Mutha Magazine Article By Alison -

For a moment, I was jealous. And then I went inside and bought the oval crackers.

Around 2 a.m., I realized we were out of the oval-shaped crackers. Not the round ones—those are for school lunches. The ovals. The ones my toddler will actually eat without negotiating a trade deal. Then came the domino effect: if we’re out of ovals, I need to pack extra cheese sticks. If I pack extra cheese sticks, I need to buy more before Thursday, because Thursday is early dismissal and that means double snacks. Double snacks mean I’ll be late to work pickup, which means my boss will give me that look—the one that says, We’re very family-friendly, but also, please stop leaving at 4:47.

Let me explain.

Mutha doesn’t usually do tidy endings, so I won’t give you one. I’ll just say this: yesterday, I sat in the car in the Target parking lot for seventeen minutes. I didn’t go in. I just sat there, watching a crow peck at a bag of spilled popcorn. And I thought: That crow has no spreadsheet. That crow is just being a crow.

Because that’s the thing about this load. It’s invisible. It’s unpaid. And somehow, it’s still the most important job I’ve ever done.

This is the mental spreadsheet. It runs 24/7. It has tabs for: pediatrician appointments, birthday party RSVPs, who last used the EpiPen, whether the school’s “spirit week” is tomorrow or next Tuesday, and the exact emotional temperature of my partner. No one taught me how to build it. I just woke up one day three years postpartum and realized I’d become the CEO of a failing startup called Us .