Fun Saturday Evening & Forgetting Important Stuff

We went to the house (the beautiful house) of some very good friends J&EB for dinner on Saturday night. (I think it was Saturday... I've slept since then.) EB was making pizza. EB can cook like nobody's business. The pizza was fabulous! She even made brownies - from scratch! She's 7.5 months pregnant and can run circles around me, who is not pregnant...just old and tired. We had a great time. Our kids play together very well. Their son is two days younger than Little Bit and they've known each other their whole lives. They wrecked the place with books and toys and various bits of who-knows-what. They ran themselves silly. They screeched in delight. They fell down some (hardwood floors are tricky in footie jammies or socks) but picked themselves up and kept going. They all got bathed at the same time. It was quite a scene; water everywhere. But - they all got clean and then, after they were clothed in their jammies for the evening (we borrowed some from EB for our kids) they ran some more! Both Kiddo and Little Bit fell asleep in the car on the way home. We didn't leave until after 9PM which is late for us so it must have been really late for the kids. Good times all around. REWIND 5 HOURS: See, I really do have a point in telling you about all that fun we had. The evening started off on a somewhat even keel - us getting ready to go, making sure we had everything. I'd just baked a small batch of Danish Butter Balls to take with us to J&EB's house. The kids had just gotten up from a nap and were excited to go visiting. We piled in the car and began the 25 minute drive. After we'd gone about 3/4 of the way, Hubby looked at me (I was driving) and asked, "Um...did you turn the stove off?" I went blank. Completely blank. I couldn't remember even touching the stove after getting the cookies out of it, much less turning the thing off. Of course, there was no way I was going to enjoy my evening without going all the way back home to check on the frikkin' stove. So I dropped Hubby and the kids off at J&EB's house and promptly turned the car around, drove 25 miles back home (chanting a mantra of sorts all the way so I wouldn't forget the other things I wanted to get - since I had to go back home anyway) only to find that the stove was, indeed, turned off. Dammit. I got my iPod, my camera, and the thing from the other car that lets me play my iPod through the tape player in the Corolla...(all part of my mantra, "Stove, iPod, camera, thing from the car..., stove, iPod, camera, thing from the car...")...and headed back to J&EBs house listening to Phantom of the Opera as loudly as my car speakers would let me. Hey - I didn't have the kids in the car so I only had to worry about my ears! TTFN JMS