The day started with me being first out of bed (as per usual), before heading downstairs in my robe to wash up two sink fulls of cups, plates, and god knows what else before even thinking about making the eldest’s school lunch, then three kids breakfasts.
All three kids arrived downstairs carrying toys, still in their pyjamas, and all three looked at me in a questioning manner when I said “School starts today! Remember getting your stuff ready last night? Go and get your school clothes on!”
They all headed off upstairs, and I heard them shout W 50 times to help them get dressed (some mornings it seams they can’t sneeze without asking either of us to help in some way).
In the end I had a 5 minute shower to myself, no breakfast for myself, and no packed lunch for myself - even though we had the food to do it. Leaving the house W had to turn back to print letters off for their teachers, leaving me to wrangle all three on their way to school. Normally this would be fine, but given that I had my mountain bike, and they all had scooters, keeping control of them all was going to be fun.
Little Miss Three got about 20 yards before face planting spectacularly on her scooter. Luckily her winter coat took the entire impact and she got straight back up.
Half a mile further on W finally caught us up, and I departed for my cycle to work.
The working day was then filled with revision for a raft of Microsoft Exams, which was both boring and complicated. I won’t explain any further for fear of making you fall asleep.
Travelling home was… interesting. The temperature was far below zero, and about half way home I discovered that my normal mountain bike gloves really weren’t going to cut it. My little fingers went numb after about 10 minutes, followed by the rest of my fingers. The last half mile towards home was spent making sure I could actually feel my fingers at all any more - a curious pins and needles sensation had spread through most of the, and the ends of all of them were more or less devoid of feeling.
W had to let me into the house because I couldn’t use my fingers well enough to unlock the back door of our house. I put my hands under a warm tap for a few minutes, and feeling gradually returned.
Next job was a trip straight back out into the cold to buy missing ingredients for dinner from the corner shop. Following that another two sink fulls of washing up.
While drying up, and while the kids were tidying their stuff away I heard an enormous crash, and saw the aftermath of our eldest dropping her sister’s china pot (a christmas present) on the kitchen tiles. It exploded with a huge bang, and disintegrated into a hundred sharp pieces.
I lifted her in the air immediately and put her on the couch, failing to hold my anger in check while she cried uncontrollably. My main worry - that nobody else seemed to realise was that everybody was going to end up with cut feet.
I began picking pieces of pot up, and our three year old started helping me. I got her to drop everything and carried her over to W, noticing I already had ribbons of red blood dripping down my own hands… inspecting her, she had made quite a mess of her hands too in those few seconds.
We finally sat down to eat at about 7. Little miss 4 decided to pretend she hated her dinner, and little miss 3 decided to stop eating for no reason. When prompted to get down from the table to go to bed, she started eating.
It was well past 8 before all the kids were in bed, and the evening had basically gone.
I have checked a few emails, and just drunk a can of fizzy drink, which will no doubt make my teeth fall out (or 50 spots appear).
Roll on a better day tomorrow.