Nice Day for it

Nice day for it, sez Tony Fenton on Today FM at precisely 2.50pm this afternoon.  I was playing bald vulture with a chicken carcass (more on this anon) and I thought, nice day for what exactly, Tony.  I didn’t pause from ripping pieces of meat from the dead bird, but I did have a little think.    Considering that the sun hasn’t stopped shining (thank you, thank you, oh thank you) since Saturday, that’s a pretty good start.  Today I only had to issue mild threats to lock the doors if the Screecher Creatures didn’t leave the house to play outside.  It was so nice that Mister Husband decided the umbrella for the garden table wouldn’t look out of place so that was erected during lunch time.  When the Screecher Creatures see this flapping in the March wind, they connect it with summer and that to them, means picnic time.  I decided to go with their summer feeling and as it was something I have been meaning to do for a couple of weeks now, pizza was on the cards.  Homemade pizza.  From scratch. To say we, as a family, pissed all over The Walton’s and those on The Little House on the Prairie today, would not be too much of an understatement.  Talk about homey, self-sustaining, telly free and outdoors-y.  But back to the pizza.  Feeling very puritan and virtuous of late, I had already made the sauce for the pizza so the dough was next.  Yes, also from scratch.  I’m telling you, Sophie Dahl, Rachel Allen and their ilk were only in the ha’penny place today.  Listen to this next bit.  Whilst the dough was proving, if you don’t mind, I took it upon myself to fly a kite with the boys.  And I actually had fun.  So much so, petulant cries of “mammy, when is it our turn?” started up.   The Creeper Crawler, since getting his provisional licence (crawling only.  Full license will be issued when he takes his first step) is dead nuts on escaping when he sees a door left open.  I’ve had my work cut out for me the past week keeping tabs on Those Who Like To Leave Doors Open, as it is a real possibility that Creeper Crawler will take a tumble out of either the back or front door. But today I arrived at a nice solution.  I put the old trampoline base on the ground and covered it with a blanket, plonked Creeper Crawler on it and he was in his element.  Snotty nose and all.  The perfect view point from which to watch the kite in the sky and those on the trampoline.  Look, you would be sickened if you had to listen to me much longer so take solace in knowing that after approximately three hours of This Wonderful Life, reality came crashing back down.  Yes, it was a nice day for it and then the pizza arrived.  Out onto the garden table.  The made from scratch one, the one that I tore today’s roast chicken carcass apart for, and different cries started up.  “I’m not eating that!”  “It tastes funny.”  “Is that broccoli?”  Ungrateful little…..         Before I could say “eat the bloody pizza” a row broke out over the Y bike.  At least I was back on familiar territory.  I wondered briefly how Maw Ingalls would have handled this one.   Within the next half hour there was a foot placed none to gently into the throat of another, a row over a different bike, a fracas over the trampoline, a scuffle over a packet of chocolate chip cookies and a couple of mad dashes to scoop some stones out of the Creeper Crawlers eager mouth.  “Mammy, I had a lovely day,” Screecher Creature told me later on and even threw in a quick hug for good measure after I made him hot chocolate.  I was coming over all warm and fuzzy again.  But just to keep me and my feet firmly on the ground, this charming little conversation took place before bedtime.   Screecher Creature No. 1 again. “Mammy, I can do exercises in gym like you.  Look, this one is for my back.”   I agreed that he was very good and doing his exercises well.  He wasn’t finished. ”But you won’t be able to do it, Mammy.  Only children can do it.  And skinny people.”  Oh, thanks a bunch, Con.  Am I not skinny now? Two and a half stone lighter, I hasten to add!   “Ah, you are, Mammy.  You’re getting skinny.” Very gracious of him but then Screecher Creature no. 2 chimes in, “Yeah, you’re getting skinny, Mammy.  But you’re still spotty.”  It was a nice day for it I suppose.