Day 210 or “The Day I Return”
After nearly two weeks away, I finally return. The house is silent at midnight. Han decides to break the silence by singing us the song of his people. So, by morning I haven’t slept enough. This doesn’t matter to Stormy. Her excitement at my return is contagious. Although, she might be more excited by the presents I brought her. There is a visceral joy in opening conference swag for a 5-year-old. I almost didn’t need to buy her anything. But I did, and she loves her new space shuttle toy and clothes. She immediately puts on one of the NASA t-shirts I bought her.
And then the morning begins as though I never left. We scoot off to ToastBox and Sportsball. On the way, we come to a traffic light that everyone forgot to press so it’s stays red. It’s safe so I scoot across anyway. Stormy then proceeds to berate me for the next 5 minutes. “You can’t do that, you have to wait for green man!” she tells me. She’s right of course, which just makes her more insufferable.
After Sportsball we stop for Ice Cream and people watching. As they walk past, we tell each other stories about where people are going and what they are doing. Afterwards, we decide to go Trampolining so stop past the house the pick up our socks. Stormy, of course, refuses to leave the house again. I eventually coax her into the pool. I have a few errands to run so, after our shower, I suggest we have lunch at Ikea. Stormy decides that she wants to watch a movie instead. Her negotiation goes something like this:
“I’ll draw you a nice picture if I can watch a movie now. I’ll draw you a horrible picture if I can’t.”
“You don’t want that do you?”
I hold my ground and eventually she succumbs and we go to Ikea. She starts with “this is so boring, when can we go home”! However, she soon discovers drawers. And by that, I mean she runs around opening every cupboard & drawer from the office, lounge, bedroom and kitchen sections. She mutters “this is so awesome” under her breath about a thousand times. Along the way she finds a plushy cat which she picks up and starts cuddling. Once she names is, Nighty, I can’t get her to put it back. We do eventually get a late lunch before returning home.
I put on a movie and crash out from jetlag. At the end of the movie I help Abbi, who’s been fantastic at looking after Stormy for the last two weeks, down to the taxi rank. We bid her farewell as she leaves for the airport. We spend the remainder of the afternoon before dinner doing reading exercises and games.
It’s good to be home!
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