As I type this, it’s 7 p.m. Kevin is eating dinner, having arrived at his usual late day at work (where he starts at 6:30 a.m.). The boys are upstairs playing, awaiting their bath. My fingers are sore from practicing really awful, pathetic attempts at chord changes on the guitar (which I’ve neglected and re-scheduled and procrastinated about until finally returning back to it—and whenever I do, it’s always so fun and I wonder why I procrastinated). My back hurts, my feet hurt, but mostly, I’ve done everything that needed doing today. To say that I am utterly, physically, emotionally, intellectually exhausted would be a grand understatement. Wah, wah. I’m this tired every night. It’s this hard every day. Nolan and Aaron are both being extremely challenging in unique ways (via defiance and curiosity, respectively), and with the two of them tag-teaming on me all day, in addition to their eerie tendency to simultaneously crap their pants moments before we’re due to leave the house, sometimes it’s more than I can stand.

My writing career is limping along, as is my weight loss progress, though I did exercise today. I turned in my latest parenting column to the local weekly, and I find myself feeling really dissatisfied with that particular body of work. I can’t blame the paper’s stringent “G” rating or septegenarian editors who insist columns should follow AP news reporting style; I simply don’t feel a swell of pride when I consider the columns. My hopes of being the Erma Bombeck-meets-Dave Barry of Woodstock never materialized. I also haven’t sent a pitch to an editor in weeks. I have done a considerable amount of non-writing work over the past month or so, which means I can pay my student loans for a couple of months, which is a really, really good thing.

None of these things, not the busy-ness of my crazy life with these feral, curious, defiant, loving, messy kids, not the insanely early waking schedule, not the non-writing gigs, are responsible for the lack of pitches. It’s just sheer terror; when I start to make progress, I walk away. “You sabotage yourself; that’s your pattern,” said someone who knows me well. And I know the only way out is through. The only way to un-block writer’s block (I use the term lightly here) is to WRITE. Sure, I could use a business plan. I could stand to be more organized. I could also use a tummy tuck, daily orgasm, and 10 hours of sleep per night. But the only way my limping career is going to advance its gait is if I move it forward, one foot at a time.