Match of the Day

I want to tell you about my day so far.  But I’m a bit embarrassed to really, and I don’t think that you’d actually believe me.  Well, here goes, please enjoy my recounting of the first 6 hours of my day.

I woke up at 7ish.  I had been inspired to go for a run this morning by my brother who was here last night so I did.  This, however, meant trying to get out of bed and downstairs without waking my wife or disturbing the sleeping daughter.  Not disturbing my wife proved impossible.  I’m sure she could be in the deepest possible sleep but will still wake at the slightest change of my breathing as I wake up.  Or perhaps she’s just got a bit of string tied round her little toe which makes her twitch whenever I wake up.  Whatever it is she was awake as I thought about getting up. 


Morning 1-0 Me
(Note morning had the home advantage (unless of course you are in North America where you have it all backwards), I had to try to find some excuse)

But N was still sleeping sweetly in her cot, I slipped into my running stuff (which makes it seem like I run regularly, this is not entirely true but it’s my story so I’ll tell it how I like) crept passed her door and slowly shuffled downstairs.  As you will have read in a previous post, (well, why not?  Better rectify that now) we have an alarm, which we set overnight and which goes off when one of us goes downstairs.  And when it sets off it is not quiet, I suppose so that you don’t set it off but forget because you can’t hear it and the alarm goes off.  It’s loud, randomly loud enough to wake the child, which is why, if you had happened to be superman and had exercised your X-Ray vision on our house at the point I was coming downstairs you would have seen me performing some form of crazy stairs cha-cha, shimmying down on my back, keeping as low below the bannister as I could so as not to trigger the sensor.  Needless to say, despite busting out my best moves I am just too big to be trying to stealth my way past any alarm system (hence the need for the run, ninjas can be made as well as born, can’t they?)  The setting signal wailed for about two seconds before I managed to get to the console and punch in the number, (what a ridiculous phrase, there was no punching, I never once used my fists it was all delicate key strokes performed in a courteous manner, ‘as I caressed the number in’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it though, does it?)  The alarm wailed, the number was put in, the alarm went silent.  Quiet seemed to pervade through the house, as though a fog had descended to envelope everything in its muffling shroud.  It couldn’t last though.  Of course N woke up, of course she started crying and shouting.  Of course my wife then had to get up to her.

Morning 2-0 Me

Shockingly the run passed off without a hitch, I was even feeling so good that I tacked a little bit on to my usual (see, I did it again) route.  That may have been a slight mistake as I now can’t feel my legs and the funny wheezy sound doesn’t seem to want to go away.  All in all though, I think I’m going to chalk this one down as a win for me.

Morning 2-1 Me

So things were looking up, until breakfast.  N had her weetabix like a champion, I scoffed my Fruit ‘n Fibre and then we both tucked into our respective drinks, I had my big mug of coffee she had her little glass of juice.  Unfortunately N’s idea of tucking in turned out to involve throwing the juice all over herself and me, at which point I threw my chair back to get out and get a cloth and managed to jam my finger between the chair and a cupboard that was closer behind me than I thought,  I’m ok though, thanks for asking, the doctors think the finger will make a full recovery (there were no doctors and it really wasn’t that bad, and the noise I made when I did it was very manly thank you.)

Morning 3-1 Me

What comes next however is just disastrous, and the real reason for the post.  I have been wanting for the past few weeks, since we got them really, to put up some shelves.  One in the living room and one in the dining room.  Today the opportunity came. N was playing playdough with my wife, the only substance in the world scientifically proven (I used the stopwatch on my phone and everything) to quieten my child and make her sit and play for any length of time.  This was it, nothing could go wrong, the shelves were found (it had been a while since we bought them and one of them had been hidden from N, which meant a bit of searching for it) but they were ready, screws, rawplugs, and little bits that I don’t think have a name, or purpose really but they are in every flatpack I have ever put together.  Now I’m not a DIY expert, but shelves I can manage, although my last attempt had to be salvaged by my dad as all I had managed to do was make was a big hole in the wall and a shelf that was too high for my wife to reach.  But this was just a couple of easy drill and screw jobs on which nothing could go wrong.  Until it transpired that I had lost my drill.  A big, electric drill in an even bigger black box that was, somehow, nowhere to be found,   Quite how it could have got lost was a mystery, it really is quite big, and it’s not as though I had more than one wing to search, but there it was, gone.  Despondently I resigned myself to not being able to put the shelves up.  But then my wife got involved.  Two minutes after walking into the room that I was sure I had searched top to bottom, twice, she was triumphantly pointing out the big black box which contained the drill. 

Morning 4-1 Me
Wife (2)
N
Drill


It was at this point that I decided to write today off, I think bed beckons once I’ve finished this, although even then I imagine it will collapse, leaving me in a pile of bedclothes whilst my wife and daughter laugh at me.  Good Night.