Dang I had forgotten that Wednesdays are half days.
I kiss foreheads and elbows and lips, as I fasten zippers, tie shoe laces and generally abandon all current ‘self help’ campaigns in the face of expediency.
As the car spurts them all away for a couple of hours, I am left in my kitchen in the middle of my house, a house devastated by the full time occupation of two sicklies for four days running. I am so behind with my preparations that it is difficult to determine where to start?
The bright gem of the day is the collection of my daughter from SFO back from an Australian summer. How delightful to have all my babies home for the holidays, peacefully aslumber in the bosom of our family.
Aslumber?
I startle as I dash towards her room, her room that has become the temporary depository for ‘things that I do not have time to do right now.’ Right now, I can barely heave back the door, full to bursting with stuff:- the futile fax machine and the passed out printer, both of which were too heavy to lug onto the overflowing “pending mending” shelf in the garage, the new and broken picture which failed to survive 24 hours and all that shattered glass, boxes and boxes of holiday decorations, broken Pokemon and confiscated toys on temporary time outs.
Nonna appears at my shoulder, "look at choo! You're like an old mudder hen!"
"Me?"
"Yes....nestin for all you're little chicks to come ome and flock together!"
"Hmm."
I pout, because she's such a little tease.
"Well……dat’s a bit of a job,” she adds peering around the room.
“You’re not kidding.”
“Eh?”
“Yes, you’re right!” I bellow.
“Didn’t dere used to be a bed in ere?”
“Yes, it’s under all that…….those……boxes.”
“Ow are you going to make dah bed with all those nonsense.”
“I’m going to stick it all up in the roof.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ave dah time……with Christmas and everything?”
“I’ll just have to make the time.”
“It’s a big job.”
“I’ll say.”
“Are you quite sure dat she wants to sleep in the attic?”
“Sleep in the attic?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s sleeping in the attic?”
“Er……I thought that’s what you said……..dat you’re going to take dah bed up into the attic for her…..because she’s coming home from Australia?”
I look at Nonna with a hint of twinkle in her eyes. “Do you know I think you’re probably right. It’ll be quicker to leave the mess down here and zap the bed into the roof than to try and clear this rubbish heap.”
“Pity though.”
“Pity?”
“The ole.”
“The hole?”
“The ole in the roof.”
“What hole in the roof?”
“You know…..dat ting?”
“What thing?”
“The ole …….it’s small.”
“I didn’t know that there was a hole in the roof, small or otherwise?”
She chuckles as she hunts for the word, the elusive one.
“I mean……what is dat ting! Dah ole in the ceiling…….dat leads to dah attic…….is too small……to fit a bed through it.”
“Hatch!”
Nonna steps back, knuckles to hips to form flapping wings before she makes one single, well timed cluck.
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1 comment:
Ha ha, she's a real dag isn't she? You can send her to me, I'd love to have her sense of humour around!
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