(At the end of a long day)
Dad: You look worn out. Long day?
Mom: Yeah. Exhausted.
RJ: Poor Mum. She always works so hard.
Mom: I need a job where I’m not at a computer all day. It’s soul destroying.
RJ: (suddenly REALLY interested / concerned) Cell destroying!!? How does that work? Do they get exploded?
It’s a beautiful, bright, sunny day and RJ and Mom are in the garden. Deep within a ferocious tangle of tomato vines, Mom is pulling up plants and getting the garden ready for a new season. RJ walks purposefully outside… He clearly has an agenda.
RJ: Mom, is there anything that I can do to help you? … And then maybe earn a prize? … Like a new Beast Quest book?
Mom: Ummm…Okay. You can empty out the pool so we can put it away for winter.
The pool is four metres in diameter and 80 centimetres deep… It holds a LOT of water.
RJ: And if I empty out the pool, can we go to the bookshop right away?
Mom: Okay… It might take a while though!
RJ starts industriously emptying the pool, tiny bucket by little, tiny bucket. After half-an-hour the water level has dropped a little, but not significantly. Mom feels sorry for him and steps in to help out.
Ten minutes later, she has had enough and is seriously considering suggesting that they just go to the bookshop and leave the job for Daddy.
RJ: I know it’s hard, Mom. But if we want that book, we just have to keep going.
Mom: (Feeling guilty, desperately wishing the child hadn’t just said that, wondering if it’s bad parenting to discourage such industry) Mmmmhmmm.
Time passes. More water is emptied into the garden.
RJ: We’ll just keep going, won’t we Mom?
Mom: Okay…
RJ: Because we might not like it, but it just has to get done.
Mom: (sighs)
RJ: Even if it’s really hard work. We just have to keep going.
Mom: Yeah…
RJ: Because if we don’t do it, who will? There’s just nobody but us. So we have to get it done.
Mom: (looking around for candid camera set up by Dad) Argh.
RJ: I know, Mom. But we can do it.
RJ: (pauses, thoughtfully) Maybe you should get a book too, Mom. You’re really working hard.
More time (and water) passes and eventually they emptied the entire pool.
All of it.
And they got a book.
And Mom got a coffee.
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!!!
