This week's crises: I decided to stick to my eco-friendly principles and reject the proferred carrier bag at lunchtime, only for the sticky, yoghurty oat dessert I'd bought to spill inside my handbag. I didn't know whether, credit-crunch stylie, to scrape it out and eat it or to feign denial and chuck out the bag altogether - thus completely mis-firing on any green credentials.
To add to that taking up time when I could have been on the phone to someone requesting something or other, I've been late numerous times recently. The worst time, I'd got permission to arrive late because I wanted to witness my children's summer concert, only for road works to completely magnify the lateness. I'd waited and waited for my eldest son's class to come on stage; only for other kids to disrupt the programme with extra twiddly bits on their guitar or recorder/piano. I was impatiently yelling at them inside my head, while outwardly smiling at their parents' beaming faces. Eventually, my son's class's X-Factor equivalent moment came and then I sprinted to the car park, stressed and tired.
Finally, on the very last day of the summer holidays in fact, I was feeling particularly blurry and tired, so spent most of the morning encouraging my lovely sons to avoid me. Then, we went to a friend's house for an innocent cup of tea and play in her garden. Twenty minutes later, I'm on my way to casualty with youngest son bleeding from a wounded mouth. An hour and three stitches later, we're on our way back home having been picked up by Dad who's had to bale out on a work engagement. My guilt-addled brain was firing on all cylinders by this point.
By way of consolation, the other voice in my head reassured that this was my first trip to casualty after nearly nine years of motherhood and it healed quickly and it wasn't that bad an injury, in the round. Also, the NHS facilities and staff were fabulous and the boy learned a lot about hospitals and is probably less fearful of them now. Maybe I am too! Though I couldn't watch them stitch him up, despite the reassuring noises I made to my son!
I was late for an interview and for a course and then completely missed one shift at work - not by design but because of a misunderstanding. Then I volunteered to take my sons and some school mates on a school trip. Of course, I was late for that, then had to get petrol, then had to park in such a tight spot that I had to let the children out and turn myself into an anorexic ant to escape the car's clutches. Then we couldn't find the meeting place amidst the vast university complex. Then, what could have been a moment of pride turned into an excrutiating moment - my son gets picked as a volunteer to help out the scientists with a demonstration of the digestive system. Yay! He's up there, looking proud but shy. What does he have to imitate? The rectum! That's a story to tell at his 18th. And I'm hoping, thanks to the incredible NHS, that we indeed make it that far!!
