Time is not on my side.

Well, that's not wholly true. Time itself is on my side – in some contexts. 

I'm 10 to 15 years younger than many of my peers at work, for example. I will turn 50 years old the month before my youngest child turns 18. My odds of spending quality time with my grandkids or even my great-grandkids are pretty good.

It's time management, on the other hand, that will be the death of me.

I read a book review in last Sunday's Washington Post which suggests that we can all improve our memories if we just try. I suspect none of the subjects of that book, "Moonwalking With Einstein" by Joshua Foer, are trying to raise children.

I used to be able to keep track of where I needed to be and when – and why – without any real effort. That information all went somewhere into my frontal lobe and surfaced as needed, along with phone numbers, names, and bill due-dates.

I don't blame the kids themselves. Sure, the wrong name usually comes out when I call for one them. As one of three kids myself, I expected that.

But the kids' activities get more complicated as the children get older.

This weekend alone, the younger kids start swim practice and the oldest starts soccer practice.

There's at least one playdate to coordinate, one trip to the roller rink, one round of church school on Sunday morning, and one teen who will be dragged screaming from Facebook to religious ed on Sunday night.

Not that it felt simple when it was just a matter of getting them to and from day care without being late for work or being late to pick them up.

But the kids themselves didn't care much one way or another. Because these are now activities that they chose for themselves, the idea of showing up on time – with the right gear, in the right clothes – matters to them.

They are just learning to think of time as something that they can have and use.

Yet keeping track of the where and the how and the when is still my job, for the most part. The older they get, the more they can handle this themselves.

Right now, though, we're just at beginning, where they know just enough to critique their parents' time management skills.

I could blame the combination of kids and job.

The job does come with a lot of demands for time and information retrieval. Sometimes I imagine how much more organized I would be if I didn't have the job.

Then I spend a couple of days at home with my kids, and that brings me back to reality – that, and talking to my friends who are trying to raise kids on unemployment or disability.

The easiest thing to do is blame myself.

What is wrong with me – that I can't keep track of what my family or my boss needs, and when?

Why can't I manage my time better?

Well, I can correct for my tendency to assume that all cross-town trips take 10 minutes, or at least I should.

I can try to be more realistic in planning for due dates and deadlines.

But the laws of space and time will not bend, no matter how much I want them to.