Sophie had been up at 6, shoving her face into mine and then, instead of climbing in for a cuddle, disappearing — which meant I had to roll out of bed and search for her. She gave me a hard time as I tried to alternate unpacking from a week’s vacation with entertaining her, and soon after that, Annabelle showed up, demanding breakfast and an agenda for the day.

Ray took off, returning mid-morning from the hardware store with a rented jackhammer and the goal of digging out the rusted stump of the basketball hoop that fell over in our driveway during a monsoon storm a summer or two ago. He’d never used a jackhammer, so not long after he’d begun, he was back at the hardware store, investing in a sledgehammer to dislodge the now-stuck jackhammer.

Meanwhile, inside the house, I was sorting piles and putting away toys — but not as quickly as the girls took them apart and got them out. Sophie emerged from the playroom in a Cookie Monster costume from a couple Halloweens back, and she and Annabelle raced across the (filthy) wood floors on a scooter intended for outdoor use only, narrowly avoiding hitting me several times. I managed to shower then announced it was time to go to the fabric-by-the-pound store, only to have Sophie announce there was no way that could happen til “Olivia” was over on TV.

At this point, I was feeling a little envious of Ray, slaving in the 110 degree heat — but alone.

I crashed on the couch with a copy of New York magazine. I’m not sure how I got the subscription — I suspect I wrote the wrong number on someone’s Girl Scout order form a while back — but I’ve been enjoying it, on the rare opportunities I’ve had to actually read it. It’s pathetic. I’m a newspaper editor with no time to read the daily paper. My New Yorker subscription is long gone. Even People‘s lapsed and I don’t see the point in renewing it. If I’m lucky, I’ll have a chance this weekend to check out the craft in the back of Parents, a magazine my mom signed me up for before Annabelle was born and which, for nine  years, has continued to show up every month.

You can barely see the unread piles of books and magazines in my house; they are obscured by laundry baskets filled with clothes, craft supplies and Important Papers I can’t find. Somewhere, there’s a Crock Pot I swear I’ll start using.

In short, I’m a disaster. Harried at work, even worse at home. Not sure what day of the week it is or what that noise is coming out of the air conditioner. Do I get enough quality time with my kids and husband? Of course not. And please, try not to notice that it’s been way too long since I had my eyebrows waxed. Whatever you do, don’t tell Ray I was up at midnight blogging, wasting precious moments that I could have used for sleeping to have the energy to chase the kids tomorrow.

Yes, I’m a mess, but never once in the nine years and one week I’ve been a parent has it occurred to me to to ask whether or not I’m  happy. Until this morning at 11, when I opened a magazine while the girls watched Olivia try to open a lemonade stand.

The cover of New York magazine had a pronouncement: “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting.”

My first reaction: jealousy. Great headline, good concept. Very counter-intuitive. Kinda ballsy. All the things I look for as an alt weekly editor, and all the button-pushing I try for in memoir writing, whether I’m doing it or teaching it. Honesty tends to be the best policy when you’re writing about yourself, and with the mom-oir genre, you really want to let it all hang out. Go ahead. Say that you resented little Sophie when she deprived you of sleep; tell the world you let Annabelle stay up til 11:30 on a week night.

But admit that parenting makes you unhappy? That one really caught me off guard.

Slumped on the couch, anticipating a trip to the hot, smelly remnant store with two whiny kids in suburban Phoenix when I once spent my Saturdays deciding which block of Manhattan or L.A. or D.C. to explore with my girlfriends, I read the story and asked myself the question.

The answer: No. I am not unhappy. I am exhausted, frustrated, sometimes disappointed (mostly in my own failures) and often surly, but I am one happy camper, damnit.

And this, I must tell you, surprises no one as much as it surprises me.

I think I was born depressed. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t anxious as a child, and it’s painful to watch Annabelle approach fourth grade with a touch of the trepidation I had at that age. No one was medicating kids in the 7os, so I suffered in silence and did just about nothing about it til I was 30 — engaged, employed and bone-shaking miserable.

The psychiatrist suggested Prozac. Would I have to take it forever? I asked. She was honest. We don’t know how it works, she said. For some people, it flips a switch. You stop taking it, you still feel better.

I took it for a while. I felt better. I would have continued, but I wanted to get pregnant. So I stopped. And I braced myself, waiting for the dark clouds to return. Oddly, they never did — even when I couldn’t get pregnant, even when I had a miscarriage, even when I did get pregnant, even when I was a new mom, even when work got really hard, even when I bickered with my husband.

Even when I had a second child, and this one had Down syndrome and needed open heart surgery.

I’m not saying that I was dancing a jig every day, but I was always able to get out of bed. I didn’t spontaneously weep at the dinner table. I could breath. I was okay.

I’d even say I was happy. I am happy.

I do know that I’m one of those sick-o people who can’t function unless I’m really busy. So the working mom thing — though infuriating, and I’ll admit that last month I warned several colleagues at a staff meeting that anyone who says the working mom thing works is a liar — is a god-send for me. The only times I feel the depression peeking in is when I’m on vacation, but vacations with kids don’t count. Too hectic.

So maybe I’m too busy to be unhappy? Maybe. But I prefer to twist it around, to think that the writer of the New York mag piece, along with all the people in the studies she dutifully researched, are confusing being busy with being unhappy.

Really, folks, buck up. Whoever said that parenthood — specifically in touch economic times, particularly in single family households or double-income ones — was going to be easy? No one told me it would be. Raising little people is an honor and a privilege and it’s also by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’m quite sure I’m not even doing it right.

Maybe it’s the Prozac (still, after a dozen years without it) talking. Maybe I’m just jealous of someone else’s good story. Or perhaps it’s that snotty voice in the back of my head that says from time to time, “You think you have it rough? Try raising a kid who’s got more therapists than friends, a low IQ, and a patch on her heart that could give way.”

It could also be the thought of a dear friend with daughters almost the same age as my own. This friend battled cancer several years ago, and one night not long ago, tipsy at a backyard BBQ, she told me through tears how much she treasures each day, explaining why she gets up at 5:30 in the morning to brush her sweet girls’ hair into perfect braids and dress them in matching outfits, then be at every Brownie meeting, every birthday party, every school event, and teach them to cook and sew and be good people even when she’s been at work all day herself. When I get frustrated, I think of her.

Most likely, it’s the sight of Sophie, asleep on the couch tonight, snoring like a linebacker, holdng tight to her Piglet as I carried her to bed. Or the feeling of Annabelle’s hair as I rubbed her head, singing both of us to sleep.

Tomorrow, those girls will wake up too early and drive me nuts. I can’t wait.