Is this what rock bottom looks like? Hunched over in my driver’s seat parked at a 7-11, frantically portioning out 5 M&Ms onto squares of Saran Wrap I had hacked from the roll (Have you ever tried to cut Saran Wrap into even squares? Trust me, you’ll only do it once, from the depths of desperation.), twisting the wrap into a pouch then scotch-taping it to a tiny, cheap Paw Patrol valentine.

If it’s not rock bottom it’s the closest I’ve gotten so far.

We got a list of 26 kids’ names to provide valentines for the pre-school’s Valentine’s Day party. No worries! I purchased a cheap box of Paw Patrol insta-valentines (plus fake tattoos, because that’s how we roll—providing toddlers with the gateway to an ink addiction) WEEKS ago. I am on TOP of this game.

I even got Captain in on the act. While I was away for the day before V-Day, he coached Toby through signing each one. The night before V-Day, I packed up my assigned school party provisions donation (veggies. Toby swore no one would eat the celery, but damn it, celery was in the party platter of pre-cut veggies and as such it would for sure be included in my ‘why yes, I did carefully chop and slice all these veggies’ re-packaging effort into Tupperware.).

I wrote each child’s name on a valentine and tucked a fake tattoo into it. I even went so far as to put each room’s group into a separate ziploc bag with the class name on it.

BOOM, mother of the year. I was pretty proud of myself.

Then. Then I remembered that last year, I sent just valentines. And Toby came home with elaborate candy offerings from each of his classmates. I even remember the plaintive Facebook post I made about it.

Damn it. Was I going to make my kid THAT kid—the one who didn’t attach a lollipop to his valentine—two years in a row? My peer-pressure/mom-guilt addled brain decided at 11:30 p.m. that I. Would. Not.

And so began the process of conjuring up 26 individual servings of candy in the middle of the night. Yeah, we’re not the kind of family that keeps handfuls of individual serving candies around. In desperation, I decided to cannibalize the box of Valentine’s M&Ms that Toby’s grandmother had sent him. I did the math of serving size x servings per box and decided that 5 M&Ms per kid would suffice. (Hint, don’t believe the box’s M&M count.).

About 15 tiny hand-made Saran-Wrap baggies of 5 M&Ms each into the process (I experimented with sandwich bags. Do you know how pathetic a serving of 5 M&Ms looks in a sandwich bag?), I realized I wasn’t going to hit my quota. Not even if I bumped my serving down to 4 for all of the Bunny Rabbit class. I can now say that I’ve cursed the M&M gods.

And so, my friends, THIS is how I found myself buying an emergency bag of M&Ms at 7:30 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, then breaking a dewey sweat as I nestled 5 M&Ms each into their Saran Wrap purses in the 7-11 parking lot. I only had to fill 9 that morning, but with the tiny voice in the back seat questioning my sanity, it felt like an eternity of futility.

And yes, Toby came home with a box OVERFLOWING with valentines attached to lovely individual serving boxes of conversation hearts, Swedish fish, lollipops, and more. There was even a hand-lettered card with a Matchbox boat attached with a nice ribbon.

All this sent home in a highly crafted box festooned with decorations. Said box and decorations provided by a FAR more crafty mother who actually came INTO SCHOOL to supervise this crafting by 3-year-olds. Guess what, I wasn’t that mother.

I can only imagine the other parents pillaging the kids’ loot for a post-bedtime snack and coming across my 7-11-to-table, artisan crafted, mom-guilt sealed M&M Saran Wrap pouch with less than a handful of M&Ms inside. My sincere hope is that they had a sense of humor. Or, at the very least, a sense of pity.

I admit it, I belong to a few ‘community yard sale’ type Facebook pages. I’m working up the energy to take photos of some stuff to sell (because that’s a yuge effort).

But I’m also pretty entertained by what some people put out there.

This one takes concise copywriting to a whole new level…

“probably car shaped.” Dying of LOLs.

Not even quite sure what this is?

Now THIS is a mindset I could really get behind. I mean seriously, this ad really appealed to me. Not sure why the chef needs to be elderly, but the idea of having a grandmother-type cooking for me a few times a week? SOLD. Major points for creativity.

Ummmmm, there are these things called forecasts. And stores that sell shovels.

I really have no words for this one. I never saw pics go up. Small blessings.

I’m trying to imagine levels of nuclear my husband would reach if I started collecting salt and pepper shakers to this magnitude.

Punctuation is a beautiful thing, people. So are paragraphs.

Was Rosa Parks in jail? Yes. Why? Because she broke the rules. So she was bad? No, she was a very brave, very good person. Then why she break the rules and go to jail? …

Seriously, help me explain this.

They talked about Rosa Parks at Toby’s pre-school today. He got a little Scholastic hand-out about her and apparently an abbreviated explanation. He was FASCINATED about her getting arrested and going to jail.

He spent the entire trip home asking about it. Over and over, approaching it from every angle. He could NOT understand why if she “broke the rules” she was still considered a good person. I tried talking about how the rules then were wrong, so she was right to break them. Let’s just say that’s a level of subtle that is just a titch above a 3-year-old’s head.

“So, it’s OK to break the rules?”

“No, Toby, it’s not OK for YOU to break the rules.”

“But I think the rules are wrong. Lots of rules you say are wrong.”

Sigh. It’s too early to learn subversion. Look, Toby, a TRACTOR!

Supposedly tomorrow they’re moving on to ‘planets’ as subject matter. WHEW. His questions on this topic are a tad easier. “That guy lives on Earth too?” “Yep.” Happy. Bring on the planets.

Do you know what’s scarier than a 3-year-old in the middle of a raging tantrum?

The eerie, sudden, complete silence that ensued when we sent said irate tantrummer to his room for a time-out.

We’re used to echoing screams bouncing down the hallway. Kicks to the door, yep. Howls of outrage, totally normal. The outrage usually lasts for a few minutes, until he dials it down a bit and says the magic words, “I want to talk about it.” Then we go in have a chat about appropriate behavior, and carry on.

Not this time.

This time, after being sent to his room mid-dinner for whatever ridiculous breach of protocol he came up with this time, he screamed at full volume for 15 seconds, then went absolutely mute. Like, no sounds at all. John and I looked at each other, mildly alarmed. We waited, thinking maybe he was gathering oxygen for a fresh vocal assault.

Nope, silence.

The parental paranoia started running through my brain. Did he somehow pull his dresser on top of him? Fall and hit his head? “Go see what’s going on,” I told John. We were a bit freaked out.

“Are you OK? Toby, TALK TO ME.” John’s voice was edging toward panic. He carried Toby down the hall toward me. Toby’s little face was slack, his mouth hanging open. Completely unresponsive. We went into panic mode, frantically trying to think what might have happened. Do 3-year-olds have strokes???? We huddled over him, tantrum forgotten, desperate to have him respond and solve this puzzle of sudden reversal.

Then I saw Toby slant a sly side look toward John.

“We’ve been had. Big time,” I told John. Toby looked at me and I could almost swear he laughed. “Had, we’ve been. Badly.”

He plopped Toby back in his chair at the table, and instantly he was back to cute, happy, compliant Toby. Noshing on his dinner like nothing happened. So… yeah. Time-out aborted, consequences of the misbehavior vanished, attention lavished. Just. Like. That.

Well played, young’un. Well played.