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My day with the kids and I was less knackered than I’d been on Tuesday and felt I gave them a more fulfilling and varied day. Was helped by the lovely sunshine meaning we could spend a fair amount of time in our modest garden and get out the hose and the paddling pools. Though it took me a fair amount of time (and the expertise of my wife) to work out how to connect all the bits of the hose together and to clean the pools out (we have one that is flat and like a sprinkler and a more traditional one) after a year of languishing in the corner of the garden. The proper pool also needed to be blown up, which was a huge job to do with a human mouth and I got nowhere near getting it ready. But eventually the hose got connected to the other one and the kids set up the little slide we have so that they had a very basic water park. My daughter enjoyed herself. My son cried every time he got wet. But then still went back for more.
I am really looking for activities that I can sit and monitor whilst getting on with something else, like reading or researching for my book or doing my blog or just getting some basic admin out of the way and our garden is enclosed and small and fairly safe, but Ernie is just that bit too young to leave to his own devices at any point, lest he destroys something important or hurts himself. And the internet doesn’t stretch to the garden (it’s very temperamental as it works fine in the attic, but not in the room next to the router or the kitchen/garden which is much closer than the top floor).
But watching the kids larking about and trying to keep them topped up with suncream (I fucked up a bit and Ernie’s cheek and ear got a little rosy) was fulfilling enough and the day passed easily and I didn’t feel like dying at the end of it, so that’s a good shift for me. Making more happy memories in the midst of disaster.
Very exciting final quarter final of self-playing snooker featuring the female me (who seemed to excite the real me) and the me who is controlled by a ventriloquist dummy who gained power over him by wanking him off. Two of the real characters of the game and a shame we had to lose one of them. But a big 32 player tourney will start up once this 16 player one is over (final on Tuesday if all goes to plan) so whoever we lost will return.
Luckily the snooker and the stone clearing are providing normality for me and keeping me sane. And then I have my night time job of football managing and won two cups tonight, so hopefully that should oprovide me with a decent income to get through all this.
