Lady Bird, Lady Bird…

Nothing says “Welcome home” more than the sound of all three of your smoke detectors going off. 

You see, I had managed to merrily set off on the school run, leaving biscuits that I’d deemed to need only “a few more minutes” trapped in an oven that was hotter than the sun.

In many ways, it was a good thing I didn’t remember the biscuits until we were actually at the school otherwise I may have been faced with one of those terrible “Get A Late Pass or Save The House” decisions. Somehow, I think the house would have lost out, particularly because I still too much of a soft cock to show my face in the school office (see “Sorry, It’s School Policy“). And it is quite possible I might have regarded the house burning down to the ground as one hell of an effective way to get out of doing the dishes…

But once Mr Justice had been delivered through the school gates, my mission was clear: Get. The. Hell. Home.

Of course, the journey back was fraught with many obstacles: for one thing, we had to swim against the steady stream of parents heading to the school, who said stuff like “Oooh, you’re early today!”, “No late pass today?” and (my favourite) “Did you forget your son?”.

No, I didn’t forget my son! I’m not *that* irresponsible – I’m merely burning the house down!  I felt like shouting. But I didn’t because then they would have said “Oh, why?” and I would have had to explain the whole situation. Which is probably why fire engines have such loud sirens so nobody is tempted to ask them where they’re going or why they’re going there. 

Still, all that nodding and smiling and “Ha ha ha ha!”-ing takes up time and energy, people! But when I finally got clear of the school rush hour, I came face to face with another school mum, carrying her newborn baby.

Now etiquette dictates that you have to pause and fuss over the baby and ask for details of the birth, etc – you can’t just say “Yeah, yeah, nice baby. Sure… Uh, gotta dash! My house is burning down!” It’s just not The Done Thing. 

Also, if the truth be known, I’m a sucker for newborn babies – they’re so itsy-bitsy-ickly-wickly cute with their ‘ittle-wittle ears and fingers and toes and nose and… But I digress.

However, the etiquette surrounding our next encounter was a little less clear. We saw a cute little baby dog running cute little baby dog circles on the road in front of considerably less cute and larger oncoming traffic and somehow “Sorry kids, that cute puppy has to die so that our house may live” just didn’t seem the appropriate thing to say. And so we had to carefully shepherded the dog back across the road to the house he’d run out of, knock on the door, explain to the owner, be thanked by the owner, get away from the owner, etc, etc. ETC. 

After all that, I literally sprinted down the rest of the road pushing the Valco Mobile Home, to find a) the smoke alarms heralding our arrival; b) the house (thankfully) still standing; c) the dishes still undone; and d) the biscuits only fit for use as charcoal to scratch the words “TURN OFF THE OVEN, YOU FREAKING IDIOT” on the inside of the front door for next time. 

What kind of person bakes cookies before the school run, anyway? Sheesh!