A Drive on the Surreal Side

Driving can be dull, though it’s best not to ask B what she thinks.  Judging by how wild her eyes get and how white her knuckles are afterwards, car rides with me are more turbulent than tranquil, more joy-ride than joyful.  I of course think everything is going fine, until there is a little squeak from beside me and my wife’s hands shoot up from the thing they were crushing to cover her mouth.  It’s understandable really.  B learnt to drive at 18 and has therefore been driving for REDACTED years.  I learnt to drive when I was 28, which was a long time after B and so she looks upon my driving the way a mouse might think about a new neighbourhood cat, an unwelcome addition to its life that is likely to kill it one day.  

I've told you before.  I am not getting into a car with you.

A day not Wasted

We all like laughing.  The Best Medicine and all that.  In our house it is especially important, considering the number of ways that I am able to mess up a situation.  Just this evening I thought I would help and ended up destroying the fish fingers we were going to have for tea.  Just the other day B could be heard to wail, “How many times do you have to be told?”  Sadly it was at me rather than the three year old after I had managed to mess up a relatively simple shopping trip.  It has got to the point where one of B and I’s favourite sayings is, “One day we’ll laugh about this.”  Often uttered after I have managed to break something important, like the tea, or one of the children, or managed to pull a cupboard door off its hinges, or rendered something entirely useless just by walking in its general vicinity, also often uttered by me as I try to placate my distinctly unhappy wife.  The time that really engrained it in our lives though was nothing to do with me.  We were on our way down to stay with some friends in Cornwall and had made it about 4 hours into the journey.  At which point our car, which we had purchased 3 days before decided that enough was enough and just ground to a halt.  Nothing would persuade it to go (turns out the timing belt had snapped causing a lot of damage and an immobile car) and in the end we had to wait a good few hours for a tow truck to come and drag us all the way home.  At some point during that wait one of us uttered the words, “One day we’ll laugh about this,” at which we both burst out laughing and stayed that way for a good few minutes.  This may have been the result of the rising hysteria we both felt, but we were both much happier about life afterwards.

A Good Walk Spoiled

Golf is a funny game.  Though perhaps not in the classical sense of the word.  There’s not a lot of humour to be found in strolling around on grass with sticks, unless you have a dog.  And yet there is something inherently amusing about watching people chase a ball around.  Which is why I imagine there were people chuckling the whole time my wife, N and I were playing pitch and putt on holiday.

I want to set the scene a little first.  It was raining.  Lightly at first, but by the time we were half way round it was raining the sort of rain that is reserved  for British summer time by the sea.  Cold, very wet, rain that soaks into your clothes, and doesn’t dry for hours.  And there we were, knocking two little white balls around a course.  You won’t be surprised to know that we were the only ones there, in fact, considering how this summer has gone we’re probably the only people who have been on that course for about 3 months.

I like you (yes, you)

I want to like you.  Obviously I love you, but liking you is different, and much more difficult.   You just make it so hard when you behave like you do sometimes:
When you get angry and refuse to do anything that you are asked.

When you are so tired that you fight against everything, especially your mummy and me.

When you decide that eating is for inferior beings and, that you never want to eat anything again but instead, (like those people in that story that I have forgotten) have decided just to be nourished by smell.
 
When you throw your arms around and nothing is safe.

When you throw your toys around and those things that had been put safe from your arms are suddenly in the strike zone again.

When you say you need the potty, only to sit there for ages and not do anything.

When you’ve sat on the potty for ages, but hold on to whatever you’re going to do until I’ve picked you up.

When we’re outside in the garden and all you want to do is pull plants up.

When you’ve got bored of pulling plants up and decide that the only thing you’ve every wanted is to eat peapods, not the peas so much just the pods they come in.

When you stab me in the chest with a pencil and then get really grumpy when I take it off you.

When toys are not for playing with but for scattering like fairy dust around the house.

When, having done your best Tinker Bell* impression, you want the one thing you’ve scattered that we cannot find.

