Mummy had been awake for half the night, worried about how she was going to juggle everything that she needed to do… and the potential embarrassment at not being able to do yr 3 maths. The small child, and self isolated one, clearly couldn’t give a flying f**k though as he slept like someone without a care in the world and emerged from his pit just as mummy was about to take the slightly larger child to school,
“Mums, can we go to the skate park today?” (He clearly had no concept of what ‘self isolation’ actually was.) Not wanting to invoke World War Three as she was just about to walk out of the door with an already resentful slightly larger child, Mummy replied, “We’ll discuss it when I get back, ok?”
The ride/scoot to school was actually really lovely with only the slightly larger child. There was no immediate danger of anyone riding into pedestrians or pretending that they were Hans Rey and mummy started to reminisce about when she only took the slightly larger child to school and they had laughs and conversations that didn’t involve, farts, beasts or ‘would you rather’ conversations.
Legging it back home, because the incredibly amazing school that the kids went to had decided in their wisdom to conduct an online meeting for the self isolating ones at 9am to explain everything about the fancy pants new learning platform, and seeing as mummy had dropped the slightly larger child off at 0855 (scraping in just before the bell) and they lived 15 minutes away, the chances of her being on time for the meeting was zero… making Les (her anxiety buddy) sit even heavier in her stomach. Arriving at home, a stinky sweaty mess, the small child was pumped and ready to go to the skate park,
“Errrr… lets talk about that later buds” said mummy. “You’ve got a very exciting school meeting to go to ONLINE!” – I mean, no matter how she tried to dress that up, it was never going to be exciting.
So after swearing at the computer and aimlessly tapping at the keyboard for 5 minutes, mummy figured out how to get into the fancy pants new online learning portal that the school had provided, only to find the meeting drawing to a close,
“Does anyone have any questions?” said the very important and knowledgable teacher. Mummy started to talk, at which point the very important and knowledgable teacher sighed, “You have to take your microphone off mute mum.” Blushing a very deep shade of red, mummy asked the small child to unmute her, “Oh I’m sorry about that” stumbled mummy, “I’m just not used to this fancy pants platform…. in my very important job, we use a completely different system….” trailing off, mummy could see that the very important and knowledgable teacher didn’t believe a word she was saying, “errr, I’m so sorry” continued mummy, “We actually didn’t hear any of the meeting as we were late…” Mummy could feel the very important and knowledgable teacher wishing that he could expel parents, but as he was very important and knowledgeable, he let mummy and the small child stay behind to explain AGAIN the very fancy pants and complicated new learning portal.
Although mummy didn’t understand much of what was being said, she did gleam, that by having this new fancy pants learning portal, it meant that the children (which meant the parents) were accountable for handing in the work that had been set, which basically meant that mummy had to give over her computer, time, life, and her chances of ever leaving the small child’s side for 11 days.
So 5 1/2 hours later (despite the very important and knowledgable teacher claiming that the maths would ONLY take 40 minutes, reading 15 minutes, English 40 minutes and Topic ‘for as long as you wanted it to, let your imaginations run wild’….which mummy read as sticking on a 5 minute YouTube video about the world’s largest river… it’s the Amazon FYI…) and mummy was cheering to herself and patting herself on the back for not losing it when the small child insisted that every one of his pencils were sharpened before he could possibly start writing anything or asking every two seconds “what would you do here mums?” followed by “Can I have a snack?”
“Only 10 more days to go” thought mummy to herself as she crawled into bed at 0830, exhausted, ready for another night battling Les (her resident anxiety) at which point the small child bounced into her bedroom,
“Mums, we forgot to go to the skate park today, can we go tomorrow?”
“ffs”
Stay tuned for Day Two of Self Isolation….
CC x
Me, myself and eye 