Having IT ALL

The idea that women can work, raise children, and still have the energy to make love to their husbands is unreasonable. In fact, it's a fairy tale. But that doesn't stop a lot of women from striving to "have it all" - a social life, a job, a marriage, offspring, intimacy, and a spot of tennis. Females are special like that; we can cook couscous, order a soccer uniform on the phone, keep an eye on two kids, and file our nails and text at the same time. But just because we can, does that mean we should? The first women's revolution was about the right to do more; the second might be about the desire to do less. Less overachieving, less perfectionism, and less guilt about over-stretching ourselves Every working mother I speak to debunks the myth of having it all. "you have it all", said my friend, "but you just don't have it all all at once. And, "everything you do have is on the run." 
Despite the fact that we have fought for the right to maintain a work life and a home life, not everyone can deal so effortlessly with the intensity of being a mom/wife/volunteer/chef/corporate diva/carpool driver.
The message out there about combining a career and motherhood are very mixed. There is still an unspoken moral judgement that mothers belong at home. There is also a corporate culture that implies that pregnancy and parenting make a woman go "soft" and lose her professional edge. And there is a lack of compassion about the sacrifice involved in trying to do too much. Worst of all is a media culture that depicts women who both work and mother without showing the least strain.
People work because they have to pay bills and they work because they love their jobs. Being a working mother is a balancing act that gives birth to a siege mentality, a sense of humor, and a wonderful sense of perspective. Who has time to worry about a run in her stockings when she's got ten minutes to make it from a meeting to a day-care center, collecting a bag of frozen peas along the way? Guilt, constant compromise, exhaustion, self-doubt, and joy are the emotions that are common as well as plenty of hard-won grace, Contradiction is part of the job.
Do you work outside the home? What do you do daily to have grace under pressure while doing the Mommy Great Balancing Act?