The ingrates are on holiday Yippee! Yesterday was the last day of school. Now we have the kids at home for about the next seven or eight weeks. This means we can sleep in every day and not have to make school lunches and fork out an endless stream of money for inane "excursions" dreamt up by some teacher.
It also means me turning off every light in the house several times a day, no matter how much I plead for the kids not to leave them on. My strategy within a few days will be to switch the main light circuits off in the meter box during the daylight hours.
Plus there will be an endless mountain of cups and glasses on the kitchen sink which have been retrieved from all manner of places throughout the day, but especially from the TV lounge. The nice thing about this is that when we ask someone to do the washing up, the whining will rival a jumbo jet. "But I did it last time." or, "It's not my turn." or else there will be a sudden attack of deafness and a slamming of the back door as the house is rapidly vacated.
That's another thing which will grind away at me. The slamming of the back door. I plead for the kids to close it as quietly as they open it, but do they take any notice? No they do not. Movement through the door is done at three times the speed a normal person would travel. As they pass through, the edge of the door is given a nifty flick and, "Wham!" The building shudders. This can be accompanied by a plea/command from me in the kitchen. "Don't slam the door!" By this time they are half way to the back building.
There is a small swamp-like bathroom in the back building where the teenagers lurk. On the floor of the bathroom is a perpetually wet bath towel which someone has surreptitiously used as a bath mat. We have real bath mats, but the kids usually reckon someone else's towel is better. Neither are these ever hung up after use, unless its by me or my wife.
There is a shower recess too. Its floor is distinguished by several empty plastic shampoo bottles. I shampoo my hair twice a year; my daughters twice a week at least. I have asked my wife to stop buying the stuff so often, but it still seems to happen.
In this bathroom is also a washing machine and a toilet. The first is distinguished by piles of clothes in front of it. Most of these are not dirty. Its just that some people have an urge to see how many they can wear in a week. They think they are helping us by throwing them in front of the washing machine. They think we like washing them.
The toilet is distinguished by by being surrounded by numerous discarded cardboard tubes from rolls of toilet paper. When there are about a dozen on the floor I pick them up. I thought about using them to make Christmas crackers, but gave up on the idea.
We went to Garden City early yesterday morning. I don't really know why. But when we were there my wife decided she wanted to buy a beach towel and some new shorts for one of our worst offenders. I talked her out of this temporary insanity. The lad in question has a thing for those awful ghetto "shorts" so much beloved by male nerds and geeks - the baggy type which come down to the knees.
I reckon all the boys should wear footy shorts and Stubbies at home during the day, but I am informed they are "gay." What are they on about, "Gay!" If they had sequins they might be gay, but they don't. They're footy shorts. I wear them all the time and I'm not gay. Anyway even that'd be better than being identified as a geeky ghetto nerd.
Of course we will be without our old Daihatsu for the holidays. Not a bad thing. It goes to the car dealer today, probably to be consigned to the wrecking yard. Yesterday was the deadline for us to change our mind on the colour of the new Squid. Now it's too late. The robots in Japan have taken over. "Whirr - clank - oops!" Do Japanese robots have bad days on Fridays and Mondays? I hope not.
I've been searching everywhere for the glove-box lid of the Daihatsu. I took it out a few months ago when the radio died. I thought I had put it in a safe place. Too safe obviously. My older boys tell me that the car dealer won't give a damn. The whole lot might go to the crusher at Sims Metal. The window winding handle from the passenger's side is missing too. It was on the passengers floor, but is not there now. I hope they don't notice.
I had another phone call from a salesman at the Melville Toyota dealership - on the evening we signed up for the Squid at Fremantle. He asked for someone named Doug. I said there was no one here by that name. He rang five minutes later again asking for Doug, then on checking the number he mentioned my wife's name. I passed the phone to her. "A man is calling for you dear." She finally figured out who it was and passed the phone back to me. She didn't want to tell him the bad news.
He was still confused about my name. I cut to he chase. I said he had lost his chance when he indicated we would only get $100 for the Daihatsu. Without saying exactly how much, I told him another dealer had given us "much more." "Hrrumph." he snorted, "If you had come back to us we probably would have met it."
He sounded a bit miffed, but thems the breaks mate. Somewhat haughtily he said, "Well I hope you enjoy your new Yaris." and rang off. We will too. I've thought about going down to his dealership for another test drive while we wait for the Squid. That would confuse him.
On the subject of cars, son number two has decided to sell his Jag. I've put an ad up on the web with a picture of him and the car.
Click here. The asking price is 4k, but if any reader of this blog is interested I can probably wrangle a lower price. Don't say I never did anything for you.
© MMV Paul R. Weaver.
About the writerCheck out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days.
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