Today I had the odd responsibility of getting three different females out the door on time so that we could catch a series of trains.

She Who Must Be Obeyed complicated things by having to work in the morning. That left me to rally our girls. The “rallying” involved several steps, including telling them to pack their own day bags. I didn’t repeat this as I couldn’t care less if they carried their own stuff or not.

However, as they packed, I pointed out that neither She Who Must Be Obeyed nor I would carry anything that belonged to them. They should therefore choose carefully.

This prompted a bit of rethinking on their part.

The next stage involved reminding our oldest to clean the bath and reminding her that snapping at me for interrupting her was NOT an acceptable response to such a request.

I reminded our youngest that she’d probably want her new Nintendo 3DS on the train and that draining the battery at home was probably a bad idea. She plugged in the power cord and kept playing.

Somewhere in there I made lunch, which amounted to cleaning out random leftovers and encouraging the girls to finish them. (In my defense, these were my orders from She Who Must Be Obeyed.)

Eventually, She Who Must Be Obeyed returned from work and finished the last of the leftovers. I then had the job of getting her out the door along with the other two. This involved getting shoes ready and asking why the washing machine was running only 15 minutes before we were scheduled to leave. (There’s a long explanation for why it was running; short version: girls.)

We managed to leave on time, which was a disappointment to me as we were actually on schedule to leave early until the washing machine somehow got involved and my daughter decided to do her hair.

I the end I waited until everyone was out the door and then put on my shoes and locked the front door.

Our youngest then had the nerve to say I was slow getting ready.