A long, long week is finally done. I worked from home today, and Dee is sick, so we went to get Jules from “after-care” at about 4pm. (We could have picked him up at 3, when school finishes, but (a) he loves after-school care, and (b) we pay for it either way.
Oh yes, Jules has (finally?) started at primary school; incidentally, we just saw his school featured on Channel Ten’s The Living Room — the same Living Room that gave us a lounge room makeover courtesy of Temple & Webster, yes. Not that we watch the show much, admittedly, but we just might be more likely to tune in knowing we may see Miguel serving up a paella to our own little blonde offspring …
Overall I think he likes it (Jules, not Miguel). We drop him at “before school care” each morning (unless we’re running stupidly late, and so far we’ve beaten the bell every. Single. Time) and pick him up from “after school care” each evening. He certainly likes before/after-care, having at least a couple of friends there, and likely enjoys it more than day-to-day classes at school. “What did you do today?”, we ask. “I told you”, he retorts exasperatedly, “I don’t remember anything.”
He does tennis lessons on a Thursday morning, and boy oh boy is it hard to get there by 8am! Even this morning was a bit of a struggle: making a lunch he might even try, finding the reader and hat and water-bottle and shoes, pulling it all together to get the 1.1km down the road to the school with enough time to sign him into care … and heaven help us if he wants to “just pick one toy,” or “find all [his] cuddle toys”. A battle each morning, then a rush to get home and off to work.
Today I worked from home (and Dee took the day off — see below), so it wasn’t so bad. I sent a message to my team at about 7am to let them know what I would be up to, then was back circa 9:30am (to find out about the production issue that, frankly, I have no access to debug, let alone fix). A day of code review, conversations with “incident management”, and finally a chance to fix up our abysmal unit tests. When it was time to get our boy we bundled ourselves into the car, hit up Annandale Cellars for their craft-beer expertise (and stock) and found one of the few available parking spots outside J’s school.
But now we have, as Dee put it, “decanted” into our home (and our Friday night): schoolbag is unpacked, lunchbox emptied, washing on and dishes done. I for one am taking the opportunity to unwind with chemistry — namely the effect on human biology of ethanol, yeast, carbohydrates and over 250 essential oils (from hops). Sure, it’s not the end of the twelve-week Garmin half-marathon training programme that I’m paying more than a passing lip-service too, but by the Elder Gods, I need it. It’s been a long week.
Dee’s been sick: seemed like a cold and the first walk-in medical clinic (Monday) was less than awesome, promising that “…[she would] be good to go back to work tomorrow.” A few miserable days later and she’s back to the doc: oh yeah, it’s a bacterial infection! Have some antibiotics! (Still, it’s the next day and she’s starting to feel human again, so maybe it was the right choice.)
Tomorrow we’re checking out another (rental) property, with no real plans to move — but if it is worlds better than this place, we’re outta here!