O que significa "asleep at the switch"?

Imagine you're a stay at home mom trying to take care of everything at the same time. There's your baby crying for attention, a lot of cleaning up to do and still all the food you're cooking for lunch before your husband comes back from work. That's definitely a juggling act [a situation in with you try to achieve many things at the same time]. In a fraction of seconds, while you're changing the diaper of your baby, you hear some strange noise coming from some pan you left on the oven indicating you've just ruined the whole food. When your starving husband comes home looking to have lunch, you tell him what happened: Sorry, but I was asleep at the switch changing diapers when I burned all our lunch. I guess we're eating out today. Do you know what being asleep at the switch/wheel means? Read on!

In Portuguese, we could say that we have a very similar expression for that: dormir no ponto. We say we're asleep at switch when we're not paying attention to something, usually something that requires a quick act to avoid problems. Even women that are known for their great ability to do many things at the same time fall asleep at the switch sometimes. It happens all the time. Tell me about your stories. The last time you fell asleep at the switch and had something terrible happen. Talk to you next time!