AS IT TURNS OUT, stroller technology has advanced somewhat since I was entirely au fait with the toddler crowd. While Angel twerked up and down the hallway, I pressed levers and stepped on pedals, desperately trying to get the folded-up contraption to release itself from its cosmic pretzel and transform into something a toddler could actually sit in.

I was on the verge of tears when Vic walked in from his run.

"What the hell?" he asked, which was fair enough, given that while I'd mentioned babysitting today, I hadn't said (or been aware myself) that it would involve quite so much gear at such an early hour.

"Wa da HELL!" chimed Angel from behind me with a toddler's instinct for immediately learning words they shouldn't say.

Vic's eyes widened, only just noticing that there was a toddler as well as a folded-up stroller in the hallway. He looked at me questioningly.

"Ah," I explained. "Daddy-Buddy's having a spa day. We're just about to leave for the grocery store, but I can't seem to...." I gestured helplessly at the annoying stroller. "I've tried everything I can think of. Stupid thing won't open up."

My husband, who is good with mechanical things, removed his earbuds and took a long look at the beast. He flipped a (fairly obvious, in retrospect) lock/unlock lever on the top handle, and the whole thing unfolded itself magically before us.

"Oh."

"Mmm," he said, brushing past me a little huffily and jogging up the stairs. "I have to get ready for work."

Implied: unlike some people (meaning, I supposed, me). Interesting.

I'M STILL RUMINATING ON the exact nature of the bug that crawled up Vic's bum this morning as Angel and I roll smoothly down the cookie and crackers aisle. We've developed a happy agreement where she points at something and I obediently open it, give one to her and drop the rest into the handbasket that I have balanced on the stroller's handlebar.

"Want!" she yells, pointing at a box of Pirate Cookies.

"Remember to say please," I remind her, already reaching for the colourful box.

Angel delivers an enthusiastic "Pees!" just as another baby stroller rolls up beside us.

"You know, you should always have her clipped in. It's not safe otherwise," the woman driving the second stroller says. Her eyes dart between the shopping basket, the open cookie boxes and the peanut butter cookies I'm reaching for. "Has she been peanut tested?" asks the impertinent, unlined face of the twenty-something mother who is eager to school me in the science of feeding toddlers.

"She's not allergic," I inform her more confidently than I feel. Has Buddy ever mentioned peanuts? I remember from when my own kids were young, there was a certain age before which you weren't supposed to offer them nuts of any kind, just in case. My hand stalls in mid-air. Maybe we'll skip the Pirate Cookies. Just in case. Even though they're my favourite.

"That's a nice stroller, you have," I say, trying to deflect any further peanut conversation. "Bet it opens like a dream."

The young woman made a sort of squiggly face at me, then said, "Don't worry, my mother finds the new strollers hard to figure out too."

Then she strolled off.

"Wait — I'm not her grandmother!" I call out after her. Is she insinuating that I look old enough to have a grandchild? That's just ridiculous. And rude.

I get my compact out of my purse to check if I've somehow aged 20 years since waking up this morning. While I look for favourable lighting, I'm vaguely aware that Angel has hopped out of her stroller and is selecting something of her choosing from a lower shelf. Good! Motor skills development! Got to get out there and take what you want in this life, girl. I am teaching important life lessons!

"Awice," I hear Angel's taunting voice below me now, so I put the compact away and return to the task of substitute-parenting. As I look down at her, I realize she has uncapped a squeeze bottle of maple syrup and has it aimed directly at my chest.

"Angel, no!" I shout, already too late. The sticky liquid squirts out, landing in streams across my lululemon technical top, which is, I will learn, sweat-wicking but not syrup-wicking in any sense of the word.

The toddler shrieks in delight, taking a quick hit of syrup by mouth directly from the bottle, then twerks in the aisle.

"Bawassing!" She cries gleefully.

BY THE TIME I exit the grocery store, I am: a) covered in maple syrup -- mostly shirt, but also, now, through magic of transference, hands, hair, winter jacket, keys, credit card, phone and stroller; b) mentally exhausted by the negotiations required to convince a toddler, hepped-up on sugar, back into her stroller; and c) in desperate need of a good coffee. Or glass of wine, but it's only morning, I remind myself.

Therefore, rather than going home, which might, on reflection, have been the more sensible thing to do, I push the lumbering stroller (containing a very annoyed-to-be-strapped-down Angel) across the park and towards the cafe.

After scoping things out from a bit of a distance to make sure there are no tiktokkers currently dancing either in or outside of the cafe, I push through doors with a sigh of relief.

The comforting smell of our house-roasted beans welcomes me like a warm embrace.

Natalie, who has been processing a batch of beans in the industrial-grade grinder, looks up when I enter, panting, sticky, and clearly out of my depth. Wordlessly, she goes to the backroom to get me a fresh shirt. Fortunately, we keep a box of cafe branded swag in the back: black t-shirts that read "First, coffee..." on the front and "...then, wine" on the back. Unfortunately, we'd accidentally ordered only kid sizes, which explains why we have so many left.

