A typical morning at my house

Why I always start the day with a bang: notes from a dad’s diary

ARRIVING AT MY DESK, I collapse into my chair with a bucket of coffee so tall that it shouldn't be called "large" or "grande," but "Eiffel".

A new colleague comments: "I'm surprised you need coffee. You always seem so unruffled. Had a rough morning?"

I decide to tell him about it.

7.25 am: I run around the apartment screaming at the children to get dressed. I dash into the kitchen and discover to my horror that we have not washed up the night before, so every surface is piled high with dirty plates.

7.35: I open the fridge and a jar of mango chutney leaps off the edge of a shelf. These days, 99.99 percent of foodstuffs are packaged in plastic, but this is the last thing on Earth still sold in a glass jar. SMASH! Floor tiles glitter with razor-sharp shards. The dog finds itself wearing a light coating of mango chutney. She gives herself a lick and decides she likes it.

7.41: Using brute force, I clear some countertop space (more glass breaks) and speed-assemble a packed lunch. A panicked female voice says: "Dad. My friends are waiting. Where's my lunch?" I march through the broken glass in my bare feet to hurl a pack of sandwiches to a girl racing out the door.

7.49: I scrunch back to my tiny bit of counter space. I hear a male voice: "Dad! I have to go. My school bus is here." Once more I trudge, guru-like, through broken glass, and throw a lunch pack to another child.

8.01: Twelve minutes later, lunch three is ready, glass has been picked out of my feet, the blood has been mopped up, and the chutneyed dog wiped (much to her annoyance). I race to the bedroom to get dressed.

8.09: The youngest child and I descend to ground level to get the primary school bus. Huh? The road is empty! No bus, no kids, no parents. I reassure her: "We missed it. Don't worry. Daddy will take you to school in a taxi."

8.16: I check my pockets. Oops. The sum contents are a single small brown coin. "Don't worry," I tell the child. "We'll go to the money machine in the mall and get some cash, THEN we'll get a taxi."

8.25: We sprint to the nearest mall and rise to the second floor where there is an ATM. I punch in the instructions. "REQUEST REJECTED," the screen says. "INSUFFICIENT FUNDS."

At this point in my story, my listener in the office, who is unmarried and childless, shakes his head in horror.

"What a nightmare start to the day," he remarks.

I shrug my shoulders and reply: "I wouldn't use the word `nightmare.' I'd use the word `average.' In fact, I got the kid to school before the bell, and myself to work slightly earlier than usual."

Now he knows why nothing can ruffle me. I'm invincible. I'm imperturbable. I'm a parent.

Later, the phone rings. It's my wife.

"You're not going to believe this," she says. "But someone has seasoned our dog with mango chutney."

 

Technorati Tags: family humor,family,humor

Comments

[farah]

sounds something like my house only i play the role of the kid *guffaw*

[Rika]

My dear sweetheart Nury, welcome to the real world!

A good two years ago I asked you how on earth you manage to write all that stuff you are writing, and I got a response: http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2008/07/cmon-baby-light.html#comment-122021292

Oh yes! I am German, remember?

Back then this inspired me to write my own account of my sad life: http://incredibleladies.com/Column/Rika/SweetNury.html and reading through it again I now feel blessed; your life seems to be even sadder than mine.

But it gave you a new column...

[Ange]

If your Mango Chutney is the last thing on Earth not packaged in plastic, I'd be happy there's still one.

[Andrew]

Nury, no big. Sounds like my day! LOL!

[TS]

I hate to be in a rush in the morning and fortunately I don't have a problem getting up early, normally I'm awake before the alarm clock goes off.

One day when I awoke and looked at the alarm clock, I realised that I had overslept.
No breakfast, just a quick shower and out the door.
It wasn't until I got up from the basement bicycle storage onto the deserted street that I realised it was Saturday.

[Chamin]

Other than for broken glass, I would say it has some fun, too. I live alone and work flexi-hours, that makes life pretty boring. The morning goes the same even if I sleep late :-p

[Nury]

TS, is that the street you live in? It is SO pretty. It's like a village from a European fairy tale. But it looks a bit cold -- is that snow on the cobble stones?

You guys are so clever. These days I only write this column so that I can read your comments, which are kind of "mini-columns" in themselves. The same goes for sej and fardel, who are fine writers, albeit with very different styles.

And even the ones who write shorter comments, well, I feel I am getting to know your personalities, Farah, Christy and the others.

Rika, I love your site. Anybody who hasn't been to it -- do make a visit, click on Rika's name in the comment above. She writes really well. You can really picture her.

In the meantime, I am in Singapore, just getting ready to go out and find the mysterious Angela "and her creator" to use the words she used in a recent message. Intriguing!

[TS]

No that's not where I live, unfortunately.
I thought I'd illustrate my anecdote with an early winter morning picture with empty street in a typical old Danish village.
Like most boring stories from everyday life, the photo needed a bit of work. Here's the original before I performed minor surgery on it:

The first yellow house on the right is the childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen.

