Category: Ramble Page 41 of 57

Rach’s flight means getting up at stupid-o’clock. Luckily her Mum has offered to drive to the airport, so I don’t need to turf the kids out of bed, which would be needless stress right before a holiday. Inevitably I head back to bed once she has left.

The first day of #singleparentlyfe proceeds excellently–other than the Kinderbeast getting up early and destroying my attempted lie-in. We bake some brownies. Then we watch Moana (which takes me about half an hour to find as Rach has left it in an otherwise empty Target bag amid her clothes on the bedroom floor). Moana is excellent and we all love it.

Then, by popular demand, I am subjected to a round of The Game Of Life, which I lose as surely as a one-armed man in an archery contest. For dinner I treat myself and the Elderbeast to some steak. It’s a while since I’ve cooked steak, but I haven’t lost it. It’s delicious.

Finally, once the Kinderbeast has been settled in bed, it’s time for the real highlight of the weekend: introducing the Elderbeast to Aliens!

I’ve decided in the last few months that he’s ready for it, but I take time to explain that if he gets scared at any point then we can turn it off right away. I needn’t have worried: he loves it and is competely enrapt throughout.

• Chestburster scene? “Gnarly!”
• Burke getting finished off by an alien? “That alien deserves a promotion!”
• The queen alien taking off after Ripley and Newt? “I guess she’s out of her stay-at-home-mum phase now…”

He already wants to watch it again…

I make it back to work today, mainly to try and catch up on all the things I’m falling behind on. Obviously I make certain I’m no longer contagious first: I don’t want to be that guy. Rach takes the day off to do her packing for Melbourne.

Seems to be the day for absences. Only half the team is in. I feel particularly terrible at around 3pm and wonder if I should head home, but the day is nearly over so I persist and start to feel less worse. Before we all go home our manager gives us each a bottle of wine and personal note to thank us for our work on delivering the project. It’s a Very Nice Touch and makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.

Highlight of Fridate, either than seeing the Glorious Seb, is our first viewing of the It trailer. Damn, but I think they might just do that book justice…

I force myself to take the day off work. I’m headachy and tired. Not sure if it’s a bug or not, but I’m not going to be the one to spread it around the office. Rach takes the kids to school and I go straight to bed where I read for a bit and then zonk out.

I offer to collect the kids from school, but Beryl (Rach’s Nan) offers to get them instead. Which is good, because I’m really not up to the effort. I retreat back to bed. Where I sleep.

I remain in bed. Repeated doses of panadol barely touch my persistent headache, but I’m too lacking in energy to even be that bothered. After the kids have gone to bed I crawl out to the sofa and we watch the first episode of Iron Fist.

It’s a curious show, given the quality of Marvel’s other Netflix shows. It’s like they wrote a first draft and didn’t go any further. Almost nothing happens, apart from the main character being a bit of a creepy stalker guy, and then being surprised when no one trusts him. Despite that, I find that I quite enjoyed it.

I then return to bed. Where I sleep.

Today is Wednesday. I made banana bread.

That was the sum total of my notes.

(Gee, last Wednesday was really memorable.)

It’s one of those days with a non-stop morning. Get the kids to school. No time for coffee before my first meeting, which ends mere minutes before, my next meeting, which then sort of continues into a coffee-based post-meeting meeting. I finally grab some lunch and take it back to the office, and try vainly to escape from my 2pm meeting, but no dice. By then I give up on the forlorn hope of catching up on the rising swamp of work that I’ve fallen behind on, and do my best to pick a few of the less fetid scraps.

And tomorrow’s not looking any better either.

One of those days where even things falling over at work don’t really put too much shade on it all. The kinderbesten were good getting ready for school. The Elderbeast had done all his work by the time I got home, which meant I had to make good on my promise to play some Rogue Legacy with him. In the end, after sorting out dinner and everything else, I have about have about 15 minutes free before the bedtime routine has to start. We take turns and I am predictably rubbish, but the game is pretty good fun. Reminds me in some ways of the old ZX Spectrum games that I used to play when I was his age.

After the kinderbesten have finally been locked in the dungeon–I mean, have settled in bed, I remember that I wanted to check out some eighties synth soundtracks for the Elderbeast. He’s been listening to the Undertale soundtrack repeatedly, and it reminds me massively of the sort of music you’d get on cheap eighties horror/sci-fi movies.

