Ms. Octopus & her Juggling Act

I want to pen down this incident so that when I am retired one day, I can read about this and laugh. Last Monday morning, 31 May, I was alone in the house with 3 kids. J went back to his hometown with both his parents as they had to attend a funeral. The natural thing for me to do was to take leave and stay home. Unfortunately I had an important meeting at 11am, and even after testing water with my boss, I had a feeling that taking leave was not an option.
So I took the 2 kids to their "Aunty Van" driver who took them to school, with baby in tow in the morning, arranged for the teacher at the daycare to take them in after school, and I would pick them up when I got home from work. As for the baby, I'd arranged with my mom that I would take the baby to her for the day. I fed Baby Xin, changed her and got ready for work. I put all the baby stuff (bottles, milk powder, diapers, clothes, the works) in a bag hanging by the pram, put the baby in the pram, and on me I had my handbag, laptop bag, another bag for my documents, and my breastpump & bottle. When I thought I was finally ready, I took the lift down, pushed the pram to my car, strapped the baby in her carseat, threw the pram in the boot, strapped myself in the car and voila! I was ready to go.
Just as I was driving out of the guard house, I suddenly remembered something was missing. The kids' towels, change of clothes and snacks. These were requested by the daycare teacher earlier when I asked her to care for the kids. Thinking that I did not want to be carrying an extra set of things on Monday, I had specifically asked J to help send those to the teacher last Saturday, and of course, he had forgotten. And sure enough, on Monday morning I forgot these things as well, even though I had seen the bag of stuff lying around.
Only that I remembered just in time. I turned back, parked the car, and for one crazy moment I wanted to leave Baby Xin strapped in her carseat while I run upstairs to grab the crucial bag. Sanity returned and I unstrapped her, grabbed my keys and up the lift I went. After getting the bag, while waiting for the lift, I had beads of sweat on my face, and I was hoping, "Please, let the lift with working ventilation come." - because the other lift's ventilation was not working. And up came the lift without ventilation. Sigh.....
After that, I was really off to go to my mom's.
I arrived work at 10am.
And then, I was told, one of the crucial attendees of that all-important 11am meeting, was on emergency leave. Meeting was called off.
Now I remember why I want to retire young....