Thursday 21 March 2013

Moving

The other day the Boy asked me what a mortgage is. After ten minutes of trying to explain it to him there was a long pause and he said;

"Right. I think I get it. It's like a unicycle."

I think this adequately displays why I didn't pursue a career in teaching. The point of this conversation is that we're selling our house. Due to the careful efficiency of my Wife's accounting and the... er... fact that I work, we've found ourselves in a position where we can buy a bigger house. Clearly this is a good thing, bigger house, better location, closer to the Boy's school and the faint possibility that if our next door neighbours decide to have sex, regardless the volume or gusto we won't be able to work out what position they're in. Or who finishes first.

However, it is tinged with sadness. When we moved into this house, there wasn't a recession. In fact, the price of houses crashed THE MONTH AFTER WE BOUGHT THE HOUSE. We moved in with a very small Boy, and a pregnant Wife. The Girl was actually born in this house. On the Wife's side of the bed. Intentionally, I should add.

This was the house where the Boy learnt to speak, to our lingering regret. This is where the Girl learnt to the throw tantrums, how to aim a punch to the genitals, and how to insert spoons into cat rectums. 

The Boy has not taken this lightly, and we've had a few fits of crying because;

"I'm going to miss my bedroom."

Not the first time the Boy has forged an emotional link with an inanimate object. Last time it was his bed. Which he still talks about like it betrayed him. So in an effort to cheer us all up, we went to Colchester Zoo. Since it's March, getting out in the spring air seemed like a good idea. 

Spring unsprung

It was freaking freezing. Only the penguins and sea lions seemed happy. The non-sea-lions looked really pissed off. Especially when I managed to catch the reflection of my hat in the picture I took of them.

Send us victorious

Most of the animals had vanished to the back of their enclosures. At one point we were standing by the sun bear enclosure when one of the bears wandered to the doorway, stepped out, clearly thought the words "Screw this" and high tailed it back out. We went from one empty enclosure to the next and every time we went outside it was like being dipped in liquid nitrogen. 

No you don't.

The Kid's loved it. The only disappointment for the Boy was that he didn't get to see the rhino urinate (which, I'll admit, is always impressive to watch). Despite the cold, the wind and complete absence of any animals at the zoo, they had a lovely time. And then a duck got raped, and ruined everything.

We were walking past the duck pond when three ducks, two males and a female, flew out of a hedge. One of the males grabbed the female by the beak and held her down whilst the other one had his happy town. The Boy and Girl watched silently for a minute, whilst the Wife and I tried to hustle them along.

"What are they doing?"

The Boy asked.

"They're playing motorbikes. The one at the back is trying to kick-start the other one." 

I replied. The Girl mulled this over, nodded and said;

"Brilliant."



Thursday 7 March 2013

Why I Haven't Killed Anyone...Yet...

If my life was a television channel it would entirely been comprised of an endlessly looping advert for sanitary towels, where the mother of a family effortlessly juggles a thousand tasks. All the while safe in the knowledge that patented technology was keeping her clear of unsightly stains caused by - bizarrely - blue liquids.

Last Friday I spent the morning painting the Girl's room. In the process I also managed to paint every square inch of myself, most of the floor, the stool I was using, the bath and the cat because it looked at me funny. I finished just in time to pick up the Boy, take him to a party and have balls thrown at me for two hours. 

I'll admit that the balls in the face was a surprise. When we arrived at the party the Boy dumped the present he'd brought on a table, stripped to the waist and ran screaming into the hall where he proceeded to dance impressively to Gangnam Style. It speaks of the information age that my son most commonly sings in South Korean. In school even the hot French teacher couldn't teach me to say anything other than "Je suis le vaisseau spatial Enterprise"*. Make some geezer in sunglasses sing on the toilet whilst dancing like he's riding a horse, and my son turns into Ban Ki-Moon.

I was a bit surprised when we arrived that there wasn't a bouncy castle. I've mentioned about my hatred of bouncy castles here (not that it stopped us from hiring one for our kids party). Instead, there was bloke in sportswear and a lot of cones. A few other parents and myself grabbed some chairs and sat against the wall chatting. Cups of tea, vodka and cyanide pills were handed out. Some poor fool started a conversation with me, using the words "Doesn't your wife have a horse?"  and I embarked on a long and detailed explanation of my unending hatred of all things equine.

As I was getting to the bit about shotguns and petrol strimmers, I looked up and realised that the bloke in the sportswear had lined all the kids up to play a game of dodge ball  With us in the line of fire. Before we had time to teach our kids any new expletives, there was a blizzard of misdirected balls. In which respect it was a little like my wedding night. Cue an orgy of flying coffee, spectacles and glassware. It was awesome.

After two hours a bunch of exhausted parents led their children, frothing and spiral eyed from E numbers and sugar, back to their cars. I all but hammered the Boy into his seat and rushed off to pick up the Girl, who greeted me with the line;

"I love you, daddy!"

Before poking me in the stomach and following this up with;

"Because you're so SQUISHY!"

Days like this are not rare. Most days are like the tampon advert, but without the terrible music or impressive absorbency. Due to the irritating necessity of having to pay mortgages, both the Wife and I work, which means some days we pass each other at the front door with barely enough time to say; "The Girl cleaned the laptop keyboard with yoghurt."

Today the Wife was on a course, so I had to rush out of work early, pick the Girl up from pre-school, the Boy from school, rush home, get the Boy changed, take him swimming, not kill anyone at the swimming pool (and I really, REALLY wanted to) and come back to cook dinner, bath them, shout at them and then put them to bed. 

Not that I'm expecting sympathy, but it does rather explain why most parents you meet have a tolerance for bullshit approximate to that of an american border guard. Which in my experience, is zero. What prevents both the Wife and I from picking up a sniper's rifle, scaling the roof and picking off kittens with precise head shots is those moments when the Kids do something that makes you realise why you did all of this in the first place.

A while back the Wife came back from picking the Girl up from school. It had been another one of those insane, scheduled-to-the-minute days. She was stressed, so when the Girl said something from the back seat she wasn't quite paying attention.

"What?"
"I said; 'take this, mummy.'"

The Wife took the imaginary object from the Girl, pretended to pop it in her mouth, chew and swallow it.

"Mmm... delicious."

For a moment there was no sound, so she turned around to see the Girl staring at her with a look of abject horror.

"What's the matter?"

The Wife asked.

"That was MY PRETEND CAT!"





* "I am the starship Enterprise"