one screaming harridan, one hiding husband, one tearful daughter, one subdued son and a whole load of recyling.
Tomorrow, tomorrow I will find my equilibrium again and be back to normal. Today must have been my last hurrah or something. Davies and Scarlett’s bedrooms were in turmoil so I sent them off to tidy them up after breakfast with the intention of removing the last few things from the lounge which hadn’t yet been found homes into their rooms. Ady went and ‘helped’ Scarlett which is always an error, partially because I think she then has no ownership or investment in the tidiness and partially because Ady doesn’t tidy anyway, he shoves. Shoves things under beds, into boxes and on top of wardrobes. There are no cupboards in Tarly’s room but if there were he would have shoved stuff in there too.
Davies constructs piles of stuff. This means floor space is clear but surrounded by towering piles of things. Davies collects junk anyway so there is always loads of empty cardboard boxes, drawings, bits of packaging and general ‘stuff’ his room. Along with at least two empty or half empty glasses, at least one odd sock which may or may not need to go in the wash, various art materials and a pile of books that has slipped off the bed into a random fan shaped pile on the floor.
So, while I decided to empty out the old pens and paper drawers in the playroom to make space for the new pens and other crafty and arty bits I thought they were all getting on with clearing out stuff from their rooms and generally tidying them up a bit. For a brief period I felt at ease and peaceful at the notion of order being restored to the dwelling.
But I was wrong. I was indeed tidying, creating more space to put things away in a proper, permanent, appropriate home and getting rid of stuff from the house that we no longer need (take that felt tips with no lid that are all dried up, be gone pencil that the lead is broken all the way down in so you tease us with a new point upon sharpening only to break again as soon as pressure is applied to paper with you, leave this house oh stub of crayola crayon that may once have been yellow but is now tainted with other scraps of wax from jostling against browns, reds and purples as children rummaged in the box over the years). Ady is shoving, Davies is piling and Scarlett is mostly wandering around the house still in her pyjamas deciding that whatever anyone else is tidying up is the most interesting thing to be doing and offering to ‘help’ with that instead.
Once *I* had a full bin liner and had fed the recycling box a fair bit of cardboard and paper AND had made the start of a pile for ebay / charity shop / whatever the local freecycle list is calling itself this week I went to check on the others’ progress.
Cue me yelling, Ady hiding, Scarlett crying and Davies looking like I’d maimed a puppy infront of him.
Ady continued to hide, Davies pulled himself together, added to the rubbish and recycling piles and whilst it’s not perfect (and we both agreed that 9 year olds are not supposed to have perfect bedrooms anyway) it is now under control again. I explained to Scarlett about a place for everything and everything in it’s place and how the bed isn’t supposed to be shored up by a pile of crap so high the legs are off the floor and she brought out various things and put them in proper places so we could lose some packaging and clear her room a bit too.
Order was restored once more, Ady came out of hiding and I made everyone lunch.
Ady had reserved some Christmas lights in the sale at Argos and we wanted to return Davies’ video camera as the volume control seemed to not be working on playback, so we went to Asda, queued for about half an hour and exchanged that, collected the lights from Argos and nipped into Morrisons for a few bits.
Back home I was feeling tired. I’ve not been sleeping at all well for the last week or so and my jaw is really achey which is either me grinding my teeth when I am asleep (I used to do this all the time but haven’t done it for years – back in stressed retail management days) or my bite being out as the dentist suspected it is. Or perhaps both. Or one being caused by the other. Or something. I suspect this has all had an impact on my frame of mind but that doesn’t excuse me being such hard work to be round for everyone else 🙁
I cooked a lovely roast beef dinner and whilst that was cooking I looked at Davies’ weather station with him (a Christmas present). It’s very good and has all sorts of experiments, all of which neatly fit inside the weather station itself which includes wind gauge and thermometers. We did the first few experiments and learnt about wind direction and how they are measured. We learnt about the Beaufort scale which I’d not remembered very well but fortunately the accompanying booklet was very good at explaining, we got out the compass and worked out wind direction, checked the temperature at various parts of the room (close to the fire was 5 degrees warmer than near the door). There was pH paper in the kit so we tested various things to find whether they were acid or alkaline, trying to recall some of the stuff we’d learnt at RI lectures. We tested tap water, tea, orange and lemon juice, milk, brandy, salted water, vinegar and my tongue and Davies wrote down all the results in the little notepad that came with it.
Meanwhile Ady and Scarlett were playing with the Eyeclops which is also excellent. We looked at hairs, skin, the carpet, a paper cut on Scarlett’s finger, a spider and a woodlice that Ady brought in, a pine needle from the tree and various other things.
It was all very science experiment-tastic here for an hour or so :).
Scarlett asked if we could watch Fox and Child so we put that on and then it was dinnertime. We enjoyed a good old bitch about my parents over dinner which I found very healing. I try not to colour the children’s view of my parents too much but they are pretty astute and see ever such a lot of what goes on. It was a lovely end to what had been a rather wobbly in places sort of day.