Ever had one of those days when you think you have all the time in the world, and then you discover you’ve forgotten something particularly significant?  As in, picking up a child attending an after- school program?  Yeah, me neither.  But, let’s just say that “were” this to happen, it might go down like this:

If it were to ever happen that I forgot someone so essential, so important, as a child, I would probably have left work earlier than usual; and as I never really allow myself relaxation time, I might have given in to the fatigue and had a forty-five minute visit with my friend who also happens to babysit for us.  I just might have left her house at 4:30 p.m. so as to get home in time to make supper.  But, as I would be nearing our driveway, I would notice my son’s Robotics Instructor driving into the driveway of our next door neighbor’s house.  Strange, I might think to myself, but who knows?  Maybe he has made a new friend in the quiet grandmother who lives in the house next to ours?   She could use the company.

I would then pull into the lane leading up to our house, and I would just be about to get out of the vehicle when my cell phone would ring.  Then, the Robotics instructor also would pull in beside me at precisely the same time as my cell phone is ringing.    I would probably not have to worry about the fact that everyone in the country side would be aware that I had forgotten my child (as all my emergency contact information would by now have been called) because I would not know this small detail until much later on. It would turn out,  in this imagined scenario, that my son would be stranded at the school with only the principal and janitor for company, and he would have been waiting for me for at least 40 minutes, prior to my grand entrance with hungry, tired siblings in tow.

As I would pull into the school parking lot, I would then make a feeble attempt at an apology to the principal, who would be waiting on the bottom of the steps with my son.  His reply to me would be this, “It will make for good writing material for your Huff Post column.”

Thankfully, I am not notorious for forgetting my children in all manner of places as well as being late for pretty well everything I am involved in.  And if I was, I would certainly not admit it on Facebook.

So, needing a bit of a break from my day dreaming, I quickly throw supper in the oven tonight and sit down for fifteen minutes of further mindless entertainment, otherwise known as creeping people’s Facebook statuses on my homepage.

To say this is a mistake is a bit of an overstatement.  Let’s just say this:

Supper was stellar tonight. Who knew that cooking food at 475 degrees would actually not only save time, it would also ruin appetites?  What with the burned chicken fingers, the four bar-b-qued hotdogs leftover from Sunday and the corn that arrived half-way through the meal, as I had too many items lined up for the microwave to cook in time for the meal’s commencement, it was a burnt offering at best.  Part way through the feast, a little one jumps up and makes a run for the toilet.  Minutes later, same child calls me from the bathroom.

“Moooooooom, I’m dooonnne.”  I look at my plate with its meager portions.  Growing colder by the minute.  More pitiful under the light of our candelabra, minus its two burnt-out bulbs.  And I decide that eating it cold makes no difference.

In the bathroom, I try to hurry up the job as quickly as possible.   Wiping at any time of the day is not my forte.  And as it all vaguely resembles something on my plate, particularly now that the darkened chicken was charred beyond recognition, I am also trying not to inhale the fumes.  Unfortunately, I drop a wad of used toilet paper on the floor, soiled side down.

So now I have to clean the floor too.  Just great.

And so it goes.  And so it goes….

“It might be a crazy life” (a.k.a. Jon and Kate Plus Eight), but if there was ever any financial offer made and a reality television show to boot that would pay us to video tape our lives for an audience of millions, I’d do it all over again.