This week the kids are away with the other adult. They are camping for four days, and I am working.
Feeling left out about all the fun times they’ll be having in a tent while poor me slaves away at home over a laptop? Sad about all those lifelong memories I will never be able to share with them – idyllic camping moments toasting marshmallows around a smoky fire, and, oh, how funny was dad trying to blow up the mattresses and cook spaghetti on the barbecue …
Are you serious? I have the house to myself. Tonight my book group is coming for dinner. Tomorrow I will sleep in until whenever. This afternoon, at the usual crazy hour when everyone is home for the dinner, bath, bed fiasco, I had a cup of tea and two Mint Slices.
A while ago I read an article by a mum who also had her kids away for a few days in the holidays. It was all about the floorboards that didn’t creak and the beds that weren’t slept in and the cute-little-kid-noises void in her head. She was all melancholy about their absence, and how big and quiet the house felt without them in it.
Over here, there’s no melancholy. There is just one big party for one. Me, a whole packet of Mint Slices I can safely leave in the pantry for once, some red wine, of course, and a couple of episodes of Upper Middle Bogan.
When I wake up, all I need to do is pull the doona and, voilà, the house is tidy. Then it’s just 24 hours of me-time ahead, albeit with a lot of work to fit in to those hours, but still, I can do it with a latte on the couch if I want to – no one’s here to push me out.
And I can nap. Ah, the napping I’ve been doing. I’ve also been sorting and folding, rearranging cupboards and pictures on the wall, and getting a whole lot done around the house – between work, of course.
I’m not a camper. Actually, I might be but I wouldn’t know because I’ve always managed to avoid it. It’s just the whole creaky-tent-back thing, the icky shared shower block, dirty dishes in buckets and the omnipresent possibility of rain.
But now the other adult has invested in new sleeping bags, a camp kettle and deck of Uno, so I fear a relationship with the wilderness and a pit toilet will soon be inevitable.
So right now I’m revelling in the four solid walls in the ground around me, a bathroom that is without puddles, and my solitude. Oh, and the Mint Slices.
And you might think I could possibly finish this column off with a paragraph about, after a few days of them all being away, how much I long for them, their chaos, those sweaty little faces and noisy fights and chubby cheeks I long to squeeze. But I’m not, because that would be a lie.
There, I said it. Bad me, I say, munching on another Mint Slice.
