Once a failure, always a failure

When the prep work for my job pick up the week before I have to start, I get a little crazy.  I'm trying to spend as much time with my kids as I can but I also have people counting on me to do certain things from home.  So when I get a new draft of a script, this shortly before shooting, I have to rearrange my day around breaking it down.  The trouble is, my kids don't understand that.

Before I had kids, I hated this time before work.  The dread of knowing my life is about to change drastically and not knowing how well I'll adjust.  We have a lot of new faces this season so it's not exactly like I'm going home.  In many ways, I'm starting all over again and that's never easy.

So on that ominous note, I'm also going crazy arranging child care, interviewing more sitters for the fall and generally trying to get everything in order before I go back in the trench work life of 70 hour work weeks 60 miles from my home.  Yes, I'm so lucky I have a job but trying to juggle it all often feels like if there's a hell, this is.

Today, I really thought I couldn't handle it anymore and I still haven't fully recovered.  My kids have barely eaten today, in part because I haven't had time to go grocery shopping and then right when we were ready to go, in came the new script.

I met a fabulous sitter for the fall yesterday and went ahead and hired her today.  We talked at great length yesterday and I feel lucky, but shortly after I hired her and she accepted, her requests started texting in.  I sure do with we felt comfortable discussing these things face to face these days because texting sure eats up a ton of time.  I hope it works out with her but I'm not sure she fully understands how TV schedules change constantly.  She wants her "schedule" and I'll give her one but it might change drastically every other week so what's the point of getting locked into it now?  But I have to go into this with positivity because she's great but I also know these babysitters have me over a barrel.

I love my kids but Oh to be C and never, ever have to arrange child care.  He can go to work and earn money and never have to interview sitters, call references or deal with sitter demands and requests.

As the primary caregiver, I enjoy a relationship with my children he will never have.  I get this.  I am usually happy in my role.  Today, I have to remind myself of this because I'm so thoroughly and completely overwhelmed.

I wanted to be a writer, I'm not.  I wanted to be in a happy, stable family relationship, I'm not.  I wanted to find a different job, one that would enable me some level of flexibility in terms of my schedule.  I don't think that will ever happen.  When I finally managed to drag my kids to the store today, I really thought I'd start screaming and never stop.  Elena won't potty train and I'm tired of trying to get her to do it.  If I let her run around in underwear, she pees.  I finally thought we were getting somewhere last week when trapped inside by the heat, she actually spent one entire day accident free.  The following day she peed everywhere and now refuses to get on the potty.  If I stick her on, she does nothing.  After six years in diapers, I really don't think I can handle diapers anymore.  I hate how much space they take up, how she just lies there while I clean up her crap, how she's not even trying at all.

Of course the store had toys and of course the girls cried because I wouldn't get them any.  Of course walking out of the store involved my having to haul Elena across a parking lot because there was no room in the cart with all the paper towels and diapers we need to clean up after her.  Naturally on Friday, the traffic was atrocious and the humidity made it feel like it was 100 degrees.

I screamed obscenities at other drivers in the car and scared the girls with my bad behavior.  I laughed at myself and told them I was acting stupid and they should know by watching me never to act like that.     But inside I know the truth.  I'm a failure at everything, even motherhood.  I honestly felt today if I had anyone, anyone who wanted to raise my kids, I'd let them.

Eliza cleaned the playroom all by herself today while I timed the script.  It's even clean enough to get a vacuum in which is something of a miracle.  It was all motivated by her desire to get a certain toy and now she's demanding we return to the store immediately for her reward, a reward Elena really can't share in because after three months of trying, I'm really sick of the fact that she won't even try to use the toilet.  But I don't have time to go back to the store, I don't have time for the 10,000 things that have to get done.  I don't feel like making dinner and we ate out last night.

That's motherhood.  Being a failure and still not being able to walk away from this job.  Tomorrow will be a better day.  It has to be.

