Most days pass by, as so many others–nothing terribly memorable happens. We turn the page on the day and it joins the hundreds of other days just like it in the book of motherhood.  But then there are just some days, every once and awhile, that should be scribbled out from history because they just scream mom failure like no other.  And last week, I had one such day.

It started with good intentions.  A grocery list.  Two boys–one just coming off a nap. And 1 hour and 30 minutes before preschool started. Plenty of time, since my list wasn’t terribly long.

I packed up all our stuff, and like I normally do, I carried Sawyer out the door, along with anything and everything I could also carry in my free arm.  A diaper bag. My phone. Carter’s backpack just so we could already have it in the van for later. A sweatshirt for Sawyer. And my keys.

Oh wait.  Did I just say keys? Because, no, in fact, I did not have my keys.

It was a freezing day. And it had just rained, so the ground was all wet. My house was now locked. My van was locked.  And I was standing in my driveway clearly dumbstruck and unsure of what to do. My good friend has a key to my house and only lives a mile away. I called her up–but she had literally just sat down her son and the two kids she babysits for lunch. She told me she could bring it over in a little bit, so I was just going to have the boys play for a little while. In the cold, wet driveway. With no toys.  I’m a dummy sometimes.  I ended up breaking into our garage–that’s a whole story in itself, and one that James needed to fix after the fact so that no strangers could do the same. I got in the house, and grabbed my keys. Next mini project. . . find a secret spot to hide a house key.

After that disaster, we headed to Wegmans.  I finished up, and noticed that it was about eight minutes before I was supposed to have Carter dropped off at his carpool house. And when you’re late, everything goes in slow motion. The cashier was moving at the pace of molasses (this is not an over exaggeration–she really was terribly slow). I hit every single red light imaginable. I got stuck behind everyone who was out for a Sunday drive.  But they waited, and I made it just three minutes late.

And then I realized that I made another mistake. I was about to send Carter to school and I hadn’t even fed him lunch!  What a twit.  Good thing I had just gone grocery shopping. So I sent him on his way with a rolled up turkey slice, a bunch of grapes and a cheese stick.  Holy moley, sometimes I’m a failure.

When I returned home, I tried to make my crockpot dinner.  It involved needing curry–before leaving for Wegmans, I made sure we had some in the cabinet, but when I went to use it for the recipe, I noticed that there was like a 1/16 of a teaspoon in there.  I needed two full tablespoons.  Oy vay. Dinner failure as well.

When it was all said and done, we did make it through the day. It sure was rough, but we were fine in the end.  Thankfully, most days run a lot smoother than that!