The whole evening went wrong because I forgot to take the chicken out

Dear Delyara, I opened the freezer, saw the chicken still hard as a brick, and knew immediately what that meant. Delay, hunger, improvisation, somebody complaining, me trying not to sound irritated, and the whole emotional weather of the evening shifting because one thing hadn’t happened early enough. We ended up having eggs on toast. No one was traumatised. Still, I carried the sense of failure like I’d mishandled something larger than dinner. I think that is one of the strange burdens of daily life. So many small turning points depend on whether one tired person remembered one ordinary thing at the right time.