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Another week has passed and we are drawing ever nearer the summer holidays. I don't know whether to look forward to them - not having to frogmarch everyone into school uniform - or dread them as I am not entirely sure I have covered all childcare eventualities. At the moment, my mum and partner are sharing the load and my sister has also pitched in, plus there is the chance of a holiday playscheme at the end of August and we are going away for a week. I have also just found out that one of the temporary jobs I have by some miracle or other that I overlooked does allow holiday time. I hadn't even looked at the small print - when do I have time for that? - and had assumed that you don't qualify for holiday unless you have worked at a temping agency for at least a year. I feel almost giddy at the thought that I have clocked up eight full days of holiday.

This week I had one of those disaster days that seem to come around so very often. I locked myself out of the house at precisely the time I was expecting two important phone calls. Plus I forgot to take my raincoat and it was the day it never stopped raining. Usually it only rains at dropping off time or picking up time. It might drizzle the rest of the day, but it saves up the big deluges for the school run. You can be sure that God is not a mother.

After crawling through undergrowth and nearly being decapitated by next door's fence, I managed to find some wire from our neighbour to wiggle through the letterbox and gained entrance to the house just as the phone was ringing. I had been contemplating a day spent in the car with the PDA I got for a job which required total access at all times to email. It would be great if I actually understood anything about how the PDA works. My partner, of whom more later, showed me at the weekend how to switch it off. I had just been switching off the screen until then and so had to turn off the volume in important meetings in case it rang.

Prior to getting the PDA, I had developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of internet cafes in London and could sniff one out in a five-mile radius. Libraries are good. Unfortunately, in the bigger ones you have to book your slot in advance. This has led to some interesting situations. I was once doing a job where I could be called at any time but crucially only paid for when I was called, and it was the school holidays. I had been called previously in the school disco, in a forest on a weekend break, in a toilet with toddler daughter poised delicately over the loo - it was not, as I soon ascertained, the best job for someone with children. I had popped out at lunchtime to get the school uniform, anticipating no calls for the hour it would take.

Unfortunately, I got an urgent call in Asda followed by an urgent demand to send an email. I rushed to the local library, booked my slot and waited. I did most of the work and sent the email, but had to wait for it to be okayed. And wait and wait. My hour was up. I booked another slot. I got 20 minutes. The log-in didn't work. That wasted 10 minutes, then toddler daughter [who was indeed with me because of illness] demanded to go to the toilet. I had to rebook. I must have been there several hours just to send one email. I never ventured out again.

Anyway, that was a past bad day. This week's day, while briefly improving during working hours, got worse after school. I had to head over to Harlow to the opticians with Rebel daughter. It was wet, bonkers daughter fell asleep in the car, it was hard to park, it was raining a lot, my trousers were sticking to my legs. You get the picture. We got there five minutes late. The manager at the opticians stared at us crossly. "You are late," she intoned harshly. It was true. We were bad people. I pleaded traffic. She gave me a form and I sat down. Suddenly, toddler daughter leapt to her feet with the dreaded words "I need a wee wee NOW". I went to the manager who said there was no toilet on the premises [hard to believe], we could go next door to the cafe, but if our names were called we would need to rebook. "You were late," she said again to emphasise the gravity of the offence. I asked what she suggested I do and whether she would like toddler daughter to do a wee wee NOW in the middle of her floor. She repeated the rebooking mantra. I left, vowing never to return. Obviously, I blamed my partner. He had booked the appointment at a time which was going to be hard to make. I am now reconsidering, though, after a friend read my blogs and said he comes across as "not really doing anything". I feel I must put in a bit of good pr for him.

He's actually very helpful and looks after the kids on Fridays and cooks fantastically well and is generally very supportive. He is Spanish and so he does need a siesta every day if at all possible. He does shave a lot and he is always the last person out of the house, despite me getting four people ready and him only having to look after himself. But, like many men, he does find multi-tasking a challenge and we are now living in a post-single tasking world. He finds toddler daughter [now referring to herself as "a big girl"] particularly challenging. She appears to have gone into hyperdrive recently. I think, in addition to a growth spurt, her brain has spurted. She is very, very bouncy and asks endless questions about everything but principally the properties of milk and its relevance to cereal. She won't stay in her bed and even when she goes to bed late, she wakes up early. This Sunday I was in the middle of a very pleasant deep dream about soft beds and sleeping late when the words "I need a poo poo NOW" floated into my consciousness and I opened half an eye to see a very bouncy person clutching her nappy. I am finding that my patience by the end of a day dealing with a billion questions about milk, cereal and the excretory system is wearing a bit thin. It's the combination of one small person on acid, a bonkers one asking questions about God and Santa [she thinks they are related. Are they????] and Rebel daughter needing serious conversations about the tangled and traumatic web of school relationships. Added to that is my partner trying to tell me about his new job - a total waste of time as he gets only four words into a conversation when we are interrupted by a cacophony of voices demanding either food, drink, a potty, someone to skip with them or some torturous general knowledge question to which I have to fake the answer. All I want to do is park my brain somewhere and watch the mermaid programme.