April 27, 2006

Nobody told me there'd be days like these


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Originally uploaded by billyjoebob.
When you first become a parent, punkin, you firmly believe that you'll face large challenges. You understand that bringing up a child will be the longest, most arduous, most rewarding project of your life. You think long and hard about how you're going to make sure that your child will be given every available chance and opportunity to do well in a very complex and difficult world.

You work on scenarios in your head, and say things to yourself like "right, ok, so if we get attacked by zombies, this is our escape route, and this is what I'm going to grab on my way out the door, and that's all sorted then". You get the idea in your head as a parent, punkin, that you have many of these contingencies sorted, that you are, as they say, ready for anything.

And then some days, punkin, some days just come right up and bite you right on the bum.

Your mum had one of those days today.

It started out, as many of these things do, with a fairly simple clerical error. Your mum made two appointments that were a little bit too close together in parts of town that were a little bit too far apart. One of them involved you and one of them didn't. Her schedule for this morning, then, was always going to be a little bit frenzied.

Being, of course, the collected and together woman that she is, she had the situation in hand, and set about ensuring that she would be able to make both appointments.

She had the whole thing under control, punkin, until she looked at the clock this morning and realised that in order to make the first appointment she needed to be out of the house in 10 minutes. Juggling the kid in one hand, she got on the phone to organise the slight pushback of her second meeting. The person she spoke to didn't have the information she needed, so she asked him to call her back.

She got midway through the changing of the child, which in this case was a full costume switch, due to you having just had your breakfast, when the phone rang. She picked up the kid, not noticing that only half of the child's nappy was fastened, and headed off for the lounge to answer the phone.

It's fortunate, shall we say, that your mother was wearing brown trousers.

I think it's best that we let her tell it in her own words from here:

well first I didn't know he had pooed, because, well, because it was... fresh. And the nappy fell off just as I sat down and I couldn't see any any poo (moreover, at that point it would have been a fait accompli anyway cause as I was sitting him down I pulled him towards my knee and gravity and momentum played their parts), and I had to keep a straight face on the phone, because it was a business call and there's no polite way to say "pardon me, someone's just done a poo on my leg, do you mind if I call you back?"

Once she got herself cleaned up, as far as I understand it by shedding her brown corduroys then and there, and took care of you, she hightailed for the car, started it up and hit the road.

Noticing once she did, that she'd read the clock wrong and she was running a good hour early.

No big deal, she thought, and continued on her merry way to the child health nurse, to get there and find out that she wasn't an hour early.

She was a day early.



Love you,

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Man! I hate that kind of day! I also sometimes have days where it seems like a) I can't read a clock or a calendar, and b) everything else seems to go wrong as well.

Ren said...

*LOL* Oh dear.