While prepping my next column--about the crises that can ensue when work and life collide--my work and life collided yet again. My 3-year-old daughter had to stay home from day-care because of a cough on a day that I was presenting a virtual training session to a client and staff. Working from home can have its fantastic advantages, but when the child is home sick and you don't have a baby sitter, everything descends quickly into chaos.

I only had to mute about three times during my live presentation--and I had prepped the client and staff that my daughter was home sick. But each time it was because my daughter decided she no longer wanted to follow the "don't talk to mommy while she is on the phone rule" and instead wanted to make repeated demands for snacks and to climb onto my lap.

By the time the presentation was done, I was livid. Not at my daughter, who was clearly bored on top of not feeling well. But at myself for once again putting myself into (or not extricating myself from) a frustrating position that pushed all my anger buttons to the hilt. I had recently experienced a total emotional meltdown because I had backed myself into a corner of chaos by making choices that relied on the alignment of all planets to work out. Hadn't I just learned my lesson?

A few weeks ago, I was between child-care options (note to anyone who insists on pointing me toward SitterCity or Nannies R Us-type services: I live in Tok, Alaska. Those services do not WORK in Tok, Alaska, because no baby sitters in Tok, Alaska, use those services. Because there are virtually no baby sitters in Tok, Alaska).

I spent two weeks trying to find my zen while running my company and doing my work from home with a bored 3-year-old who was convinced that every day was going to be "mommy and daughter quality time" from dawn to dusk. I managed those two weeks as best I could. And then for the next few weeks, I was able to bring said daughter to a new day-care provider.

That worked like a dream, although I spent that time digging myself out of very deep piles of work. I barely had a chance to catch up and take a breath before my husband left on a 10-day hunting trip. During that time, I also had a speaking engagement and ended up bringing my daughter along, lining up a baby sitter in the other town (where they have baby sitters). I think she held up like a trouper given the 11 hours of driving each way and shuttling from friend's house to hotel and back before finally getting back home.

But me? Total meltdown. I simply lost it one afternoon when a doctor appointment for my daughter conflicted suddenly with a live phone presentation I had to give for a new client. When I realized I had a conflict and was trying to figure out what to do with my business partner on the phone, my daughter peed in her pants in the doctor's waiting room. I had to carry pee-soaked daughter into the elevator, downstairs, across the parking lot to my car, and was still trying to resolve the scheduling conflict on the phone. And my daughter started doing her classic "mommy, mommy, mommy" routine, which means "get off the phone and pay attention to me right now because I'm not going to quiet down until you do."

"I can't take it anymore," I said in a tiny, strained voice.

My business partner thought I was talking about our company, that I couldn't take being in our company any more. And she went immediately into "OK, if you are going to quit the company mode, let's discuss."

I heard "quit the company" and thought she was trying to get me to quit the company. I hung up on her. Then with tears streaming down my face, I proceeded to change my daughter's clothes in the parking lot--which she thought was a ton of fun until she saw me bawling.

"Smile for me, mother," she said in her cheery little way, and I just lost it. Totally lost it. She gave me a big hug, which only made it worse, not better.

What was I doing to my daughter? What was I doing to myself?

I wish I could say that I dropped everything right then and there and headed for my friend's house to kick back and chill and spend some quality time with my daughter. But instead, I sucked it up and went back in to see the doctor, who was very understanding and kind, especially when she saw what a wreck I was.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that several times during this fiasco, I was on the phone with the wife of my husband's hunting partner discussing the fact that we hadn't heard from them for five days via their new satellite notification device and that we had several scares that something bad had happened to them in a very remote part of Alaska. That only added to the pressure.

Husband arrived back safely. Wife still has had no time to decompress. Daughter was sick yesterday, wife screamed at husband for being half an hour late getting home.

On the business side, the solution is to delegate more, rely more on my new assistant and learn to say "no" to smaller projects that, while meaningful, just won't pay the bills.

On the personal side, I'm thinking therapy, marriage counseling, a trip to someplace tropical and copious amounts of red wine.

How do you keep work and life from crashing into an ugly mess? Or can you?