Cover

Today was a day when I needed a lot of cover.

I woke at 4 with my throat on fire. I had to gargle cold water for five minutes before I could even bring myself to swallow some water. Then back to bed for a fruitless two hours trying to sleep.

When I woke again properly it was just after 9. Mr B got up, so I dozed on. Until, at 10 to 10 I remembered in a panic that CarbBoy was due at an all-day basketball thingy starting at 10... And I was responsible for taking a neighbour's son too. Ten minutes of mad dashing around ensued, with everyone providing cover for me: CarbBoy dressed in record time; TallGirl explained to neighbour boy what was going on; Mr B dressed (to be driver) and then found the things I couldn't; while I put together a packed lunch for the fussiest-boy-in-the-world in record time.

So, with unsurpassed teamwork, the boys got to basketball only five minutes late.

Once properly awake and dressed, I popped in to see mum of neighbour boy to apologise for lack of wakefulness in our house when she left for work this morning, then some garden related shopping and home for work in the garden. All was going smoothly when at 4.30 I had a call from another neighbour with a different boy at basketball. Did I want her to bring CarbBoy and neighbour-boy-who-I'm-looking-after home? Now, I was under the very strong impression that basketball finished at 5... and clearly wasn't there at the actual finish time of 4... So she brought them home. So later I had to turn down all the profuse expressions of thanks from my neighbours for looking after their son since I had in fact done absolutely nothing of any use to him. But I made up for it by offering child-minding services another day in the holidays. Amazingly, they accepted.

At the moment we are plagued for about half an hour before sunset by these tiny flies that land in any liquid they can find. So I improvised a cover for my wine from the half milk bottle that is waiting to be cut up for plant labels (while I was potting up a million (nearly) Cosmos nearby, all obviously neatly labelled with cuttings from another milk bottle.)

I left the day determined to be a more organised mother tomorrow...