[sej]

Nury,

No need to be so self-deprecating. After all, my comments are not always so good, and what life they have often only comes out because of a capable and effective facilitator.

TS,

"Minor" surgery?? Apart from the stars being a bit of a give-away, it's come up really, really well.

And if that's a typical "old Danish village", does anyone still live in Denmark? In China or Japan, trying to get a photo of a comparitive scene, you eventually give up on trying not to get so many people, let alone trying to get it without anyone.

Take this photo for example... taken sometime after 11pm, and I caught a good moment, where there weren't so many people in the photo. I waited 20 minutes, but still ended up with people both in and walking through the frame. Alas after the hard day we had, I knew I wouldn't be able to get up before dawn to take it either.

[Christy]

Sej's comment of photos and people brings back a funny memory from September:

I study at HKU, where the Arts Faculty is housed in a very nice Victorian building. Back in the warmer months there would be people taking wedding pictures every day.

I love that scene -- students trying desperately to get around brides and grooms and the cameramen. I took a pic of that and would love to share it here, but I lost it...

[TS]

sej,
You don't have to get up early to get photos without all those darn tourists.
Just take a bunch of photos while people mill around and cut out the bits without people and save them as separate files. Next load up a panoramic stitching program and put it all together.
Windows Live Photo Gallery or Autostitch both do an excellent job and both are free.

The top photo was composed from bits of three other photos at.
It's not perfect as there is a few blank spots but you get the idea.
Click on the picture to see the original photos.

[sej]

TS,

Such a simple and brilliant idea! Why didn't I think of that?

Still wouldn't have worked in that particular instance, because there was never a clear view to the gate at the bottom, but there are many more instances where I think it could have worked. Do you find you need to use a tripod when taking these shots? I'm guessing you need to be close enough to the same spot each time for the stitching to work properly...

[TS]

sej,
A tripod is helpful, but you can do it freehand. It is important though that you stand at the same spot and keep the camera at the same height.
When you cut the photos up, it's essential that you ensure some overlap as the software uses this to align the bits properly.

[Vince A]

Nury's experience is unfortunate, but it only highlights how family-unfriendly our modern culture is.

10,000 years of human evolution and families still struggle to get their children to school on time.

We need guidance. We need wisdom. We need best practice standards.

We need the ISO.

I really hope the International Standards Organisation would see the light and finally come up with standards to help us cope with the demands of daily life.

Instead of silly standards like 'quality processes', or 'Hexalobular internal driving feature for bolts and screws', or 'how to brew tea but not for drinking the tea', they should come up with standards for the real world:

ISO 45890 - Process for preparing a 3-child breakfast in 2 minutes.

ISO 45891 - Standard for storing 60 varieties of jars in a refrigerator.

ISO 45892 - Methods for remembering what grade your children are in.

ISO 45893 - Process for preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when there's no peanut butter.

ISO 45895A - Standard for disciplining children (for countries where spanking is not allowed) (450 pages).

ISO 45895B - Standard for disciplining children (for countries where spanking is allowed) (1 page)

[Angela]

Haha. Vince just made my day. I will mention this to my friend's dad, he is also known as the father and management guru of an iso/ice standard. I am sure he would appreciate this idea.

[sej]

I think this guy might have a clue on best practice... no kids involved, but could he be on the right track?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qin4UptO

[sej]

Thanks TS, I'm going to give it a go.

[Vince A]

sej, YouTube says the link is malformed (ended up discovering Sydney's hilarious Natalie Tran!)

Angela, good move. Let's see if your friend's Dad has enough clout to make real changes in the ISO. When we see publication of the peanut butter and jelly standard next year, then we'll know. I hope Nury survives you.

[sej]

Oops. Looks like I somehow managed to truncate the URL..

Try this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qin4UptOEsI

[Tinni]

Hello Nury - Your curious diary has been a part of my mornings for quite some time now. I hadn't realised just how much it influenced my thoughts until this morning’s dream (good or bad??). It’s not that I dreamt of a bald man running around my kitchen, it was the other elements. It was a Sunday morning in my dream(in Bangladesh Sunday is the first day of work) and I was putting blobs of peanut butter on pieces of bread in a hurry, my children were running out the door to our car because they were late for school so I threw the pieces of bread at them. At that point I realised I hadn’t changed so I whirled around (like Wonder Woman) to get to my clothes and suddenly the peanut butter jar fell to the ground and broke into pieces. I still don't know how it broke; I remember dreaming it was a plastic jar!! Just then a dog came into the room...I couldn't see what happened next, my alarm went off.

I clearly borrowed my dream from your column; I've been through the mad-dash-to-get-ready-in-the-morning routine with my first-born the first year of school. Now I've become smart (the rush is still there), all tiffin is prepared and clothes are ironed the night before. And, most importantly we don't have a dog. I must have 'plagiarised' from your column!!

[osteornoult]

schon aufgekl rt, sagte 509. Berger wartete einen augenblick. Es kommt darauf an, und die, die ich kenne das. Er beobachtete weber von der steten

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