Wordy Wednesday

It’s piano day. That means I should not be lying here scrolling through facebook and considering whether or not to read any of the interesting things people have linked. I should shove over this snoaring child and leap up, opening curtains, turning on lights because opening the curtains won’t do anything against this daylight that looks like twilight. I should shove my pile of money into the Cora of the little brass Malian statue so that I don’t have to make eye contact with the piano teacher. I should get on the coffee and tea and wake up Gladys, who always goes first, because we finally established a fixed order after no less than two years of constant bitter fighting about whose turn it was this week to go first and last. Then I should creep up stairs before she gets here and take a shower because my hair is standing all on end and when I don’t, and I have to open the door, and she looks all breezy and yoga thin and supple, and I look like a washed up troll in a bathrobe, it’s just another opportunity to hate myself. And then I should try to make my bed while the children plunk out ghastly little songs in such a way that the fact that they didn’t practice enough, or at all, is completely unavoidable to me and to the teacher and to the whole world, but not to them, because who cares. It’s just a lesson. It’s just my parents hard earned money poured out like water upon my laziness. And then I should go down and face the laundry and the chaos it has become in the last two days with Matt being horribly sick and Elphine not having energy because this cold keeps circling in on her, just when she thinks she’s kicked it, and flattening her again, or maybe she also is being lazy after all. But I won’t actually make it down there. I’ll fry myself an egg and sausage and steep a new pot of strong black tea and I’ll sit down in the office, for just a minute, and three hours later I’ll finally stand up and curse myself for being such a failure. And then we’ll finally start our school day, thirty seconds before everyone starts complaining about being hungry for lunch. And that will be it, piano day done for another whole week.