While writing this, the time is marching inexorably towards 11pm. I have no idea where the evening went. Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly where the evening went - to ten different hells.
I called home before leaving the office, because I didn’t yesterday. I got in from the frostbite inducing journey yesterday evening to an immediate grilling - “why didn’t you call home tonight? You always call home! We needed some tortillas!”… so tonight I called home.
“Can you get some tortillas?”
So it was that I ended up trudging around the supermarket at 6pm with one leg of my jeans tucked into a sock to avoid the bike chainsawing it off. I find the tortillas, and pick up bagels and cookies as I pass them.
I get home, walk into the hell-hole of a kitchen, and find a note. Other half has taken youngest to football practice, contents for tortillas is cooking on the hob. There are cooking pots everywhere, a mountain of washed dishes on the draining board, and another sink full waiting to be washed up. The kids are nowhere to be seen. I shout after them, and am greeted by a distant echo.
They are watching Vine videos in the junk room.
After preparing the tortillas, we shovel them into our faces, and I try to engage our eldest in conversation. For a moment I think the task might be hopeless, but she suddenly bursts into life and becomes witty, entertaining, and engaging while we eat. It all comes to an abrupt end when I leave the table to wash up. She snears, and stomps off in the direction of the junk room again.
Washing up takes half an hour. I listen to the radio while filling the sink over and over with clean water and washing up liquid. We really do need to get the new dishwasher soon (ours broke before Christmas - my parents gave us the money for one - we still haven’t spent it).
My other half returns for a few moments - dropping one child from football, and taking another to Girl Guides.
An hour later she leaves to pick said girl back up, and I make hot chocolates to short-cut the bedtime delaying tactics. Finally I find myself on the upstairs landing, wrangling the children through the bathroom, and into bed. For some reason known only to children hanging out their bedtime an extra few minutes, the kids are “tidying their room”. At 9pm. Really?
Finally - heading towards 10pm - I sit at the now empty dining table with the Macbook, and start catching up with Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, and Facebook - the four horses of the social media apocalypse. I realise while reading the various streams that there’s no way I can really keep up with so much information, and begin contemplating hacking some of the dross away with a virtual machete. Of course I don’t - because guilt stops me from hitting any unfollow buttons.
It’s now 11pm. Now the kids are in bed I can sit in the study once more (after spending 10 minutes clearing the desk - the desk the kids promised they would keep clear after using). It’s already too late to work on the web development project I’ve been tinkering with recently. I’m writing this instead.
This was a head emptying post on behalf of nobody in particular.