Today began nicely, albeit in the darkness of five-twenty am. A voice called from the darkness; I drew near and it asked me for toys. I delivered them and went back to bed. The voice joined us in bed, and eventually hounded us out at not much past six. All well and good. The day is Monday, the order of the day is laundry, grocery order online, and well, a sense of mission. My brain is foggy and tired and I am not sure what this mission is, but it must involve a journey, with my two boys strapped into their streamlined, red double buggy. I spend most of the morning pondering which direction to go in. Exhaustion escalates, I cannot think. I leave the laundry in suspense. It does not know whether it will be finished. Neither do I. I load the buggy up. The tyre is flat again. I pump it up with Jerome on the floor and Caedmon bumping me and rolling the buggy backwards. In the end we make it out the door.
My first achievement is to buy a booster seat. There it is, nicely perched on the sunshade over Caedmon's seat. That's okay. Once I had a vacuum on a buggy. I am unmoved. We wander into the mall. Caedmon rides one of those things that you put coins in. We leave. On exit we see the poppy appeal lady. I want a poppy. I give my bit to the veterans, and start attempting to attach the poppy to my coat. It is at this moment that I do my very popular attention-getting trick. I have practised it at various places in England. It is best when done in a long line which you are blocking with a buggy and massively pregnant belly. Once you are thoroughly in everybody's way, you drop your change purse so that it explodes money everywhere. Mostly two-penny pieces. If you have too many pound coins then people might be conscientious and help you. The best part of this exercise is seeing how many people pretend not to notice. I like to think that this repetition on my part is simply part of a deliberate scientific experientment. It gets some reaction this time, perhaps because I am the only one there.This is a trend. When I did this experiment on the sidewalk in Weymouth in front of an old Dorset man who reminded me a bit of Long John Silver, but with both legs intact, he actually stood over me positively crowing with laughter. That was the most surprising result in my British experiment, and I think it perhaps deviates from the norm.
Once my change has been regained, my poppy attached, my son reinstalled in his buggy, from which he had escaped, I decide that what I really need is a pumpkin spice latte. After all, it is British half term break, and I need something to make me feel as though I too, along with the hoards of overpainted, underdressed 13-year-olds out shopping, am having a break. I get my latte and begin the journey home. This is when I realize my latte was ill-timed. It is in fact a herculean effort to steer a buggy one handed with about forty pounds of child in it, a booster seat on the sunshade and a hot latte in the other hand threatening to splosh on the baby---on British pavement which, if not precisedly cobbled, goes for a similarly jarring effect. I guzzle about half the coffee, and the rest goes cold and sploshes on the sunshade at various intervals, but it is mine and I will not be parted from it. I now must bring to bear one of the charactaristics of my buggy. It reminds me very much of Balaam's ass, although I am not certain that I can impute to it the same kindly motives. At various intervals the wheel likes to get stuck sideways and you cannot budge the whole machine unless you drag it forward by the front wheel. This feature is the cause of much fury on my part. Unfortunately it will not, like the ass, explain itself when I beat it, and I should hope that its stubbornness is not the result of the angel of death constantly barring my path. That would be unfortunate.
We skip ahead to another scene of action. We are on the busy road nearing our house, passing the internet cafes lined with hookas, and various shops of interest, when my booster leaps off of the buggy and out of its bag. I rush to grab it and the man arranging his fruit catches the buggy as it rolls backward. I am now trying to reinsert the booster into the bag with my coffee in the middle of the sidewalk. A man picks up my coffee for me. We did eventually reach home. Caedmon fell asleep two minutes from our house and I successfully transferred him.
Now it is time to do grocery shop online. Right, more energy now as the coffee has begun to do its good work. I look for the order I had done yesterday. I had ordered a month's worth of meat to go in the freezer and had planned to add all of my other items today. I can't find my order. This is because I had accidentally scheduled a delivery to arrive in an hour or so. I had wanted it all to come tomorrow. The man delivering it did make a slightly unintellible comment about the peculiarity of my order. I did look like the world's craziest carnivore.
At some point after this I have my laundry unfolded in the middle of the kitchen, two boys awake and needing me, and just about every toy dumped in the living room. Right. Getting a bit fruity. I resort to a little Peppa Pig for Caedmon. CCR and singing along to "Bad Moon Rising" gets me through the kitchen tidying. Now for dinner, and this is where I do my other trick--failing to read the recipe. My frugal spirit had decided to make tortillas with our last two cups of flour. Unfortunately I put three times the ammount of fat in as I was supposed to. My greasy flour is still in a bowl on the counter. After a buggy run in the dark we are sorted. Thank you Old El Paso.
I think I am definitely living in a comedy. Maybe even a Peter Sellers one.
I should just add I was interrupted in my writing here. Caedmon threw up all over his bed. Yup. I had a feeling when I heard a faint voice in the backround that the story was going to continue and it did. Poor chap. He has now been tucked back into a clean bed, the doxology has been sung over him, and I am back to the keyboard. The comedy is wrapping up for the night, I think, and Balaam's ass slumbers in the hallway.
