A little Monday morning update, in the interests of getting it off my chest…
The sun is shining! The birds are singing! A new day has begun.
Someone is hunting and pilfering their confiscated mobile phone.
Someone is rummaging in their DIRTY laundry basket for leggings to wear, bypassing the clean items I have laid out.
Someone is declaring how unfair a two day weekend is, in comparison to the five day week.
Someone is searching high and low for a singular Nike sock. Ordinary socks won’t do.
That same someone is intermittently stealing gulps of someone else’s tea.
Someone else protests. Loudly.
A small someone offers up her tea: a kind but provocative gesture.
I praise the kind gesture, until I realise it was provocative, in a “Look at me, I share tea and he doesn’t!” kind of manner.
Someone is asking for baby wipes. Over and over again. Their tie stinks, apparently, and they new a new one.
Someone’s uniform is still slightly damp from washing, causing said someone to walk gingerly across the room, gurning in (mercifully silent) protest.
Someone objects when I proffer alternative socks to the half pair of Nike ones, as those socks are theirs, thus kick-starting the ongoing SOCK ARGUMENT that is constantly bubbling under the surface in this family.
Someone else declares that Nike is not pronounced NIKEE, and that it is pronounced like bike.
I cannot resist retorting that I have indeed read Phil Knight’s autobiography, Shoe Dog, and have done my own independent research and can assure her that the intended pronunciation of said brand name is for it to rhyme with spiky. I manage to resist sticking my tongue out. Just.
Someone is playing on their bleedin’ phone when I ask them to check whether they need ingredients for this week’s cooking lesson. Guess what! They do. A mad rush to jot the recipe down ensues.
Several someones are still in the house long after they should have left for the bus, and just as the boy someone has got stuck inside the gate and needs letting out, the other someone is still faffing in the dresser drawer. The birthday she had mentioned on Saturday immediately requires a card, and at short notice, my card stash was not offering the desired selection. (Also, the envelopes have all gone missing. How does that happen???)
Eventually, I am left with just one small someone, and as we walk across the field to her school, I remonstrate with her (humorously) about her attempt to wear dirty leggings. “I don’t know why I bother!” I chuckle. “Do you think ***** would go in her laundry bin to pull out dirty clothes? I don’t reckon she would.”
“Well, her mummy is a dance teacher, she likes pink,” comes the reply. “And you,” she goes on, “you like bonfires.”
I think this was Mini Seymour’s way of explaining why we never quite look tidy. That we are, in fact, scruffbags. She gave me a hug and told me that she loves me anyway, and all was well with the world.
Tomorrow, I shall not make the mistake of assuming a smooth morning. I shall anticipate trouble, and be ready for it.
And I’ll be embracing scruffbag chic. It’s easier that way.
(More problematic socks.)
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