Mr. Mom - part deux - DISASTER Strikes!

48 hours left for Mona to be back in town. We had almost made it through the month without any major mishaps. All of us were starting to lose it a bit but the end was in sight. I was feeling pretty good about myself. Finally on Saturday, disaster strikes.

I took Aanish and Ayaana out for brunch and we left the apartment without taking a key with us! Had a good brunch, stopped by the library, picked up some groceries and came back when we realized that we had no way to get back in the house - 2PM. Well, not such a big deal. Mona had left a set of keys with one of the neighbors (bless her - she anticipates the impossible). But luck was not on our side. The neighbors were not home. They were away at a resort and were not going to be back home until 7PM. OK. Our housekeeper, Pushpa has another set (thank you, Mona) and she has to be in the building somewhere. I head to the security to find out that she has already signed out and left the building. Mona had left her cell phone number with me so I called her - turns out that this was not the correct number (and given the state of the things, probably I was the one who took it down incorrectly!). I know Pushpa also works in apartment 401. They must have her contact number. Guess what, nobody's home. I rush to the Home Care office to see if they can help us get in the apartment from the roof - no such luck.

So now we are stuck outside - with no options left. I have bags of groceries that need refrigeration and a couple of cranky kids. Ayaana came to the rescue and tracked her friend down in the building who volunteered to store the groceries in her refrigerator. We decided to head to the mall for a movie. We had to kill time until 7PM. I realized that I did not have sufficient cash for movie tickets but had my ATM card handy. No problem. Stopped at the bank but could not remember the pin for the life of me. Wait, wait. Before you pass any judgment on me, I don't use this card very often. Well, I had my American Express and figured we can get through this.

We get to the mall fighting traffic along the way, make our way through a long line of cars making tight turns in the parking lot at the Forum (my favorite activities, all of them) and get there. There were no English movies playing at any of the theaters around that time. Our only choice was the Tamil movie, Enthiran and nobody voted for it. So we killed some time at the mall (eating cookies & popcorn, browsing at Landmark, shopping for a laptop cover) before we decided to head back - 5PM. Drove back to a Coffee shop near the apartment and hung out for an hour - 6:30PM. Tried reaching our neighbor but no luck.

Came back to the building and spent an hour in the game room playing table tennis with the kids until our neighbor called announcing that he was in the building. Hallelujah! Finally got into the apartment around 7:30PM, ordered some pizza, started watching Harry Potter 6 with the kids and passed out.

As it turns out, it was actually not a bad day at all!