Sometimes it’s the little things in life. Like today, I ran around like a headless chicken, powered without a doubt by the steroids pumping through my veins from yesterday’s chemo and today’s four tablets, two after breakfast and two after lunch. Though there are some undesirable effects of such, one good thing is that the ‘roids seem to give me some energy and the Friday after treatment I usually feel relatively “normal.” Or at least I think I do — sometimes there is the new normal.

It was a busy day. There was no school because of “portfolio” conferences in which the kids get to show the parents what they have been doing in school. We did ours on Wednesday and it blew me away to see what the kids had accomplished. My second-grader can sit down, draw a map of the world, label the continents and the oceans and even a good deal of the countries. There is something mind-opening about living across an ocean from where one started that allows a young child to understand geography in a more sophisticated way. Dang. Made me want to brush up on my geography which hasn’t been honed since around the time the Iron Curtain fell. Lately I have been looking at maps of the world. Now I know where the Middle East is. Sort of.

My pre-K gal can look at a bunch of objects and tell you how many there are (within reason – like not in an idiot-savant way when there are about 278 sesame seeds on the floor) without counting them. Seven cardboard cookies on a plate. No “one, two, three…” Just bam, “seven!” Cool. I am pretty sure she is going to be into math. She didn’t inherit that from me. But I am more into that now too because of the new way they are teaching things. So all you parents who have your panties in a twist about the new math just pipe down. It’s good for some of us folks who thought we sucked at the subject but have since discovered we just needed to approach it from a different angle. If you are shaking your head now, then run off and do your times tables the old-fashioned way. See if I care.

Back to today. We started off the morning by going to Primrose Hill Park and for the first time I didn’t protest when Isabel climbed to the very top of the rope structure. This is a contraption not atypical for an English playground, but a bit high by litigious American standards. However, Isabel’s younger, smaller classmate was perched at the summit when we arrived and it just didn’t seem right to rain on Isabel’s parade.

And in fact she was just fine. She is, after all, part monkey, the way she powers across the monkey bars quick as a flash as if she weighs one pound.

By lunchtime we had already checked off the boxes for fresh air and exercise, having walked/scooted to the park and walked/scooted back from the park. And yes, I do make my kids wear helmets when they scoot, another Americanism. There are loads of things I have embraced about London life (such as using the word “loads”) but helmetless scooting ain’t one of them. Nah-ah.

After lunch (I made panini on my panini press — oh how Martha Stewart of me!), we went to St. John’s Wood, home of the American School in London (our school) and numerous ASL families. I dropped Charlotte at a classmate’s house for a play date and had a quick cuppa (that’s tea, people). Then Isabel and I hightailed it to ASL for her piano lesson. No sooner did I deposit her with her lovely Finnish teacher, who when we arrived was sight-reading a complicated Mozart sonata that made me wish I hadn’t given up lessons at fourteen, than I spun on my heels and made for the local shoe store. See, I had to buy Isabel a pair of Converse All Stars for her hip-hop performance tomorrow, and I had so far failed to do so, leaving exactly one day to accomplish my mission.

I had been schooled by Isabel on acceptable colours and then Charlotte piped up and said she wanted a pair too, and why did I have so many pairs of shoes when she had only two or three pairs. I explained that my feet haven’t grown in about 28 years, but this information was met with a blank stare. “I want shoes.” Ok. Only fair. So there I was amidst a gaggle of Converse, without either kid and thus without any of their feet. But I totally scored. I bought Isabel the pink pair and Charlotte the purple pair. And when I reunited with each child, lo and behold the damn things fit perfectly. Did I mention that Converse run large (just in case you weren’t adequately impressed)?

Oh and did I happen to clarify that I made this successful round trip between the school and the shoe store in the half hour it took for Isabel to have her piano lesson?

Now, I do realise that this rather mundane story does not rise to biblical or even Cinderella proportions. Nevertheless, it did make me feel pretty great to get it right, the day after chemo, with so little time, and be met by my kids with round grateful eyes. Both wore their Converse home from the play date and out to dinner that night.

To celebrate, my good friend and neighbour and I took our kids to a local restaurant and had half-priced Coronas with limes (not the kids, who had vodka — just kidding — they had appletinis). I popped a couple of anti-nausea meds and decided, what the heck, to wash them down with the Corona. Damn, I thought, this is livin’.

Let me evaluate my day: I got some fresh air, packed in a good deal of brisk walking, found activities for my kids to do and got them there on time and last, accomplished my mission of the day. All that and no cooking and no dishes. The whole thing made me feel like an All Star Mom.

I like days like this. They’re killer.