Missing a Day
I didn't post anything here yesterday. This almost certainly means the world is going to end. Either that, or some kind of horrific fate is going to befall it. Probably.
The weekend was a little bit mad.
We had quite an entertaining fight with our eldest daughter, where she flipped from being nice as pie to everybody's enemy becauseget ready for itthe hoodie she wanted to wear was still in the tumble dryer. We waited for ten minutes for it to become dry, but by then the crazy switch had been thrownand as anybody knows with 15 year old girls, once the crazy switch had been thrown, you can't reset it. It's kind of a one-way deal.
I tried to talk to her on Saturday evening over the dinner time, but could only elicit mumbled threats and various jibberish that seemed to more resemble a comedy version of Professor Snape than anything vaguely frightening.
We didn't see her before leaving the house yesterday morning. Our youngest was in a Judo tournament first thing (and came home with a bronze medal), and then we all headed off to the local football ground for her to walk out as the mascot for the ladies teamwho were playing in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
I had never been to a local football match before. We sat in the front row of the stands, which it turned out was a motorway of sorts for all of the children in the entire damn ground to run back and forth, completely unsupervised by their parents,regardless of their age. I missed the first goal, and the third goal of the game entirely because kids were pushing past me.
Anyway we got home, and I walked into the makings of another shit-storm with our eldest, who had checked what homework she needed to do, and was face-down in the study, with her head on the desk. She was there for a good twenty minutes before I walked in, and tried to sound enthusiastic about helping her.
It turned out she needed to do one more piece of work in her art sketchbook, which was being seen as a vertical cliff face of a problem. Rather than fight with her for the next hour, I grabbed her sketchbook, and did a drawing in itin her styleand handed it back. It took two minutes. She grunted, and stomped off.
Fast forward to this morning, and Miss 15 appeared downstairs at 7:15am dressed for school, happy, smiling, and skipping around the kitchenright up until her Mum arrived in the kitchen, at which point some other knob or switch was flicked, that removed all emotion from her once again. And she thinks we don't noticeI thought about the mayhem going on at home quite a bit this weekabout how much of my life seems to revolve around avoiding arguments. It's like some kind of bizarre tightrope walk, where any false step causes 48 hours of recriminationsand you have no idea if any next step is going to be a wrong step.
Anyway. Time to get on with work. I'm going to be working from home for much of this week after today, on account of my other half travelling to the other end of the country for a few days. I'll be “Mr Mom” for a changetaking the kids to school, cooking meals, washing up, washing clothes, dropping them at clubs, picking them up again, and fighting with them over bedtime.
Wish me luck.