You all know how I love a schedule, right? It’s true. Almost as much as I love lists. I LOVE SCHEDULES. Structure. Plans. Everything in order.

So imagine how topsy-turvy things got yesterday, when at 8:30 am my schedule suddenly got thrown out the window.

I was scheduled to be a chaperone at Stinkerbelle’s class trip to a local museum on Monday morning. And the week previous, we got our volunteer assignments from the teachers at That Girl’s school. Now, one of the things you agree to when your child enrolls there is a certain amount of volunteering. Fundraisers, making playdoh, scrapbooking… that kind of thing. And I am a stay-at-home mom for the most part. So I don’t mind.

Only I did all the enrollment paperwork, including all the volunteering paperwork, in the summertime and then? Promptly forgot what I had volunteered to do.

So when the volunteering lists came to us last week, imagine my surprise to be reminded that I had said I’d be the class historian.

Basically, what this entails is taking a lot of pictures of the class during the year, for the scrapbooks or year-end slideshows or what have you. Which is all fine, except the school year was one-third over by the time I was reminded of this assignment, and so I had missed A LOT.

So I was in a bit of a tizz, and thought I’d better get cracking. I mean snapping.

So I took the camera along to the museum on Monday, and merrily snapped away. And at the end of the session, one of the teachers came and asked if I had managed to get shots of every child. It seems they are making Christmas ornaments and wanted to have all the kids’ pictures to put on them. And, since Monday’s outing had the class divided into two groups, and I spent the majority of time with Stinkerbelle’s group, I hadn’t taken many at all of the other children. Plus one of the kids’ grandmas, who was there taking pictures of her pweshus widdle gwandbaby, had a habit of backing up and bending over in front of me so that her expansive ass was in my shot all the time.

So I suggested going into the classroom on Wednesday to make sure I got good shots of all the kids.

Enter yesterday morning’s early phone call. That Girl’s teacher was calling to say something had come up, and could I reschedule for next Monday? And as I am pretty flexible, I agreed.

Which meant: I HAD UNSCHEDULED TIME ON MY HANDS ON WEDNESDAY MORNING.

So I scrambled to PLAN.  And I decided that after I dropped Stinkerbelle off at school, it would be a good time to go out to Canadian Tire and give Santa Claus an assist. (P.S. Grammy? You and Grandad are all set.)

My day had been turned a little on its head. But what I didn’t realize was that, like the way making a small change in one’s own life can have a ripple effect into the lives of so many others… People around me were going to get weird.

To start with, as I was heading down my street driving Stinkerbelle to school, a contractor’s truck loaded with ladders and other paraphernalia came barrelling backwards out of a driveway, causing much screeching of brakes, not to mention cussing on my part. Apparently either the guy couldn’t see out the back of his truck or didn’t bother to look.

And then, not 50 yards away on the same street, ANOTHER vehicle came plowing backwards out of another driveway. Again with the screeching brakes and the foul language.

I got Stinkerbelle dropped off and headed out to Canadian Tire, DOING 50 BILLION SHOULDER CHECKS AS I GO. Because DOODZ. Drivers be crazy.

I got to Canadian Tire and went in, and started looking around for my items. And as I was browsing, I heard a song.

Now, you know how when someone gets the words to a song — a very well-known song — slightly wrong, and they insist on singing it that way over and over again, it makes you a little mental? Well, I was walking in the aisles of Canadian Tire, and I heard someone singing the Elmo song. “La la la LA, la la la LA, ELMO’S WORLD…” It’s not a complex song.

And around the corner came a couple and their toddler son. And one of the moms was singing the song to her son. Only she had one of the words wrong. But dude. There are only FOUR WORDS TO THE ENTIRE SONG. If you count “la” as a word.

Now, the other mom was shushing her — whether she was embarrassed because her spouse had the words wrong, or because she was a very bad singer, or it’s a bad song, or what, I don’t know — but Singing Mom just kept on singing. Incorrectly. Over and over and over and over again.

And I felt as though I had been plonked into some weird parallel universe. Because a) if you have a child under the age of 4, you know this song well enough to know all the words, and 2) if you have a child under the age of 4, you know this song is crazy-making at the best of times.

This was not the best of times.

So I escaped to the extreme far kitty-corner of the store among the shovels and ice scrapers.

Once I picked up all I could carry and paid, I took it all out to the car. Beside me was a mini-van, with another shopper, an older lady, loading some purchases.  She got in her car, and started to back out.

And I watched as this woman and her mini-van and an older woman in a regular car directly opposite her backed out at the exact same time, neither of them looking as they did so, and RIGHT INTO EACH OTHER.

Crunch.

Bumpers were dented and scratched and I believe the car’s bumper even had a hole in it. I am not sure, because I continued to watch dumbstruck as these two older women got our of their vehicles, surveyed the damage, and rather than exchange driver’s license information for future reference, HUGGED EACH OTHER. And then got in their cars and drove away.

Now, if you have lots of money for car repairs and/or don’t want the hassles of insurance, or maybe if you know the person you’ve just collided with, I can see how maybe this might happen. But my impression is that these two older ladies, strangers it seemed to me, likely drove home, la de da, made a nice cup of tea, watched some Oprah maybe, and then their husbands came home and were all OMG WTELF HAPPENED TO THE FRACKING CAR.

Because you just KNOW that the fact that a hole in the bumper might be a problem did NOT occur to either of these dippy women.

I got in my car — PULLING OUT FORWARDS NOT BACKING UP OH NO I DID NOT — and went home to hide until it was time to go get Stinkerbelle from school. You can bet your sweet bippy when I got there, I parked as far away from anyone else as humanly possible.

And made a resolution not to have any unscheduled time any more until WELL after Christmas. Maybe New Year’s, just to be safe.