How a stranger saved my marriage and rescued me from having to live in my minivan.

I have to tell you guys something. It's going to come off as boastful, which we know the nuns frown upon, but it must be said anyway.

I rarely screw up.

You can ask my family. They will completely vouch for me. I am a good wife and mother and pretty butt kicking housewife and I almost never drop the ball.

That bit about almost never dropping the ball makes the times when I do drop the ball pretty serious.

Tonight I dropped the ball. Think Buick sized ball.

All week David has been preparing for a television production conference with lots and lots of big potential clients. He's been editing and recording, getting all of his products just so. My job was to bring his best clothes to the dry cleaner to have them ready for pickup today so that he has what he needs for his trip tomorrow. I dropped the clothes off on Wednesday like a good little hausfrau and made a mental note to pick them up today.

You know where this is going don't you?

I completely forgot that dry cleaning even existed until 5:30pm when a wave a ice cold nausea washed over my body. I had forgotten to pick up the dry cleaning and now my husband would have nothing to wear to his important meetings and his deals would fall apart and we'd have to live in our car.

I called him and told him.

"Well," he said "You need to find out who owns the shop and get them to open it."

This was not what I wanted to hear because this was an impossible task. How on earth would I ever find out who owns the shop? And then asking them to open it up so that we could get his clothes? Impossible.

I started to plan for our new life living in the minivan.

"Send out an email to the list. I'm sure that someone must know who owns it." he said.

Now I really wanted to throw up because not only had I screwed up, but David wanted to me to send out an email publicizing my mistake to all 2,000 of the families in Arlington who subscribe to the Arlington email list.

Finally I sent out the email, sure that we were doomed to a life in the minivan eating government cheese when I actually got a response. A resourceful subscriber figured out the name and phone number of the owner and sent it to me.

I forwarded it to David, because I'd pretty much rather die than make that humiliating phone call. Since I was schooled by nuns I learned that when you screw up there is no mercy, just a hot seat in hell. The nuns would have hated David because he happily called the owner, explained his predicament and asked the owner to open up the shop on a frigid Saturday night. Which the owner is very kindly doing.

So there it is. A huge screw up, a Hail Mary toss and the retrieval of hope. Just another day at Shiny Red Houses.