The tooth fairy forgot to come this week.
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At least she was extra fashionably late, choosing to flit into my son’s bedroom while he was in the bathroom, brushing what is currently left of his teeth.
Crafty little minx, that one.
I know how she feels – everything seems rushed and last-minute right now.
The school uniform is being dried by hair dryer just seconds before we’re out the door. Lunch is being grabbed from the corner store.
There’ll be no mother-of-the-week nominations for me right now.
I know we are often our biggest critics and we shouldn’t sweat the small things, but the “small things” are starting to add up.
What else has happened? I forgot to hand in the school fundraising raffle tickets.
They’re still sitting on the kitchen bench, reminding me I’ve now no chance of winning the Harvey Norman coffee machine or the Eaglehawk IGA voucher. My own damn fault.
Actually, I fear there’s a whole heap of school administration fallen by the wayside.
Newsletters and notes are now emailed out, but our old printer’s only working function is to collect dust, so the notes don’t go anywhere.
I’ll admit I’ve never been very good at administration. RSVPing, invoicing, remembering, organising.
“Remember when you forgot to cook tea?” laughed my son last night, as I apologised for failing to not yet buy that yellow T-shirt for the school sports I said I would.
It was a wake-up comment, that’s for sure.
“Hey, I take care of the important things,” I said, attempting to put that last one into perspective.
He agreed there’s never any shortage of love, hugs and laughter in our lives.
I was just thankful I had a fairy to take some of the blame this week.
And, I know things could always be worse.
The Easter Bunny forgot to come last year.
There was my pyjama-clad boy on Easter Sunday morning, running into our bedroom with a tale of woe.
“The Easter Bunny didn’t come,” he said, blinking back the tears. Oh god.
Some quick thinking was required on my part, and while I asked him to wait in our room I ran down the hallway, dived under his bed and miraculously “found” the eggs buried under a pile of odd socks and action figures. “Just think, what do rabbits like to do?” I asked him. “That’s right, dig… now go and look under the bed.”
Disaster averted. While the day-to-day actions of keeping life in check sometimes fall by the wayside, I’m getting really good at minor crisis management.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses, right?