School Holidays: Day Five

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My kids don’t seem too keen on spending time outside, so they’re bringing the outdoors inside.

I think I now know why the school day finishes at 3pm.

Seriously, this has bugged me for years. I mean, the kids’ parents are typically working until five, and kids can’t be left unsupervised until…well, ever… so why don’t they marry the two and have school finish at a time parents can pick them up on their way home from work? I’ve never been able to get my head around the lack of logic.

Until now. Until these school holidays when the penny dropped.

We’ve reached the end of the first week of hols and they’ve been hugely successful in terms of naps achieved, emergency rooms avoided, board games played, cakes baked and Pokemon caught. On that last point, we’ve been going out for Pokedrives at night. It’s Pokegoodfun and you seriously should try it because the kids get so excited when they catch a new one.

But in terms of the state of the house…for five days I’ve been posing questions I never thought existed. Like today:

“Why is there dirt in the sink?” I asked Tracey.

Why I chose to ask her when I was 99% sure she wasn’t the one who put it there was because I wanted a sensible answer. You be the judge on whether or not I got one.

“Your daughter is growing flowers,” said Tracey, her voice deadpan. She didn’t even have to say which daughter. This had Miss4 written all over it.

“But in the sink?”

“Obviously you haven’t noticed the water bottle yet.”

I looked. One of the kids’ water bottles they occasionally take to school but mostly leave under the seat in the car was on the bench.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“See the flowers on the side of it?” Tracey asked. I nodded. “She’s growing them.”

“But why is there dirt in the sink?”

“The water bottle was full of dirt so she had to make some room for the water.”

D’uh. I mean, obviously.

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But I wasn’t done with the dumb questions.

“So why isn’t the water bottle full of mud and outside growing flowers?”

Was the water bottle half full or half empty? That’s a philosophical question I am unequipped to answer at the midway mark through these holidays. The thing was, it was half full of dirt, and not dirt and water.

“She got distracted,” Tracey explained. I was almost too scared to ask by what, but I did anyway. “She got hungry and then had to go to the loo.”

I waited for the bombshell. Much to my surprise it didn’t come.

Until half an hour later when I went to the bathroom.

It’s not that I walked in and was assaulted by the unflushed turd in the bowl. Which by the way, I don’t understand. From the moment she could stand all she was interested in doing was tossing stuff into the bowl and trying to flush it down. But now? Apparently, we’re preserving it for prosperity.

It’s not that on the bum ticket holder was an empty roll – my pet hate – or that on the sink above it she’d left the partly used one she’d finished off with.

All that I can kind of handle.

Do handle, in fact.

Daily.

But a banana peel casually tossed aside on the bathroom vanity and left for the ‘help’ to take care of? What the actual? I mean, firstly, who eats on the loo?

Although I have to take some responsibility for this. We’ve told the kids they’re not allowed food in the family room, but I confess I didn’t think I needed to mention the toilet – because usually the stink of shite puts people off their appetite!

And I don’t want you to think I’m encouraging my children down the wrong path, but I’ve told them time and again if they do something they could get in trouble for be smart enough to remove the evidence.

When I spluttered my rantypants thoughts on this at Tracey she suggested, rather wonderfully, I go for a little nap to cool down and absolutely not stick my head in the girls’ room to admonish Miss4, which she could tell from the direction I was going was the plan of action I was running with.

“Why not?” I asked over my shoulder as headed in.

Part of me assumed she was making a joke about being concern for Miss4’s safety, but when I got there I realised she was, in fact, probably more worried about my mental well-being.

There is no photo because there’s only so much mess we’re willing to cop the internet’s condemnation for. Without going into too much detail, can I just say there was a complete lack of visible carpet.

And it was while I stood in the doorway to their room, stunned mute, I had my revelation.

School finishes at three because the teachers need a good two hours to clean up the mess our kids do to their classrooms which they’re currently doing to our bloody homes.

I hope they’re enjoying their holidays as much as I’m going to enjoy sending my kids back to them in a week.

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Raising a family on little more than laughs

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