This morning the machinery of our house spat us out of bed at the prescribed moment, pitching us into the morning routine. I woke several times as the radio filled the room with the usual political doom and gloom - never quite gathering the impetus to get up until I fell asleep and then woke with a start - panicking that I had overslept.
Why does your body do that? Why do you fall asleep for a minute or two, and then wake abruptly?
A half naked four year old greeted me outside our bedroom door. Her sisters could be heard arguing over breakfast production downstairs.
“Why aren’t you getting dressed?”
She looked at me with a tilted head, and walked backwards into her bedroom, banging into the door, and vanishing out of sight.
Downstairs I found our eldest stood at the kitchen worktop with a loaf hacked into crazy shapes in front of her. Recollection dawned on me - a voice earlier in the morning in our room asking if it was okay if she cut her own toast. While I was sympathetic to her cause - this was her first go at cutting crusty bread - I was also annoyed.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s hard… I can’t do it…”
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
She shrugged, and started looking at the floor. I hacked another inch off the end of the loaf to level it out, cut her two pieces, dropped them in the toaster, and made my way to the shower.
After enduring our hopeless excuse for a shower for a few minutes, and dragging some clean clothes on I wandered back into the kitchen. Eldest daughter was now stood forlornly in front of the toaster, eating the toast with nothing on it.
“Why haven’t you put anything on it?”
“I couldn’t find anything”.
I opened the cupboard right in front of me, and retrieved two or three different things.
“What are these?”
“I didn’t know what they were…”
It was one of those moments when you decide that any further conversation isn’t going to help anything, so got on with making packed lunches. A few minutes later I heard W from the living room saying “No, don’t get that out now - you need to get ready for school”. Two little girls walked into the hallway, bobbing their heads from side to side as they passed.
A few minutes later - while hunting for “extra stuff” to go in sandwich boxes, I heard a crash and a whoosh from the lounge, followed by panicked “I’m sorry!”’s from the girls.
I looked through the lounge door, and saw a sea of Aqua Beads rolling in every direction across the wooden floor. Thousands of them. W followed me, and flew into the maddest rage I’ve seen in quite some time.
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO GET THAT OUT! WHY DID YOU GET THAT OUT! WE HAVE TO GO IN FIVE MINUTES!”
I looked in again, and saw three little girls on their hands and knees, picking up tiny beads one at a time. I let them get on with it.
Just as they seemed to have cleared the worst of the devestation, I heard it again…
Crash… Whooshh…..
“OH YOU SILLY, SILLY GIRL! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! THAT’S IT - THEY’RE GOING IN THE DUSTBIN”