Mr. Waffle: It must be time for dinner.
Me: I think it must be; I’m starving, myself.
Him: Am I married to Posh Spice?
Me: No, I’m starving, comma, myself.
Mr. Waffle
The most powerful women in the world
From: Mrs. Waffle
To: Her loving husband
Subject: Mary McAleese comes in at 55
Merkel beats Rice as world’s most powerful woman
German chancellor Angela Merkel has come top in a Forbes magazine list of the world’s most powerful women, beating US secretary Condoleezza Rice despite Berlin‘s first lady not even featuring in the 2005 ratings.
http://euobserver.com/9/22313/?rk=1
From: Mr. Waffle
To: His loving wife
Subject: RE: McAleese comes in at 55
And Dooce?
How was your weekend?
Dinner on Friday was delightful. Because he loves me and, clearly, we are made of money, Mr. Waffle had tried to book Comme Chez Soi (much posher and more exclusive than its, frankly alarming, website makes it seem) but it was closed for the holidays – as he pointed out, July 28th is a great day to get married but not a fantastic date for restaurant reservations. Fortunately, Brussels abounds in opportunities to spend all your money on excellent food and he opted for L’Ecailler du Palais Royal where we lowered the average age in the restaurant considerably, which, let’s face it, doesn’t happen to us so much any more, and were the only people there who a) were not Belgian and b) did not have fat bank accounts in Luxembourg. The food was fabulous and we had a delightful evening even allowing for a little embarrassment about the bill.  It’s hard to know who was more embarrassed, Mr. Waffle for pointing out that they had inadvertently charged €111 euros rather than 11 for my dessert or the waiter who was absolutely mortified and entered into detailed explanations about how their bill totter had knocked off for the night and someone else was adding up etc. etc.
It was as well that we had a lovely evening on Friday, because we needed that rosy glow to sustain us over the weekend.  Daniel was awake all Saturday night with a temperature (cheering thought – start of chicken pox perhaps?). Michael was awake all Sunday night for the hell of it.  The Princess wet the bed on Saturday and Sunday night (having been accident free for weeks) and refused to nap on Sunday when we really, really needed her to have a nap. And Bill Gates is torturing us. His latest update says that we may be a victim of illegal counterfeiting. We are not. Our installation disk, however, which will allow Bill to check that this is really the case, in 14 simple steps, is in the cellar under mounds of baby rubbish. Bill will not let us deinstall our latest update and nor will he stop annoying us with little windows telling us that we may be victims of fraud. I suppose we’ll have to set aside a couple of hours to dig out his bloody disk.  Time when we could be SLEEPING.
And I am seriously beginning to wonder whether exhaustion is making me lose my mind.  I cannot remember anything for more than two seconds. Sample conversation with my spouse:
Him (to Michael): Voilà un beau papillon.
Me (a little later): Michael has dropped the whatchamacallit.
Him (tending to Daniel): Eh?
Me (tending to Princess): Can you give Michael the yokeemebob, the er, the umbrella.
Him: What?
Me: It’s all your fault you said papillon and that made me think of parapluie and that made me think of umbrella.
Him: Do you want me to give Michael back the butterfly?
At least the weather has broken.
My perfect husband
Him: Are you tired?
Me: Yes.
Him: Fed up?
Me: Yes.
Him: Did you know that today is our fifth wedding anniversary?
Me: Oh God, I forgot.
Him: I have booked a babysitter and dinner.
Poxy – continued
Her: I have as many spots as there are stars in the sky.
Me: That’s a lot of spots.
Him: Though it’s daytime now and there aren’t any stars in the sky.
Me: Yes there are, you just can’t see them.
Him: That’s what YOU say, Columbus.
The sound of elastic snapping
It’s 38 degrees today. No air conditioning in our sunny flat. No air conditioning in my sunny office. And I am busy, busy, busy. Mr. Waffle isn’t exactly idle at work either but he’s been picking up a lot of the slack at home, while I hunch over a hot computer post 9.30 when our children finally go to bed. Need I say that both of us are up regularly during the night?
Yesterday the creche rang me to say that they would replace the cover of our car seat which got dirtied in their building works.
Me: Sorry, I didn’t see it, my husband collected the boys.
Them: But later when you saw it at home, how was it?
Me: My husband had put it in the wash. And he hung it out to dry and he dropped the boys to the creche this morning because I left the house at 7.30 for an 8.00 am meeting, so I have no idea what the damage is, but I’d say it washed out alright or he would have mentioned it.
Them: Silence.
Me: See, in our household, my husband looks after that kind of thing.
I feel that I am a cliché, running all day at work and running at home and only just managing to catch some of the balls that are in the air. At work, if I don’t write something down, I have no chance of remembering it and even then, some of my notes from the previous day can be baffling (is that somebody’s name, a new policy initiative, what?). As well as having a lot of the kind of competing deadlines that interviewers love to ask about we have a new trainee who is keen as mustard and entirely ignorant about what we do. This combination is proving a little difficult in the short term.
Yesterday, the boys were the last kiddies in the creche and the Princess was the last one waiting to be picked up from her course, the second last little soul having been picked up by her mother 50 minutes previously. The Princess was sitting on her own in a big room at a little table colouring conscientiously under the, slightly dour, supervision of a middle aged man (I suppose, it was hot and he wanted to go home). It was depressing.
Last night Michael woke up with a temperature and was up for a couple of hours. Being Michael, he was cheerful but he was hot. Since it was 30 degrees in the boys’ room anyway, I suspect that didn’t help. The Princess woke up with a temperature. Mr. Waffle took the morning off to tend to her but poor old Michael recovered so well that he was escorted to the creche along with our only healthy child and a message to them to call me, if he seemed unhappy (I called them, he was described as being as happy as someone could be with a temperature of 39 when it’s 39 degrees outside – I will have to rescue him when the Princess wakes from her nap). During the morning Mr. Waffle called to say that the Princess was very cheerful but he had taken her to the pharmacy to get something for her heat rash and they said “that’s no heat rash, that’s chicken poxâ€. What do you think might be wrong with Michael, people?