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Oh yes, here we go. Two hours sleep, mildly poorly baby, demanding toddler and neglected dog. The spinning plates come crashing down to the ground and all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry before preferably dying so that you get out of your commitments and leave your partner having to pick up the slack. A Pyrrhic victory perhaps, but in the moment of death, how triumphant you would feel? This is all your problem now.
Parenting is only hard when you are really tired. Which is a problem, because you are always tired. But I had in no way recuperated from the drive to Halifax and it was a day of constantly making meals, washing up, sterilising, wiping sore bottoms (I probably should give up that hobby whilst I have so much else to do) and trying to entertain a curious two year old and exercise a skittish puppy. My life is now a cavalcade of piss and shit with the occasional bit of puke thrown in for good measure. The variety isn’t spinning plates, it’s catching excrement in a paper cup, having to run round the stage as the next geyser goes off, missing, slipping over in some dog piss and rolling around in baby shit. To be honest I think people would pay to watch that. They might not all be the nicest people, but their money is as good as anyone else’s.
I had hoped to do a bit of prep for the podcasts, but aside from trying to run through questions for Armando in my head at 2am whilst my son screamed in my arms and I wondered if I was asleep or awake, trying to make mental notes was probably not the most efficient prep.
Somehow amongst all this I managed to sleep drive my daughter to her football class and back, but to be honest, I only just remembered that now and it seems impossible that I managed it. Oh and blimey even though that started at 9.15 Phoebe and me also managed to take the dog for a walk beforehand. Phoebe took a photo of some horse poo with her new camera. I have to say that that was a brilliant present idea from Ernie for his new big sister and looking through the 700 or so photos he’s taken in the last fortnight is a bit like visiting an art gallery. Many are out of focus or been treated with incongruous effects and many are mundane to the point of high art. Like photos of the washing machine or toilet. Yesterday she insisted on taking a photo of very puddle we passed on our walk. Most people wouldn’t think of documenting something as transient as a pool of muddy water, but her brain works on a higher plane, which recognises the beauty in the ordinary. And puddle historians who will have little record of how puddles worked in the early 21st Century will also be delighted to have this valuable resource courtesy of P Herring. This morning she also got some great shots of Ernie’s sore bottom, which may be used against us in court for a whole variety of reasons.
One day we will display all the photos in a huge gallery. I think the horse poo one will be a good addition to the canon.
