The meteorological fog is thicker this morning than it was last night; rain has turned all the dead leaves that have fallen into dead wet leaves (and slip hazards). But the morning's adrenaline has at least partially replaced the mental fog of last night with the urgency of fight-or-flight.

Paula is substitute-teaching today, and so the logistics of the morning sprint were a bit more complicated than usual. We needed to shuffle the cars so that she would be able to pick up all the kids at the end of the day (she's subbing at the boy's school, and our daughter has pre-school today, and she's picking up a friend as well, which makes for a tight fit in the Jeep).

Well, the van wouldn't start. Plan A was shot. She took the Jeep.

I called AAA (who were kind enough to remind me that our membership is two weeks from expiring) for a hot-shot. Then my wife called and told me that in the confusion, our daughter's bag had stayed in the Jeep.

At 8:30, the AAA guy arrived and we opened the hood on the van. It turned over, thank God, and I left it running while I went to wake my daughter up for school.

Toddler shoes, like car keys, need GPS locators on them. It took me 10 minutes to find one pair of her sneakers that fit.

Finally in the van at 9:00 (15 minutes behind schedule), we drove first to the boys' school, where I retrieved my daughter's school bag from my wife's Jeep. Then we zipped to her preschool, and I dropped off Zoe after stowing her gear in her cubby and giving her a quick hug.

Then, to D&J Automotive, which is thankfully only a block from the house. I dropped the van off with a request to test and (if necessary) replace the battery–and to fix the inside panel of the driver's door, which (coincidentally) was starting to fall off the door this morning.

I walked home, and nuked my cup of coffee that I had left sitting.