Just when I thought I’d make it through a Friday without a major issue at work, I learned of something that did not make me happy. At all. So, instead of leaving work breathing a sigh of relief that the week was over, I left work frustrated that I’d have yet another problem to deal with on Monday.

After work, I picked up the family unit to go to the Verizon store and dinner. The screen on Chloe’s phone was damaged and we wanted to see if we could get the phone replaced, since she hadn’t dropped it. No go, of course, because it was cracked and that’s not a manufacturer’s defect. As we were talking to the Verizon employee, Chloe was hounding us about replacing her disabled phone with one of our old blackberries. And at one point I turned to her and said, not as softly as I would have liked, “Shut up.”

Needless to say, the salesperson overheard and I felt more than a little mortified. Chloe didn’t seemed phased by my inappropriate admonition, which bothered me even more because it implied that she’s used to such admonitions out of my mouth.

This all comes after Chloe missed the bus this morning, which also elicited a fair amount of cursing and yelling on my part, since I had to be at Sophie’s parent-teacher conference at around the same time. I apologized to Chloe after the morning’s outburst, but I still feel awful.

I need balance and calm, and to stop feeling completely overwhelmed day in and day out. There’s too much going on and too little time, and my family is getting short shrift. Does it ever get easier?