6.30: Arrive home.
7.00: Eat
7.30 – 9.30: Wrangle children into bed.
9.30: Decide not to turn on computer. I will talk to husband or watch television or read my excellent book. Do so.
10.00: Help husband deck the house with laundry. Have my efforts rejected as “laundry does not dry in a bundle”. Mutter darkly about the joy of owning a (very bad for the environment) dryer.
10.15: Husband goes to bed. I tell him I will be up in a minute as I want to read my book in bed.
10.16: Slip over to the computer for a quick look. Cat hops up on my lap with contented purr.
10.17: Stare dolefully at yesterday’s blog post which has received no comments (yes, this remark is addressed to YOU).
10.18: Draft some deathless prose. Post it.
10.35: Trot off to bloglines where I find 630 new posts.
11.30: Still here, reading away, eyesight going, fingers freezing (heat has gone off, haven’t bothered to turn it on again as I will be going to bed in 5 minutes).
11.40: Decide to skip reading the full feed from the Huffington Post, wonder why I ever subscribed. Nearly at the end now. Hurrah.
12.00: OK midnight, I’m definitely going to bed now. Definitely, definitely. Just going to comment on a couple of posts.
12.30: Oh God, oh God, it’s really late, I must go to bed. I’ll be exhausted tomorrow.
12.45: Just going to have a quick look at my sitemeter and then I’m going to bed, definitely, definitely. Look at those readers in China, I wonder how they got here? Oh right, they were searching for wafflemakers. Did anyone look at those links I put in, let’s just quickly check the outclicks.
1.00: Oh God, it’s one in the morning. I must go to bed. I must. I must. Just going to quickly check how does this feedburner/twitter [insert technology of choice here] thing works.
1.15: Too baffling. OK, now I’m definitely going to bed. Just a quick check on the email and then I am definitely going to bed.
1.30: OK, delete the junk mail, tum ti tum. Send a couple of quick mails.
1.45: Maybe just check back to see whether anyone has commented on my deathless prose. Maybe, maybe, but no, oh wait, 45 spam comments. Delete same.
1.50: Just one quick last look at bloglines.
2.10: OK, that’s it. I am definitely going to bed now. Dislodge cat. Try to warm frozen fingers.
2.15: Just going to have a quick read of my book in the bathroom while I wash my teeth and floss.
2.30: God, this book is really good, why did I play on the computer all evening when I could have been reading this?
2.45: Move to sitting on the stairs. No, I’m going to stop reading. I’ll just fill a hot water bottle for myself as I am now frozen to the bone. Filch tepid bottle from daughter’s bed. Go downstairs book in hand and fill bottle up from the kettle. Back upstairs, book in hand.
3.00: Will sit for just one moment on the stairs with delightfully warm bottle toasting my perished extremities. This book is really excellent. If I go to bed now and don’t get up until 8 I will still have five hours sleep which is lots, Margaret Thatcher survived on four (though, of course, that explains why she was so cranky).
3.45: Finish book. Put child on the toilet. Crawl into bed. Husband says blearily “what time is it?” Am frozen. Get up again to refill hot water bottle. Back to bed to instant and dreamless sleep.
5.30: Husband cannot sleep. He tosses and turns and eventually gets up. I say blearily “what time is it?” He goes downstairs to put on a wash and do some work.
6.00: Some child crawls into bed beside me. I swear that tonight I will go to bed early. This can, in fact, be achieved. I say to my husband “help me, stay here and make me turn off the computer”. And he does and then I am tucked up and lights off by 11.
Mr. Waffle
And a good morning to you too
5.45: Princess arrives into our room coughing and chatting.
6.15: Mr. Waffle gives up the struggle and gets up, goes downstairs hangs out the washing and makes the children’s sandwiches [yes, I know, a treasure]. The Princess follows him.
6.20: The Princess returns; her father would rather hang out the washing than talk to her.
6.30: I decamp to the Princess’s bed.
7.00: The Princess wakes me and says she is going downstairs, I can go back to my own bed. I do.
7.05: The cat jumps on me and starts running up and down my person.
7.10: The cat finally settles on my head with her tummy purring over my ear and her paws kneading my cheek.