I leave Angel with Natalie and go into the washroom to squeeze into the tiny shirt and try, pointlessly, to comb maple syrup out of my hair.

20 MINUTES LATER, I emerge from the washroom still dishevelled but slightly less sticky.

"What in the world happened to you?" Natalie pulls a croissant apart in light buttery strips and gives them to Angel, who she has parked at a table (but, wisely, has not unclipped), trying to distract her from her fury.

"It's been a while since anyone left me in charge of a toddler," I explain. "I'd forgotten the dangers of too much sugar."

She nods as though no further explanation is required.

"Have you been besieged by influencers this morning?" I ask, going around the bar to get myself a stiff espresso.

"Nope," she says. "I'm not sure the TikTok crowd gets out much before breakfast."

"Mmm," I agree. "Shaking one's butt on video is probably a post-lunch thing. Or should be, anyway."

Just then, the door chimes tinkle. Natalie, Angel and I each look up from our respective focus, and there is a palpable shift in the room. The man who caused the door chimes to tinkle is handsome enough to cause an echoing tinkle in each of our female brains.

Because I'm happily married, I'm the first to shake off the tinkly-ness and notice with a stab of irritation that Mr. Awfully Good Looking isn't wearing a mask. He's also so engaged in his phone that I'm sure he's going to walk right into the stroller.

"Excuse me, sir?" I call out from behind the bar. "You need to put a mask on inside the cafe unless you're seated. It's the law."

He steps neatly around the stroller as though he'd known it was there all along.

"Let's pretend I'm sitting down," he says vaguely, eyes still on his screen.

Oh, he's one of those, I think. One of those personal freedom vigilantes who want to debate what the difference is if he's sitting or standing since he's breathing the same air anyway. The answer, of course, is that none of us actually know what the difference is — only it's what the law says, and if we want our business to stay open, we have to enforce it.

Usually, anti-maskers are a little rougher around the edges. This is a broad generalization, obviously, but these anti-law and order types tend to dress like bikers or, ironically, like the kids who cover their faces with black bandanas to smash up windows during otherwise peaceful protests. They very rarely look like this guy.

This one's smooth as Italian silk. His euro-cut, dove gray suit is somehow corporate and trendy at the same time. The crisply tailored white shirt he's wearing under the slim suit jacket is just tight enough to hint at the hard, masculine chest underneath. When he finally looks up from his phone, I'm startled by his gold-flecked eyes.

"I'll have a cortado, please. To go." He flashes a completely disarming smile.

I blink at him. He's ignored my request to put a mask on, but now he's grinning at me like we're — oh god, why did the word 'sweethearts' pop into my mind? I meant to think friends!

I push the box of disposable masks we keep on the counter toward him in a pointed 'don't mess with me' gesture and ask, "Oat milk? Soy? Oat-soy?"

Mr. Awfully Good Looking ignores the box of masks but keeps smiling. "Regular milk, please. I'm not trying to save the world; just get a proper coffee."

I have to turn my back to him to reach the almost never used regular milk from the back of the under-counter fridge. While I'm bent over and blocking his view, I try to take a discrete sniff at the carton to make sure it hasn't gone off.

"I liked your video, by the way," I hear his smooth voice say behind me. I stand up, already blushing and turn back around slowly. He's got his phone out, screen toward me, and I can see it's playing my clip, thankfully on mute, but embarrassing nonetheless.

"You're not here to do the dance challenge, are you?" Natalie asks nervously as I start the usually calming process of steaming milk. "Because you have to buy pastries if you film in here. It's our new rule."

He turns and takes both her and the now docile, smiling toddler in as though he hadn't noticed them before, then turns back to watch me pull his coffee together. I feel like a slug under a microscope—a slug with unfortunately sticky hair and a too-tight t-shirt.

"I'm not planning to make a TikTok, but I'll still take a croissant. If they're fresh," he says, surveying the nearly empty cafe. "Doesn't look very busy in here, considering that you're internet famous."

Natalie chimes in again. "Oh, you should have been here yesterday. It was crazy for a while there. I nearly had to call the police. Anyway, this is our quiet period."

"You have a quiet period in a cafe at 9:30 in the morning?" he says, his perfectly groomed eyebrow arched ironically.

I slide his cortado across the bar and say nothing.

"Let me guess," he adds now with the hint of a smirk, "At about 10, the local underemployed show up, trailing laptop chargers, order one tea and sit there for the rest of the day?"

"If they like," I reply tartly. "We're a neighbourhood cafe."

He shakes his handsome head, then reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a card.

"Let me know if you feel like making this place profitable. I have some ideas."

He slides his card across the bar and, with one last tinkle-making smile, turns and leaves the cafe.

"Wow. Wow, wow," Natalie sighs out loud.

"Wowz," agrees Angel, who smiles sleepily and turns her face sideways into her stroller seat as if she wants to carry Mr. Awfully Good Looking's face right into her dream.

I pick up the thick, embossed card and turn it over. It says:

Joss Carvil, CEO
Carvil Foods