Why I Can’t Get Away With Anything At Home

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Today I tried to sneak in a nap. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for…my kids.

Miss5 asked if she could make herself a sandwich.

“Of course,” I readily agreed. Because that meant I didn’t have to. Score.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said, and she ran off with a very excited looking little sister in tow.

“Make both of you one!” I called after them, thinking that would free me up to continue sorting the last of the flotsam from the car from our family trip to the Gold Coast. Tracey had needed to duck out briefly and I was keen to get a bit done before she came home.

No, I wasn’t. I was laying down trying to nap.

The first clue something was amiss, when I emerged from the bedroom maybe half an hour later, was a heap of small empty chip packets on the dinning room floor. There were four.

Still, this was a fairly low key mess and neither eyebrow felt particularly compelled to go for a stroll up my forehead as I bent to pick the packets up.

“Aw come on guys. Who’s been into the chip pac-” I started to shout as I tossed them in the bin.

Then I spotted the interesting plate/bowl formation on the table. Lifting the ‘lid’ revealed a mess of jam sandwich.

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“Who’s left this bowl of sandwiches on th-” I started to yell as I scraped it into the bin to keep the chip packets company.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a chair in front of the stove.

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“Why is this chair in-” I started, reaching out to move it back to the dinning table.

Then I saw why it’d been dragged into the kitchen.

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And from here, as I took in each mini disaster on the stove top, my sentences became a lot shorter.

“Who put this….why would you…..how is it….why is there…..why didn’t you…?”

But it was easy to put together who, why and how. Miss5 had dragged a chair into the kitchen to make sandwiches where I always make sandwiches. Then she’d made a jam construction for Miss3 before discovering the chip box. She’d taken a pack of chips out and then Miss3 had seen this and decided to abandon the jam sandwich, but not before putting a ‘lid’ on it to keep it safe. Following this all sandwich related activities were abandoned as more and more chips were opened and consumed and the empty packets tossed aside.

All this was going through my mind, making me feel very Sherlock Holmes-like, when I heard Tracey pulling into the driveway.

With speed unusual and, if I’m honest, unbecoming on a man my size I raced around the kitchen shoving lids on and wiping things down.

And I did it!

Tracey came in suspecting nothing.

It lasted all of a minute.

“You had a nap, didn’t you!” she said accusingly. It wasn’t a question.

If I’m Sherlock Holmes then she’s Poirot and Miss Marple all rolled into one delicious, if sometimes scary, package.

There was no point in denying it. Damn, she’s good.

“How’d you know?” I asked her. I didn’t even attempt to keep the awe out of my voice.

She grinned and seemed to point to the stove top I’d just cleaned. It looked fine. Only she wasn’t pointing at the stove, she was pointing at the chip box on it. What, does she count the number of packets left?

But then I saw what I’d missed – an accusing jam sandwich in the chip box. Kids!

“But how did that tell you?'”

Oh, it didn’t,” she grinned. “That just told me things went to shit while you were asleep in the bed you haven’t remade yet.”

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 ~ raising a family on little more than laughs ~

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