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Early this morning La Serpiente came in and woke us up, and then went out again as I fell back to sleep. I woke up about an hour later to the sound of terrible weeping.
I stumbled out to find Destroyer prone on the sofa, crying her eyes out. She managed to sob out the problem:

"I woke up… and I didn’t have anyone… Didn’t have sister… Didn’t have mummy."

I was a little saddened that I don’t qualify as anyone: but I suppose the fact that she gradually stopped weeping when I came out to give her a hug suggested I wasn’t so bad after all.

It took a while to figure out where my wife and La Serpiente had gone: they were out eating pancakes as La Serpiente had woken up at 630am and refused to go back to sleep.

Unfortunately that meant she was tired by the time we went climbing. She’d gone to bed late last night, she’d got up too early and now, sitting in the taxi on the way to the National Stadium, she was monosyllabic and glassy-eyed. I was really sore after yesterday’s climb so I didn’t climb. Instead I watched La Serpiente refusing to climb far up the wall. Was she physically tired? Was her willpower depleted so she couldn’t make herself even try?

We had a family day at the office, so after climbing La Serpiente and I went there, meeting up with my wife and Destroyer. There was an obstacle course, face painting, make-your-own pizza, rideable electric dinosaurs, the whole shebang. I did worry that my kids will assume this is normal operating procedure in my office, but I suppose that’s not too far off a regular day for me.

Then after three hours of that we got on a bus and rushed home, and then rushed the girls out to swimming, and then home again, where I sagged onto the sofa, fantasies of going climbing in the evening colliding with the reality of being exhausted and having sore forearms. I guess lying on the sofa was the sensible choice after all.


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