Despite what I consider to be a herculean effort in the diet and exercise stakes, the pre-schooler can still leave my head in knots and my body twisted like a pretzel. I have absolutely no idea what on earth runs through her veins, but I am increasingly dubious of the fact that it’s pure blood, as her energy levels are consistently at 587% of normal capacity; if she’d sit still long enough I’d rope her up to a treadmill which would power a generator which would give our block electricity. Think of the money we’d make as power barons. It’s a serious consideration, that and the invention of a TV show called WHY WHY WHY where she can challenge the world’s greatest minds with a rapid-fire barrage of ’whys’ that would require answers so minutely perfect that any attempt at sarcasm and insubordination would merely unleash a whole new verbal torrent of questions which would then render-said expert to being a sweaty, gibbering wreck who weeble-wobbles on the precipice of internal combustion as the whys and wherefores fly around his increasingly dizzy head.
She hates sleeping.
I don’t. I bloody well like it. So does my wife. And so (of course) does the teenager. But she hates it. She goes to bed happy enough, and I think to myself ‘ooo wah wah wee wah, she’s going to get a full night’s kip here!’ before I slowly realize that under her pillow is a giant aluminium bat plus supersonic NASA-grade steel metal shield which she will gleefully deploy to beat away the stodgy old ’sleep-lord’ with all the ease Of Muhummad Ali whupping Sonny Liston as Cassius Clay. She likely adopts the stance Ali had at the end of that fight too. How, I wonder, does she sleep so little? How can a child who has a late night of 10pm (rare) be bouncing around like Tigger on uppers at 6.30 am, already in a Princess dress and with more neck jewelry than Mr T? Even if the poor girl tries to creep around quietly to avoid waking us up, between the cacophonous clacking of her cheap, plastic princess shoes and the rattle of her chains, it’s like hearing a real, live chain gang going up and down the living room.
The upshot of all this tomfoolery is that I seem to have increasingly little time as I negotiate the final few weeks before her pre-school begins. Indeed, I got very close to delivering this column via Twitter, tweeting it to you as the terminology dictates, but I never quite got the time and regardless, the tweet stream on my application is jumbling up so as I read useless bits of information from 3 weeks like they never arrived before, thus I decided against. Anyway, I realized it would start reading like this
@bunkup yeah girl is restless boy and i off to watch footy hope we mash the bastards must go, lotion all over glass, WTF?
@z******22 dude it is time to make sure wallet and keys r wiv u at all times as this cabbie don’t do doors
pre-schooler just ate ice-cream, swam and screamed ‘poopy toilet head’ damn I nearly nodded off then and fell off stool
See? It’s hard to know what’s real, what’s bullshit (none of it) and what’s really going on? Which is why rather than ‘tweet’or ‘twoot’ or ‘blog’ this column, it’s important to carve out the time to actually sit down and write the damn thing. Just like it’s important to carve out time to use my new backyard outdoor leaf blower/vaccum cleaner. Which is how I ended up with a backdoor being washed with Cetaphil moisturizing lotion. Because as I toiled in the backyard, the sleep slayer was charged with the task of amusing herself indoors without an electronic device being switched on. And given her state of ‘wire/tired’ I should’ve guessed that this was not really going to be enough of a parameter to harness the border collie, the worker bee, the industrious and mighty mental warrior and sleep layer of our times, the Lara Croft of 4 year olds. But I didn’t. Because at that moment my brain farted. I don’t know, I just casually assumed that, being over over tired, she’d collapse on her giant bean bag with her blankets and a couple of books. Instead, after deafening hald the neighborhood and looking a freak with this machine strapped to my side, I went upstairs to see her on all fours pushing some puddles of water around our dining – sun room. After quickly making sure the Titanic wasn’t at the bottom of one of them, I then noticed that the glass door panes were covered in white.
“What,” I asked reasonably and without yelling (because I knew already this was not an act of total and utter insubordination),”is this?”
“Oh, I’m cleaning Daddy,” she said as she wore her Princess sunglasses and continued slosshing the water around the floor with an array of paper towels, “and I’m cleaning the door too.”
“Ah-ha,” I said, being careful not to actually say ARRRGGGGGHHH AHHHHHHHHHH, “you know, thank you very much but lotion is for bodies and hands and feet and not to clean glass with.” I had, you’ll understand, already made an executive decision not to suggest a raft or water wings as we gathered the swimming pools from the linoleum.
“Oh, OK, sorry.”
“That’s OK.”
And then she promptly grabbed a splodge off the door, retreated 4 steps, fell backwards and started rubbing it on her feet.
“If I can’t clean the door I’m just going to give myself a foot rub instead.”
And THAT, dear dear DEAR reader, is how to make a proper silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
Goodnight!
