Instructions for a downright decent day.

Moments before an unsuspecting chocolate/peanut butter cupcake is wolfed by a ravenous Season.

First of all, you'll need to wake up to find your Internet down. You're husband will have fiddled with it for a bit but he'll need to leave for school so that will leave just you to do the fiddling. So you'll head to the router box and start pushing buttons at random—as is your specialized technique when something goes wrong. Then you'll find that your computer is asking for your network's password, which of course you don't remember because it involves at least 17 letters from the alphabet in no particular order. So you'll need to start rummaging all your junk drawers in search of that green post-it that has the password written down.

You won't find it. Just yet, anyway. (You'll probably have to wait for your husband to come home from school to find it because he knows where it is.) Instead, you'll find—stashed away at the very back of your nightstand drawer, a small pile of gift cards. Some of them dating back to your wedding. You'll stare at them in amazement, wondering if any of them are actually worth anything—because you could have sworn you had used up all your wedding gift cards. But....maybe not?? You wonder why you would have kept them if the gift cards were empty, so you assume they must have something on them. But then again—sometimes you can be scatterbrained and you don't always take the most logical course of action with something that seems logical, like throwing an empty gift card away, for instance. You'll probably mull over all this for another 6-7 minutes. Eventually, you'll gather up your gift cards like precious baby bunnies and put them in your purse for safe keeping, and then you'll (and this part is important) sneakily look around your empty room like you have a super-cool secret that no one else knows about.

This is most definitely step 1 for a downright decent day.

Later, while chowing down on a delicious lunch that you'll have made, you'll tell your husband about the loot you found at the back of your nightstand drawer and offer to go try one out at Macy's since he's been saying (for some time now) that he needs new shoes. (Plus, you've been planning on going to the mall anyway to take advantage of the raging Memorial Day sales—it'd be stupid not to, right?) So you put on your Sunday best, pack up the family car and make your way. Your husband will find a nice-looking pair of shoes on sale. Then the nice clerk assisting him will apply another coupon towards the purchase, and with the gift card (which indeed has money on it, hipperdeediddles!), his pair of new shoes will cost a mere $6 dollars. You'll give each other a "nailed it" high-five—the type of thing that would totally embarrass your daughter if she wasn't just one year old.

This is step 2. But of course.

Later your wee babe will take an outstanding nap, so you'll say "Why not?" and go and take one too. It'll be revitalizing.

This is steps 3-21.

For dinner you'll attempt a new recipe involving couscous. It will be okay—nothing phenomenal but at least it's not disgusting. Because isn't it the worst when a new trial recipe goes south? And frankly, you're just glad you tried it because now you can finally toss the flyer that it came on, which has been sitting with all your recipe books taunting you for the past umpteen months.

(Actually, this step isn't really important to a downright decent day.)

And here's the real kicker. It's very important to get this part right. Your husband is going to need to surprise you with a dessert date at a dessert cafe near your home. Say, The Chocolate. You'll probably order something chocolatey and peanut buttery. Or, well, that's what I would do. And your husband will opt for something minty. Or, that's what mine would do. You'll offer some to your sweet little child, but since she seems to still have an aversion to cake, she'll bow out after the first bite, leaving more morsels for you. You'll enjoy every last crumb, along with the pillows on the couches and the paint motif in each room.

After that, you really can't go downhill. You'll put your baby to bed and enjoy the evening free as a lark—strapped to your computer and couch for five hours crafting up crafty ads for crafty people who like crafty products. And occasionally you'll twirl your hair for a bit and hope that you don't get any of it in a knot.

Then you'll go to bed.

So there it is. Should be fool-proof. I oughta trademark these instructions.