The Best Use of a Morning Off

By working a half-hour later every day and taking a half-hour lunch instead of an hour, I am able to take advantage of a 'compressed work week', which basically means I have every second Friday off.  Today is that day.

It's a good opportunity to get things done which are inconvenient or time consuming on the weekend: banking, shopping, the bathroom cleansing, et cetera.  Often it is a chance for me to get in some 'me' time by playing a video game, or sometimes watching a movie no one else in the household is interested in (and you'd be surprised just how many of these there are) (or maybe you wouldn't, come to think about it), or lately, catching up on some painting.

Waking up to the radio newscast and wishing I didn't have to get up, and then realizing that I don't , and then rolling over and going back to sleep is the second best thing to do on a day like this, but that isn't what I did today.

I've been inexplicably waking up around 5:00 am every day for the past week (with one exception), and been unable to get back to sleep.  Since I was up when Audrey and the girls were getting ready for school anyway, it gave me an opportunity for my favourite flex-day activity.

Fenya and Audrey staggered into the kitchen to feed the dog and get a bowl of cereal (no, as far as I know, the dog has never gotten Corn Pops instead of kibble or vice versa) when I asked them which would be better, pancakes or waffles.  After a short discussion, it was decided that regardless of relative appeal in terms of taste and texture, pancakes were a better fit for our timetable, so I started grilling them up.  While they were cooking, I was able to get a pot full of Diamond Mountain from Transcend Coffee brewing as well.

15 minutes later, Fenya and Glory had set the table with plates and cutlery as well as maple syrup, homemade apple butter, jam and brown sugar, and were able to start tearing into a stack of flapjacks.  I scrambled up some eggs with crumbled bacon and cheese because I don't like the idea of them starting a long day without protein of some sort, and then joined them and Audrey for breakfast.

The girls had an altercation two nights previous, so Audrey and I had forbade them talking to each other or interacting in any way, but after speaking to them individually last night before they went to bed and exacting the required teargeld, they reconciled easily this morning.  We all talked about what we thought the day had in store for us, and agreed that in terms of setting out from the right place, sitting down to a hot breakfast together was vastly superior to wolfing down a bowl of Special K individually while reading the paper.

Grilling breakfast is something I regard as chief amongst the dadly arts, and our weekends are usually frantic enough to make it difficult to pull off then, between various rehearsals, practices, church, and other commitments.  Besides, making a hot breakie for my wife and daughters is only my favourite thing during the week, when there is still a timetable to be followed.  On those rare occasions where there is nothing scheduled until afternoon, it is not unusual to find the girls joining us for a lie-in, and you can usually find Nitti in there as well.  Nothing gets accomplished on these mornings (unless you count laughs or cuddling), and it usually means cold cereal or instant oatmeal for breakfast, but that's an easy trade to make.