Wait for it…. here we go…

by Katrina Bennett
9th October 2019

MY GOOGLE Calendar informs me there are 30 days in September, but if you listen to Mike Brady there is only one day I’ll want to remember.
Do I really want to listen to a man who also wants me to get in there and fight?
Probably.
It just so happens that yet another lot of school holidays fall in September.
Fighting is surely the order of the day? Let us chart a typical day in the September holidays.
You wake up and it’s warm and sunny, by the time the offspring wake up, clouds have formed, the wind has sprung up and for goodness sake it’s started to pour with rain.
Excellent, we are now all trapped inside.
Wait for it… here we go…
“Mum, he just used all the milk so I can’t eat breakfast — I’m starving.”
Door slams.
Looks like I won’t be eating either.
Different door gets banged.

“Mum, she’s just gone into the shower, I wanted a shower”.
Of course you do.
You haven’t wanted to for the last three days whenever I’ve asked you to, but now that one of the three showers in the house is occupied, it’s imperative that you wash.
And apparently it has to be that shower.
Distressed screaming spews forth from a bedroom.
Wait for it… here we go…
“Mum, he’s stolen my phone charger”.
Really? A day ago, I had a charger and a fully functioning pair of earbuds.
Currently, I possess an empty wall socket and a white cord that has the left ear bud hanging on by the merest of threads whilst the right one is MIA.
As the caterwauling increases, my one manky earbud that’s hanging on by a wire fails to block out the incessant noise adequately enough.
I devise an escape plan.
With all of them too busy hissing at each other to notice me, I grab the car keys and sneak out to the garage.
Except, where there is meant to be a car, there is large empty car sized space.
School holidays — car service — of course.
Shoulders slumped, I drag my defeated butt back into the house and commit the most fatal of parenting fails.
“If you lot don’t stop fighting, I’m banning all electronic devices”.
Wait for it … here we go …
Complete silence as three sets of eyes unite, turn and bore into me like laser beams.
It’s only 9am.
It’s only day one.
It’s not the first time that I wished I drank coffee.
Or gin.
Or the perfect combo of the two.
Espresso martinis.
Backing away from the combined advancing force of three wi-fi-less teenagers, I feebly offer up a packet of Uno cards and my treasured childhood limited Australian edition Monopoly set, complete with Bourke Street before it was a Mall and Telecom before it became Telstra.
By some unspoken sibling super power, they have me surrounded, pluck Monopoly from my trembling grip and start to set up the board on the breakfast-less dining room table.
Game on.
I’m ready to get in there and fight, fly like an angel and show them my might.
I’m not called Cazaly for nothing.
I dazzle my treasured offspring with my entrepreneurial 1980s property developer style, snapping up properties, building houses and opening up the odd hotel.
Too busy congratulating myself on using the experience that only comes with being on the earth longer than all three of them combined, I make the typical Gen-X mistake and ignore the crumbling infrastructure.
I have failed to invest in the utilities and railway stations.
My portfolio slumps.
I find myself trapped like a commuter approaching Hoddle Street on the Eastern Freeway at 8:30 in the morning.
A few more poor rolls of the dice and I’m in and out of jail often enough that I could be cast for a recurring role in Wentworth.
Filing for bankruptcy, I realise I’m not called Cazaly at all and the crowd is definitely not on my side.
Without me to gang up on, the teenagers turn on each other.
The noise gets louder and louder.
“If you lot don’t stop fighting, I’m returning all electronic devices”.
Wait for it… here it comes…
High fives all round and
“Hey, have you seen the latest skittles Tik-Tok?,” as they clamber around each other’s phones.
Walking out the door to embark on my seven-kilometre round trip to IGA to get milk for my breakfast, it strikes me that Mike Brady was both right and wrong.
There really is that one day in September, but I truly do not want to remember it.
My Google calendar was also correct about there being 30 days, thankfully only half off them are in the school holidays.