After school today I had tidied up, finished arguing/discussing the right and wrongs of GE with a German exchange student and put the gear in the car - it was pretty early still, and the thought of coming home and getting on with the washing and the cooking and the cleaning and the childcare was just boring. So I went to visit a friend who had been home yesterday with 3 (count them) sick children all on her own. By herself. With THREE sick children. I have no idea how many children would still be living at the end of the day if I had to do that, but she copes with these things really well. Anyway, I thought I'd like a change from my routine and that she might like someone else to talk to too. She seemed to.
She takes a daughter to a ballet lesson once a week, and while the daughter dances, she goes for a walk. One where she actually gets somewhere. Walking with children is so terribly slow, and they are not about the progress. They don't care if they never get anywhere. I know this can be described in a very positive way as they look at every leaf, but honestly after 38 years most leaves are pretty similar. When you are 2 or 4 they are new things, but I've done the leaf thing now, and the only way they get interesting is if I have to draw them... Walking with kids is slow and erratic. Other women have offered for her to go round for coffee at a house, but she loves going for a walk, by herself and on her own, and the walk being about walking and not about all the things to see. I can relate to that.
It keeps raning here, and the hillsides keep slipping down. The kids are wet and glum and some of them could not get home tonight because of roads being closed.
Posted by Toni at August 8, 2006 09:23 PM