This has not been my finest morning as a wife and mother.

I woke at five to the sound of Wonderboy crying over the monitor. I get up shortly after five most mornings (alone) with no particular difficulty, but this morning, when my child needed my attention, I seemed incapable of accomplishing the simplest tasks. Such as shutting off the baby monitor so Scott could get a couple more hours of sleep. When I reached for the monitor, I knocked my water bottle off the nightstand.

“You dropped your water bottle,” mumbled Scott helpfully and groggily from his side of the bed.

I fumbled in the dark, found the bottle, returned it to the nightstand. But it wouldn’t stay put. Kept wobbling and falling as if I were trying to put it on an uneven surface. I felt the nightstand to see if someone had left, say, a Pretty Pony in the way. What I felt was a nice flat surface covered with water.

I was, you see, trying to put the water bottle on the table upside down.

So now the whole nightstand was swimming. What’s that, you ask? What do I keep on my nightstand? (Besides the occasional Pretty Pony?) Why, books, of course!

Frantically I snatched my stack of books off the nightstand, blearily hoping they hadn’t gotten too wet. In the process I managed to rip the cover off The Pickwick Papers. I also heard a rattle and clink that indicated I had knocked my glasses to the floor.

“You dropped your glasses,” contributed my ever-helpful husband.

(OK, to be fair, during all of my aforementioned fumblings and spillings and cover-rippings, he made numerous offers of help, all of which I ignored because I was too sleep-addled and baby-rattled to muster gracious words of assent.)

So now I’m slapping my wet hands on the damp carpet which is scattered with soggy books, attempting to locate my glasses by, you know, smashing them under my blind fists. This is all the more irritating because I don’t usually wear my glasses. I wear night-and-day contacts. Except for times when I, just to throw out an example because it happens to currently apply, have managed to scratch my cornea and not only cannot wear my beloved contacts but am forced to smear ointment on my eyeball twice a day. Which is, I must interject, a truly disgusting sensation.

The knowledge of the ointment-smearing that lies ahead of me this day does not improve my before-dawn mood. I continue my ineffectual carpet-slapping, muttering darkly under my breath.

“Why don’t you let me take care of this,” says Scott in the gentle, patient tone of a man who is quietly regretting dropping out of his band after college in order to take a semi-respectable job and save money for an engagement ring. This clumsy, inept creature is the woman for whom he sacrificed a promising career as a rock star?

“Fine,” I snarl, such a sweet and grateful wife.

Wonderboy, meanwhile, has not uttered another peep after that first ear-splitting wail. Like his father, he quite sensibly believes that five in the morning is a time meant for slumber, not humorless imitations of the I Love Lucy show.

Scott got the mess cleaned up and I, finding myself wide awake at the time of day when it is my custom to arise, naturally sank back into bed and slept another two hours.

And awoke to discover a blizzard in progress, and me without any milk in my refrigerator.

Oh, and I forgot to fill the bird feeder, too.