I�m in familiar terrain. The panic of finishing last minute things I either haven�t had time to complete or have forgotten about until the eleventh hour. I�d like to say I hate it when I do this, but the fact is I actually like it. I like the rush of accomplishment at the deadline and my ego takes less of a hit if I am unsuccessful, seeing as I left it to the last minute. It couldn�t be my best work. Could it?

For a while I had a job where my lust for that adrenaline rush was an asset rather than a liability. As the manager of an orchestra, crisis management was a major part of my job. Not only am I cool under pressure, but such pressure often frees me up to be creative with my solutions. I didn�t just tolerate it. I thrived on it. I think my major coup, though, was the day when one of our singers showed up late at a concert two hours from his home without his tails. Through some fluke, I happened to have a set in the trunk of my car. I�d borrowed them from one friend for another and hadn�t yet made the delivery. The day I pulled out the tails from my car 15 minutes before the performance was the day my orchestra learned that I could handle everything. It was really just dumb luck, but the subsequent respect of the orchestra was palpable. After staring at me for a moment like I�d just pulled a rabbit out of a hat without benefit of a magic wand, they applauded. It�s nice when others remind you that you�re competent at what you do.

But more than reminding myself of my abilities to handle pressure, being under the gun of a deadline reminds me of all the times when I could be flexible and drop everything to do what needed to be done. I miss the flexibility sometimes, the feeling of total freedom it offered. I love my family, I love being a wife and mother, but sometimes I really miss being able to decide, at the last minute, to, say, drive across country. And then actually do it.

There�s certain music that instantly brings home the ache to just run, not away, not to, just the action of going. It�s mostly music that reminds me of the long solo drives from my parents� Midwestern house to my summer job on Cape Cod. The exhilaration of that first view of the ocean, the slight quickening of the heart upon viewing the word Saginaw spelled out in flowers on the first Cape rotary. That sense of arrival after a long journey and the anticipation of an adventure to come, mixed with the raw power of the ocean and summer sun.

I remember reading somewhere not too long ago, in the context of an article explaining why so few people appeared in pictures in magazines like Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living, that what American women today want more than anything else is to be quiet and alone. So I suppose I am no different than anyone else in occasionally plotting an entirely hypothetical escape. Thanks to an understanding husband who works at home, I probably get more alone time than most married moms of preschoolers. But once you�re a parent, your kid is there even when he�s not there. There�s always a part of your brain, once reserved for you, that is devoted to planning dinner and remembering pediatrician appointments, even when you aren�t really paying attention to it.

Sometimes that part of the brain takes over, robbing other parts of needed attention. For example, I have for days been trying to come up with an interesting paper proposal to submit for a conference next spring. The eleventh hour is here, and I still have not written anything, nor have I come up with a particularly viable idea. I have a backup � a proposal already in the can, one I�ve submitted elsewhere. But surely I have more than one idea in my head. This is where I�m supposed to pull the beautiful and perfectly executed rabbit out of the hat. But instead of a rabbit, I�m finding a calendar, a dinner plate, and a sippy cup full of milk.

I try to remind myself that when things were simpler, when I was single and had nothing to do but work on my dissertation, I didn�t. I avoided. I didn�t know what to do with my hands, my time, the space I inhabited. I also ry to remember how fast any less than 100% positive comment from my advisor, often made offhand, the result of his bad day or my gross misinterpretation, would reduce me to the depths of despair. Perhaps it is simply a matter of always admiring the lawn on the other side of the fence.

But sometimes I miss the simplicity of being able to be working or not, as opposed to working at this or working at that, the ability to get in the car with a pile of CDs and drive and drive and drive. I am feeling like a caged animal today. Instead of pacing back and forth, I am listening to music with a lot of repetition � Marin Marais, Philip Glass, Bronski Beat. They soothe somewhat, but also remind me that some motion gets you nowhere, no matter how energetically applied.

I am holding two strings, stretched to breaking point, but no matter what I do, they don�t seem to tie.

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