Mamalade

“My Morgan”

“My Morgan!” Hayley clasps the teddy firmly and looks challengingly at Miles. Hayley is a stirrer.

Of course, Miles reacts. Morgan is his special bear who shares Miles pillow at nightr, comforts him when he is sick, and accompanies him to scary places – like doctors or hospitals.

Miles gets frustated when Hayley disrupts his games. Today there was a bit of a tussle when Miles brought out his walkman cassette player to show me.

“When I want to play it,” he said, “I hide under my bed, then Hayley can’t find me.”

Little sisters can be pests. But brotherly love wins out in the end. This week, Hayley got her hand caught in a door and Frances had to take her to the hospital for xrays in case the bones were broken. Hayley came home distressed about the splint on her hand.

That night, Miles tiptoed in to Hayley’s room, with his favourite bear under his arm.

“Morgan says he’ll sleep with Hayley till her hand gets better,” he told Frances.

It must have helped. Hayley’s hand is a bit bruised, but she’s using it normally and it’s going to be fine.

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Twinkle, twinkle

I’m sure no club has meetings like our World Vision meetings. Someone always seems to inject a note of hiliarity into our business session. This week it happened when someone excused themself to go to the toilet. That prompted another member to tell about an incident…

“I was shopping with my friend,” she told us, “and she said she had to go and have a ‘twinkle.’ I stayed and browsed through the shop for a few minutes, then I went on to meet her at the toilet. When I went in, I could hear someone having a ‘twinkle,’ so I sang, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star!’

Then the door opened, and out walked a total stranger!”

“Do you know whose birthday it was yesterday?” I asked Miles. (My 5-year-old grandson.)“Whose?”

“Olive’s!”

“Did her friend’s come and visit?”

“Well,” I said, “when I was gardening, the ginger cat came from over the road and Olive and Oscar chased him up the footpath.”

“And were they wearing party hats?” asked Miles.

I really enjoy my two grandchildren. The other day I brought Miles here in my car. He said he knew the way, so just to trick him, I detoured along a couple of back streets. The trip from their house to mine would take less than 5 minutes. When Miles got out of the car, he said, “I’ll have to go to the toilet – it was such a long trip!”

22- month-old Hayley is always happy to stay with me. Last time I minded her, I said to her just before Frances was due to come home, “Mummy will come back soon.”

Hayley sang, “Mummy come back, quack, quack,quack, quack!” I laughed as I realised she was thinking of her favourite song, “Five Little Ducks.” You know, the one that goes – “Mother duck went quack, quack, quack, quack and only four little ducks came back!”

Hayley was seated at my computer looking at pictures of herself when Frances was ready to take her home. “We’re going home now, Hayley,” said Frances.

Hayley didn’t even take her eyes off the screen. “Bye, Mummy, see you later!” she said.

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My next door neighbour has been away this week. He left me his house key so I could go in and get the food for his cat, Squeaky. He had divided Squeaky’s food into meal-size portions and put it into used yoghurt containers.I’d rather not go into his house every time I feed Squeaky, (she eats outside, anyway) so on the first day, I took the cats meat out of his freezer and brought it home and put it in my fridge.On the third day, I opened the yoghurt container and found….. Raspberry Yoghurt! It had already thawed for a couple of days, so I couldn’t refreeze it, so I replaced it with a new one. Our local shop only had Strawberry Yoghurt. I wonder if he’ll notice the difference!

We’ve had a few storms lately. Last Sunday we had hail. I don’t think the hailstones were quite as big as golf balls, but they were pretty big and would have caused a lot of damage if there had been a strong wind.

Joel and Frances had to go out on Sunday, so they left Nelson (their Corgi) with me, because he is afraid of storms. (He hid behind my bed during the storm.) He stayed overnight, which meant the cats wouldn’t come in until about midnight when they knew Nelson was bedded down in the laundry.

They always wait until I’m almost asleep before they decide they really wanted to be out. First, Oscar demanded to be let out, then half an hour later when I was getting dozy again, Olive decided she wanted out, too.

The rest of the night went something like this:

1 a.m. Olive howled at the window till I got up and let her back in. She jumped on my bed and swore at Ingrid (who sleeps at the foot of my bed) before snuggling up against me. Purr, purr!

2 a.m. Oscar howled and scratched on the door till I opened it, then he ran away down the stairs. I went back to bed.

2.15 a.m. Oscar howled at the door again. I got up and let him in. He jumped on my bed, smacked Ingrid, and rolled Olive down the hall. Nelson barked.

I tried to sleep, but Oscar kept jumping on me till I put him out. After I got back in bed, Olive decided to go out too. Nelson barked.

3 a.m. Olive howled at the window till I let her in again. She went straight to the litter tray and used it.

3.10 a.m. Olive went out again and Oscar came back in. Nelson barked.

4 a.m. Oscar jumped on me until I put him out again. Nelson barked.

4. 30 a.m. Ingrid started to throw up. We almost made it to the door in time. Luckily, it was just a small furball. Nelson barked.

4.40 a.m. Nelson still barking. It was almost daylight, so I let him out into the back yard.

4.50 a.m. All the neighbours dogs barking. Nelson had started up the neighbourhood orchestra. I brought him back in again.

5.30 a.m. Ingrid rattled the front door and demanded breakfast. I tried to ignore her.

6 a.m. Still awake, so I got up. Oscar came in, lay down and slept all day!!

I think those animals are getting a bit spoilt.