Siblings

“She tried to kill me.’ Bonkers [middle] daughter said indignantly after bursting in from the garden where she had been playing swing ball with her older sister. “I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose,” I said, trying to calm the waters, as always, with an appeal to reason. “It was,” replied the bonkers one without a pause. Before I could utter another word, she added “I’m going out to kill her,” and flounced out. In other words, the usual sibling interchange. Rebel daughter, her older sister, once threw her out of her room [she had been sharing it for a while on condition of bonkers daughter being on best behaviour, something which it was highly unlikely she could keep up] with the words “And I hope you are homeless on the streets.”

The bonkers one tends to become overenthusiastic about most things she does, which can wind her sister up as well as other members of her family. On Friday, for instance, she decided, a propos of nothing, to make a swimming pool and jacuzzi using a few bowls and an ice cream container. I was just changing the baby so I didn’t notice until too late that she had climbed into the kitchen cupboard and got the food dye down. The swimming pool was dyed blue and the bowl was full of purplish water [apparently she had thought that blue and red together made green, which she thinks is the colour of jacuzzi water]. There was red dye all over the table, floor and baby changing mat [an attempt to waterproof the whole enterprise]. It took ages to clean up and, while I was cleaning up, she disappeared upstairs [always worrying]. She emerged with a giant bear made out of mathematical multiplication cards. He was carrying, apparently, a waffle, made from bits of mathematical multiplication cards woven togeter. She hates maths so at least she has found some use for those cards. One day she might actually read them.
At the weekend, we cleaned her room and exited with seven bags, count them, of rubbiish or art works, depending on how you look at them. It would be good to keep all of these, of course, but I think we'd need a mansion.