Nuts

A couple of weeks ago the Girl had a major meltdown. This was unlike her usual meltdowns, because it didn't end in bloodshed. Instead she became all wobbly and emotional because the Boy got her a drink.

That was it. He brought her a drink of juice, and she wigged out, burst into tears and decided to send herself to bed.

"Uh, oh..." the Wife said.

"What?"

"She's getting hormonal."

I thought about this carefully for a moment, because it's always good to be calm and considered at times like that. After a picosecond of consideration, I gave my verdict.

"No! NO! She's not allowed to get hormonal until you've done that menopause thing because I JUST CAN'T DEAL WITH IT!"

I then excused myself and went to bed. It was six thirty.

Today I picked the Kids up from school and once we'd got home and I'd spent a few minutes shouting "Door!", "Shoes!", "Bags!" and the like the Boy said to me

"We had a really interesting lesson today at school."

"Righto." I replied, eyeing a bottle of wine on the table and trying to figure out how long I had to leave it alone before it wasn't classed as middle-class alcoholism.

"It was about puberty."

"Oh, REALLY? So, what did you learn, because I'm still not sure what all the bits do."

"Oh, you know. Body changes and feelings and stuff."

Annoyingly, he wasn't embarrassed. As mentioned previously, my Dad started this conversation with the words "You might be feeling randy..." and I cut him off by bailing out of a moving car. My Kids, it seems, simply cannot be trusted to react correctly.

"Well, it'll happen to you one day."

"Already has."

"No it hasn't, you're ten."

"It has. Look."

And then he showed me his penis.

I'm going to bed.

In the Midnight Hour

In the dirty hours of this morning I found myself mulling over the person I seem to have become. Ordinarily I sleep like narcoleptic with a Valium addiction, but I was afforded this wakey time thanks to the Dog. 

The Dog now sleeps in our room, as this helps prevent her doing dirty protests on the shagpile. When we go to bed she's curled up in her basket next to the bed. However, the moment she thinks I'm asleep she climbs onto the bed and works on pushing me slowly out of bed over several hours. Sneaky little bastard.

Last night she was a bit restless, so she jumped off the bed before waking me by applying her cold nose to my arse as if to say "HIYA! IT'S ME!"

And so the start of my existential crisis. I think it was David Baddiel that said that during a bout of insomnia the only things you think about are; sleep, death or the possibility of a fifth wank. No so me. This was my thought process.

When the hell did my life revolve around resolving arguments between the Kids?

"Daaaad... the Boy annexed the Crimea..."

"Well she invaded the Sudentenland!"

It's like being the UN.

Why do I start each morning switching the electric toothbrush on before I've put it in my mouth and spraying toothpaste all over the wall?

When did I buy trousers on which the flies are always open?

Why can I no longer sit down where I want to?

"BISCUITS?"

Why do I spend so much time retracing my steps looking for something that has dropped out of my pocket?

Similarly, how much of my life has been spent looking for the fucking remote control?

Why does the Dog deliberately, and with malice of forethought, shit as far as caninely possibly from the dog poo bin?

And other such mundanities of life. This is why I'm so popular at parties.

Tonight, the Girl came downstairs after bed time clutching her book (it's hard to tell them off for reading too much, it feels like saying "You've done TOO MUCH HOMEWORK!"). Ostensibly this was to show us that her name was in it.

"That's great, Girl. But it's time to put the book down and go to sleep."

At this, she started jumping on the spot. She'd been undergoing a period of mania since four snowflakes had fallen in the back garden.

"I told you that you need to calm down, darling. It's bed time."

"This is how I calm down."

And she hopped out of the room and up the stairs, much like an articulated lorry full of marshmallows crashing into a pillow factory. Ten minutes later she was snoring like a walrus.

I'm jumping up the stairs to bed tonight.