Don't Dream it's Over

So here we are in late June, a wonderfully happy time.  One of the perks of season one of Smash was the fabulous northern California vacation I was able to share with my daughters.  We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, took a day trip to a redwood forest, ate countless bowls of clam chowder, cruised the San Francisco Bay and toured the streets of Chinatown in a motorized duck.  This photo is our only view of the Pacific Ocean from high above Muir Beach.  My daughters were marvelous, truly, and we shared a time we won't ever forget.

In less than a week, I return to work.  And it feels like a death.  I know that's not what it is at all.  I am lucky.  I have a job.  This job provides health insurance, rent money, clothes and fine dinners for us all. This year it even took us across the country on a fabulous adventure.  I like the people I work with.  Sure, the hours are long and shooting outside all night long sucks but sometimes, those night shoots can feel like a party.  There are more pros then cons when it comes to my job.

But let me get back to those long hours.  When a typical day starts at 7am and ends around 9pm and I live too far from where I work?  I don't see my kids for five days in a row.  As one friend said, I leave for work and they're sleeping.  I get home and they're sleeping.

Today was the first read through of season 2 of Smash.  Read throughs are fun.  The cast, executive types and various peon types such as myself gather to hear the cast read the dialogue of the episode as scripted.  I took the girls to New York, enlisted my old babysitter to watch them, and then attended the read through.  I love our cast.  I hugged recent Tony winner Christian Borle.  I chatted with Debra Messing and Kat McPhee and sang happy birthday to Angelica Huston.  We were all happy to be together and Angelica dedicated her wish to us, saying she already had all she wished for and wanted us to fulfill our wishes.  This is the truth; this is the kind of person she is.

The script was good and it set a hopeful tone for the season of the show.  We have a new regime and there's a lot about the old regime I greatly admire and miss.  But I do love this cast and even with a new regime, there's just something about this show that I love so much.  I guess because it's about a group of people with show biz dreams and I was once young with show biz dreams and I see myself in them.

In this, there is a greater heartbreak that I can't go into as far as my own dreams.  Let's just say I am a writer and I know I can write for this show and I don't think I will ever have the chance.  And that breaks my heart, just breaks my heart in ways I can't describe.  I am happy to be a part of this show but I will always be on the outside.  And the truth is, I want to be on the inside not just to feel creatively fulfilled but as a writer, I could see my children more.

Today I left Elena with a new sitter and she was okay with it.  At first I thought this because she liked this sitter.  Now I think it's because I've been home for three months and she's gotten to trust that when I leave her with the sitter, I do return on the same day.  She's not going three, four or five days without seeing me.  So now that I've got her trust back, what do I do but rip it all right out from underneath her. Next week I go back to work on Tuesday and that's it, I probably won't see her until Saturday.

I only have a sitter through the end of summer.  I've had no luck finding a sitter for the fall.  So I may have to quit abruptly in the fall anyway if I can't find a sitter.  I tell myself I'm okay with this but I'm not.  I can write for this show and though it's highly unlikely, I might have a shot writing for this show. But it won't happen if I have to quit in seven weeks.  I made it through last season and I did make some headway but if I don't make it through this season, that's it.  All the time I've spent here will be lost.

So tonight, as I write this, my heart is breaking in a thousand different ways.  I called my mother to talk about what this all feels like and she listened in her current distracted state, too overwhelmed by how shitty she feels to care too much.  Without her, I have no one to call to talk about this stuff.  Without her, I am more alone than I can ever describe.  She has been the only person to share in my personal triumphs and tragedies.  C was there for a lot of really big moments in my life and a lot of the time he was really quite great.  But a lot of the time he was like he was the night I labored overnight with Elena.    It was too soon to give me an epidural and I was having heavy contractions every two minutes.  I begged him to just sit near me and hold my hand so I could get through the contractions.  He did this for about 30 minutes before collapsing on the chair to sleep.  He just couldn't stay up all night, not even with his daughter getting ready to emerge into the world.

All I want is to make a living as a writer.  It's all I've ever wanted but now I need it like a life raft.  Because being a writer also enables me to be a mom too.  I feel like Elena's grown up so much in just a few weeks.  I don't want to rip the world from out beneath her feet again.

Please, universe, please help me here.