The biggest thing about relocating for me is timings.
I know what time I need to be where but I’m still not sure of how long it will take to get there.
You see time is very important to me. I don’t like to ‘waste’ it, and I don’t like wasting other people’s. I’m not anal or anything, but i’m.. no, ok, I am. I try to work backwards from my time due at a place to calculate when I’ll need to leave. Allow for traffic and some other stuff and voila. It works most of the time.
We’re late(ish). I try not to get stressy. It’s not the kids’ fault, but this is the thing with relocation. I’ve moved too far from where I need to be.
The kids are on form for the drive in. Angry Birds denied her fallback today is I-Spy. This can be challenging; past games have seen me exhausting ‘Ns’, for the reveal to be ‘Squirrel’…..
Dont make me explain it.
For some reason I can never guess ‘teeth’, even with her great clues. My suggestions are a little more pedestrian. I’ll have to remember that one for tomorrow.
Daughter dropped off it’s a slow toddle with the boy to the school office to pay for an upcoming trip. 25p over, I suggest the secretary place it in the offshore account for a rainy day.
I decide to promote the big man to the front seat for the onward journey to nursery. It’s a 3 point rather than a 5 point (preferred), but even at 2, he has the size and stature to fit safely. Interesting mistake..
Despite me pre-empting and moving the seat back, he can reach everything. He keys my radio, turns on the heated seat and puts the car in second gear. His comprehension is good, so I explain to him that what he is doing isn’t good. He stops.
The passenger window opens. And shuts. He turns and looks at me with the biggest smile in recorded history. And opens it. And shuts it. At this point if he was in the back I would have isolated the windows.
And open..
He then slides the center console open. Just a few centimetres, but enough for OCD daddy. I close it. He looks at me, smiles, and opens it, almost to exactly the same distance. I close it again. He gives a smile and opens it again – I can’t help but admire his curiosity; he knows his time in the front seat is limited.
The toddle into nursery is uneventful, and he joyfully hangs his bag and gillet on his hook. Entry into the playroom is more fraught. He doesn’t want me to leave and I don’t want to leave him. The staff are lovely, and he always settles eventually but not without tears. His strength matches his size and it’s a physical wrench as well as emotional.
There’s something so perverse about having kids then going to work in order to pay for someone else to look after them.
broke-single-dad 