I am away for work. Mr. Waffle is, with the aid of his parents, holding the fort. Last night he was up with the boys 5 times between 11 and 4 and then up with the Princess who had wet her bed. I think he misses me.
Archives for July 2006
No worst, there is none
I had a dreadful trip. I scraped the hired car. I spent an hour or so circulating the airport but always ending up back on the motorway facing in the wrong direction in rush hour traffic instead of safely in the terminal building. When I tried to fill the car with petrol, it would only fill three quarters full. The little thing kept clicking. The man in the garage couldn’t come and help me as he was alone behind the till. I paid in three different installments, the last two being for sums of the order of 40 cents and 20 cents.
Pitched past pitch of grief
As I was complaining to the man behind the counter about this, I looked in my bag for change and suddenly realised that I had left my passport in the hotel room. An hour’s drive away. And that was assuming that I managed to get into the airport first go. I blurted out my problem to the man in the garage. “That’s the best laugh I’ve had all day”. The kindness of strangers. I drove into the airport pondering my options. I decided that I would hand in my hire car and try to change my flight and get the train back to the hotel (who had by phone confirmed that they had my passport).
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
I was feeling a bit mournful as I handed back the car to Messrs. Evil Avis, we couldn’t care less and my mood was not improved by discovering that I would have to pay 300 euros for my tiny dent. And petrol money (“probably air in the tank”). I was lingering at the Avis desk negotiating the details with the man when I had a brilliant idea; I would try to fly home on my Belgian ID.
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
I got into the airport. Passed through secuity feeling a little tense as I was now late and I felt that it might take some time to convince officials that I could travel on my ID. The security people stopped my briefcase and I could see them starting to huddle round the telly thing. Four men looked at it baffled. “It’s a breast pump” I said. I think the customs man who sped through my bag was marginally more embarassed than me (what, yes, ok, I’m still breastfeeding, leave me alone, don’t I have enough problems – if anyone so much mentions one word about breastfed babies not sleeping he or she will be shot).
Here creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind
They did, in fact, take my ID without a blink. Until I got to Belgium where, perversely, they insisted on seeing my passport. I said I didn’t have it and the nice woman said “we may have to put you in the holding pen but I’m sure they’ll let you out shortly”. And I said “please, please let me home to my 3 small children and my poor husband who may well divorce me, if I don’t get back shortly” and she laughed and said “oh alright in you go”.
each day dies with sleep
Got home about 23.30 and remembered that I didn’t have any keys because our childminder had taken two sets to the Philippines, our cleaner one set to Poland and the publishing exec a set to London (our keys and globalisation, comments please, in your own time) and I had given my set to the royal grandparents so that they would be able to leave the house with her highness while I was gone. Rang the doorbell and woke the house. Collapsed into bed.
I suspect that I didn’t feel as badly as Gerard Manley Hopkins when he wrote “No worst, there is none” (as my mother is fond of saying “there’s always someone worse off than yourself”) but my English teacher had a special devotion to him and to this poem in particular and whenever things are not going my way it runs through my head and maybe now it will run through yours. Always the ray of sunshine spreading joy and happiness on the internet.
Survival of the fittest
R in the creche tells me that yesterday she heard a faint cry and turned around to see Daniel whacking another child on the head while, simultaneously, Michael slapped the misfortunate mite merrily on the bottom. It’s a jungle out there.
Reasons to buy the LRB
From a review of a book on Wal-Mart:
“Wal-mart is about price, so much so that it has created a reification of cheapness, in which cheapness becomes a mystical quality, a Ding an sich or fundamental essence…”
And you thought it was just a supermarket.
The sound of elastic snapping
It’s 38 degrees today. No air conditioning in our sunny flat. No air conditioning in my sunny office. And I am busy, busy, busy. Mr. Waffle isn’t exactly idle at work either but he’s been picking up a lot of the slack at home, while I hunch over a hot computer post 9.30 when our children finally go to bed. Need I say that both of us are up regularly during the night?
Yesterday the creche rang me to say that they would replace the cover of our car seat which got dirtied in their building works.
Me: Sorry, I didn’t see it, my husband collected the boys.
Them: But later when you saw it at home, how was it?
Me: My husband had put it in the wash. And he hung it out to dry and he dropped the boys to the creche this morning because I left the house at 7.30 for an 8.00 am meeting, so I have no idea what the damage is, but I’d say it washed out alright or he would have mentioned it.
Them: Silence.
Me: See, in our household, my husband looks after that kind of thing.
I feel that I am a cliché, running all day at work and running at home and only just managing to catch some of the balls that are in the air. At work, if I don’t write something down, I have no chance of remembering it and even then, some of my notes from the previous day can be baffling (is that somebody’s name, a new policy initiative, what?). As well as having a lot of the kind of competing deadlines that interviewers love to ask about we have a new trainee who is keen as mustard and entirely ignorant about what we do. This combination is proving a little difficult in the short term.
Yesterday, the boys were the last kiddies in the creche and the Princess was the last one waiting to be picked up from her course, the second last little soul having been picked up by her mother 50 minutes previously. The Princess was sitting on her own in a big room at a little table colouring conscientiously under the, slightly dour, supervision of a middle aged man (I suppose, it was hot and he wanted to go home). It was depressing.
Last night Michael woke up with a temperature and was up for a couple of hours. Being Michael, he was cheerful but he was hot. Since it was 30 degrees in the boys’ room anyway, I suspect that didn’t help. The Princess woke up with a temperature. Mr. Waffle took the morning off to tend to her but poor old Michael recovered so well that he was escorted to the creche along with our only healthy child and a message to them to call me, if he seemed unhappy (I called them, he was described as being as happy as someone could be with a temperature of 39 when it’s 39 degrees outside – I will have to rescue him when the Princess wakes from her nap). During the morning Mr. Waffle called to say that the Princess was very cheerful but he had taken her to the pharmacy to get something for her heat rash and they said “that’s no heat rash, that’s chicken poxâ€. What do you think might be wrong with Michael, people?
Poxy
The poor Princess is and the rest of the world isn’t great either. Unless you count
Moldova.
The Middle East is awful. I remember hearing an Irish guy who was with the UN peace keeping force in the Lebannon many years ago blasting the Israelis and their agression and, you know, I read Pity the Nation as a student at the instigation of my then boyfriend (I feel I’ve mentioned this here before, but it was a hard read, alright).
On the other hand, an acquaintance whose sister lives in Israel described to me how driving round in their hired car all the young soldiers kept waving at them from their outposts (apparently you can tell hired cars from their plates – I imagine that this keeps you safer, if you’re a tourist) and I suppose that just makes me see the Israeli soldiers as vulnerable young fellas (and girls, though, I presume, they weren’t doing the waving). I suspect the inhabitants of Beirut have a different view.
