When the wheels fall off... the track wheel that is

I don't have much patience for whinging (or gossip, but that's another story). I had lunch today with K, a feisty colleague who is Mum to not one but two gorgeous little girls. K, being the efficient lass that she is, popped them both out at once too. We were talking about someone she knows who is pregnant for the third time and has taken to her Mum's house for the last trimester because she's a bit tired and needs to lie down. Ah, bless. K and I both scoffed at this lack of gumption, us being both of a certain nationality and certain type of upbringing where complaining is seen as a sign of weakness and is punishable by death.

However, I confess that today I feel a lot like complaining. My life is starting to feel like a conveyor belt that seems to be getting faster and faster. I never much liked the Generation Game, I have found something inherently scary about Bruce Forsyth since I was a small child, but I am increasingly finding myself shouting the working Mum equivalent of "teasmaid, TV, hockey stick, cuddly toy" at my life as I desperately try to remember everything I need to do.

So, this morning, for the first time in my career I found myself late to a meeting. Not just a bit late, but full on halfanhourlateanditswithmybossandlotsofimportantpeopleshit late. The cause? My Blackberry broke last night. My life is now organised to the millisecond and if I don't have something to write it all down in and flash and vibrate at me violently to remind me to be somewhere then my life simply stops. Everything goes into my Blackberry, I even put my Sunday school teaching dates into it. Without it to organise my life I am lost.

My assistant called IT to get it fixed this morning, I couldn't bear to call and she had to prise my fingers off it. Someone came and took my broken little device away, and as I wept and made the man from IT to promise me that he wouldn't leave me on my own for too long, I realised the only option is to cancel all meetings for two days until I get the new one.