My poor peanut had a rough day at preschool last Thursday. It was rainy and yucky, and that just about summed up her mood, too. They were having a "Fancy Nancy" ice cream party that Little L and I went in to help set up for. At the appointed time, MJ shuffled in with her class with her fancy bead necklace and sparkly crown that she had made the day I was in the classroom as the "teacher's assistant" (there's a job description I didn't prepare for in college), looking so glum I wanted to promise her ice cream every day for a year.

So they all sat down in front of little name cards they had also made, and she looked up at Little L and I standing nearby and tried to muster a smile, weak though it was. She ate her ice cream, keeping her head down pretty much the whole time, until the entertainment portion of the morning began.

Apparently in the book Fancy Nancy, which they had been reading all week at school, a waiter drops a tray full of ice cream. So the preschool folks had one of the dads carry a tray full of empty Styrofoam bowls between the tables where the kids sat, and then pretend to trip and drop the tray.

But he really did fall, a la Jack Tripper in "Three's Company," and made a pretty good crashing sound for a fake tumble. The tray clambored to the ground, the bowls went flying ... and the kids, most of them, weren't quite sure what to make of it. A few laughed, but mostly they were quietly unnerved by it. I mean, after all, here's someone who could have been their own daddy, falling to the ground with a great commotion. Even I was a little worried, and I was in on the joke. Surely someone would cry. Surely, someone would wonder about the safety of the daddy/fake waiter.

And sure enough, above the confusion came one colossal cry and accompanying bucket of tears. From my MJ. And what did she say, when she stopped heaving long enough to say something? Did she express concern for the poor guy who took the fall, you might ask?

Not exactly.

"Oh no!" she wailed, "The ice cream! The ice cream is all gone! What are we going to do?"

Oh, MJ.

To be fair, though, she's not totally about the desserts. At the end of the day, the teacher asked each of the kids what they're favorite part of the day had been. She wrote each of their responses next to their names on a poster and taped it to the wall in the hallway where we parent types were waiting to pick up our small ones. MJ's answer? "Ice cream and Mommy."

I'm sure she didn't mean it in that order.

So I was making out my annual grid of fall television shows -- new ones worth watching, days they're on, times they air, returning shows, conflicts in recording, etc. You know, like everybody does this time of year. (What? You don't? Hmmm.) It's sort of my equivalent of fantasy football or baseball, except my opponents are the networks and my DVR. Oh, and time, which, as always, is a worthy and formidable foe in my quest to conquer all my favorite shows in a single week while making sure my children are well-fed and clean. They generally are.

Anyway, I finished my grid, looked up from my work -- a timeline of teenage romps, medical dramas, sci-fi nutjobs and sitcoms about friends who don't have children and spend way too much time in each other's apartments to be platonic -- and gave Randy the news.

"It's looking pretty bad," I told him.
Him: "Yeah?"
Me: "Yep."
Him: "What's the diagnosis?"
Me: "That Monday night at 8 p.m. is where our television dreams go to die. We have Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dancing with the Stars ..."
Him: "Ugh."
Me: "Anyway ... Dancing with the Stars, Big Bang Theory, Chuck ...
Him: "Uh-oh."
Me: "... and Gossip Girl."
Him: [sarcastic gasp of tragedy] "Oh no! Not Gossip Girl! Anything but Gossip Girl! What are we going to do?"
Me: [ignoring lack of appreciation for my pretty, pretty show] "Well, I think it's clear what we have to do. I can dump Dancing with the Stars, I guess ..."
Him: "Please?"
Me: "... but unless two of the other four are available online -- and here I have to exclude Gossip Girl, because you know I love it, xoxo, and I like my teen dramas in full screen, in all their backstabbing glory, as they were meant to be seen -- we're going to need another DVR. What do you say?"
Him: [with a promising note in his voice] "Well, I think we could manage that."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "Sure. Just take MJ out of preschool and we'll use part of her tuition to pay for another DVR so we can keep watching all of our shows."
Me: "Awesome. I love it. I'm calling Time Warner Cable tomorrow!"

... not that it's a competition or anything, but I think it's safe to say that on her first day, MJ's preschool got the better of this mommy. No big deal, or anything, it's just that when I pulled her out of the car to take her inside, I looked down and saw a long dribble of something wet all the way down her orange sherbet-colored shirt. Great. Maybe it's just water.

"MJ, what is that?" I asked her.

She looked down. "Oh," she said, in her best don't-worry-about-it-Mommy voice (which she inherited from her father, who likes to tell me that he'll let me know when it's time to worry), "that's just toothpaste."

Toothpaste dribble. She missed her mouth while brushing. By the time we got inside, it was that lovely chalky shade that makes any first day of school truly special. Oh well. Obviously, there are worse things.

Like going out to your car after dropping off your newly minted preschooler and hearing this sound when you turn the key in the ignition: "Cluuunk. Cluuunk. Cluuuuuuunk." Then checking your purse (wait ... do I have my purse? ... yes, good) for your cell phone, which, like your car, is also dead. Awe.some. Grab baby from back seat, head back inside to find an old-fashioned land line, call husband at work and interrupt his day so he can drive over and jumpstart your piece of crap Camry ... which the Toyota service people swear has nothing wrong with it, even though this is roughly the sixth time it has died on you in the past two years.

But on a brighter note, MJ conquered preschool just fine. We thought she might be a little apprehensive, but that was before we let her pick out her own pair of tennis shoes last night -- Dora shoes, which are slightly better than Cinderella shoes -- and she couldn't wait to wear them. I was surprised she didn't ask to sleep in them ... that is, when she was sleeping last night, which wasn't for long. (Yes, we're back on that kick again. The mood of our house currently? Tired. What? That's not an actual mood? Yeah, well, we're too tired to have an actual mood.)

She spent several minutes showing off her new shoes before we left the house, and once she entered her new classroom, she plunked herself down at a Play-doh table and never looked back. She honestly did not even look up when I told her goodbye and headed out to my dead Camry. "Later, mom. See you in a few. I'll be hangin' here with my new homies."

Plus, she is CLEARLY already a genius after only one day of school. CLEARLY. At bedtime, she decided she needed to "change the sheets" on her dolly's bed. And because, perhaps I mentioned, I'M TIRED, I tried to persuade her that dolly was already asleep and it would be rude to wake her up in the middle of her dreams. Not that MJ would understand that concept, since she DOESN'T SLEEP.

"Mommy, Dolly not asleep yet," MJ told me.

"Oh yeah, sure she is," I said. "You tucked her in. She's gone to sleep."

"No Mommy," she told me, with a look of concern for my lack of intelligence, "she's not. Look -- her eyes are still open."