Some people believe in angels. Some people believe in ghosts. I believe in invisible mischievous creatures.

When I was 20 years old, I spent time in the Outback under the tutelage of an aboriginal shaman. He taught me about the blue light that would suck out your soul. He taught me about the sleeping spirits. He taught me about the wormholes he used to walk from Uluru to Sydney in less than two hours, returning home with bags of cold groceries. And, in addition to all the other pulsing elements of the mystical and unseen, he taught me about the mischievous creatures all around us.

"They are all around us, interacting with our world, but to the untrained eye, they remain unseen." The shaman said proof of these creatures is in the fact that every culture has tales of such species; they're simply called by different names — e.g., the Scandinavian trolls, the Germanic elves and the Irish leprechauns.

When I stayed with the shaman, camping out on his property, the aboriginal equivalent of Thing One and Thing Two was in full force. I would find my scrunchies tied around the topmost branch of the tallest tree. Holes filled with trinkets were dug behind my back without my noticing. My rolled-up sleeping bag was constantly stuffed with local flora. And one sock was always missing.

"Mischievous little buggers," the shaman would say, shaking his head. "If they know they're bothering you, the teasing will get worse. If you ignore them, they'll return your belongings and move on."

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, and I was off my game. The morning was a disaster. You could say it was just one of those days. But I know the truth; it was the creatures of dreamtime. On March 17, we refer to them as leprechauns. I even wore green for the little hellions, but they were relentless.

It began with my morning alarm's not going off. Funny, seeing as it is programmed in my phone to chime at the same time every morning. Then my toddler decided to play keep-away, running around the house naked for 20 minutes. Clearly, the creatures were whispering into his ear. The green outfit I had laid out for the baby was missing. The bottles I'd washed to bring to day care were now dirty in the sink.

Frazzled by the morning chaos, I managed to remember to pack the fruit plate that I had to take to work for a potluck that was being thrown to celebrate my weekend birthday. I forgot, however, to take my son's glasses. And not only did I forget to give my son, who is legally blind in one eye, his glasses but also I didn't even notice they weren't on his face until a teacher pointed it out at school.

I also forgot the diaper bag, something that would have been useful when I had to stop at Dunkin' Donuts to pick up more food for the potluck and discovered that my daughter had had a blowout. She had leaked through her pants and onto her car seat. Without the diaper bag, I scoured the car and only found an Iron Man diaper that my 3-year-old son wears at night. She was also missing a sock. As if I didn't already know who was behind this misfit morning.

I dropped my children off at day care and preschool — one half-blind with green doughnut frosting coating his cheeks and eyebrow and one pantsless, sockless and in a diaper that was nearly falling off. Before leaving, I grabbed for my phone to take an obligatory St. Paddy's Day picture of the kids.

Wait. ... Where's my phone?

I got to work, frazzled, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Finally, I was ready to get down to business. The hair tie broke.

I pulled my hair back with another band. OK, let's get to work.

That hair tie broke.

Where's a Guinness when you need it?

Halfway through the workday, I ran home to get my son's glasses and a change of clothes for my daughter. All day I had been trying to remember the aboriginal name for the mischievous creatures. When I was home, I quickly ran to where I keep the diaries from when I lived abroad. The book that chronicled my time in the Outback was missing.

The creatures, they're onto me.

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Photo credit: Christian Schmitt