Chocolate or Butterscotch?

My brain seems to have turned to pudding. Pudding, thick and opaque, and when you stick something down inside it, you don't see it anymore. Specifically, my brain has turned to pudding in the area of scheduling. It's been happening too often lately to blame on someone else, although I've tried. Oh. How I have tried.

Unfortunately, Peanut has been the biggest casualty of the pudding thus far. Her kindergarten concert was Thursday. And I SWEAR on my dead dog's grave that the note said "wear blue" and "starts at 7:00." I swear this because there are usually two concert times, and there wasn't another time listed (on MY note, anyway), and I remember thinking, hmm, I wonder why they are only doing one this year. So you see, it had to be 7:00.

When we got to school, I saw Peanut's recovering-from-knee-surgery teacher, who had promised the class she'd be there, getting INTO her van. And I thought, oh no. Oh NO! But it was true. Mrs. B suggested we find out if she could sing with the other classes, she would stay to watch. At first Peanut said she didn't want to, but then she changed her mind. When we got to the strange class, however, she balked. I told her I was not going to make her sing, but that I was worried she'd feel sad if she didn't get to sing for Mrs. B. So she went.

We sat and watched Peanut stand stock still on a front bleacher, first with her hand in her mouth, then with her entire shirt in her mouth, until she pointed off stage and began shuffling off sideways. I ran to one side, Mrs. B's friend ran to the other, and we got her off. I, of course, felt lower than gum on a shoe, and Buddy was in tears her felt so bad for Peanut. 0-1 for the Mommy.

That was bad enough in and of itself. Then Saturday we all went our separate ways: Princess and I to the Daisy Girl Scouts Build-a-Bear Cookie Sales Celebration, and everyone else to Buddy's soccer game. We get to Build-a-Bear in South Bend (45 minutes south) at exactly 10:00. It was absolutely and entirely empty. The manager knew nothing about a Girl Scout troop. I say, do you happen to have a store in Kalamazoo (45 minutes north. Of my house). Why yes. Yes they do. Naturally.

Princess doesn't really differentiate between "specialness" of events; she wouldn't get any more excited about a trip to Disney World than she would about baking cookies together, so she was just as happy to go out to lunch at a restaurant with me (in fact, she got much, MUCH more upset at not getting to sit in the middle seat of the car later that day). This did nothing, of course to calm the deep guilt and sorrow and sense of stupidity clawing at my stomach. I mean seriously; who DOES that? Once would be forgivable; 0-2 in one week is pretty inexcusable. 0-2 mean I officially have a problem. 0-2 means I need to develop some serious coping skills.

How does one, exactly, cope with pudding?