Thoughtless

Beck's recent litany of household absentmindedness, including, as she says, "blowing up small appliances, letting the kettle boil dry, forgetting my keys, locking myself out of places" has me itching to make her feel competent by reference to my own thoughtlessness.

This summer, I locked us all out of the house. We had to wait for a locksmith. On a Sunday night. In the dark. It cost $130. I'm a moron.

Ah, July. Such nice evenings for hanging out in the driveway, waiting for the locksmith, watching the traffic whiz by on your regional-road street.

Here I am, trying to look contrite and pitiful so that Pynchon will forgive me: who remembers to put the camera in the diaper bag, but neglects the house keys, for goodness sake? Just looking at this picture brings me back to that summer evening. Look at me wearing my maternity jeans, grateful that (unlike late in my pregnancy) they actually fit! Look at that big blue lump, sitting on top of the brown lump that is my postpartum belly! That's Miss Baby there--that blue lump in the sling. She's asleep, having had her fill of open-air diaper changes and open air nursings and several marchings around the block. Thank god the sling had come to the grocery store with us. Again, I remembered the sling, but not the house keys.

We are beginning to be able to laugh about this--we were lucky enough to find ourselves squatting in the best of conditions: a clear night, a trunk full of groceries (we opened some pop), a garage through which we could forage for camping chairs, and a bag of warm clothing that we kept meaning to bring to the Goodwill but never had. Club Monaco sweatshirt from 1989? Yeah, baby! Warm me up! We were also though, obviously, unlucky enough to be locked out of our house, with no spare keys in existence, with a 7 week old baby, on a Sunday night, with a cell phone with near-dead batteries, that allowed us about 5-8 minutes of call time. Did you know that it's not easy to find an on-call locksmith on Sunday nights in July? And that when you do, he will make you wait nearly two hours on your front lawn? While your cellphone dies and you have no way to contact him or he you? And then when he finally arrives, tell you you should get some spare keys made?

Yup. I'm a dummy. This was 100% my fault: I packed the sling, the diaper bag, the grocery list, the wallet, the camera, and the cellphone. But not the keys to the house, even though it was totally my job. Now that's thoughtless, um, not that there's a competition or anything ...