheels seem to be falling off.