Good evening Negative Soundbyters! I hope you all had a very fine Easter weekend; it was Rafe’s first but as he is only 8 months old I didn’t feel it necessary to plan an Easter egg hunt in the back garden. As it is we have a Mission Impossible squirrel, some quarrelsome pigeons and a few flighty felines that often frequent our little postage stamp (and let’s not forget the rather inclement “spring” weather), and I am not sure how many chocolate eggs would have survived to feel the clutches of Rafe’s little digits on Easter Sunday. Indoors is a logical alternative but a real hunt is an outdoors affair, so when he is a little older I will have to plan accordingly.
Judging by Mrs H’s expression when I turned up empty handed on said morning, she would have appreciated a bit more effort in the chocolate egg department especially after baking me a special Easter cake and giving me a very large Cadbury’s Egg. A massive fail on my part; I tried to deflect the blame onto Rafe (for no apparent reason other than he can’t defend himself) but Mrs H wasn’t buying it (or any more eggs for that matter!) nor was she up for an impromptu hunt. I therefore compiled some “Easter-notes-to-self” for next year and put them in my diary with a calendar reminder alongside my notes for “Christmas”, “Mother’s Day”, “Birthday” and “Valentine’s Day”.
Apart from Egg-gate what else is there to report…?
I cancelled my Twitter account today. My 39 followers – 30 of which I am sure were Twitter-bots – are no doubt going to be devastated, but it had to be done. I was turning into one of those people who is always looking at their phones whether it be crossing a road, attending to a medical emergency, sitting on the bog having a crap, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, going for a run, having sex, talking to your wife after a long hard slog in the swamp, putting your baby’s nappy on and waiting to order a pint. I don’t fit in all these categories (like the sex one) but it was getting a bit out of hand to a point where my mother – who only sees me twice a year - said, “you seem to on your phone more than you used to.”
I followed a lot of South African politicians and commentators and given the fractious nature of society over there any topic would eventually descend into racial acrimony. It was unpleasant and depressing for the most part and I think sub consciously it was affecting my mood.
Twitter is full of “twits” – giving Joe Bloggs a platform to call Piers Morgan a “< worst expletive ever >” might make Joe feel better but where’s the societal value-add in that? Piers might be that, but do I need Joe to point that out for me – sometimes incessantly? Um…no!
So I am freeing up my hands to grasp that pint and my mind to focus on what’s going on around me a bit more. Let’s see….
OK enough soap box for one evening, time to move on.
Love Hoddy X
When struggling for content, the little man is always a “go-to”; I hope I don’t bore you my faithful flock, but watching Rafe develop is very amusing…ok sometimes it can be downright painful, but that is on the rare occasion where we have had no sleep and Rafe is exercising his lungs at four in the morning…
Talking of early morning interruptions…
Mrs H and I were asleep; an unusual state for most parents of young children, but yes, our eyes were closed, I was snoring (softly) and peace-and-quiet prevailed.
From the deepest, darkest corner of Club Duvet a rather unsettling sound began to disturb my sub-conscious. I told my sub-conscious to settle down, “I’m only dreaming”, turned over and tried to return to my comfort zone. Um..no.
Rafe was beginning to rumble. He hadn’t quite reached strangled-egret pitch, but he was working his way toward it. A full-blooded air raid siren in the early hours is not fun for anyone, so…
“You go…”, “No you go….”, “Please can you…it’s your turn” “But I am up early…” “You go…” Frankly Rafe didn’t give a rats whose turn it was, just that somebody had better appear pronto. Dad, Mom, In-house ghost, neighbour – he didn’t care.
I dragged myself out of bed with an exasperated “huuurrruumph” and trudged bleary-eyed into the nursery to try and reason with my son. Um…No. His body language said it all, he wanted to come in for Mummy cuddles. When it comes to a baby at four in the morning – well, I am all up for the path of least resistance if it sees me back in Club Duvet.
In he comes. Now Rafe has grown a tad since the earlier days when he was able to nestle into Mrs H and drift back to sleep – without disturbing my slumbering form! He is a different proposition now. Arms and legs everywhere and splayed at angles that are bound to make contact with various parts of my anatomy, indiscriminately! And then the vocals. Not only did we have to contend with an eight-month-old octopus, we also had to endure a rather frazzled egret. Needless to say, Club Duvet was turning into a dive.
Eventually I couldn’t take it any longer and with Mrs H’s approval (government sign off is important) hauled him back into his own room, plopped him into his cot and left him to squirm and gurgle in his own space far, far, far away from my lower back.
Club Duvet was once again open for business, but only for about five minutes before the pesky egret was once again invading my subconscious. This time “we” decided to leave him; that was a bad idea because soon the air raid siren was at full tilt.
Reluctantly – and with another “Hurrrruuummph” – I weaved my way to his room. The human octopus had managed to get one of his not-insubstantial little legs wedged between the slats of his cot and couldn’t pull it back; hence his cries for help.
I felt SOOOOOOOOOO bad; a massive misjudgement on my part. “New Dad” was not popular either with Mrs H or Rafe…
But I learnt something from that experience; generally when a baba cries it’s worth checking it out, even if you sneak up on him 007-style to check that he isn’t just playing you…!
OUT:)
Pic of the Week
Taken from a rose garden in Franschhoek - love the light...X
