Good mum, bad mum

I have just shut my children in the garden for 30 minutes. I didn't lock the door but near as damnit. 'Outside?' you're thinking. 'But that's good, that's healthy.' Yes, it is, but that's not why I did it. It is   Saturday morning and I need a cup of coffee, need half an hour to plan my day, to just... think. And they weren't being awful, but they were being LOUD, teasing each other, needling each other until one started to shout or scream and they would all erupt and...
So I've just marched them out of the back door into the garden. Sorry neighbours.
The thing is, I know that when I'm fully engaged, the whole parenting thing is actually much easier and also much more enjoyable. Take the time to sit down, do a puzzle, play a game, and they all respond brilliantly. But I don't always have time to do that. Okay, I rarely have time to to that. I have breakfast to make, breakfast to clear up, food to buy (husband is away, in-laws are coming for lunch tomorrow). I have work to do (I'm giving a workshop on 'how to write a thriller' on Monday at the Hay Literature Festival. Super exciting, but I need to plan, to think. I mean, I'd quite like to go to a workshop on how to write a thriller myself... Bit scary to think that I'm now apparently the expert), birthday parties to organise. Birthday presents. Damn, forgot to put that on the list.
The real problem here is not the children; it's me, trying to do too much and ending up feeling incredibly scattered, all over the place. Right now, as I'm writing, I'm thinking about the laundry basket piling up, the front gate that keeps banging and needs a new bolt, the edits that I need to get on with, the strategies I need to employ to get it into my daughter's head that she has to wipe front to back and not the other way around...
But actually, right now it's all good. They are pottering around outside, sweeping up blossom, throwing it over each other. Right now, no one is screaming, and here, sitting at the kitchen island, I feel calm, in control, like it's all doable. Twenty minutes on my own and the list gets reduced in no time.
Of course it may not end up being twenty minutes. Any minute now one of them could fall over; decide they want to play with something that one of the others is playing with. Then the screaming will start once again. Then all bets are off...