7.30: Mr. Waffle gets into the shower. The cat leaps from my head so that she can stand outside the bathroom door meowing loudly.
7.45: I get up.
7.50: Mr. Waffle leaves for work – mercifully, it is only one day a week that he has to leave so early.
8.00: The Princess re-emerges. She asks for a hot water bottle. I give it to her.
8.05: Daniel emerges. He takes me by the hand and shows me that the cat has settled in his bed. He demands pancakes for breakfast. Their father, the only person who can make pancakes, has gone to work. Daniel gets cranky. I remember that my sister brought Ikea pancakes when she came to stay. I root around the freezer, find these and deploy them. Revolting though they appear, they meet the identified need.
8.20: I leave the pair downstairs and go upstairs to wake Michael. I decide, in my ultimate wisdom that now would be a good time to put away laundry. Because I have so much spare time. That must be it.
8.30: I get Michael up. He has wet the bed (alas).
8.35: The others come upstairs. I persuade them into their clothes. The Princess is helpful – hurrah. She reads a page of Dora for every item of clothes the boys put on. They are all dressed. Rejoice.
8.50: We go downstairs. The cat has, as, alas, is becoming her habit, used the time while we were upstairs, to do a wee at the bottom of the stairs and cover it with plaster from the ever growing hole in the wall. I stop the children (all in socks) on the stairs and mop up the wee.
8.50: Michael has to have breakfast. I start my morning refrain “The school has already opened its doors, there are children there already, classes are about to start.”
8.55: Pack the Princess and Daniel into the car. The Princess insists on bringing her hot water bottle. Daniel brings a library book.
9.05: Pack Michael into the car. The Princess has stolen Daniel’s library book. I tell her she can hang on to it on condition she reads it aloud. She does so.
9.15: Arrive (5 minutes late) at school. Daniel refuses to budge from the car until he has had a chance to flick through his library book himself. A free and frank exchange of views follows which ends with both parties glaring at each other. I bring the other two to the door of the school and go back for Daniel.
9.20: Ensconce boys in classroom; make up with Daniel and have a quick word with the teacher. Emerge to find herself waiting in the corridor. She wants me to accompany her to her classroom – four floors up. Do so. Am then sent about my business and told not to kiss her as this is embarrassing.
9.30: Arrive back to car (hazards flashing – I am that annoying driver) and zoom to work. Traffic miraculously light allowing me to be at my desk at the breath-takingly early hour of 9.45.
9.45: Colleague telephones to give me a blow by blow account of her difficult meeting. Sympathise. “Is it only 9.45?” she says. ” After going through that, I feel like it’s four in the afternoon.” As do I.
10.00: I realise that I forgot to feed the cat. Ring Mr. Waffle to see whether he can get home during the morning. He reassures me that he fed the cat before he left.
Today’s lovely links:
One of my favourite bloggers is back. Hurrah.
Pretty pictures.
Knowledge of French and Belgium required to appreciate this one; but very much worth it, if you fall into this category.
Dot supplies the answer to a question that has been plaguing the Waffles.
Our Justice Minister is
upset about yesterday’s soccer match.
I really like these little google videos. Health warning: my husband thinks that they’re creepy.
Why am I the only person in this family who ever throws anything out?
Following a late night search for my phone charger, this pile was left for Mr. Waffle one morning along with a tart note saying 1) I was going to throw them out unless he mounted a very convincing defence and 2) did he have any idea where my mobile phone charger might be?
He confessed that he had “misfiled” my phone charger in the drawer with his – where it is easily found, being apart from the big box of wires we are not allowed to throw out (including, until recently, Air Canada headphones purchased on a transatlantic flight about ten years ago – never used since that initial trip). Is it my fault for buying a big box where all these things could co-exist in harmony and develop their own ecosystem?
For Irish speakers only
Have a look at this. Seriously, ignoring the spelling, aren’t Manx and Irish the same?
Give me a boy at seven
New acquaintance: And where did your husband go to school?
Me: Jesuit School X.
New acquaintance: Oh lovely, clever, sensitive boys.
I understand that Mr. Waffle’s school produced many chess champions but that they failed to star in rugby.
For scrabble lovers
Headline from the Irish Times during the week: “Xilinx records Nasdaq gains.”
