parenting and the arts...balance. argh!

So life is all about balance, right? My daily struggle is often about fighting to make the time in the studio that I need. It often means other things, like email & blogging, etc. fall by the wayside a bit.

Attended a wonderful panel discussion on The Apocalypse on Weds. night by a panel of artists, designers and a writer for  National Geographic. The main artist there was Marina Zurkow, whose amazing video "Slurb" was/is playing at the Women and Their Work Gallery where the discussion was hosted. Incredible video, thought-provoking discussion.
http://womenandtheirwork.org

But the next morning, (and I do believe I was somehow being "punished" by life for having some fun and a nice night out ;) ) I was up at 6am sharp. Thursdays are fertilize all the trees day, and getting ready to head out to a nearby town to work as an art assistant for a UT sculpture prof.- right when I get home from that, I had two massage clients back to back. So all in all a busy day. No problem, I have my routine down. The only thing that made this particular morning different is that my son had a book review due. Before I left for the panel discussion, I gave him explicit instructions about the final touches that needed to be done. I sneaked into his room at 6:30am, and jumped on his computer to print out the report for him. Only to see that he did not do anything to the review the night before. What did he do? He watched the "300" movie with my fiance. You might ask why he couldn't print this out himself? Our network printer is not set up with his computer (this is to save our ink from the many many things he deems "very important" to print) and I need to email it as an attachment to myself to print from my computer.
Anyway, I immediately shook him awake and of began a monologue on my frustrations about him not finishing. I imagine that none of my words penetrated his barely awake head. So I wrapped it up by telling him he needed to get out of bed now and finish the report,and headed back downstairs.
25minutes later, no sign of my son at the breakfast table. My internal "mom" clock is going off and I head back upstairs to his room. Only to find him ready generally ready for school, but with the book review not touched. AH!! What was he doing? I was greeted with the usual answer of "I don't know". As I lecture him yet again (why? perhaps for my own sanity), I noticed that he has really horrible breath. I mean seriously disgusting. So I stopped lecturing to tell him to brush his teeth.
2 minutes later, he ran out of the bathroom saying, "where is my toothpaste?!"
The first thing I thought was, um, if you brushed your teeth last night then you should know where it is. When I asked this question I was greeted with "I believe so". Translation: "I believe so" means: "No, I did not, but I don't want to get in trouble for this so I will give a vague answer". He then proceeded to go to his closet and pull out his toothpaste, toothbrush and floss from the overnight back I packed for his sleepover last Saturday night. Let me repeat, Last Saturday Night- it was now Thursday morning. You do the math. Freak out time!
"Brush your teeth for 10mins- time it! and finish the damn book review so I can @*&$ print it!".
It was now 7:55. We had to leave in 10mins. I had not eaten breakfast, or pretty much finished anything I needed to do to get ready. Mad crazy rush time. My son appeared downstairs to let me know all is finished. Yay!
But wait, he decided to use a downloaded trial version of Microsoft Word on his computer for this report and my old clunker laptop converted this to.... wingdings!!!! awesome. Finally ended up printing it from the html showing from my email and it printed....sideways. Sideways it was. I didn't have time for it anymore. I handed it to my son, who at that point knew better than to say a word.

On the way to school, I informed him that he would be late, stopped by the coffee shop, dropped him off at school, and ate the best bagel and coffee I had ever tasted while on the way to work. Oh, and I sent a text message to my sister about the desire to beat my head into a wall over and over again. :).

And my family wonders why I often lock the door and put on headphones while in my studio??

As soon as I send this post, I will be happily in that space- getting in as much time as possible before heading to my "regular job" this afternoon.

Final moral? Even though my son is just shy of pre-teen... I cannot leave the house and expect things to actually happen.

The End.