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I was dreaming that I'd just met Jason Mantzoukas at the Edinburgh Fringe and was just about to ask him to be on my podcast, when Ernie woke me up. So now Jason will probably never be on the podcast, thanks a lot. And he was really nice in the dream too.
Ernie has made a huge leap forwards in the last few weeks in that he is now happy to go downstairs on his own and pour himself a bowl of cereal. It usually means another 20 to 30 minutes in bed. Today he couldn't open the new bottle of milk, so needed me to come and help.
Even being a temporarily single parent of for one week only, just one child, I am finding it much easier to cope with just one child. It's said it's not twice as difficult to look after two kids, but I think that's wrong because it's more than twice as easy to do the morning with just one.
I tend to do most of the morning stuff anyway, to let my wife have a lie-in if possible (Am I the best husband ever? Yes I might be. If you ignore all the bad stuff)
Usually I have to get Ernie loads more food, whilst trying to prep something for myself, then Phoebe comes down and I have to make her breakfast whilst I try to eat mine and then I have to make both kids their packed lunch (I do them a melted cheese wrap each which I do in a frying pan and then put in a flask so it's still hot when they eat it - Am I the most amazing dad ever? No doubt). Just having to do the one kid breakfast and one kid lunch meant that we had plenty of time for me to eat some food and then we both walked the dog, (we were the only people in the park- Ernie loved it) before I whisked Ernie off to school in the car by 8am.
It was pimpsy.
After school was OK too. I took Ernie to the drive through Macdonalds for his dinner (I don't eat that crap, but he loves it) and then we walked the dog again. Ernie was annoyed that there were other people in the park and I had to explain that it was a sunny evening. After school all the teenagers come here to sit in huddles and flirt with each other from a great distance. A group of boys at least 50 metres from a girl were making overtures on behalf of a friend. "Tell him I have a boyfriend," she yelled back, whilst looking quite pleased that she was being asked out. Or shouted out. She beamed and turned round coyly and repeated the fact she had a boyfriend. I am not sure that relationship is going to last.
I remember being a teenager and I am impressed that these lads were even managing to interact with a girl from a distance. The idea of just going up to someone and talking to them seemed ridiculously unachievable.
Also I looked like a potato in the exact correct school uniform, so that might have been part of it too.
I got Ernie to bed and settled down to enjoy a rare evening to myself (as Catie wasn't back til later). I sat in front of the TV and scrolled through all the options in my many streaming services and absolutely nothing appealed to me at all. I didn't want to watch anything good and I didn't want to watch anything bad that I could enjoy ironically. The vast feast of entertainment and nothing appealed to me any more. Is it just age or is there too much choice or have I seen everything or enough of everything to not be enticed by stuff that looks like it?
If you could tell the me of 20 or 30 years ago that I would look at all this stuff dead-eyed and unimpressed, I would not have believed it. Movies delight not me, nor old TV series neither.
In the end I thought I'd give Boston Legal a go, having never watched it, but seen a couple of clips on social media that made it look like it might be fun. You can't go wrong with Shatner surely. But then Catie came home so I could watch one of the things we watch together, some of which are good.
We watched episode 2 or Rooster. Which I really love.
Turns out I just can't cope with endless choice.
