Twelve Hours


Last night, after Destroyer screamed at me because I couldn’t find Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to read to her, I fell asleep on her bed. My wife came in after an hour and woke me, and I went into our room, lay on the bed and woke up at 9 this morning, wearing the clothes I’d put on yesterday. I guess a week of four hour sleeps every night has a way of catching up with you.

I wheezed and coughed and spat vast amounts of something disgusting in the sink, then read La Serpiente some books when she came in to see me, and then we all went out to the library, by way of Starbucks.

Because I’ve put on so much weight while on holiday, and because I’m not sure if I should drink lots of dairy, I ordered a cold brew, which Starbucks think should come with ice, and which tastes pretty rotten without the milk to disguise the flavour. Oh well. At least it got me as far as Toa Payoh, where we borrowed ten books for the girls and two books for me (a book of barre exercises, and a book for aging endurance athletes, which included the surprising information that apple juice is almost twice as sugary as Coke. So I should stick to Coke after my month off sugar.

Somehow, we kept the kids out until way past 2pm, which meant their naps were at 3, which meant we had to wake them at 4 by opening the curtains and whistling as loud as we could.

I took La Serpiente for a run in the stroller to distract her: she asked to go to see the Marina Bay Sands, so without intending to I spent almost an hour pushing her in the stroller. We had a bit of a chat, she got scared by the National Day Parade practice on the bay (very loud music while somebody intoned facts about the Singaporean self-propelled howitzer) and I also had a random conversation with a passerby while waiting at traffic lights. It turns out a child in a running stroller is quite the conversation piece.

Because of the late nap, we thought bedtime would be hard, but I only had to lie next to La Serpiente for an hour with her complaining she couldn’t sleep before she did. And then the night was young, and I could… I don’t know what. I could go back to bed, I guess.


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