Staycations

I have been pretty stressed out at work for a while, so it was nice to get away for a couple of weeks. Not too far, though. I took a staycation, as much due to the recession as to the stress of traveling with three kids.

Two whole weeks. Pretty long time for me to chill out, right? Wrong. It turns out three kids have a way of fast-forwarding time faster than any time machine yet discovered. I can't say I got much done. I did have some hazy plans for finishing the mural on their playroom wall...buying some sequins for the blue front wall...getting our modern chandelier repaired...putting up some of the paintings we've been too lazy to put up since december...being a little more active on my blogs...

Well, I achieved none of the above. I did manage to take them swimming almost daily for 3 days, and then I fell ill with a septic bad throat. I recovered by Friday, and we went swimming twice on Saturday, then chubbocks fell ill. He passed it on to Puddi who then passed it on to Bojjandi and so it went. A welter of impatient, cranky kids and cranky and impatient mum, glued together in one room with the AC perpetually on thanks to the heat.

A big chunk of my day went in yelling at them to behave/ eat/ wear their slippers. A tiny but blissful chunk went in curling up for a siesta in the afternoons. A small chunk went in helping Chubbocks have fun with his holiday homework - a concept new to me since I went to school in the dino era when there was no such thing. I spent a teeny tiney amount of time reading - was too tired to read most of the time. Don't really know where the rest went, but I can tell you I found no window aimless and big enough to persuade me to put away the pile of ironed clothes.

I got back to work today, and it feels tough to give up that aimless, rambling, snapping, yelling existence and come back to the relative sanity of a workplace. To not have little bodies hurling themselves at me precisely when I'm painstakingly painting a toe nail or updating my facebook status, to say, "I lou you mumma" or "Fimming pool". To not watch puddacious hurl herself at the furniture in a frenzy of joy at sheer existence twenty times a day. To not applaud Bojjandi carefully drool and crawl his way through an obstacle course of cushions set up by his big brother to cushion his fall. To not be around to answer Chubbocks' twenty million existential questions. "What if there was a number bigger than infinity?" "Are you older than infinity?"

On the other hand, I don't pay for the air conditioning bills at work!