just gotta be Monday
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This morning I left the house on time with Kenny on my arm. We were bound for the daycare, and I had everything: his shoes, his cycling helmet, his bag with spare clothes and diapers and towels. Everything but my own shirt.
I discovered it when we got to the first landing of the stairs. So, back upstairs and take off my shoes and set down the things I was carrying (but not Kenny, because he'd run all over the carpet with his dirty shoes on). I found a shirt, and managed to pull it halfway on while juggling the boy.
Then we were outside again, and on the stairs when -- we spotted a 'semi'. It's a Japanese cicada, and they're just hitting the point in the season when the first of the poor things no longer have the energy to mill about calling for a mate. They make a hellish din during all of this, but I for one really don't mind because a) it'd be hypocritical and b) it means it's the middle of summer.
So I stopped to show Kenny the cicada. Carefully setting him down again, I set aside the bag of daycare goodies and picked up the cicada. The things have a body that just looks like an odd assortment of armoured plates, a formless shape that looks hastily built. They have some nice colours, though, mostly hints of green amid some dark-and-light greys. With longish legs and 5-6cm wingspan, they are quite a specimen to see and Kenny regarded the thing silently as it crawled around on the back of my cycling glove and then up onto my wrist.
Scooping him and the daycare bag up again, I got down to the mosquito free-fire zone where we keep our bikes. Only to release that I'd left the child seat's strap upstairs. I'd been carrying the padding, but not the restraining strap. Ugh.
So I set the dazed semi on the ground and we went back upstairs again, and then quickly down with everything.
We quickly started feeding the bugs while I wrestled with the padding for the child's seat (we'd got it wet in the rain the day before and I'd taken it out to get dry overnight). Getting the seat in place meant carefully feeding the restraining straps through the seat and padding, and then affixing the padding itself to the seat. All the while I was watching Kenny to make sure he wasn't trying to eat the semi. I had to retrieve him once when he ran off after a cat, but that wasn't too bad because the cat went behind a fence and Kenny more or less stayed where he was among the bushes and mosquitoes.
Slinging the daycare bag over the bike handle, I put Kenny on his seat and strapped him in. Slapping all of the winged parasites from legs I hopped onto the bike and very nearly ran over the struggling semi which was still on its back. Poor little semi.
I got to the daycare on the late side but still before 09:00 and agreed with the staff that yes Kenny did have a mosquito bite despite my several attempts to wave them off of him.
Finally then it was time to do the errands I had lined up, then back to home.