When you don’t believe me when I tell you that we’re going to put you in your chair to have lunch, so you take it out on my ears.

When you absolutely will not go to sleep no matter how tired you are.

When you decide that if you aren’t going to be asleep no one on the entire street will.

When you hate being in the bath until the exact moment that I take you out of the bath and then you hate being out of the bath.

When mummy is the parent you want, until you’re with mummy, and then daddy is the man for you, until you’re with him.

When you have been told not to touch the cooker time after time after time, and yet just can’t resist playing with the knobs one last time.

When you climb up on the arm of the chair and won’t come down until you’ve fallen off.

When you won’t play with any other children at all but are sad when they leave.

I want to like you, but you make it so hard, are you just keeping me on my toes?  Are you trying to wear me down so far that I will let you get away with anything that you want?  Is this how life will be for the next 18 years, or is is just a phase you are going through?  Is there anything I can do differently?  Will I look back at this one day and wish we were back here again?  Because even though it is so hard to like you, I never want to let you go.

I want to like you, and underneath everything, despite this list that I have put together, you are very likeable, your smile is wide and toothy, your giggle is infectious and comes easily, your cuddles are freely given and heartfelt, you are my daughter and every now and then I see myself in you and almost explode.  Yes, I do like you, but couldn’t you just make it a little easier, even just this much.

Check the awesome table cloth!

*Who knew that Tinker Bell had two names?  Not me before writing this!

Staring, Staring, Staring

Our daughter is a girl of many expressions.  For a long time it made no difference that she couldn’t speak, she managed to convey her feelings through the medium of her facial expressions.  Which I suppose is preferable to the medium of modern dance.  Anyway, she is one of those people who you would not describe as inscrutable.  In fact, scrutable, if it existed as a word, could have been coined just for her.  (It turns out that scrutable has been used and is a recognised word, although it has fallen out of the rather niche use which it once enjoyed.  It even merited a definition in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, or to give it its full title, A Dictionary of the English Language: In which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals, Explained in Their Different Meanings, and Authorised by the Names of the Writers in Whose Works They are Found.  What a wonderful book that is.  One of these days, when I have totally run out of ideas, I’m just going to dedicate a blog post to words and definitions from that most remarkable book.  Let us all hope that day is a long way off.)

She's a girl!

Shopping has never been my favourite activity.  Along with millions of other men, I dreaded a shopping trip and would spend the entire time making snide comments about anything and everything.  Being a father has not really changed my feelings towards shopping, it has, however, ramped up my dread for these occasions.

I first noticed a real change in the shopping experience when people suddenly started stopping us to look at the Buglet and chat to us.  This caught me totally by surprise, it was not a practice in which I had engaged before having the child and I was just not expecting complete strangers to strike up a conversation amongst the processed meats.  For a start, why couldn’t they have picked a more exotic aisle to examine my child in?

A question of children

I had an interview today.  It went quite well thank you.  Why is it that you always come out of an interview feeling like you must have sounded like a complete idiot, as though you have been answering the questions in Hebrew, whilst standing on your head and juggling with your feet.  Or is it just me?  And anyway, if I had done all of those things I think they should just give me the job, who else do you know that can speak Hebrew and juggle with their feet?

All of this interview stuff got me thinking, unfortunately none of it was fit to publish as a blog post so I did what I always do in tight corners and asked my wife what I should write about.  That, by the way, is not the best question to ask when the tight corner you are in is surrounded by panthers. So here we are, with a simple question to answer.  What would you ask if you were interviewing prospective parents?

They're not Terry's, they're ours, unfortunately.

7 years ago today I watched the woman of my dreams walk up the aisle towards me as I waited to become a married man, and whilst this blog isn’t about me and her I feel like it is appropriate to take a little time to think about 7 wonderful years.

Enough time?  Good, now back to the calamities. 

We use cloth, reusable nappies, the majority of which are shaped.  Just like this.

I'll never look this clean ever again

 However, we also have some square terry nappies, which are just like this. 

Doesn't look like it could make a grown man cry does it?