...Or at least a WAHM. Anything but a WAWM (work at work mom--I just made that up).

I make this statement having fully accepted that it may result in my name being crossed off the guest list for the Supermom Soiree that I assume occurs annually. I have not yet been invited. Quite frankly, I don't care if I am invited to join ladies discussing how they grow their own fruits and vegetables, cook and can them, all after a typical 10.5 hour day in the office; just in time to give four children baths, pedicures and manicures, and make wild, passionate love to their husbands. I "don't do" fake people well.

...It all started on Monday. Because of our faith, my family does not celebrate Halloween. Though our five year old daughter was struggling to understand this, she was excited that our church was providing an alternative with candy, food, games and live music that night.

Halloween is a big deal at her school, so much so that her class dresses up and goes trick-or-treating around the campus. Instead, I took my daughter to work with me for a few hours. She really gets a kick out of going to my "work" and was well behaved during a team meeting she had to sit through.

We got to her classroom later that morning and immediately two of her classmates yelled, "Gabrielle! You missed trick-or-treating! You missed candy!"

She turned her pitiful eyes toward me. She knew she would miss trick-or-treating, but it still hurt to hear it from her friends. Then, she saw a princess costume hanging in another classmate's cubby and pointed to it with those same pitiful eyes. Meanwhile, I got a text message from a coworker that the group I'd be traveling with for a hospital visit was ready to leave. I needed to hurry, and tried my best to quickly console my daughter.

I ran to the car and thought, "I sure hate leaving her today. I wish I could have kept her home."

But I couldn't have. This trip had been rescheduled because of me and it wasn't a good time to pull the Mommy Card and bail.

I was also wondering how my 14 month old son was doing at daycare. After almost two months there, he was still giving Academy Award-worthy, back-arching and fall-out performances every morning I dropped him off. That day, he was also recovering from a cold, and though his mucus was clear and he had no fever that morning, dropping him off and being greeted at the door by his classmate who seemed to be drinking snot pouring down from her nose made my stomach ache with guilt.

The hospital visit was going well when I received a text from my husband to check my email about an afternoon full of Halloween activities my daughter was scheduled to attend with her class. The afterschool coordinators heard that I brought her to school late to miss trick-or-treating and wanted us to be aware that they would be celebrating Halloween with a parade and party. If I couldn't pick her up, she'd have to be taken to a classroom with children and teachers she didn't know or participate in these activities.