After weeks of scrambling to meet various deadlines, preparing for celebrations and trying to get a handle on new job responsibilities, I got a reprieve.

Rather than being insanely busy, my life went back to its normal crazy busy.

As it turns out, though, I’d been moving at a sprint for so long that I temporarily forgot how to walk. It was a temporary lapse… just long enough for me to take a tumble down the driveway.

My 4-year-old was more surprised than I was. In her reality, mommies aren’t supposed to fall – or fail, for that matter.

It happens.

When you’re trying to juggle too much, sometimes something falls. Despite my inventory of minor scrapes, strains and bruises, I’m actually relieved that the thing that dropped was me.

I bounced back up from my little spill, just like I’ve bounced back from every other setback that’s been thrown my way the past couple months – a little worse for wear but relieved that there wasn’t more damage.

The real lesson here is that I’m a klutz, but nevertheless, the episode made me pause to consider why I’m always rushing around like a maniac, sometimes with my brain several steps in front of my feet.

It’s ridiculous. Last Monday, I ran five errands before slipping behind my work computer at 9 a.m. On Tuesday, I had two appointments and the biggest iced latte I could buy before my workday even began. The rest of the week was much the same.

By Friday, I was officially fried but decided that the kids and I should celebrate the first chance we had to mellow out in weeks.

I steered them past Flavors of Honolulu and into a darkened movie theater to watch “WALL-E,” mentally checking that “obligation” off my list.

Maybe we should have just gone home instead because by Saturday I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even walk from the front door to my car without incident.

I realized then that packing my “free” time with even more activity wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

That afternoon, I traded in an invitation to lunch for a chance to get away from the kids so I could browse the Friends of the Library booksale without having to chase after two children with divergent interests.

Yesterday, I just puttered around the house and got things in order so that it should be smooth sailing into the holiday weekend.

If I slow down enough, I might just manage to focus on what’s right in front of me and stay upright.

—

This blog post has reminded me of two things.

First, one of Oogway’s quotes from “Kung Fu Panda”

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

The other, one of my favorite Pixar shorts, “Boundin’”

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/7AYP1Y5CQzg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Pixar Animation

Disney/Pixar Animation

What’s going to happen if Pixar ever makes a lousy movie?

Not all of the studio’s releases have been stellar, but they’ve all been good, if not absolutely great.

Collectively, the animated films have given me enough confidence to not just plunk down the money for tickets and popcorn, but also to brave opening weekend crowds. It’s nice to be able to count on a movie to be able to captivate a preschooler enough to keep her quietly seated in a packed theater.

Forrest Hartman, film critic for the Reno Gazette-Journal, just wrote a column about his favorite Pixar movie, and noting that he was using “worst” as a relative term when he ranked them from worst to best in this order:

8. “A Bug’s Life”
7. “Finding Nemo”
6. “The Incredibles”
5. “Ratatouille”
4. “Toy Story 2”
3. “Cars”
2. “Monsters, Inc.”
1. “Toy Story”

I found the list fascinating.

Until “Ratatouille,” I would have agreed that “A Bug’s Life” is definitely the worst of a good lot, but it got bumped up when Pixar tried to make it acceptable to have rats preparing gourmet dinners.

I don’t dislike “Ratatouille,” but it’s my No. 8.

I agree that “Toy Story” has to be No. 1, but for me it’s a tough choice between that and “Finding Nemo,” which Hartman put at No. 7… worse than “Ratatouille.”

My list looks like this:

8. “Ratatouille”
7. “A Bug’s Life”
6. “The Incredibles”
5. “Cars”
4. “Toy Story 2”
3. “Monsters, Inc.”
2. “Finding Nemo”
1. “Toy Story”

There’s actually a lot of room for negotiating in the middle because really, I like them all.

I expect to like “WALL-E,” too.

Maybe I’ll see you at the theater.

Are you ever surprised by what you find when you upload photos from your digital camera? Do you want to share?

