Is it only the Family Nowak beleaguered by what my grandmother used to call The Black Dog at the moment or is there some kind of rampant miserablism going around? I'm keen to blame it on the weather/season/husband/cat, but who knows? To be fair, describing it as a combined family condition is probably unreasonable. It could be, well....... just me.
Finje never has a truly bad mood. Finje's states of being are:
Chipper in a cute way (my personal favourite)
Chipper in an exasperating way
Chipper with a hint of irritable
Chipper in an "actually I'm tired but attempting to remain chipper" way
Tired
I was naively proud of my imagined ability to hide my grey days from Finje, fancying myself on a par with, let's say Meryl Streep when it comes to Oscar winning performances. That would be incorrect. And a Mumfail.
They know. They might not necessarily altogether care but you can be sure.... they know.
Last week, after a detailed examination with a plasic stethoscaope, she announced that my head was not in Ordnung. "Hhmph" grizzled I, "Out of the mouths of babes".
In a pathetic attempt to thwart the oncoming Mumfail, I begged to differ, but she had me bang to rights.
These were Finje's solutions:
1) To keep telling me she could "very gut English speak" but not actually doing it
2) To pick flowers from neighbours garden having become bored of daisies from our lawn (Charlie Dimmock I am not)
3) To comb my hair with the cat's tick removal comb
4) To "allow" me to read her "I wish I had Duck Feet" thirteen and a half times (last cut short by merciful toilet break)
5) To tell me not to worry because she is never going to leave home
Bless her and all that but numbers 4 & 5 were not overly helping the cause.
She achieved succeess in the end. That afternoon in the supermarket as I was grumping around wondering why kids not old enough to know who the heck Kurt Cobain was, should feel the need to don Nirvana T-shirts, when I noticed she was involved in an animated exchange with an elderly lady. I entered the scene at the point where the poor unassuming woman had just asked Finje what she wanted to be when she grows up.
Answer?
"I want to be a rhinoceros skin doctor!"
Now that did cheer me up.