Shattering End to the Day

I am typing this on Peter's new baby laptop. It measures about 22 by 16 cm and is designed for elves perhaps, or people with very thin spindly fingers.



One has to try to avoid requiring the backspace, shift or tab keys, otherwise - and oops it just happened again - one tends to get totally the wrong key resulting in disconcerting window behaviour such as one's entire blog post window disappearing (for instance).

At least I am blogging, and a mere three days after the last post!

Today was exhausting, despite the fact that I hardly saw the children.

Today was the day to finally get (finally to get, if you are predisposed to find split infinitives offensive), the Tow Bar and Bike Rack, which has been on the agenda for approximately 360 days (do the maths) so that we can carry all of us, and our stuff, and our bikes in One Car! Repeatedly having to take two cars on holiday and on bike riding excursions has lost its novelty value. The only thing going for it is that the kids and I can take off in the morning and Peter can join us 8 hours later when he finishes off 'writing a few emails for people at work'.

I left home at 11.30 this morning on Tow Bar Mission and returned 5.30. Fortunately I decided to leave Stephen at home with his siblings and grandparents otherwise both of us would have been very tired and miserable by the end of the day. Tow Bar Place is not close and is not speedy. However, I am now the proud owner of a smart new tow bar and four-bike bike rack. Tow Bar Guy was so proud of his efforts I didn't have the heart to tell him we will soon need to carry five bikes and ultimately six. (I am working on convincing Peter to get a baby carrier for Stephen to ride on the back with one of us; once we have that there'll be no reason not to buy a second adult bike - the fifth bike.)

During the long wait I

• watched a bit of daytime TV; evidently xhosa daytime tv is no less mindless than its english counterpart
• read some of my new library book (my resolve to put reading on hold so as to catch up on other things lasted about 72 hours; I was unable to hold out when taking the kids to the library; pathetic I know but just imagine visiting a library and not coming out with a book for yourself....)
• got picked up and taken to lunch by Peter who took pity on my plight (I think he got the hint I wanted to be fetched when I said 'please can you come and fetch me').
• bought Stevie a birthday present
• bought myself some new summer clothes

So all in all a long but successful day. Which was not yet finished.

Came home and started to help Lauren plan tomorrow's design technology project, and since we are about to hit the First of Spring, the project is to construct a flower in a container from waste materials. Think cardboard tubes, coloured paper, crepe paper, balloons, yoghurt pot, coffee tins...

Got a huge shock when, just after saying goodbye to Peter's parents, there was a crash and a scream from the other end of the house. It was Robyn screaming Mom! Mom! and I thought the worse for a moment (Stephen, bath, etc) and then I remembered of course he wasn't in the bath and we all raced up the passage to find Stephen on the floor, Robyn in the shower, a mountain of broken glass everywhere and Robyn holding the remains of the shattered shower door.

Very, very frightening.

Stephen must have pushed it very hard. He was sitting on the bathroom floor while she showered. One connector was broken and it made the door swing in the wrong direction and hit the wall.

The shower door is made from that safety glass which sort of crumbles, so only minor cuts fortunately (just a scratch on Stephen) but it could easily have been so much worse had Robyn not caught the remains of the door. I am so proud of how well she did. She said she knew she had to catch it (cutting herself in the process) to stop it falling on him.