Ever have one of those days?

Ever have one of those days with your kid? You know, the kind where you take her into a store for a quick perusal and she finds a strangulation hazard in three minutes flat? And you know she found it because in the 20 seconds you had actually managed to focus on the reason for your trip, she wanders away from you and you locate her by the "Hey Mama, I can h-gaaaah" that you hear from 5 feet away. When you turn to look, she's got a cord around her neck and grimace on her face.

Yes, one of those days.

Or one of those days where, in an effort to get food on the table (cause that's your job too), you pause for a second to appreciate how smoothly things are going. Maybe a little too smoothly. And definitely too quietly. So when you ask your kid what she's doing and she says "I'm playing in my room," you instantly determine that you are hosed. This is confirmed when you call her out to see you and she comes trotting in with one arm behind her back, certain that you'll never figure out that she's hiding something back there.

What were you doing?

"Nuffing."

No, what where you doing?

"Cleaning da floors."

And that's when you find that the bathroom hand soap has been squirted all over the bathroom floor, her bedroom floor, her bedside table, her bed, and one sandal -- the other one, thankfully, is still on her foot.

10 minutes are spent coaching her on how to clean up her mess. 10 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

At this point you breath a little easier. The worst is over. Because what could she come up with in the two minutes that you take to go back to the kitchen & make sure dinner wasn't ruined?

Turns out, she comes up with Desitin. The sticky, smelly Desitin that just the other day you had found her smearing all over her boot and told her she was not to get into. Right -- the very same stuff. Except this time she is huddled under the quilt on the far side of the bed trying to avoid detection, rubbing it on her hands and arms. Why? Just because she can, I guess.

Aaaaand game over. Time out clock begins... now. Tears, wailing, an actual - and I kid you not - boo hoo, pleas for release, demands for Noggin.

For the love of God, if I could just get dinner on the table!

She is freed and makes a bee line for higher ground. Now that she's upstairs with her aunt you feel safe, and take advantage of the situation by sitting (that's right, sitting) for five minutes. Dinner is ready. You make her a plate, hopeful that when get some food in her belly the beast will be silenced.

But not so much. Because in calling her to dinner you've interrupted what clearly must be the best episode of Ni-Hao Kai-Lan ever, and you hear about it. All through dinner. Lots of sobbing, but very little eating.

Oh, sweet Lord.

Before the evening ends she will have consumed 4 and a half chocolate chip cookies and you don't even care. She's in bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

And then tomorrow comes. But it's no longer one of those days; now, it's one of those weekends -- one of those rainy, stormy, stuck-inside-all-day weekends.

Chasing the cats.

Using the sofa as a trampoline.

Using her baby stroller as a battering ram.

Honing her macrame skills with the cords from the blinds.

Insisting that the neighborhood dog running through the yard needs to be fed, and weeping when you won't let her go after it.

Save. Me. Now. It's not even noon.

Lemme just say that next weekend, when the Papa is home?

I'm so off duty.