School Holidays: Day One

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Because it’s school holidays and the kids like to take control of the family room to lie around cutting perfectly good bits of paper into tiny tiny triangles and play their electronics, I’ve moved my work computer into the dining area so they don’t annoy me.

Love them to pieces, and most the time they don’t mess with my head deliberately, but as a group they are a frustratingly loud and distracting bunch and occasionally through the course of the day I just need a couple of mostly uninterrupted hours to get my stuff done.

Although I confess I look forward to the holidays because I also love being in the dining room. I can spread out more on the bigger table, I’m much closer to Tracey who works from a desk in our bedroom and sometimes lets me feel her boobies and, most excellently, I’m two steps closer to the coffee machine in the kitchen – and on school holidays I need more coffee.

All in all, it’s a pretty sweet spot.

Mind you, as great as that all sounds, there’s already been the odd problem these holidays to iron out.

“What the diddly is wrong with my computer?!” I mumbled angrily for the sixth or seventh time in as many minutes. Actually that sentence was nearly twice as long but I removed the cuss words.

Which is the other reason I moved out to the dining room – I swear at my computer because it’s super dumb, and Tracey thinks it’s probably best we limit the kids’ exposure to that.

Like today, when a white screen had been randomly opening over the top of the pages I was working on and stuffing up my concentration and blood pressure. It reminded me of what happens when I plug my phone in to download my photos but my phone was unplugged beside me.

There was just no reason for it, and as a result I was going a little nuts and dusting off some of my favourite swear jar worthy expressions.

I’d tried everything. As well as yelling colourfully at the screen, I’d closed all the windows and rebooted my computer. But there just didn’t seem to be a solution to stop this.

Finally, I came to the only logical conclusion.

Nope, not a virus.

“Kids!” I yelled out at the top of my voice. “Kids, have you been on my computer?!”

The initial question is always rhetorical. Experience has taught me not to expect an answer to such an ambiguously directed question. My kids struggle to comprehend I’m asking them something even if I use their actual name.

So you can imagine the mightiness of my shock when a voice from the other side of my screen piped up – and I don’t mean from the interweb, but literally the other side of it. Behind it, in fact.

“I didn’t, Daddy.”

Surprised, I stood up and peered over my Mac. Miss6 was sitting there doing something on an iPad.

“This iPad is broken too,” she told me. “I can’t get it to be on the internet.”

To show me how it wasn’t working she unplugged the white lead from the iPad – the other half of which was plugged into the back of my computer – and then plugged it in again.

Instantly a new page opened over everything on my screen.

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A reenactment, although my face was a lot redder than this when it was actually happening. Thankfully, Tracey keeps a stress-boob handy.

Raising a family on little more than laughs

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