When Kat was young, she was very inflexible. She has a sensory integration problem that she has largely overcome but she was easily overstimulated then by bright light, loud noise, and too many bodies in one place. Her overload made her frightened and her fright made her inflexible. We used a code word to let her know that things were okay and she needed to go with the flow. We used to turn to her and say, �Serendipity.�

Nowadays, it�s me who is inflexible. I want my serendipity but I want it organized. No, let me be more specific. My own serendipity can be as disorganized as it wants. My children�s serendipity is the serendipity in need of organization. If their serendipity doesn�t get more organized, I�ll never get the chance to take advantage of any of mine.

Having a young teen and a preteen in the house means living with children who have schedules of their own. While their schedules can be tricky to balance with mine, at least I know up front where I need to be and when, in a pinch, I can make arrangements to get someone to cover the pick up for me or can balance off what�s on my schedule with what�s on theirs and act accordingly. It�s when we get into free-floating weekends that the clashes come.

Yesterday, my original plans involved very little. Originally, I planned to spend the entire day cleaning up and sorting out my girl scout stuff before it took over the bedroom and I could not find the bed. After a friend�s mother died, I added a late afternoon condolence call to the schedule but the day still promised a leisurely pace. That promise was a lie because of serendipity.

Serendipity first struck Day-Hay. With very little notice, she was invited to a double birthday party for today. As I recall, the invitation came on Tuesday. I am not exactly a Thanksgiving Day sale shopper. The crowds are not so bad but Thanksgiving weekend mall parking lots will drain confidence from Mario Andretti. Just think what they do to a mediocre driver such as me. I�ve gotten to the point in life where I�ll pay not to have to fight the kamikaze parkers at the mall.

Then serendipity struck Kat. Well, not exactly. Opportunity struck but she let it sit around for days before doing anything with it. Her friends are no more organized than she is. Somewhere around Wednesday, they decided that they should go to see �Harry Potter� on Saturday. Now, for those one or two of you not in the know, �Harry Potter� is one of the most popular movies around. Advance tickets are available on the Internet and Kat knows this fact because she and the rest of the family went to see the movie last weekend after I scored tickets on the Internet. Nevertheless, Kat made no prior arrangements. I tried to tell her to make her arrangements on Thursday. I tried to tell her to make her arrangements on Friday. But I�m just a nagging mother who deserves to be ignored.

Yesterday morning, after Mr. Philately went off to run errands, Kat finally got motivated. She told me that she could not have done so earlier because she did not know the times of the movies until she saw the newspaper that morning. As Kat is a very bright child, I was not sure what to make of this information. Perhaps her brain was momentarily being used by aliens much as there supposedly is some program out there that pirates the use of online computers. In any event, it wasn�t until sometime after 11:00 that she knew who wanted to go to the 1:00 show and how many tickets she would need. The Internet did not indicate the show as sold out but, instead, said the transaction was �invalid.� I suspected that �invalid� meant �sold out.�

Kat was still sticking to the plan she finally had made. She said, �Oh, we�ll just go and then we�ll call you if the show is sold out.� I had visions of finally finding a parking space at the mall, hiking the mile or so from my car, and then getting her phone call. Nothing doing. I muttered �serendipity� and drove up to the theater to discover I was correct. All the afternoon shows were sold out. I called Kat to let her know. It was now past 11:30 and I had not gotten the presents.

With a sigh and a wish that Day-Hay had friends with more organized mothers, I added some shopping to my schedule. I muttered �serendipity� to myself and headed to a more expensive toy shop that was not at a mall, figuring that the extra money would be well spent, to get a crafts kit for Birthday Girl #1 From there I went to the bookstore nearby. After a bit of browsing, I called Day-Hay for advice on a present for Birthday Girl #2. �Just get a gift certificate, Mom,� she advised me so I did.

I returned to discover that, in my absence, Mr. Philately had returned and talked Kat and her friends into going bowling. It was then that I had a bit of serendipity that I actually could take advantage of. Mr. Philately was driving them to the bowling alley.

By then, it was into the afternoon and I had not yet tackled the Girl Scout Mess Monster. When I finally dug in, I found the extra dowels. I surveyed the crafts items strewn all over the room in an attempt to sort them, then waved the dowel like a magic wand, and said the only thing that I could think of.

�Serendipity, take me away from all this.�

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