Everybody told me there would be days like these...

And I did believe them, promise. Last Monday morning my lovely four year old boy asked if he could give his little girl friend at pre-kindy a Christmas card. ‘What a beautiful idea sweetie,’ I said, ‘she will love that.’

It was a rushy get-everyone-to-their-various-places morning but I was prepared to quickly sort out this request seeing as it was so cute and giving. ‘Tis the season and all that.

While the kid monkeys finished their brekky, I went to get the Christmas cards. Then I realised they had been put back in the Christmas storage tub and deposited in the garage due to our daughter’s birthday party being at our house that weekend. We were keen to avoid a 6 year old tripping over it and suing us for some kind of tinsel-box-induced injury.

I went to the garage but it was locked - it's essential to keep all those precious half empty boxes safe - so came back inside to grab the garage door key. The key wasn’t in its usual spot so I spun twice in a circle (a man look?) before I realised it was probably in my husband’s pocket of whatever-he-was-wearing when he took the tub out to the garage.

I spent some time looking through clothes mountain (the pile of crumpled and discarded items piled on his bedside table – I have a matching one on my side purely for the symmetry) but with no luck. He was probably wearing his shorts, I cleverly surmised, and they would have made it to the laundry, it being the next fairly logical place to put dirty clothes. They were in the laundry, in the washing machine in fact, about a foot under greyish soapy water and many many tiny pieces of soggy tissue (really? again? dang!). I dug in, retrieved the shorts and there inside the pocket was a very clean garage door key. Righto.

I went back out to the garage and brought the Christmas storage tub inside. My son spent some time choosing which card his little friend would like most, while I smiled and nodded and listened to my head scream: OH MY GOD IS THAT KID STILL IN HIS PYJAMAS? YOU REALLY NEED TO GET THIS FRICKIN SHOW ON THE ROAD GIRL! MAKE HIM CHOOSE THE CARD, CHOOSE NOW, CHOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!!!!

He chose. It said ‘Merry Christmas.’ Good. Thank god he spent the time on it.

I hastily grabbed a pen from the pocket of my handbag. Two pens actually, a good pen and a bad pen, and it wasn't so much a grabbing as an extraction from the Queen Alien Mother. That is if the Queen Alien Mother was a vast pool of slimy ink that had consumed a bandaid, nasal spray, two coins, a small fire truck and a couple of business cards. You never know you have a bad pen until it turns bad. Even then it tries to pin its crimes on a good one by smearing ink all over it.

But I knew who it was.

‘Gotcha Bluey’, I said and threw that cheap-arse Bic so violently in the bin it sprayed blue blood all over the kitchen cupboards. I made sure the good pen was watching too, so it could learn a lesson: ‘You want to pour ink on everything? You want to ruin my handbag and the emergency toy fire truck that was for times of dire desperation like in the doctors waiting room or the queue at the post office? You want to do that? Well this is where you will end up buster. In a coffin of dirty tissues, on top of mushy unwanted weet-bix. Oh yeah!’

Then my head said to me: You are getting very distracted with this leaking pen fiasco, look at your kids, THEY ARE STILL NOT EVEN DRESSED!!!!

Shit. Quick.

I took the good pen to the little man, we wrote a message on the card and managed to squeeze it into the envelope (a magical shrinking envelope?), and we started getting ready for our various places faster than nobody’s business.

Yes we were running a little late but I was impressed at the time when we walked out the door. Dressed, fed, teeth and hair done.

When we got to the car I realised a few things at once: the garage door was still open...my clothes had blue ink splattered all over them (Bluey's last laugh)...the Christmas card was still inside on the table (are you shitting me?)...and no one was wearing shoes. As I went back in the house to deal with these things (insert some cussing here), I tripped over the Christmas storage tub and gave myself some kind of tinsel-box-induced injury. Awesome.

So, even though there will be many mornings just like this in the future for all sorts of reasons, the next time my lovely four year old has a cute and giving idea I know what I will be saying and it will be this: Not a chance in hell shitcakes, now drop and give me 20 then get in the goddamn car.