YOU’RE THE BOSS OF THIS HOUSE

Sunday again. I used to hate Sunday when I was a child. We had to put on our Sunday clothes and sit around all day. No TV because we didn’t have one and no playing out with my friends.

My mother was born a catholic but raised by her grandparents as a Baptist. In fact, her grandfather left the Baptist church because he thought they were too soft. If I might make an observation, this development issue turned my mother into a completely f….d up individual.

If we had gone to church on Sunday it would have broken the day up, but because of the catholic/Baptist issue churches were no go areas. Out of sheer boredom I would occasionally take myself off to church to soak up and thoroughly enjoy the blissful release from stultifying boredom.

Now that I have turned into my mother I have actually grown to love Sundays. I do the Sunday lunch thing, read the papers and snore in front of the TV all afternoon.

Last night our great granddaughters stayed over to bed-hop with us. The four year old is usually the first to throw her doll and then herself onto our bed in the middle of the night followed by her 5 year old sister 1 minute/1 hour or more later. If they both arrived together it wouldn’t be so bad, but waiting for the second coming is like waiting for the second shoe to drop (only people living in flats will understand that expression). One extra body in bed is acceptable, but two is a step too far. That’s when I usually bail out.

This morning granddad gave the girls breakfast (plopped the milk, cereal box, bowls and spoons on the table for the girls to thrown all over the kitchen) and went back to bed to ‘phone friends.

After breakfast the girls start build camps in the living room with towels, sheets, various bits of clothing etc. This needs very careful supervision because it involves the girls surreptitiously seeking out objects with which to decorate their camps (DVD’s, books, dolls etc).

The next stage needs an angry grandmother to stop and involves curtailing two little girls from seeking out painting materials like lip gloss, felt tipped pens etc with which to make the camps “pretty”. Granddad, from his bed, calls this “free expression”

I try to persuade them to play outside on their bikes. The big sister is up for this but the little sister is not. Out of the mouths of babes. “You’re the boss of this house, so make Orianne come out to play with me”. If only!

Warning! A voice crying from the kitchen, “I’m fed up with this house, it’s got no cellotape in”. Best go right now!