Five minutes peace

After my run this morning I experienced one of those rare moments of being alone, in my own home, with nothing particularly urgent to do. Drake was at the swing park with Duckling (I'd popped by to say hi mid-run), and would be there for at least another five minutes.  The silence felt both golden and alien. As any parent will know, such moments are as rare as hen's teeth, and are to be savoured.

Except I did what I always seem to do in the brief, fleeting minutes of guaranteed peace I knew I had. I got overexcited about the endless possibilities open to me, flapped about and failed to accomplish anything. It went something like this:

Ooh! Five whole minutes! Maybe ten! I should really have a shower, but... I could write a blog post! Or upload all those photos to Flickr. Does anyone still actually use Flickr? No, I should be good and clean out the fridge.  Or should I put all Duckling's old clothes in the loft? No, wait, I should design the new kitchen! Where's that pad of squared paper? Bugger it, Drake's put it back upstairs. But my laptop's here... Do I have time to churn out another chapter of the novel?... No probably not. OK blog post it is.

Where's my phone? I had it like two seconds ago... Ah here!... Oh for Christ's sake, flat battery again! Right, charger... Charger?...

- Rummages down side of sofa -

Ah ha! How in the hell has it got this tangled up since yesterday? Drake is right, the 'snake pit of doom' is quite an accurate description for my side of the sofa...

- Swears at knotted charger cable before finally straightening it out -

Wait, what the hell?! How did the charger port get full of bloody sand? Damn it, must have been when Duckling shovelled half the playground sandpit in my lap earlier... How am I going to get this out? Pin? No cocktail stick would be better... Where are the cocktail sticks...?

- Much crashing about in kitchen drawers -

Located! Now if I can just tap one out of this little hole here...

- Cocktail sticks scatter all over floor as the lid comes off -

OH FFS! 

- Cocktail sticks are angrily stabbed back into their pot -

RIGHT!  Phone! You are out of there sand! Just a little flick there... Give it a blow.... Bit more flicking... Has it welded itself in there? ! Come out you bastard! COME OUT!

- Phone flies across room and violently disassembles itself on the floor -

GAH!

- Phone reassembled, charger forced in with a crunch* and phone switched back on. -

Right, I probably have one minute... Come on phone, load up... Load up.... Come on Blogger, load up.... Load up... Ooh, message! "Heading back, see you in a sec." Dammit!

- Door bell rings 15 times and small voice yells "Hello Mummy! Me go wings with Daddy, Mummy! Me see red woo woo!" -

And my five minutes peace was over, just like that. Items untangled / reassembled: 3. Meaningful progress achieved: nil. But hey, I did get a blog post out of it in the end.

*For those of you wondering, like I did, if the electrical current involved in charging a mobile would be enough to convert any residual sand to glass - no, it appears not. Disappointing I thought. Though good that I still have a functioning phone.