Day 3 with the kids - National Best Friends Day 

By Wednesday evening, the kids had spent three days at school this week, and I’ve received two phone calls from teachers. Day 3 with the kids was another stressful day, even if it was National Best Friends Day.

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After I’d dropped the kids off to school in the morning, I drove back to town and popped into Costa.  There was a small queue and I joined the back of it, standing behind three or four others.

Within a couple of minutes, there were three more queuing behind me, and we hadn’t really moved forward.

An old woman who I would guess was in her 80s, pushed in front of me.  I assumed that she was looking at the cake display, and stepped back to give her a better view.

The barista called for the next person in the queue to come down, and the old girl shuffled forward a couple of steps and told the barista to come to the cake section.  The barista revealed that she was only making hot drinks, but this confused the old girl so much that the barista stopped making hot drinks and instead sorted out the cake for the elderly queue-jumper.

I was torn between being really annoyed that she had pushed in, and feeling really sorry for the old girl.

By the time she had paid, her drink and food were ready and one of the staff picked up her tray and got ready to carry it through the shop.  Unfortunately for the staff member, the old lady didn’t want any of this and insisted on carrying her own goods, grabbing the tray as she voiced this, causing the glass full of hot, milky coffee to wobble wildly.

How she never managed to spill a drop is beyond me.

Shortly afterwards, I received a text message from Aaliyah.

I’m not sure if she was expecting sympathy, but she should know better than that from me, bless her.  She ended up borrowing money from a friend to get something to eat, thus defeating the point of having packed lunch which was to keep costs down.

After coffee, I found that I’d been given a parking ticket on my car. It seems to have been wrongly issued, so I called up Chelmsford City Council to ask about it.  After pressing various numbers to get through to the right section (primarily the “press 3 to enquire about the issue of a parking ticket” section), I could only get through to a message telling me to write in, which was infuriating.

After trying a few times with a few different options, I gave up and have now filed a challenge online instead.

The Penalty Charge Notice - Getting one of these is as annoying as trying to speak to someone at the council about it.

By the time I’d finished farting about trying to sort out the Penalty Charge Notice, it was time for the school run.

Considering that, on the whole, my kids are fairly good, it’s surprising and disappointing to have had to speak to two teachers about the eldest two this week.

On Tuesday, it had been Charisma who’d been put on report.  Wednesday afternoon it was Aaliyah’s turn as she called me to reveal that her phone had been confiscated and that the only way to get it back was for a parent to collect it.

I was furious, mostly at Aaliyah for being daft enough to use her phone in school, but partly at the teacher who felt the need to drag a parent in to collect the phone.

I’d received the call from Aaliyah as I was collecting her brother from school, so there wasn’t much notice given and had I been at work, then there would have been no way for me to go to the school to collect it.

Not only that, but after a stunningly hot morning the weather had changed to the point where it heaved down with rain at around 2.30pm for the best part of an hour, flooding roads in Chelmsford and making driving difficult.

This, in turn, meant that everyone collecting their kids brought their car along, making the roads rammed.  By the time I’d driven down to Aaliyah’s school and parked up, I was ready to kill, such was my bad mood.

Fortunately, the teacher was nice enough, and I think sensed that I wasn’t in a mood to argue.

She revealed that Aaliyah had been caught more than once using her phone which is why they had asked for a parent to come down.  Aaliyah refuted this (of course), but we were out of there within a couple of minutes, and thanks to the delays in getting to see Aaliyah’s teacher I was about twenty minutes late picking up Charisma and Chance.

By the time I’d got home, I was mentally exhausted.

I made dinner for everyone, making sure that every other sentence was a reminder that I wasn’t in the mood for any of their arguing.  It seemed to work, as everyone was fairly well behaved.

Brooke and Charisma decided to pop out to Starbucks to get a frappucino, and came back absolutely delighted that they were on offer as Buy One, Get One Free for National Best Friends Day.

Photo taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoshimov, with thanks

Day 3 with the kids was enough to wipe me out, especially after Day 2, and I was first to bed and fell asleep in no time.  In the meantime, all four kids managed to get through the evening without arguing, which is a blessing.

Once again, Charisma took it on herself to make packed lunches for everyone for the following day, which she’s done all week.  I may moan about them sometimes, but they certainly have their good points.

by DannyUK

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