The Joys of Working From Home Posted by Matthew

My wife left me at 8am this morning - she has appointments in  town and left me with the younger kids whilst the older ones went to school.  It's a busy day for me today as my laptop died at the weekend so i'm busily updating my new laptop with all my backups, a tiresome process.  It's also Monday - Monday is the day where every client I have dealt with over the past week gets back to me wanting completion of the last 7 days work. 

Generally Mondays are fairly mad days.  Mad Mondays as they will now be known.

Behind me the kids are currently playing in several litres of cat litter they decided to spread across the floor, I did catch them as they spread the 3rd litre across the floor but as there was only a few grams left in the bag it was almost pointless to try and take it from them.  Instead I got the hoover out to clean up the 5 gazillion grains of cat litter now spread around the house.  Meanwhile whilst I struggle with the hoover they found the margarine in the kitchen and are now painting their faces and livingroom walls with it.  I gave up on the hoover which doesn't seem to want to clean up cat litter and wiped off the margarine from hands, faces and walls.  Now time to find the brush and shovel for the cat litter.  Where she keeps it I have no idea and I have now given up and gone back to work, leaving the floors like a minefield of small clay grains which I am fairly sure are going to cause scratch marks in our lovely wooden floor as the kids use it as some kind of ice rink. 

The phone has been ringing off the hook all day (crunch) and yes, almost every time it goes the kids get into a fight.  I am now spending half the day in the bedroom with my back to the door and on the phone to a client apologising for the screams of murder from the hallway.  They seem very understanding however I can hardly hear a thing over the screams and whatever it is they wanted I said please email me the details.

3pm comes - now the older kids have arrived back.  One wants a BB gun from Amazon, the other has homework, and they all love to annoy the ---- out of the smaller kids to the point where their screams can be heard 15 miles away.  I tell them all to be quiet as i am working and please not to ask me so many questions about quad bikes, bb guns and general stuff they are not allowed but will pester me about on a daily basis regardless.

Tilly found the bed time pants box.  We now have the insides of bed time pants glued to the shower walls and I have a funny feeling she has been dipping them in toilet water (unflushed) to act as a gluing agent. (Davina's going to kill me).  I don't really care any more. Instead i am going to ignore everything that is going on and just start praying Davina comes back soon.  I've given up on work for the day and am instead going to bang my head off a wall for 30 minutes in the hope it will render me unconscious and as such oblivious to all that is going on.  I have even opened a beer to dull the pain and am considering a crack habit.

The 2 boys have been home from school for 30 minutes now - they don't get on.  I have broken up several fights and threatened them with going outside in the snow with no jackets for the rest of their lives but they never take me seriously.  I have gone hoarse from shouting at them and am starting to think that there is something about physical punishment which probably works.  The phone is still ringing - I've given up on answering.

If anyone would like to taste the joys of working from home, before delving into it i suggest being left alone in my house with several hours of work to do on a laptop which is not set up to work from and several bottles of valium.

I better go - I think judging by the noises they all got turned into zoo animals.  In fact, I may go and build some cages to house them in so I can get back to work.