This post is the fifth column of a regular series on Parenting & Playwriting. Find the previous columns here.

Here’s what my advice column will offer you: a place to ask questions and share grievances about juggling life as theater artists and as parents. Here’s what my advice column will not offer you: much actual advice you can use. For those of you masochists longing for some truly crappy advice, email me at dctrieschmann@gmail.com.

How do you deal with working Mother's (or Daddy's) guilt?

Once upon a time, there were two sisters. One was a successful neurologist who had a three-month waiting list to be seen and who worked, on a slow week, sixty hours. The other was a playwright and stay-at-home-Mom who wrote, on a good week, fifteen hours. The neurologist (the older sister, of course) spent her energies trying to work less, declining professional opportunities and promotion in the hopes of one day being able to have dinner with her three kids by six o'clock. The playwright spent her energies trying to drum up work, in the hope that one day, she would make enough money so she could pay someone else to watch her kids so she wouldn't have to be home every night at six o'clock to cook dinner.

They were equally wracked with guilt.

The neurologist felt guilty for working so much, for missing after school programs and soccer games, for not being available to her kids on a Saturday afternoon when they came in from the backyard sticky with sand and sweat and tears. She assuaged her guilt in a myriad of ways, including elaborate, hand-crafted birthday parties and making sure she had the morning of the first Monday of the month free so she might volunteer in her kids' classrooms, a heroic effort in creative scheduling, greeted by a request that she sharpen pencils in the janitor's closet—a great use of all her medical training, not to mention her degree in honors English (she was a little bit of an over-achiever). In the three hours she had every evening in between seeing patients and filling out paperwork, she spent "quality" time with her kids, reading to them, helping them practice the violin, and listening to their stories. She was a good doctor and good Mom, but life passed in a flurry of activity and a daze of sleeplessness, and she felt guilty about this too.

How do you deal with working Mother's (or Daddy's) guilt?

The playwright felt guilty because her kids drove her crazy, because they fussed at one another all day long and said things like, I can't pick up my raisins, Mommy, I'm pretending I have a broken leg. She felt guilty because during these precious, fleeting years of childhood, all she wanted to do was lock herself away in a room alone so she could write in peace.

She felt guilty for longing for kindergarten, out of town try-outs, and working out the problems of previews over a dirty martini or two. She felt guilty that she didn't fully appreciate the chubby, robust health of her babies, because she was so focused on what she wasn't writing, when there were parents, every minute of every day, stewing in the hell of the waiting room in the pediatric ward. She felt guilty for throwing out wilted lettuce, when pictures of hungry children in Haiti popped up every day in her in-box. She felt guilty for looking at pictures of hungry children in Haiti on the internet instead of tending to her own children.

It's possible the playwright in question was a little neurotic.

When she took her children to a park or playground and sat with the other Mothers on the bench in the shade and listened to them carry on about little Sasha's fertile imagination or Jack's deep well of creativity, she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, move over Jackie boy—you've got nothing on me. For more than anything, she felt guilty about finding her own imagination infinitely more interesting than that of children.

Guilt is an eight-headed monster that moves in when you have children and never leaves. I'm sure there are wiser people than I who know how to exorcise it. But as for me, I say, what the hell, you might as well feed it fried okra.

Here's my Mother's recipe. It leaves the okra green with a smattering of cornmeal crust, not entombed in batter like you get at the K&W.

What? You don't know about K&W? Get thee to a Southern state as soon as possible!

But back to the task at hand: Take a pound of fresh okra and cut it into one-half inch pieces. Fill a zip-lock bag with one cup of flour and one cup of cornmeal. Put the okra in the bag and shake. Meanwhile, heat two cups of vegetable oil to medium-high in a cast iron skillet. When hot, fill with okra—but don't pile it up. Let each batch fry in a single layer to a crispy brown, then remove with a slotted spoon onto a paper towel. Salt generously.

How do you deal with guilt? Or cook okra? I'd love a good recipe that doesn't involve frying the slimy bastards. Share with us in the comments!