In the spirit of the way most things seem to happen around here at the moment, Sunday rolled straight over me like a truck, rather than heeding any instruction.
It began at seven this morning when a little person arrived in the bedroom doorway, informing me that none of the lights in the house worked. After stumbling downstairs with a curiously dead arm, enough blood flow returned to lift the lid on the fuse box and reset the trips.
“It’s working again Dad”
“Ok”
“What did you do to fix it?”
“I used the force”
No answer.
After stumbling back upstairs in my t-shirt and boxers, I decided there was no point going back to bed, so fell into the usual routine; dressed, washed, help make breakfasts, let the chickens out and feed them, do the washing up, clean the kitchen, tidy the lounge, tidy the playroom… you get the idea. Hardly anybody’s idea of a fun Sunday at all.
Just to compound everything W arrived in the kitchen about an hour later looking like the world owed her everything, with interest. Fantastic. Perhaps this was payback for daring to have a birthday the day before.
The world has a funny way of balancing itself out when you’re feeling hard done by. After trudging around the house like an automaton until mid-morning, suddenly the children were happily playing on the Wii, W was quietly doing something on the iPad, and I found myself with time on my hands.
Where did I head?
The internet, of course.
I also remembered about the penny sweets my inlaws bought me for my birthday, and tipped them into a jar. For the greater part of the day I thoughtthe kids had no idea of their existence. That was right until the late afternoon when Miss Eleven walked into the study, looked over my shoulder and said “oh…”.
“What are you looking for?”
“Nothing.”
Yeah. Right.
After dinner this, after not mentioning a thing about the jar of said sweets hidden down the side of the couch in the living room, the kids waited until I was washing up and vanished conspiratorially into the lounge. I knew damn was what they were up to because they were being far too quiet.
I walked quietly in behind them, and discovered them having some kind of “dance around your handbags” discussion about the various sweets they were cramming into their faces.
“UM! THEY ARE MINE!”
The younger ones stopped chewing, and looked at the floor. The eldest returned fire.
“We didn’t know”
“Well who did you think they belonged to?”
“We don’t know…”