TGI Friday

It’s Friday…Halleluia. Forget about visions and mission statements. My main aim in life is to Get to Friday. Sadly, this is not because I have nights of tripping the light fantastic lined up over the weekend and the feeling of elation wears off by around 9.01am on Saturday when I start contemplating the following week’s events, doing the washing and finding out from various teenagers that they have got to get to far flung places or be picked up from them in the next 48 hours.

At the end of each weekend I attempt to reboot my life and gain some sense of order. This week, I say to myself, I will impose strict screen limitations, I will sit down and do algebra daily with daughter two, I will make jigsaws and talk about the Stone Age in depth with only son…But the reality does not quite match up.

I sit up at midnight marking a maths paper daughter two has done. I then check with daughter one if I am right about how you calculate angles [some of my maths is a bit rusty, though I am smoking hot at percentages and ratios, particularly with regard to gender pay…]. I sit down for a quick 10 minutes with daughter two who seems slightly distracted and not at all impressed by my command of percentage evaluations.

I do about four jigsaw pieces with only son before bedtime and an online quiz about the Stone Age, chat to him about paleo bars and why they might not have eaten them in the Stone Age and generally go off on a detour, wandering what life might have been like if all the Neanderthals and other variations were still around now. Would it be a bit like all the human-like aliens in Star Trek? Meanwhile, only son’s homework on the Stone Age does not get done.

I also go on an extended rant ostensibly about screens but really about washing up and socks; no-one except only son listens and nothing changes. I threaten strike action. I protest loudly about people who are wearing double socks in the winter not taking into account the impact on the person who hangs out the washing. No-one over the age of eight even looks up.

The eight year old looks very pensive and crushed. “It is very unfair that you do all the washing up,” he says. “I will help you. I like doing chores.” Hmm. His doing chores tends to mean me spending twice as much time cleaning up afterwards due to an overexuberant approach to, eg, washing-up liquid.

Still, it’s Friday and we made it and the great news is it’s only seven more days till another Friday.

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