Julia Childcare

It's a pretty simple process, although I rarely have cause to practice it in my underutilized kitchen.

You crack the egg into two neat halves and carefully shift the contents to one half. Then you pour it back and forth, from one half of the shell to another, allowing the white to dribble out while keeping the yolk intact. Back and forth, back and forth, until all of the white has drained away and you're left with one perfect, shimmering yolk: it only takes a few seconds.

That's how you separate an egg. How, though, do you separate a hysterically sobbing two-year-old from his frazzled mother, who only wants (no: needs) twenty minutes of solitude on a treadmill at the neighborhood YMCA?

Cooking is, I am told, really not that difficult. Mothering, on the other hand...