Crumpled Home

It’s a little quiet at home right now. LR is away at horse riding camp and the normal level of intensity at our place has dropped a bit – although only a little bit, the RJ reality distortion field is still fully operational.

Pony camp is an amazing place — I get all fluttery just thinking about it — a magical land where you spend all day riding horses, cleaning and scrubbing horses, feeding horses, and (be still my beating heart) shoveling horse manure and cleaning out stalls. Mom insists that this is little girl heaven, but I’m not totally convinced.

For the first time in her life, she has ‘her own’ mobile phone with her (it’s a spare that we’ve borrowed from Poppa for the week). We told her it’s just for emergencies or if something goes wrong and she needs to talk to us. After giving her one or two instructions on how to use it, we carefully put it in her backpack and waved goodbye.

Five hours later, while deep in the middle of one of my projects,  I was interrupted by an unexpected phone call… from LR and a room full of 7 year old girls suffering some kind of ‘emergency’ involving a large amount of giggling. Apparently, she had to test to see if the phone was still working properly…

Regardless, I’m looking forward to having her back when she gets home… as long as she leaves her boots outside.

Just before she left, she drew this on the fridge for us.

The fridge cow will keep you company while LR is away.

Dad’s desk slowly accretes items that are annoying to put away, or don’t have places to go. Over time the piles grow and grow until they become overwhelming.

Mom’s desk gathers piles of papers and other people’s things for about two weeks at a time, until there is a sudden mass extinction event and everything starts over again.

LR’s desk is never clean, but never terribly messy. There’s usually a mix of things: a couple of different projects that she hasn’t finished yet, and always six or seven books that she’s reading or has recently finished.

RJ’s desk … Well, see for yourself.

"Sometimes I just like to sit down here and get some work done..."

A skull, an angler fish, several bugs, snakes, scorpions, a pterodactyl, two pairs of vampire teeth, a whistle straw and a mini-cauldron… The perfect environment to get a few things done…

RJ: Mummy, can I tell you something?

Mum: Sure, RJ. What is it?

RJ: (worried) When I grow up, promise that I can go and live at Grammy’s house, with Grammy.

Mum: No, RJ. When you grow up, you’ll probably have to live in your own house.

RJ: But I can’t build a house! I don’t know how!

Mum: You don’t have to build it yourself, you pay someone else to build it for you.

RJ: But I don’t have a wallet with any money in it!

Mum: You’ll have to get a job, so you can earn some money.

RJ: But I can’t do anything!!!

Mum: That’s why you go to school, to learn that stuff.

RJ: But they don’t teach us about jobs there!!!