Saturday, January 13, 2007

Afternoon Aspirations

Parents all over the country are probably deeply regretting some of the presents they bought their little darlings. I know I am.

Bladeracers are the source of all that is frustrating and hair-pulling as far as this mother is concerned. It looked a terrific pressie on Vente-prive.com and at a super price too. Pah! Next time I'll just stick to pressie lists and not try anything so clever as surprising them with a super exciting circuit made of crappy transparent plastic tubing held together with ill-fitting plugs.

Had I paid the original price I would have been livid. I started trying to put the circuits together at 3pm. By 4pm I was losing the will to live and by 4.30pm I had succeeded but just felt too wasted to enjoy my victory over Nikko's sadism. Plastic tubes have to be joined and fixed in the right way to make a metal circuit which, when plugged in, makes a track upon which little cars shoot around fired by an infra-red beam. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Some of the tubes were cracked, the connecting plastic plugs don't really fit and putting them in place entailed much cursing and breaking of fingernails as they refused, then fell apart once together, and then refused to come apart when I realised I'd put them together back-to-front after they'd fallen apart by themselves.

My youngest was keen to help, but all he could do was offer moral support as there was nothing his little 5-yr old fingers could cope with. Although he did put the batteries in the remote controls, and open plastic packets of bits (which I hoped we would not promptly lose, as is our wont. One bit did get lost, but that was because it looked like a bit of packaging from a light sabre and went out days ago in the General Post Christmas Clean-Out).

The pièce de résistance, however, was the at moment of truth when remote controls were raised, ready for action; their batteries in place and eager boy faces a study of concentration. Zap! The cars took off and promptly came to a halt. I had to undo plastic tubing to fish them out and start again. Zap! Stop. Tubing. Zap! Stop. Tubing.

I was getting a little annoyed. The boys were frustrated and started muttering words such as 'Chinese', 'crappy plastic', and 'let's go out to play', whereupon they abandoned the track and raced outside with their Star Wars light sabres to wage war on enemies known and unknown. (Nikko would have suited me as enemy n°1)

I had a cup of tea and tackled making leek and potato soup as a way to rid myself of the stress that was careering round my system. Previously I had marzipaned the Christmas cake so it was not a totally wasted afternoon. Shelves have been put up in the utility room too, though not by me. I'm not superwoman!

This evening, I plan to be relaxing with a DVD of Narnia. I loved the books and am looking forward to be amazed at the graphics. I love the digital age!

2 comments:

  1. after harasing or hard working Saturdays aftenoons, a good DVD is better than Valium! Mine was a bit scary - Stephen King!

    ng

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  2. Stephen King? Good grief, I wouldn't watch that for toffee. Much too scary for me? 'The Sixth Sense' is as scary as I want to go. Yeah, I'm a wimp :)

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