Am I tired, do you think?

I think I may be losing it. Today, in no particular order;

I almost forgot to include butter in Boy #1's two birthday cakes. Not a complete disaster of course, but I would never normally leave any fattening ingredient out of anything I was baking. What's the point? If I want low-fat I can buy it in Starbucks... Anyway, the almost-oversight may have had something to do with the fact that Boy #2, not in nursery today, was 'helping' me make the cakes. This may have had something to do with his assumption that the second of the two cakes was exclusively for him... The apple doesn't fall far from the tree in his case, that's all I'm saying.

His 'help' consisted mainly of;

1. Continually asking to be lifted up to see even better than he was able to do so from the mini stepladder he was already standing on, usually at the most inconvenient moment.

2. Stirring the flour in the mixing bowl until a cloud of it floated up and coated everything - including us - in a fine layer of white dust (and let me tell, there is enough grey appearing in my hair due to Boy #1's school protests already, without help from his younger brother, thankyou very much).

3. Getting hold of the empty eggshells and helpfully stuffing them into his father's coffee machine in very small pieces.

4. Retrieving said eggshells from the machine, and then breaking them into even smaller pieces before spreading them over the floor in an interesting random pattern.

5. Hijacking the mop I then used to clear up the mess, and running it over the entire flat tutting as he did so, like one of those ladies from 'How Clean is Your House?'

6. Licking the bowl.

Actually, when I look at it like that, it's amazing that I did - eventually - remember the butter at all...

Then, thinking I was being ever so clever, I called Boy #1's judo centre to check if term was starting today. No answer - but it was lunchtime, so I thought I would just check the website. On the website; Class this afternoon at the normal time. I rooted around and found his judo kit, put it ready in plain view in plenty of time. Unfortunately this gave Boy #1 the chance to notice I had never got round to sewing on the badge he got last term, prompting weeping, wailing, and pleas not to go. I ignored him. We left.

We walked half way there, and then I remembered the bag with the judo kit in it, that was still sitting - in plain view - on the table in the flat. Tick, tick, tick went the clock, 7 minutes to go. We raced back to the house, Boy #1 complaining we were walking too fast, picked up the bag, piled into the car (sod global warming when the chips are down), raced to the centre, making various illegal right turns to do so (sod road signs when the chips are down), and amazingly found a parking spot right outside.

Hang on a minute.

Right outside?

How can that be?

Normally this stretch of road is heaving with badly parked matt-black 4 x 4's, bottle-blonde mummies at the helm chattering incessantly into their mobiles, and uniformed children pushing their way into the centre, scattering cartons of Innocent Smoothies and low sugar biscuts as they go.

I'll tell you how it can be. There was no blxxdy class, that's how it can be.

And to cap it all, when I got the boys home and made a quick dash to the loo, I found my flies were already undone. And probably had been through school pick-up at lunchtime...