superwoman is a myth.....right?

I am sitting at my computer, getting ready to study for finals. I look around and the laundry is mounting up, the floor needs to be mopped, Christmas tree has lights--I haven't gotten around to the decorations yet. Things are tossed around, evidence of a family in a hurry. 

Sometimes I wonder if Superwoman really exists. As little girls we are told we can do everything and anything...but they don't tell us how hard it is going to be to do it all. My family helps--everyone pitches in. But still, that balance...that zen....everything has its place, every place has its thing--its non existent. No matter how liberated I feel I am as a woman, something inside me cringes when I see my husband searching through the endless laundry basket looking for a matching sock, or my daughter reminds me that I forgot to pack her a snack for school....again. 

They never tell you about the struggle of balance. The constant give and take, that somethings take a lower priority--like folding laundry Monday through Friday. I remember growing up my mom would have the house clean and her makeup on fresh before dad got home. That makes me laugh just thinking about it.....seriously? The scene now is shuffling kids from car to car, trying to make it to ballet from gymnastics carrying my work bag with reviews to work through outside the dance studio while he is at home working through second grade homework and starting dinner. Survival is the name of the game, and in this world it takes two. 

So if I know that working in tandem with my guy is the best case scenario--the closest idea of perfection that one can get to in this world--why do I feel so guilty that my house is trashed and I am holed up in my office working? I feel almost as if history has warped the view of femininity and this generation of women who seek to do it all and be it all are trying desperately to unravel what was tangled before us. Our grandmothers were stay-at home mom's and perfect housewives--our mothers were working mom's with latchkey kids, and we are somewhere in between--trying to mold the two scenes into reality. Does it exist--The perfect homeroom mom, whose house is clean, car is clean, life is organized, laundry folded and put away, whose career is skyrocketing pass the glass ceiling, and whose family life is well-functioning? 

..........Does superwoman exist?