Home alone-ish
“I feel like Cinderella, but without the time to sing to the mice,” I said in passing to several children yesterday while simultaneously making the dinner, cleaning chocolate coins off the floor and answering various spelling-related questions. My partner is in Spain, visiting his mum who has not been well. He left on Boxing Day and I’m counting the hours, if I had time to count them.
After we dropped him at the airport, we headed to a family party. We arrived in the vicinity about an hour early so I stopped outside the Co-op. “What are you doing, Mum?” asked daughter one. “Just an emergency Diet Coke stop,” I replied. I feared that it was likely that the only soft drink on offer might be healthy fruit-related beverages and that I could not last through the next few hours and, more importantly, the drive home without some sort of caffeine reboot.
We got to the party around 50 minutes early. People were shocked. This is possibly the first time in years we have arrived anywhere early. The party went well. The children mostly played with their cousins except the baby, who attempted to put on the tv, put on the DVD player, put on the CD player and put on the washing machine several times over. Daughters two and three and their cousin forced the assembled adults to watch their interpretation of We wish you a Merry Christmas [the ballet version] many, many times. We retired home late with the baby in his pjs primed to fall asleep en route. He duly did so, but woke up about an hour and a half later as I was getting everyone else to bed. I cuddled him back to sleep and lay pinioned the bed while I heard the kittens cavorting downstairs. I had left daughter three’s post office kit on the table. I had visions of the kittens knocking it off the table and devouring the postal contents. Daughter three would never forgive me. I manoeuvred my body over the baby and down the stairs. Mercifully he stayed asleep.
The next morning went by in a blur of spy missions [we had to wear hats, carry spy bags and wands and crawl under very small tables] and creative escapades [a tea-stained letter, cardboard passports, a couple of crowns…]. We whipped up a cake for some friends before discovering that the baby had put one of his mini-discs from his mini DVD player in the Wii machine. Today’s big task is blow-drying the tinted window stuff off the partner’s car. Can’t wait.
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