Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Oh, What A Day!

Today I had what could be described as 'a bit of a morning'.

It started off well enough, the kids all got on like best friends, and occasionally took a break from their conversations about the meaning of life to beg me for jobs to do around the house to fill in their time before they went to school.  I wish...  In actual fact they fought slightly less than usual, and didn't argue more than they usually do when I asked them to do their chores.

I had a cleaning job to do this morning, so I was leaving the house too.  The boys got in the car, while I figured out how to get my shoes on while carrying a bag, two pieces of toast and a mug of coffee.  My bag hit the ground hard, and the coffee tipped over, so once I'd cleaned that up, I got my shoes on and got in the car.  I put the keys in the ignition, turned them, and heard an ominous clicking sound.  The battery was flat!  Then somebody mentioned that one of the car doors was open when they got in, and we realised what had happened.  When we got home from school yesterday afternoon, my biggest boy was deep in The Hunger Games, and stayed in the car for 1.5hrs until he'd finished the book.  Which was fine, except that he didn't shut the car door when he got out, and now we had a flat battery!

I left messages on two friends' phones, hoping one of them would get back to me soon.  The two biggest boys ran to school, but I kept the youngest with me - I didn't trust him to behave for his brothers.  We came back inside, and started cleaning up the breakfast dishes while waiting for a phone call.

After fifteen minutes I'd heard from both my friends.  Meg said she'd be at my house in 30 minutes, and Kerri said she'd be here as soon as she found some jumper leads.  Kerri arrived after a few minutes, without any jumper leads, as she'd discovered her husband had them in his vehicle.  We hunted around our garage on the off-chance there might be some there, but no luck.  Kerri went down the road to ask my neighbour Albert if he had any jumper leads, and I came back inside to finish the dishes.

Kerri arrived back, and I went outside to chat with her while we waited for Albert.  After a few minutes a vehicle came down the drive, but it wasn't Albert - Meg had arrived!  She had jumper leads, but they were too short to be able to use.  Albert now tootled down the drive in his old ute with a bale of hay on the back.  He had jumper leads, but we thought we needed to push the car out of the garage to be able to use them.  I went to put the keys in the ignition, and realised I had locked myself out of the house.

So.  I now had a car with a flat battery, 3 extra vehicles in the yard, 2 sets of jumper leads that couldn't be used, 3 friends, one of their children who wasn't well, my youngest child, and no keys. 

We decided we would have to burglarize the house.

It turns out we wouldn't make very good burglars.  All the doors were locked, all the windows were shut, and despite applying a hairpin to one of the door locks, we couldn't open them.  By this point I was beginning to think I might have to break a window to get my car to start! However, after a bit of faffing about we DID manage to open one of the windows (without breaking it), and my son wriggled inside, and reappeared waving the keys.  Hooray!  The car started after the first try with the jumper leads, and Albert, Kerri and Meg left.  I rang my husband to let him know the problems had been solved, dropped my son off at school only 1.5hrs late, and went off to my cleaning job.

Lessons learned.
1.  ALWAYS shut the car door, no matter how fascinating your book is.
2.  We need to buy some jumper leads.
3.  We need a spare house key.
4.  You never know when you might need a hairclip.

Now I've just got to get through the afternoon...