I started out with some John Carpenter, and get hugely excited when I discover the soundtrack to The Fog is on Spotify. I cue it up and … nothing happens. I should be getting terrifying flashbacks to Adrienne Barbeau being stalked by fish-hooks and maggots, but there’s just silence.

Then I remember that the Kinderbeast had trouble settling, so I left my phone in his room so he could listen to some soothing bedtime lullabies on, you guessed it, Spotify. Except now the soundtrack to The Fog is playing in his room because the internet is just too damn clever some times …

After my adventures trying to clear space on my iDevices I spend the morning getting thoroughly distracted trying to clear up my PC. I tidy up some of my download folders and then tire of the ordeal.

Our various friends arrive for a crafternoon. I, as usual, abstain in the interests of keeping the Kinderbeast entertained. It’s not that I don’t enjoy crafting, or afternoons for that matter; it’s just that it’s much simpler to give the Kinderbeast my undivided attention at the times rather than suffer being interrupted every seventeen seconds.

We watch Jurassic World for about the eleventy-hundredth time. After that we almost watch  Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (except the Kinderbeast can’t quite remember the title and keeps asking for variants of Cloudy Is It Meatballs). For whatever reason the film doesn’t hold his attention. I get invited to play a round of Sushi Go while the Kinderbeast latches onto the one guest who is still actually crafting. Which, I guess, is standard five-year-old mentality: “All these people are sitting around doing nothing, but, no, I’ll pick the one who’s still trying to get something done.”

Later on we finally finish off The Power Of The Daleks, which is soooo good that I basically want them to animate all Doctor Who episodes in black and white from now on. (And I told you it would take us weeks to finish it, didn’t I?)

Rach is out shopping with her nan to prep for the trip to Melbourne next week. The Kinderbesten and I stick at home for Saturday Morning Film Club. The Elderbeast has the superb suggestion of watching The LEGO Movie, which I’m totally pumped for after watching the trailer last night. It’s far from the first time I’ve watched it since the cinema release, but it’s still brilliant.

I spend a brief period in the afternoon trying to clear out some space on my choked up iDevices. My iPad is particularly suffering, and I start to wonder why so few app developers include options for emptying the cache. my Netflix app, which I barely use on the iPad, has sucked up over 300mb. I can’t find any way to clear the cache so I just delete the app instead.

Later, for Saturday Evening Film Club, we almost watch Arrival but Rach is in the mood for a western (inspired by the inclusion of Unforgiven, Tombstone and True Grit on my trailer list). We settle on 3:10 To Yuma which proves a superb choice. The Elderbeast baffles us, though, by sitting with us for most of the film and then leaving just as the climactic shootout is getting underway.

Kids these days …

It’s Friday at last! Rarely has there been a week where I’ve so looked forward to the weekend. Not because it’s been a particularly hard week (it hasn’t), but my week just doesn’t feel right if it’s not ended with me lounging on the sofa, enjoying the company of Seb, watching crap on YouTube and drinking wine, or the nearest appropriate substitute. Last week did not end that way.

I start the weekend as I mean to go on: with minimal effort and surrender plans of cooking dinner in favour of getting pizza. It’s a good choice.

That said, I do put some time into creating a YouTube playlist of trailers for all of the films on my 46 films list. It takes nearly two hours to watch the whole thing, but it’s fascinating to see the how the art of trailer making has changed over the decades: from trailers that would tell us about the filmmakers as much as the films; to the standard 80s/90s style that would narrate the whole story; to the current trend of stringing together key moments from the movie so tightly that [some] trailers have become tiny works of art in their own right.

I get home from work and, as usual, the Elderbeast hasn’t done his homework yet (a.k.a handwriting practice). While preparing dinner I try to get him to do his work.

It does not go well.

Over dinner he finally reveals that he’s in trouble at school; bad enough that he’s come home with a note from the deputy principal. Bad enough that he’s pretty stressed about it. I decide to lay off on the homework. A little later on we go and have One Of Those Talks with him about it. It goes well. He accepts responsibility and suggests he should be grounded for a week when we ask what consequence would be appropriate.

It’s one of those odd times that should be a hard parenting moment but goes really easily. If only the stuff that was supposed to be easy could be the same.