keep a stash of cash hidden in your glove box

Or, maybe not the glove box. That's the first place thieves look for enticing stealables, yes? So maybe in the little finger-well on the door on the passenger backseat that suspiciously fills up with paper scraps and ginger chew wrappers and the tips off of broken ballpoint pens. Do your self a favor and stick a twenty in there. Because you just never know.

You just never know that even though you laid out clothes for everybody the night before, even though you woke up bright and early and got breakfast going straight away, even though lunches and snacks for the day were packed, even though you restocked the car with diapers and wipes and car sickness vomit catchers, even though you threw a book into your bag in case the two-year old naps in the car and you won't be stuck without anything to do, even though you remembered EVERYTHING you could possibly need for a whole day in the city afoot with a toddler, you might still FORGET YOUR WALLET.

I discovered the offense half way in (on our hour trip). Too late to turn around. Forge ahead. I immediately launched into a grumpy IF ONLY. . . wishful thinking diatribe, feeling mad at myself for being so forgetful, mad at my house from being so far from my destination, mad at the world for not delivering me a time machine yet. Where's that De Lorean, Emmett Brown?

It's hard to remain too grumpy, though, when one travels with an encouraging life coach and motivational speaker in the form of a wild-haired nine year old. "Don't say How could I forget it", she told me, "say, What should I do now?".

A friend who answered my plaintive cell phone call suggested we check to see if the Zoo would accept phone payment and allow for Will Call ticket pick-ups. Nope. Well, then, no zoo. Which is unfortunate because, up until I discovered the missing wallet, and for the last several preceding days, I'd been talking up the Zoo big time to the boy, who was too little to remember the last time he went, a year ago. We deposited the girl at her drop off spot. And then we parked the car by the river and attempted a walk.

It was a decent twenty minute walk. But we have five HOURS to kill. And it's cold here today. Yeah, yeah, make up yer dang mind already. Last week was too hot and this week we're back down to the fifties. It was still in the high *forties* when I pointed out rowboats along the river and my little guy responded with, "peeese no more walk, mama. peeeese go back to car. peeese, i so tired mama".

So he napped all the way home and we've had lunch and I have forms of payment and identification again and if it took me having to go back and thorth and back and thorth (ah, my daughter, who just about came out of the womb with impressive and articulate language skills, had a few baby-words, that being one of them. it wasn't until she was five or six that she said back and forth, before it was always repeated twice and with the extra 'th' and, i must admit, i was sad to see it go) to learn it, this isn't a lesson I'll soon forget. The lesson, no. But my wallet again? Probably.