Boondoggle

Enough on the men topic for a while….I need to catch my breath and re-focus ! 😉

Educating kids is not something that comes as easy as actually making them… It’s a blessing, and priviledge but it is also a tremendous challenge, as kids have a way of extracting your very worst traits, at times.
My day usually starts off pretty quiet…the alarm goes off a couple of times, giving me plenty of time to adjust to daylight. I wake my kids and whilst I’m taking a relaxing shower, they get dressed. (For those of you with small kids…yes this is possible at a certain point, as long as you train them well ! ;-))
Once dressed and ready they go downstairs for breakfast (or so, they’re supposed to). I check their rooms turn off lights where necessary (and after years of training and continuous reminders it is still necessary, yes),  and then join them at the breakfast table. On the best of days, we have a reasonably calm breakfast but on some days…..it’s like being an officer in the army trying to deal with all sorts of frontline crises. Screaming, hitting, fighting, and looks that can kill, seem to be the war weapons of choice. However patient I hope to remain… I don’t. Soon enough my shouting exceeds theirs and for a little while it will deceivingly seem as if we have made peace (this is like the eye of the storm, just a momentary state of quiet).

I start my drill at around eight in the morning…”brush your teath, comb your hair, put your shoes on, get your lunchboxes, wear your sweaters, hurry up, grab your bags, ….all your bags, please hurry up, move, move, move…we’re going to be late” (which we never are, as I’ve learnt to start all the commanding around early enough) !! I’m sure many of you recognize the drill. (Especially mothers as dads somehow seems oblivious to all of this commotion.)

In the car, the seat battle continues….I have banned them from the front seat only to realise that all I did was move the problem to the back seat. Once again fighting over who sits where and why. Usually by this time I truly explode and then we sit in silence until we nearly reach school, where I start telling the kids that this is the last time I want to have this kind of argument with them in the early morning. They sulk yet promise to behave. We all say our happy goodbyes.

At 3 thirty I park my car at the school in happy expectation of seeing my kids again. Whilst I chit-chat with my friends, I wait for the kids to walk out of school. As they are approach me, they each start their own story tyelling and all wanting to be heard first, then angry that I don’t pay enough attention, and so I end up in the car once again with 3 angry kids and me wondering how that happened in such a short walk to the car.

The homework battle is one that I do not seem to be able to win. Stuff is left behind in school, homework notebooks are forgotten, reading books suddenly disappear and of course the terrible grade on the exam paper wasn’t their fault, as they only got asked questions on topics they had never even discussed in school !! 😉

In the middle of this mayhem I usually try to make and serve a reasonably healthy and well balanced dinner. Now I have to say that my kids are pretty much omnivores, but I know of motthers who cook 4 different meals to cater to each and everyone’s taste.

After dinner the dessert discussion begins, now I am separated and as some of you may know this is when kids use all their guilt trip power on you, telling me that dessert at their dad’s house is a bowl of crisps !!! I’m very susceptible to feeling guilty but this is taking it a bridge too far !!! So, new rule is yoghurt or fruit for dessert and no room for negotiation.

Shower time…now this is when true signs of the battle field become visible..the top floor seems to have been hit by a series of towel and clothing bombs, leaving debris scattered around. No one is responsible of course as the opponent is always to blame ! Leaving me, the red-cross-type-Florence Nightingale to deal with the aftermath of this disaster.

This is all followed by another blast of drill-seargent-mom instructions…”put your pj’s on, brush your teeth, comb your hair, get into bed, take your medicine, quiet please….it’s time to sleep…no, no more water now, go to sleep !!”

And by 8pm this reccuring familiar battle ends….and I am left in a bombshell, with the knowledge that like in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ tomorrow will bring exactly the same warfares, and so I prepare for the next boondoggle.*

*any military operation that hasn’t been completely thought out. An operation that is absurd or useless.

                                                                    24hrs in 2 minutes