the prodigal dad

So I've been slack, pumpkin. More slack than any dad has any right to be. I'm sorry. I feel bad about not talking to you for so long, if that helps any.

Lots has happened since last time we chatted, with a few major changes in the world and in our lives. I guess the last time I talked to you was before the long weekend, so I'd best update you on everything I can remember.

In Melbourne, where your mum and I live, there is a horse race every year. It's called, funnily enough, the Melbourne Cup, and whilst I have very little interest in horse racing, I am incredibly grateful for the fact that we are extended a public holiday for the occasion. Added to that is the fact that the race in question falls on a Tuesday. This means that, if one takes a day of annual leave on the previous Monday, one can take a full four day weekend.

A four day weekend, pumpkin, a double weekend, if you will, is, for an adult, the stuff of which dreams are made. A four day weekend means that one can accomplish all that one would accomplish in an ordinary weekend, of the cleaning, mowing, fixing variety, and still have a full weekend of leisure time left at the end. It also means that when one does finally go back to work, that one only has to be at work for another three days before it's the weekend again.

This is the way it should be always.

Of course, being in a high pressure, very busy, very important job means that I have to do five days work in those three days, but it turns out for the best, I think.

Over the course of the long weekend, your mum and I installed an electric dogfence, to stop miss Purdey and miss Kudra from digging through to next door to play with the rabbit. We did a truckload of gardening, and bought a new couch.

The couch (called Elliot, for reasons that remain a mystery), is the biggest couch known to mankind. The lovely Amber, who sold Elliot to us, gave us a special fabric protectiony thing that, she says, is guaranteed for the life of the couch. If, pumpkin, you are ever able to make a stain on the couch that we can't get off, then we can take it back, and they will replace the panel of fabric. This sounds like an awesome deal to me, no matter how much it cost, so I was careful to specifically ask if it covered baby vomit when we bought it.

Love you