Day 8. Elf on the Shelf (Pain in my Arse)

With a couple of exceptions, today was the usual maelstrom of shoddy (and shouty) parenting, personal ineptitude and eye-rolling.  This is the norm on Mondays, a day which is divided between driving children – usually bickering children – all over the island, grocery shopping, and the sudden realisation that homework (such that it is) is due on Tuesdays, and of course nothing has been done.

The fun started as soon as I got out of bed – late – when I remembered that the Girl was follically coated in formaldehyde (or maybe it’s battery acid?  Whatever it takes to STOP THE SCRATCHING) and needed a shower.  Of course by this stage she was already dressed and ready for school so the wheels fell off the entire morning.  We got to school chronically late, at which point I mentioned (sotto voce) our adventures in pest control to the teacher, and we were immediately frog-marched to the school nurse to be checked.  (All I could think was:  Christ – they’re going to send her home with me.)  She had a grand old time, however – leather chair, cartoons on a loop, kindly lady PROPERLY checking her hair.  I however, behaved in my usual half-assed haphazard way, and as a result am now one of those people that the nurses will be talking about for months to come around the water cooler. (“She didn’t even know what she was looking for!” “Who uses hair straighteners on a child’s hair to kill nits?”* “And then she changed her baby’s dirty nappy IN FULL VIEW OF EVERYONE!”  “And then she went to put the nappy in the bin!!”  “And then she offered her baby nuts. NUTS! She brought NUTS to school!! NUTS ARE FORBIDDEN!”) So I slunk away, feeling like I’d left my parenting tool-box at home (along with my brain) but at least I got to the leave the Girl at school.  Because – phew.  Mondays are hard enough going as it is.

Before the usual grocery-shopping hell / bemusement there was a lovely interlude with a lovely new friend, which involved coffee and a comprehensive, and very insightful discussion about Serial. Lovely new friend was a prosecutor in the US so had a totally different take on things, which was fascinating - because we all want him to be innocent, right?  Except she doesn’t.  She wants him to be a very well polished sociopath, and thinks that he probably is.  (However, having sine listened to the most recent episode, she has recanted and now thinks his attorney just screwed up. Which is what I assume everyone thinks, no?)  I love Serial – and not just because it’s compelling and wonderfully narrated and thorough and addictive;  mainly because it gives me something interesting to think and talk about and to have an opinion on, and doesn’t involve children or school. Or, currently, head-lice.

Nothing noteworthy from the grocery shop, apart from failing rather catastrophically to make myself understood when I asked if they had any nit-combs.  Turns out that what I thought would be relatively easy to communicate (through the various media of mime, hand gesticulations, and raised voice) in fact just makes me look like an idiot. (It goes without saying that the only person who didn’t understand me was the shop assistant;  everyone else gave me a very wide berth thereafter.)

The usual teatime/bedtime shit show, and then this little fella showed up:

The Elf on the Shelf! Suddenly – thankfully - my threats will have some substance to them.  Mind you, I can’t help feeling that I am manipulating the kids’ innocence for my own gains. Competing with that thought is astonishment at the crap that kids will believe.  “He’s an elf!  He comes to life when you’re not looking.  He flies up to the North Pole and tells Santa on you. So you HAVE TO BE GOOD. Then he comes back and you have to find him in the morning.”  (Aliens are watching us and shaking their  little green heads in disbelief.)

So of course, major excitement, a solemn naming ceremony, the sprinkling of Elf Dust (how else is he going to come alive, huh?), and we plonked him on a shelf.  And then he moved!  They went WILD.  And then he moved again – upside-down!   At this point I started to question my wisdom, because now they just WOULD NOT GET INTO BED, and I had to go out. (So then I went out and brought him with me, and God knows what they thought. But what could they expect?  These dust-sprinkled elves are unpredictable buggers.  )

And now it’s way past my bedtime, and I’ve just realised that as well as feeding the hamster – my last chore of the day, usually only remembered when I’m in bed – I now have to find things for the Elf to “do” by morning too.

GAH.

(*I thought this was inspired, but apparently not.)