Beck Vass: How baby brain ruined my dinner date

With Mum in town my husband and I decided to take the rare chance to go out for dinner. Disaster ensued. Photo / Getty Images

My mum was visiting from Nelson for a few nights, coming to see her sweet little grandchildren.

She doesn't come to see me anymore. She comes to see them. Once you have children, people say things like: "See you in a week, can't wait to see the kids."

"Yeah and me too, right?"

"Nah. Just them."

When you have family like mine, they just tell it like it is.

So that's all well and good. Then when Mum and my daughter, five, had a fight because my daughter is super hard work and it was just one of her moody days, Mum finally admitted it: "You were never like that."

I KNEW IT! She IS hard work. I feel like I've always known this and, in fact, have made no secret of the fact. Just last week I shared that we saw a professional about it.

We make jokes about karma and how I'm getting what I gave when I was a kid myself but it has been revealed: life is much harder for me and I deserve everyone's sympathy.

I digress, however. With Mum in town my husband and I decided to take the rare chance to go out for dinner. Despite my kid being obnoxious, my Mum somehow still loves me enough to take the hit and babysit.

I booked my favourite restaurant, Harbourside, online as I have previously, and, because I am pregnant with baby brain in full force, making mistakes every few minutes at the moment, I was careful to double, then triple, then quadruple check the day, date, time and year.

I received a booking confirmation. Yet when we got to the restaurant, there was no booking – or any space - for us on a busy Saturday night.

I knew it would have been me who made the mistake. I just couldn't figure out how, after all my checking, I had still screwed up.

As we made our way to the car I checked the booking. I had booked Harbourside in Auckland, not Tauranga. I checked the day, date, month, year and time repeatedly but failed to check the location. Nice one.
Not only did I miss a rare chance to eat at my favourite place, I was a rude "no-show" somewhere else. I tried to ring them but couldn't get through or leave a message.

We ended up having an awesome dinner at my other favourite place, Macau, where I celebrated constantly screwing everything up with amazing Asian-fusion and the best ginger, lime and mint mocktail ever.

I might not be able to get through a day without making a mistake but by crikey can I eat.

At least I can do something well.