This one is from January 11th
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Hi Fay,
How's it going? This week I'm writing to you on a New Zealand Friday night instead of a New Zealand Thursday night because Juliette has changed jobs and now has Mondays off instead of Fridays. This means that I used to stay up later on a Thursday night to write to you because Thursdays used to be my Friday where as now Friday is my Friday just like all you other muggles. Make sense? Good.
Juliette actually started her job last Tuesday (which is now like her Monday) which meant she was a little bit nervous and didn't get much sleep on the Monday night. I know this because she woke me up at 1.30am to tell me she hadn't slept a wink. "Mark, wake up, I haven't slept at all since coming to bed!" I suggested drinking some warm milk. I have no idea if warm milk actually works but my honest response "Do I look like a fifteenth level f*cking wizard? I don't have a Sleeping Spell in the breast pocket of my jimjams y'know. Shut the f*ck up and let me go back to sleep crazy woman!" would not have gone down well. I was awake enough to realise that the quickest way for letting me actually get back to sleep was to sympathise rather than launch into sarcasm. You have a problem, I suggest a solution, my work here is done, now let me get back to sleep because it's 1.30am and I was sleeping because of the tiredness and the 1.30am-eness of the situation. Ironically that night Sam had the best night's sleep ever and didn't come into our bed until about twenty to six so if she had slept we would have had the best unbroken night's sleep for months. For months!
This week I'm into the second half of the summer school holidays and I've got Eva and Sam to look after on my own for the next three weeks. Mum says that when your kids are little you should treasure this time because they are quickly gone forever. It does not seem like the time is quickly going for ever. It feels like someone's hit the slow button on the playback remote. I think I'm at 1/8 playback speed. There's a certain point in the day, usually after Sam has taken his fifth My Little Pony off Eva or after the sixth time Eva has launched a Thermonuclear Strike at Sam for threatening to dare to look at her My Little Ponies that I find myself raising my voice a little. Once that point has been reached there's no quality alone space where I can go to get my sh*t together because little kids just love to find new ways to hurt themselves, each other, expensive electrical equipment, pets etc and so I stick with them and just remain in the bad mood for the rest of the day. Juliette comes home and makes one innocent comment about the bin bags smelling of used nappies or something and it's like finally someone I can vent this frustrated pent up annoying anger at.
Speaking of which we had a blown fuse in the Honda this week too so I was down in there trying to find the problem with Sam and Eva "helping" out because when you really, really want to do something productive then a couple of little kids is what you need. I've got a car kit I use (plastic bag full of crap) and they'd pulled out the pump bottle of soapy water I use to squirt on tires to find air leaks. I just let them play with that for a while while I pulled out fuses to inspect because the car is a Japanese import so the fuse diagrams are in Japanese and I didn't know what was what. If the car had been French you could give is a go - it'd be "le radio" and "le conditioning avec air" and "le brakes de le power" and such like. Guessable. This looked like an ants nest had tap danced over some carbon paper. My subconscious told me that the kids had been a bit too quiet for a bit too long. So I get up and go and find them with the Guinea Pigs where Eva and Sam were about to "wash" Bubbles the Guinea Pig with the pump bottle. You can't do that I say, but how does Bubbles get himself clean asks Eva. I lie and say he licks himself clean because I don't know sh*t about Guinea Pig bathing habits. Seriously, Bubbles is eight inches long, has such long hair that he looks like an animated toupée big enough to give Humpty Dumpty's head and Emo fringe and his tongue is the size of a Tic-Tac. No way does he lick his fur clean especially after Bubbles had a claggy bum a couple of weeks ago and Juliette had to take the scissors to him and cut the fur off around his arse. Eva however bought the story. I said that if she'd squirted him then Bubbles would have got sick because he would've swallowed the soap when he licked himself. Okay she says, we'd best find Tom now because we "cleaned" him first.
This week Eva showed me her new jewelry box in which she keeps her most treasured possessions. I know this because she showed me. I put it up on the mantelpiece by the fire for Juliette to check out . Juliette reads these letters too so when she does she'll be able stand up and have a peak. Oh the excitement! You obviously can't see so I'll tell you now. but let's wait for Juliette to have a look first .... did you hear that? Yep, she's looked. So now I can tell you. Eva's most treasured possessions is ... drum roll ... I'll tell you next week.
Lots of love,
Mark xxx
P.S. I'm not that cruel. Eva's most treasured possession is ... Bubbles' cut off claggy fur. She picked it up off the floor when we weren't looking. Nice one Eva.
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