Can I just jack it in?

Oh I'm tired. Talk to me about fretful new borns and I'll talk to you about ill children. Talk to me about 3am feeds and I'll talk to you about injured husbands. Talk to me about leaking nappies and vomit on the shoulder, I'll talk to you about being a mother considering jacking in the job. Tell me you've been made redundant and I'll congratulate you. Can a mother just jack it all in? Is it actually possible? I know that Katie Price can jack it in for a week and go partying in a bikini in Ibiza. But she has lots of money. I know some mothers that can jack it in for 24hours and go on a nice weekend somewhere without the little snotbags tugging at the ankle. But that is not really jacking it in. I'm talking, like, chucking in the towel, admitting defeat and getting a new job in Macdonalds. Is that possible?
I'm talking, like, a year's sabatical? Me, I'd go off on a fast ship to somewhere quite far away. Maybe without mobile phone arials either.
Maybe that is what boarding school is actually really for. It is for legal escape. I do recall that many of my teenage years were spent in a leafy Hampshire boarding school whilst my parents were "working abroad" - probably what they were doing was avoiding their moody furrowed browed children and their door slamming antics (well, mine, anyway). Can husbands and children under the age of 6 be sent to boarding school for a year, or even a term, just so that the mangled mother can pump herself up with a new lease of life - commonly known as energy - ready to face another round of swine flu and cricket injuries?
The reason for my rant - and here's yet ANOTHER reason to dislike cricket, intensely - is that Husband returned many hours earlier than expected (no, he didn't disturb me having a tupperwear party) from a 20-20 cricket game he was playing down in Eltham, when he twisted his knee and popped/clicked/royally-fucked something inside. This is unfortunately the third time in as many years that he has had this injury - always the same reason the same game the same leg - and my sympathy goes to him in huge waves, but, I'm also thinking, this is the selfish part of me please note, oh for god sake can I just have a rest from looking after people? I know it's not all about me. And I know life isn't all about me. But sometimes I feel a bit like the one constantly spinning around the kitchen and the bathroom cabinet, throwing out an uneaten plate of pasta and pesto, administering hugs to a child with a raging fever and puss-y tonsils whilst trying to get the Husband to neck a packet of nurofen-express to get the sodding swelling down on the poor disabled red spongy painful looking knee.
But as a Mother. The Mother of this house has the responsibility to nuture the chicks in her nest; as my dear parents would so empathetically suggest: "Darling, that is just life."
So, I don't think I can jack it all in, and I don't think I'll be booking a bikini-infested-Ibiza-girly-week (don't think I have any friends who could do that with me anyway), but what I can do is imagine it all. So. The lights may be on, but there is definitely, this week at least, no one at home.