Over the past few weeks, my son’s been in a school performance and turned 12. My daughter graduated from preschool and started swimming lessons. I’ve taken hundreds of photos and some have really amused me. This one is my favorite because I’m pretty sure my daughter isn’t transparent.

I’m a nail-biter.

Every once in a while, I’ll buy something to try to keep my hands occupied to stop chewing my nails.

I’ve tried tangles, stress balls, Kooshes, Rubik Snakes, hand exercisers, putty and when I’m feeling more artistic, even those little magnetic desk sculptures.

Apparently, I’ve passed on my need to fiddle with things to my son. If he doesn’t have anything else handy, he’ll try doodling on clear plastic cups with ballpoint pens. He needs some handheld stress reliever. It would relieve some of my stress, too. I figure if I find something to keep his hands busy, he’ll keep his hands off things that I don’t want to mess with.

I thought I found the perfect toy yesterday at KB Toys, an inflated rubber worm, about a foot long with rubber “hair” that can be stretched, squeezed, tangled and even whacked around to set off sparkly lights.

I bought one for my daughter, too, so she wouldn’t steal his. No one will tell me how her worm ended up deflated, but she ended up with the one I bought for my son.

Now I’m back on the market.

What’s good to keep your hands occupied that won’t end up breaking, stuck in the carpet (or a 4-year-old’s hair) and is portable and unlikely to distract anyone else?

Or, if you have other ideas for keeping idle hands from getting into trouble, I’ll take recommendations on those, too.

My mom used to have a problem keeping the names of her son, grandson and dog straight.

When she called “Bingo,” everyone looked up to see who she was referring to. Sometimes she surprised us because she was, in fact, calling our much-missed Shar-pei.

I can relate. Ever since my son became a big brother, I’ve started accidentally calling him by my little brother’s name. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens often enough that I can’t really make fun of my mom as much as I’d like to.

It’s rare when I mix up my son and daughter’s real names, but I mix up their nicknames all the time. I don’t think my daughter has any idea that when I call her “Bun,” I’m actually using her brother’s pet name.

The mix-ups don’t happen as much as simply forgetting their names altogether. My brain will stutter and, if I’m lucky, I’ll manage to spit out a “you” in the direction of the kid I’m trying to address.

My confusion seems to be getting more complex with age. Now I’m mixing up their identities.

Over the weekend, I had to put together both of their enrollment packets for the upcoming school year. Almost all the information was identical, so it made sense to go back and forth between the forms for each kid.

I think my problem started when I filled out one emergency card and started using it to copy pediatrician, dentist and emergency contact information onto the other one.

It was going well until I caught myself assigning my 12-year-old a 2003 birthdate and writing my own name where my daughter’s belonged. The addresses really tripped me up. If I got the street addresses right, the zip codes tended to come out wrong. I could pretend that accidentally using my home address for my work address was a statement about the amount of work I regularly bring home, but it wasn’t. There were just so many names, numbers and abbreviations floating around my brain by that point that it’s amazing that I managed to write anything intelligible down at all.

It would have taken careful scrutiny to catch my errors, but I felt compelled to fix them. After all, the information I was providing was what the school office would use in case of an emergency. I somehow doubt the kids’ dentist would appreciate being called at the office to be told that one of the kids had an upset stomach and needed to be picked up.

Trying to sort through their medical histories was like a puzzle. I’ve written that my son has an amoxicillin allergy on so many forms that it practically wrote itself. Aside from that critical information, though, I had trouble recalling the details of last summer’s physicals. I knew that there were needles involved. I had to just cross my fingers that the ones that pricked my kids were the ones they needed for admittance to school.

By the end of the endeavor, I wasn’t even sure I still had the ability to do simple arithmetic and I was especially nervous as I wrote the check for their school shirts and supplies because it was the last check in the box.

Luckily, when it counted, I got it right.

The kids really would have been in trouble if I couldn’t get them into school and they had to be homeschooled by a mom who can’t even keep track of their names.