The day began prettyinauspiciouslywhen I heard the refuse collectors drive past, and realised I hadn’t put the bins out, despite numerous reminders from my mobile phone to do so. W was in the middle of pulling a Rainbows uniform onto Little Miss 6, and I had one leg in a pair of jeans.
“Can’t you run down the road and catch them up?”
And so it was that I stomped off downstairs (wearing only a pair of jeans), shouting over my shoulder “That’s right. It’s my fault, as per normal”… I didn’t attempt to catch the rubbish lorry. It might amuse anybody reading this to discover we will now have a MONTH’s worth of rubbish next time they come by. Yes, that’s right - in a so-called developed country where we pay all manner of taxes, our rubbish is only collected every other week.
Anyway. Enough of rubbish.
While Miss 6 went off to Rainbows, I conned the youngest into tidying her bedroom up in return for leftovers of last night’s pizza. It sort of worked. The five year old version of “tidy” isn’t quite the same as the grown-up version.
Next task - show Little Miss 10 how to do something on the computer in her bedroom. Only nothing would work on it.
“How long have these errors been coming up?”
“Ages”
The more I investigated, the more horrified I became. It was obviously the after-effects of a virus. After ten minutes of fiddling, I unplugged the computer (an ASUS netbook) from her bedroom wall, and carted it down to the study for a brain transplant.
By 3pm she had it back - it had been formatted, a fresh operating system installed on it, the various drivers re-installed, the latest antivirus updates run, and locked down to hopefully avoid this happening again any time soon.
Goodbye most of Saturday.
While washing up I spotted W looking disgruntled in the reflection from the kitchen Window.
“I’m shattered” (the kids have been a nightmare today)
I therefore took over dinner too. Just before delivering it to the dining table, we scouted out the children - shouting up the stairs to summon them… only one of them didn’t answer. We discovered the youngest flaked out across the couch in the playroom. We didn’t wake her.
After dinner, I picked her up and carried her upstairs. She didn’t wake properly, and promptly began snoring like a tyrannosaurus as soon as we got her pyjamas on.
It’s now just gone 7pm, and the other children are watching Strictly Ballroom in the lounge with W. Little Miss 6’s month long TV ban (yes, a whole month) has been relaxed for Strictly, just to have a few moments of peace and quiet.