Why is it that the day you have to dismantle the Christmas tree and vacuum all-things-holiday under the rug is the same day your fingers start to tingle from the cold while grocery shopping and you have to wear your insulated gloves to avoid frost bite from the cart handle?

It’s the same day a sensor light in your car starts to make a “Meep Meep” sound. Not a roadrunner “meep meep,” one high pitched “Meep!” and then a lower pitched, breezier “meep” that it has never made before and will never make again so no one will believe it ever made that sound.

It’s the day your kids start back to school after the holidays, the bus is late and the driver is different.

It’s the day you have to take a four year old to gymnastics but she falls asleep while walking towards you after school and when you wake her up to meet her new coach her water bottle starts doing tricks and all the sucking in the world won’t dispense a drop.

The day the new knitting loom your seven year old got for Christmas can’t sit in the box for another second while your four year old wants to read the book with no pictures instead of the book with only pictures.

I just want to know why, for the love of chocolate covered almonds did it have to be the same day our ten year old brought home her flute to practice….for the very first time.