The Perfect Day

Picture this…

It’s after 9 am. You awake naturally, feeling rested, unaware of the time of day. You have nowhere you need to be and nothing that you need to do. You lay there in the warm embrace of your sheets and doona for a few moments, stretching your body, and bringing a little movement into your feet in circling motions. You begin to hear the warbling morning song of a magpie, the chit-chatter of a willy wagtail and some other birds. You roll over and look out from your window, where you can see into the trees from your bed. You’re surrounded by trees, cloaked in their canopy, sheltering your from the falling rain outside. A secluded sanctuary where you can be alone with your thoughts and where you do not have to look after anyone else, but yourself. When you decide to arise from your bed, you cloak yourself in a warm cardigan / dressing gown and head to the kitchen. It’s clean and fresh, and you pop the kettle on and make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, before making your way to the balcony. The chorus of the bird song continues. You spot a pair of king parrots flying by in your peripheral vision, a flash of bright red and emerald green. They land in the trees nearby. Tentatively they make their way towards the balcony towards the bird feeder. You sit still watching them approach. They see you and they sense that you are no danger to them, so they settle in and start to pick through the seeds for their favourites. You listen to the conversation between them, and the cracking and peeling of the husks of sunflower seeds.

The weather is still drizzling, You take this as an invitation to do a little writing, or reading, and you sit there a little longer, losing track of time all together.

The only indicator you have of the time is your tummy grumbling. Just as you start to get hungry, your partner arrives, they’ve cooked for you a plate of bacon, eggs, chorizo, garlic butter mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and avocado. Delicious. They take a seat beside you on the balcony and you enjoying eating this tasty meal together, talking about things that matter, and the little things that you appreciate. You clear the plates and wash them up while making another cup of tea or coffee for yourself and your partner. Again, the time has past by, without a care.

The sun has started to peer through now, and the weather has warmed up. You feel drawn now to be outside. Perhaps you go for a hike, a walk down the beach, or out to the garden. You potter for a few hours, noticing the nature around you. Taking in the sights and smells of the outdoors. You pick up treasures from all around you, some wild flowers from your hike, shells from the beach, or a handful of crisp, bright green sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes from your garden. You feel a little flutter of happiness. The day continues at much the same pace. You follow your interests throughout the day and listen to your body cues for when it’s time to eat or drink. You end the day watching as the sun sets, gazing at the colours in the sky, as they change from pinky-orange hues, to darker shades of purple. Until their replaced all together with deep blues and the twinkle of the first evening stars.

Enjoying your favourite beverage and beautiful conversation with the one/s you love… as you think to yourself “What a wonderful world”.

***

That was a bit like ‘porn-for-parents’.

A little snippet of something so out of reach from reality some days – more like a tantalizing daydream.

That’s my idea of a perfect day. 

Here’s the actual start of my day…

***

I awake to the sound of yelling and fighting…

“That’s mine, I had it first” someone’s yelling, maybe Middle Man. Anyway, it’s fucking loud. Now there’s crying. I’m guessing someone has hit someone else. Ah man, looks like I’m up, I think to myself…

I drag my body down the hallway wearily, toward the lounge room. What time is it?, I wonder. I glance at the clock, it’s not even 6 am, seriously! As I’m looking toward the clock, I fail to notice the cat vomit on the carpet, until a I feel a cold squish underfoot and between my toes. Gross! I’ve just walked it across the carpet, so it’s going to be a bitch to clean up now. I hop, one-legged, over to the kitchen counter to grab some paper towel and wipe it off my foot. I reach for the spray and wipe and a wet chux and I’m down on my hands and knees cleaning up the mess from the carpet. At least the kids are being quiet now. They’re watching me clean up the vomit, with immense interest. I put on some TV for them.

“I’m just going for a shower, back soon. Be nice to each other while I’m gone”, I say, more as a threat than anything else. I head for the bathroom, dirty chux in my hand, but before I reach the door, the burning stench of cat shit hits my nostrils. Low and behold, there it is, a steaming great puddle of fresh cat mess, from the other end, for me to clean up. It’s in the middle of the bathroom floor. Almost like it’s on display. I can’t even pretend I didn’t see it, or smell it, and wait for husband to clean it up either. There’s a little marriage stand-off game we play with each other, kind of like, ‘shotgun not’, where we pretend a mess isn’t there hoping for the other to deal with it. So, now I’m dealing with the cat shit, by grabbing a wad of toilet paper and wiping it up to go straight into the loo, but my fingers slip and now I’m literally ‘in the shit’!

“Fucken cats! Yuck!” I yell for the whole household to hear. I wonder if my husband will still keep pretending to be asleep, or get up and help. I’d would stay pretending to sleep too, if I were him! As much as I resent him right now for it.

Hmmm, anyway, now I really need my shower! Why do we even have cats? I’m contemplating my life choices again. Lucky their cute!

Here’s a picture of ‘Skittles’, also known as ‘Shittles’, a nickname made up by Middle Man. 

I step in the shower and turn it up to ‘melt-skin-off-the-bone hot’.  Aahhh perfect. After less than a minute, Big Boy runs in, “Crazy Cat has hurt himself”. This is followed by Crazy Cat, walking in silent crying. You know the cry, when they hold their breath, and their face goes red, before they let out a massive wail!? It’s that cry. A serious one, and I notice a huge egg forming on his forehead. “Fuck! What happened?” I ask, urgently.

Middle Man is now in the bathroom too! I’m still completely naked and trying to dry off my body and hide my genitals from the oldest child, ‘cos he’s past that age where their curious, and now into that age, where they’re awkward and are moving into pre-puberty. While concealing myself, I’m trying to comfort the wailing child. Middle Man starts explaining what’s happened…

“We were playing ‘catties’ on the couch and he hit me, so I told him not to, then he…”

“Just get to the point”, I bark at him. “What happened!?”

“He fell off the couch onto his head!”, he says with a hint of guilt. ‘Fell’ seems to be emphasized. I’m wondering if he were more likely ‘pushed’? Not important right now. 

“Ok, thank you”, I say. ‘We’ll talk more about this later”. I sit Crazy Cat down on the couch with a blanket over him, grab an ice brick from the freezer, wrap it with some paper towel and tell him to hold it on his bump, which is getting bigger by the minute.

“Everyone sit down, away from each other and do not move!” I say firmly.

I go back to the bedroom now, still wrapped in my towel, and see Hubby is still asleep.

“What the actual fuck! How can you sleep through this chaos! Time to get up!?” I bark. Our dog, Kevin, is also barking outside the window now, from all of the ruckus. 

“Good morning?” hubby says sheepishly as he awakens, wondering to himself, what the actual fuck is going on as well. Trying to make sense of his surroundings, but figuring out very quickly from my barking that I’m pissed off at the world! I throw some clothes on my body angrily and storm out of the room.

“Yeah, a great fucking morning!”, I say sarcastically.

In hindsight, this is hilarious. But seriously, in the moment, some mornings, some days, are shit! On this day, within the space of 20 mins I had transformed into a raging monster, so angry, I could smother my loving husband, just because he was sleeping peacefully! Send us a comment if you can relate!

Here’s to more good mornings, a few rare perfect ones, and getting through the all-too-common shitty ones, as best we can, without absolutely losing our minds!

Much love,

MumOf3WR