One of those days.

It has been one of those days, Three Readers.

It's not all about leaning lazily on teak furniture, scrunching polished toes in the orange shag pile, gazing at a vast collection of Royal Copenhagen Faience vases, or playfully wrestling amongst the Marimekko soft furnishings.

No, it's not like that at all.

It's more like this ...

I woke really early. Child 4 demanded a bottle at 4:30am and from then I couldn't sleep.

I folded all the washing that I folded last week.

Then put another load in the machine. I heard the birds chirping; heard the rubbish truck drop our bin in the street; heard possums heading home across the roof, hoping their home wasn't in the roof.

I saw the sun come up, saw to it that the dog was put out about four times and wondered, why can't he do one big wee, rather than four small wees?

I sprung Enemy No. 1 perving in the french doors. Run off, coward!

I pondered, why don't I get up this early every morning? 

Then I had a cup of tea, which is a poor substitute for the coffee which ran out yesterday, and the wine which will run out tonight.

Then it was breakfast, which means four different meals for four fussy children.

After that, I began preparing dinner. We're having a slow-cooked beef casserole, as directed by the Husband.

He often directs and produces dinner. That's possibly because if he didn't, no one would get fed. As I said before, cooking's not my bag.

I'm happy to do the casserole because it's easy and it cooks itself, and it's another meal the 4xChilds won't eat ... so why not put all the effort in and make it?

I asked Child 1, "What, exactly, do you want to eat at mealtimes, as I'm getting extremely sick of your opining that everything is 'disgusting'"?

She replied, "Macaroni cheese and Marguerita pizza".

I told her, "You can't eat cheese for the rest of your life".

Child 4 agreed, waving her third banana in the air.

Then, I managed to get Child 4 to bed for her morning nap. Soon after, Child 1 and I quickly embarked on the next Fisher Price photo shoot, as we were conscious of the poor light conditions.

That was quickly kiboshed when Child 3 fell off a stool in the pantry while he was searching for contraband biscuits.

The crash and his subsequent wailing woke Child 4. Now she was awake, she had to be entertained, so one of the other 4xChilds taught her to play the recorder.

She astounded us by blowing air into the recorder while simultaneously blowing mucus out her nose.

Fed-up with hearing the one note, over-and-over, we all got in the car and drove back to the house of yesterday's sewing meet to retrieve Child 3's soccer ball which is suddenly his favourite toy despite his spending the last four years being obsessed with nothing but trains.

When we got home, Child 2 stood in dog poo.

That means that unless the Husband can completely scrub and sanitise the shoes so that they look, and smell, brand new, Child 2 will refuse to wear them again.

It seems dog poo on Child 2's shoe sole is akin to blood on Lady Macbeth's hands. It stains forever and causes Child 2 to wander listlessly, in a hazy trance, about the rooms of the MC hacienda muttering, "... who would have thought the old dog to have had so much poo in him".

Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I thought about the blog and wondered why I have so few readers, so I decided to instigate some personal rules:

• Answer all comment-questions to the best of my ability;
• Do so graciously everytime, even if they're harshly critical of my writing style;
• If I get a new 'follower' welcome them by name, with a hearty 'Hi-Ho!';
• Then, reciprocate their 'following' by in turn 'following' their blog, if they have one, within some limits eg if it is a 'I hate 60s houses' blog, or if readership for some unfathomable reason gets to the hundreds, I may have to reconsider the last rule.

That, surely, will increase my readership. Poor readership has nothing to do with content.

While thinking of Blog Dogma By Which To Abide, I spied this spilled pile of chalk which was lying on the novel that some of the Three Readers should be reading ... remember this suggestion?

 To settle myself after remembering the rapidly approaching Second Semester, I went outside and gave the compost a good churn. It went from looking like this ...

 

to looking like this.

Finally, I embarked on a frenzied unpicking of the sheet I bought. From this beautiful piece of fabric, I hope to make some pj bottoms and yet another smock for Child 4, or maybe I should make her some bloomers, or I could just make a sheet?

I must be looking like I'm having a bad day, because Child 2 just gave me one of these sticky-notes ...

It was to go with the one he gave me about 10 minutes prior to that! On a certain angle, it looks like a drawing of dog poo.