Weekend vignettes

Mr Strange Land is off in other strange lands, and he won’t be back until well through the school holidays. Which means that it’s just me and the three Misses Strange Land, in a city we are only just getting to know. Back in New Zealand, I would simply have packed our bags, and headed north to stay with my parents for a few days, at their home, or out at my dad’s retirement project (’tho it would be frakin freezing there at night – the sort of cold where if you wake and vaguely contemplate a trip to the toilet, instead of getting up, you simply go back to sleep because it is just too damned cold to get out of bed). Here… well – we shall see how things go.

Some vignettes from the first weekend of the school holidays.

School uniforms

When the girls and I got home from school on Friday, as usual they got changed out of their uniforms, and into home clothes. “Put all your uniforms in the wash basket,” I said. An hour or so later, I found that the younger Miss Six had taken me at my word. As well as the clothes she had just taken off, every single laundered and nicely folded shirt, pair of trousers, and rolled up pair of socks was in the wash basket too.

Coffee in bed

I stayed up late Friday night, missing Mr Strange Land, and working on the 2nd edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival. I woke briefly at about 8am Saturday, and heard the girls unstacking the dishwasher and getting themselves breakfast, and woke again around 9am, when Miss Nine brought me coffee and the paper in bed. French press coffee – beans freshly ground, mug warmed, piping hot coffee with a dash of milk. I am very grateful to Mr Strange Land for teaching her how to make it. About 20 minutes later she brought me a second cup. What an excellent daughter. I got out of bed, officially, just in time for lunch. (I had previously been up to get a loaf of bread underway and rising, and to turn the heaters on, and make sure that my three darlings really were okay. Idle, but not irresponsible.)

Children’s games

While I idled through Saturday, the first day of the school holidays, the girls spent the day playing an elaborate make-believe game, all through the lounge (for my Australian readers, that would be the “loungeroom”), the family room, the attic bedroom, their own rooms, and occasionally outside, in between showers, with barely a bicker at all. The game? School!

Music

Late afternoon Saturday I put a beautiful new CD on – Cecilia Bartoli singing baroque music – “Opera Prohibita” – oratorio music from the 10 years at the start of the eighteenth century when opera was banned in Rome. Beautiful. Utterly gorgeous.

“Yuck,” the girls said when they came into the room, screwing up their faces. “Stop that horrid opera stuff and put something else on.” I pointed out that the CD was nearly finished, so they made me promise that I wouldn’t play more opera after that. I put on Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis – fabulous soprano and stunning, burnished, liquid trumpet. But not opera. “Take that, you philistines,” I thought.

They got their revenge on Sunday afternoon – I had been talking to my dad and then my mum on the phone, in the lounge, and when I came back into the family room, Miss Nine’s Beyonce CD had escaped from her own small CD player into the big one, and they followed it up with the soundtrack from High School Musical 2. The horror, the horror.

Fire starting

While I wasn’t looking, the fire burned down to sullen embers. So I piled on some pine cones, and hoped, and hoped, and opened draught doors and hoped some more. Eventually, I opened the woodburner door and blew, hard. Immediately, the flames leaped up. “Mummy is a dragon!” they shouted with glee.

Sleeping upstairs

We have an attic bedroom, open to the family room, but only visible if you stand at the foot at the stairs and crane your head at a very awkward angle. There is a guest bed up there, and my sewing table, and our household files, and other … stuff. The girls have been agitating to be able to sleep up there ever since we arrived. So I promised them that during the school holidays, and while their daddy was away, they could take turns to sleep in the spare bed. Which only led to the issue of who would get first turn. So they drew straws, and Miss Nine won. The elder Miss Six drew the shortest straw, and she was very upset. “It’s not fair,” she wailed. I don’t think she understands the distinction between procedural justice and substantive justice, yet. Especially not when she thinks that substantive justice means her getting what she wants, preferably right now.

However things have turned out well for her. The younger Miss Six, 2nd on the list, cuddled into bed upstairs tonight, but about 15 minutes later came creeping tearily down. “I miss [the elder Miss Six], and (sob) I think I will just go and sleep in my own bed (sob sob).” An interesting reaction, given that although they share a room now, they had separate rooms for about 18 months before we left New Zealand. “Perhaps you could see if [the elder Miss Six] would come and sleep upstairs with you,” I suggested. The elder Miss Six was delighted. Nevertheless she made sure that her own rights would be protected. “I’ll still get to sleep upstairs tomorrow night as well, won’t I Mummy.”

I have just been up to check on them. They are cuddled up together, looking almost as they did when they were tiny babies, tucked up in the hospital crib together.