Monday, February 11, 2013

An underestimate of life's difficulties!


Thomas decided to nip over to Denmark for five days to let Léon, Anna and Amaia visit their grandparents while I stayed home with just Marcel and Lots.When you are used to looking after five kids, you can fool yourself into thinking that being a single parent to two teenagers for five days is so close to a holiday, you won't know what to do with yourself. I did have a full-time job on for four of the five, and I knew I needed to tutor Marcel a bit for his Higher prelim on Wednesday so I figured that would probably leave me enough time to work my way through the following to-do list . Now, my many single-parent-to-two-teenagers friends will probably fall off their seats at magnitude of my naivety here, but here goes:
  • Do 30 hours of translating (books and teaching materials - Danish -> English)
  • Tutor Marcel five hours
  • Tutor my friend's son for his INT2 French prelim two-three hours
  • Wash Thomas's car, valet the inside
  • Weed the garden
  • Take garden rubbish to the dump
  • Read the three novels by my bed (2 English, 1 German)
  • See my sister-in-law for coffee
  • Meet up with an old friend I haven't seen for twenty years for coffee too
  • Wash 7 washing baskets of clothes/dry them/put them away
  • Spring clean the small kids' room and take all broken toys to the dump
  • Gut TV room, living room, dining room, kitchen, porch, front hall and downstairs bathroom
  • Prepare a birthday dinner and cake for Thomas coming home
  • Visit mum for dinner
  • Do a 1000 piece jigsaw with Charlotte
  • Blog every day
  • Print out new photos for the frame the kids bought me last week on my birthday
  • Take up my trousers
  • Wash all the floors
  • Do something to keep fit - maybe cycle every day
Ok, let's analyse my achievements to date:
  • Danish - tick
  • Marcel - 4 hours still to do
  • Friend's child - done half an hour
  • Thomas's car - nope
  • Weeding - nope
  • Garden rubbish - nope
  • Novels - Half way through the German one
  • Sister-in-law - on tomorrow's potential list
  • Old friend - tick
  • 7 washings - 2 done, 5 to go, nothing put away
  • Kids' room - toy boxes emptied on the floor, looks like Armageddon
  • Room-gutting - Does the downstairs bathroom count? I even washed the box of bath toys out?!
  • Cake making - On Weds' to-do list
  • Visit mum - on tomorrow's to-do list
  • Jigsaw - nope 
  • Blog - no more than usual
  • Photo printing - I've done 5/9
  • Trousers - nope
  • Floors - nope
  • Keep-fit - nope
Which makes me ask myself - how do I usually fit in my life, if I can't do twice as much when half of us are missing?

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