After truthfully answering the question, “Today is Monday?” for the fourth time in an hour (“Yes, Mom. February 2nd”), one is tempted to start lying. Extravagantly.

“Today is Monday?”

“Nope, it’s Thursday. The second one this week. And it’s your birthday! Yay! Since you’re a hobbit you owe presents! I’ll take that teddy bear of yours and paint him blue!”

Trouble is, while she forgets that she just ate breakfast, she’d probably remember enough of that to complain that I’d tried to paint her bear for the next month.