This past Sunday, I planned to attend the Writer’s Center staff reading in Bethesda. I was looking forward to it. At the appointed time, we arrived at the home of the grandparents. There was no one there.

We let ourselves into the house. The little one was creeped out being in the house without grandparents. She kept saying she was scared. I showed her a high school photo of grandmom, and the little one looked at me with a serious expression and said, “we should put that photo back on the shelf.” Her eyes were wider than normal.

The little one found a toy, played with it, and put it away. We dawdled. No one showed up. We could not call them because they had forgotten to take their cell phones.

Finally, my cell phone rang. They were calling from the grocery store near our house. They could have sworn they were supposed to come to our house and so on…

We had a good southern lunch. No poetry reading though. I’ll try again next weekend.

On Saturday night, our sitter completely forgot she was supposed to come over. I called and asked her if she was still coming. She dropped what she was doing and ran over.

Tonight, I emailed my friend to remind her I’m picking her up to go have a drink. I’m not taking any chances.