It is quiet at our house tonight. Very very quiet.

It is the kind of quiet I frequently long for. My husband has whisked the girls away on a daddy/daughter weekend with “no Mommies allowed.” I have a fire in the fireplace. The dogs are snoring in the kitchen. The in-laws are out. I have been able to watch “Knocked Up” in the family room without worrying about little ears. I made what I wanted for dinner and no one stuck their fingers on my plate or spilled anything while I ate. It is heaven.

And I am already counting the hours until it ends.

Mommydom, it seems, has made me schizophrenic. When the noise and chaos swirls around me I think that all I want is some time alone. What I wouldn’t do to finish a t.v. show, a book, a blog post, a sentence, a thought, a trip to the bathroom, without interruption. I complain loudly to anyone who will listen that I am being slowly driven insane by my lovely boisterous brood and fantasize about one-bedroom apartments that are neat, clean, airy and where “Mommy” is not uttered. Architectural Digest, Classic Homes and other periodicals featuring homes free of the detritus of children are my Mommy-porn. Those houses look so clean, so organized, so placid, so quiet.

Motherhood, I am ashamed to admit, has dragged into the harsh light of day how selfish I am. I get annoyed at the loss of alone time, at constant interruptions, at the bickering, at decisions by committee and at the mess, chaos and noise. I feel positively Grinch-like most days thinking, “Oh the noise, noise, noise, noise.” If there is one thing I hate, it’s the noise, noise, noise, noise. And the vomiting.

On those all too rare occasions when I get my ardent wish to be left the hell alone, I am utterly lost. I don’t know how to “do” unstructured me time any more. So this Saturday night has found me wrapping the girls’ Christmas presents, changing their closets over to fall and winter clothing, straightening up their playroom, talking to their goldfish and flipping through iPhoto looking at their smiling faces.

Granted, I am doing this with “Knocked Up” on the television and freshly pedicured toes, but the facts are that I am not me without them and “me time” now feels less like an activity unto itself and more like an intermission in the real show.

Our three-ring circus will roll back into town tomorrow afternoon. I will try to use this intermission to stretch my legs, go the bathroom alone and maybe hit the snack bar. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting the moments until the noise and chaos – my real “me time” resumes.