On friday I looked at my iCal and realized–dang, someone has a dentist appointment on Monday! Because I brilliantly failed to categorize it, though, I couldn’t tell who.

“It’s all of them,” my husband said. “We got cards in the mail last week.”

I thought that seemed funny. I thought it was a little soon, but I didn’t think about it very hard. And then last night, I looked again, and the dentist appointment was at nine. Which couldn’t be right, I never make kid dentist appointments at nine. “It’s at eight,” Rob said. Just to be sure, I got out of bed, went to find the cards, looked at the time on one and—eight.

So this morning I rounded everyone up and rushed them into the car, with a little morning madness because it was a Monday after a vacation and a little stress, in part because someone’s body decided that an extended bathroom visit was in order precisely at the moment we needed to leave, but nothing compared to the way it would have been a year or two ago.

We left the house at 7:40 and marched into the dentist right on time.

The dentist’s office was very surprised to see us. No, they said, their appointments are in January! At 8:00.

I hauled four peeved kids (a: they like the dentist and b: they felt rushed through breakfast) out. At 8:15, I dropped the first two off at school. At 8:20, I got a voicemail from the dentist. They’d considerately tried to figure out why I did this thing and realized that I had a dentist appointment. At 9:00.

At 8:35 I walked the other two kids into school, signed them in, and got back in the car.

At 8:55 I arrived back at the dentist.

I know it’s funny. But it threw me off. It took an hour of recovery (and, yanno, tooth chiseling and whatnot, violently spraying teeny weeny fire hoses and sharp pointy implements) before I could laugh. I’m still regrouping. Why does this kind of thing–ultimately nothing but dumb and inconvenient–BUG me so much?