Friday, September 5, 2008

Climbing a mountain

The last couple of days have been like climbing mount Everest. Hubby has been away for 12 days now and Thing 1 and Thing 2 have been far worst than their 'Cat in the Hat' characters ever were.
I am almost at the summit.
Thing 2 is due to go back to school on Tuesday and Thing 1 on Wednesday.
Both of them have become professional at dodging my requests for help around the house, but a complete experts at:
1. Creating a washing mountain to rival that of a family twice our size.
2. Leave an inordinate amount of mess in every room they venture into.
3. Constantly argue/shout with/at each other or answer me back.
3. Manage to pull out of their wardrobes clothes they just can't be bothered to put back or hang up properly, so decide to [a] Stuff them down the back of the wardrobe out of site, wrinkled and crumples up or [b] Put them in the laundry basket to add to number 1 of this list.

Thing 1 still hasn't finished all of his homework. I got him a little reprieve yesterday regarding his Spanish homework. He has been adamant all summer that one of his homework tasks - a pack of 2 books he was issued was completely the wrong one, so I phoned the school, spoke to the teacher who confirmed this. She gave me the option of
1. Bring it back and they would give me a refund or
2. Do it anyway.
Well considering he had to read 5 short story books [in Spanish] and complete a book review for each and he still had to read a further 2, much larger novels in English [all before next Wed] I decided the stress of option 2 would probably kill me and opted for option 1.

To add to this the weather is still hot reaching mid thirties every day. So the most basic of tasks are a hard slog. Yesterday we all piled in the car and drove the 45 minutes to Thing 1's school to purchase school books for this term. We then stopped off at the shopping centre to buy new school wheelie bags for each of them. They obviously were starving because they hadn't eaten for at least 2 1/2 hours so dragged me into Burger King. 45 minutes later and 100€ lighter we emerged fed and watered and my detox diet well and truly broken.
Today I went to the Thing 2's school to purchase her books in relative peace whilst they were both at football club.
They are busy eating their lunch so I have hijacked the computer to write this blog. I'm looking forward to late tonight when we have to go to the airport to pick up hubby. Phew!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Have you found a way to make Spanish fun?! I speak basic phrases, using questions, descriptions, feelings, etc and my family laughs along with me! A large group of Spanish-speaking Americans moved into our small city that has approximately 30-40K people. I had a brief converstation with some of them yesterday, round here, its a blast being able to speak Spanish! Good luck! The kiddos will thank you someday, always remember that! :)