It’s important to be on time for appointments and to be somewhere at the time you say you will. No matter how hard I try, I cannot manage to be anywhere on time lately.  I can either be ridiculously early or embarrassingly late and of late (see what I did there?) it’s the latter. It’s definitely harder because of baby (who has no routine that I can discern which makes it doubly hard as I cannot make an appointment and be reasonably confident I can make it on time) and I am also a very poor time manager at the best of times but sometimes completely unexpected things come out of left field and are solely to blame for my tardiness.

This morning, all were dressed, breakfasted and ready to leave the house when I needed just a quick toilet trip before we were to head in the car. No sooner had I come out, the children had decided to take their socks and shoes off JUST BECAUSE WE WERE GOING TO SLIP PLAYING TIGGY, MUM! DON’T YOU ALWAYS TELL US TO TAKE OUR SOCKS OFF?? So after what amounted to a couple of minutes of yelling at them to hurry it up because IT’S TIME TO LEAVE FOR SCHOOL. I WAS JUST GOING TO THE TOILET AND I TOLD YOU TO BE READY WHY DO YOU PRETEND LIKE I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU DO WE HAVE OTHER CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE THAT I AM TALKING TO NO I AM TALKING TO YOU CHILDREN NOT THE IMAGINARY OTHER ONES.

In the car and the kids were all “WHAT’S THAT SMELL?”

Good lord. Worried that one of the cats had managed to creep into an open door or window or through the bonnet into the car only to projectile vomit or worse, pass putrid smelling diarrhoea all over the seats we began our little investigation, sniffing all areas as we went petrified of what we may discover.

Well. Turns out I left a 600ml carton of cream in the car on Friday and it sat in the car undetected for the whole weekend of  33^C heat. DON’T ASK ME HOW. DON’T ASK  ME HOW UNTIL YOU HAVE FOUR CHILDREN AND YOU ARE ABSENTMINDED AND YOU NEVER CHECK THE CAR ONCE YOU’VE DISEMBARKED AND YOU HAVE A MILLION THINGS TO DO AT HOME AND SOMETIMES THINGS FALL OUT OF GROCERY PACKETS AND YES I THOUGHT I BOUGHT 2 CARTONS OF CREAM OH BUT MAYBE I DIDN’T BUT THEN AGAIN MAYBE I DID AND SHALL I CHECK THE CAR? NO DON’T CHECK THE CAR, I PROBABLY ONLY BOUGHT THE ONE. THEN AND  ONLY THEN YOU MAY ASK ME HOW.

It was ready to pop, and had already leaked out foul smelling rotten milky liquid on the rubber mats. I removed the rubber mats, wet and wiped the floor of the car and liberally applied bicarb. And I mean liberally. It was so liberal that it stopped the boat people coming into the country (geddit??!) I put so much labour into it that it stopped the boat people from coming into the country (HA!!) By the time everything was done, it was already 8:30 – time for the first school bell. It usually takes us 20 mins to get to school and the children need to be in class ready for learning by 8:45. Factoring the half hour it takes for me to park my behemoth of a vehicle and I knew there was Buckley’s we’d be there on time.

“We’ll be ok, guys. You’ll probably have to get a late note. Don’t panic, you’ll have to go to the office and tell them why you’re late.”

“So why were we late, Mum? Do we just say traffic?”

“No, love. You tell them the truth.”

“OK. So we’ll just say it’s Mum’s fault.”

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