I’ve been sick this last week, which has been tough, but at least my family hasn’t deserted me in search of greener pastures.
It seems to be the season for bugs and things, and a lass at work and her husband have had a slow Easter weekend coughing and feeling unwell, made all the worse for it happening on a long weekend with no hope of claiming a sick day.
“Mumma, this is not very good,” her Girl5 sympathized with her.
Actually, ‘sympathized’ isn’t an adequate description of her statement: ‘complained’ sums it up better.
“I asked for a packet of biscuits an hour ago, Mumma, and you still haven’t got them for me.”
My work mate swears it was only ten minutes.
Can I just point out, this happens here as well but our kids are much less articulate at expressing their displeasure. ‘Aaarhhhaaaaahhhar!’ is more what our lot say, combined with a lot of finger stabbing at the pantry. Not that it does them much good because I don’t hear them. Sometimes, deliberately.
“I’m sorry, love, but Mumma and Pappa aren’t feeling very well at the moment,” my friend explained, rising to the task and fetching Girl5 her snack. “We’re a bit sick.”
“I see,” Girl5 said. She chomped on a few biscuits while looking thoughtful. “Well, this isn’t good enough,” she said finally, and stomped off.
My friend watched her go, gave serious consideration to rolling her eyes, decided against it because if they rolled back she wasn’t sure she would be able to get them to come back down and let her see where she was going, took several teetering steps and flopped back onto the lounge. She thinks she even managed to nod off for a few seconds.
“Here, Mumma,” her daughter suddenly announced a foot from her ear.
My friend opened her eyes. They struggled to focus at first, unaccustomed as they were to finding a focal point a mere half inch in front of them. It was a phone.
“Wha…?”
“It’s Auntie J,” said Girl5.
“Wha…?” my colleague said into the phone.
“Apparently,” said her sister, “I’m taking your daughter for a day or two because you’re not up to looking after her.”
Yes, it seems the level of service had sufficiently dropped at their place to the point where a change of venue was called for.
That’s one smart five year old.
Meanwhile, my kids are still standing in front of the pantry, bellowing and pointing and getting hungrier by the minute.
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