#1 Day Off, Schmay Off

Bit jealous of Husband swanning off to work? Never. 

Working part-time, eh? Your 'time off' not the relaxing, takeaway-coffee-swilling break they said it was going to be, is it?

Now don’t get me wrong; Son, two-and-a-half, is a strong day-napper, which enables me to do s**t like this. That’s great; it just means I can only plan to get anything done - with militarily crisp efficiency - while he’s asleep. Once he’s up, of course, the flat (yep, flat; no garden) becomes more like a giant pinball machine as he furiously pings about. What's more, not only does he upset any recently-achieved tidiness but insists I come and watch whatever it is he’s doing or upsetting. 

But enough of prose this week; it just does not seem to do justice to this repeated scenario, so I thought I’d honour it with a bit of verse.

Son, this one's for you, you sticky little bugger. Consider it your first shout-out.

Here goes.

I’d hoped that you’d fall back to sleep this morn,

In fact every day this week,

Your father and I, hopeful fools that we are,

Dicking round on our iphones til far too late,

Were ignoring the fact we were tempting fate,

While the crackling monitor lay in wait

‘Til dawn, when you cut short our sleep.

You bounce in to see me, all smiles and snot,

Bash me cheerfully with a hard toy,

Jump up on the bed, land right near me, lay waste

With your milk to my sheets and fart right by my face,

Then hug me so hard as to cut off all trace

Of blood to my cheek, mad, mad boy.

You father hugs me, dressing gown warm and stinky,
He's sad-and-yet sprightly ‘bout what is to come,

For he is about to escape to the shower,
Then slink off to work, kicking off the eight hours

Of boy-on-mum time where you test out the power

Of words like ‘please stop’ and ‘please listen to mum.'

When I’m cleaning, it’s fair to say you are the ‘un’:

Un-smoother of duvet on newly-made bed,

Un-arranger of cushions, so artfully arranged

With a neatness that you clearly find very strange,

Un-cleaner of floors, of an entire range

Of objects, how you do toy with poor mother’s head.

And yet how I oddly look forward to this,

These days when it’s just me and you, son of mine,

Maybe all the cleaning was boring me too,

The mirrors and glass missing pawmarks from you,

Though these ideas seem much more rosy, it’s true,

When drinking my daily, compulsory wine.

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