"Working" at home

What a joke -- I have two projects due tomorrow, so I've been trying desperately to pick up an hour here, an hour there all week, with mixed success. No mix today. I sat down to start working at 9:30 this morning, after feeding and changing the kids and feeding myself and getting things a bit straightened up, and exactly seven minutes later Maggie bonked her head on something and started howling. Stop, pick her up, console, put her down, endure more howling, try to refocus on "To illustrate Cellerator utility concretely, consider the kMech model for the synthesis of the amino acids leucine, isoleucine and valine within the bacterium E. coli. One important reaction in that pathway..."

The phone rings. Dispatch call, go back to "...in that pathway is the 'ping-pong bi-bi' enzyme mechanism of the enzyme ?-acetohydroxyacid synthase, an enzyme that catalyzes the condensation of one molecule of pyruvate and one molecule of ?-ketobutyrate to form one molecule of ?-aceto-?-hydroxybutyrate." Read twice to make sense of it, start editing to make it readable; then cue Lazarus: "Mama, want a vitamin! Now!" No, you've already had one today. Would you like a drink? (God knows I want one.) "No, want go outside." Go get your shoes for mama. "No WANT shooooooooooes!" (Runs away.)

Back to editing. Boy lets in dog, who sticks her cold wet nose in my belly and then starts barking at cat who is impatiently twining around my leg because the food and water I gave him this morning is now spread all over the kitchen floor, with Maggie in the middle of it. Get up, trip over cat, grab dog by collar and put her outside to Lazarus' shrieks of "WANT LUCY INSIIIIIIIDE, MAMA!," pick up Maggie who's now soaking wet and howling again because she WANTS to splash in the dirty water and eat soggy cat food, park her in playpen, clean up the sloppy mess on the floor (scooting Lazarus out of the way as he stomps around in the water), get more food and water for the cat who is now attacking my leg, retrieve Maggie and change her all over again....

The days, oh, the days.