Category Archives: …What did you just say?

Love is a reciprocal torture. – Marcel Proust.

Posted in ...What did you just say?, Parenting by

There’s a lot of whispering happening over there. I’m only as suspicious as I ever am. Four years of low-level torture has built up a surprising tolerance for these things.

Slowly, Mabel emerges from behind the couch and crawls on her little pink belly across the floor in front of me, to where the dog is lying in a small patch of sun.

‘You got any stored, Mae?’, Theo hisses at her, peeking out from around the armchair.

She reaches into her leggings and pulls out a small Phillips head screwdriver.

‘OPERATION TIME!’, she yells.

The dog lifts his head slightly. He looks at me with brief resignation, and goes back to sleep.

I almost join him.

At your convenience.

Posted in ...What did you just say?, Parenting by

I am standing at the kitchen bench barefoot, making the children something to eat.

As I cut the crusts off a piece of toast, to Theo’s prescription, I drop them on the floor for the dog.

‘That was surprising!’ Theo notes of the commotion that ensures; flat-faced-cat trying to lick buttered edges before they are inhaled by an ever available Dachshund shaped garbage disposal.

I hand Theo a piece of toast. Buttered with hummus. Crusts, as mentioned, removed.

‘And a top piece?’ he asks of me. ‘It’s convenient that way’.