Lessons Learned

1. When you are having a good day at home, don't mess with it by going out. Even if you told your friends and spouse you'd go, they aren't the ones who have to actually do so, or deal with the consequences.

2. Pouring rain will not make the going out process any easier. You will only end up being somewhere that you didn't really want to be while wearing wet pants and sporting an unstylish mop-like hairdo.

3. Being late will not make the going out process any easier. You will only end up late, feeling awkwardly ready to chow down while everyone else is already on dessert.

4. The promise of good food will not change the fact that you are wet and late. It will only make the hunger more gnawing.

5. Public potties are scary to a two-year-old who has just learned to use them. The fear combines with the need to pee to create a plaintive, pitiful cry.

6. I am hard-wired not to tolerate plaintive, pitiful cries.

7. When I am wet, late, hungry, and intolerant, I do not like to add marching back and forth to the bathroom with the plaintive, pitiful child. This makes me embarrassed, stressed, and irritable, none of which contributes to the calming of said child.

8. When I am wet, late, intolerant, hungry, embarrassed, stressed, and irritable, I cannot hold a conversation with my friends, no matter how much I would like to think I can. Superwoman's job belongs to someone else.

9. Babies need naps. Babies who have not napped do not sit happily in the car seats while their mothers are marching their siblings back and forth to the bathroom. Who knew?

10. I can eat a lot of food in a very short period of time. I can also come up with a lot of ways to spend ten dollars other than on food that I have to eat in 30 seconds while standing.

11. A whole lot can happen in 40 minutes.

12. A whole lot can be improved by giving up and going home to dry clothes, home potties, and an afternoon nap. Dorothy had it right all along: there's no place like home.