We are exhausted!  In fact, our post this time may be late and a bit ‘thakela’ (that’s a new word we’ve learnt).  Responsibilities sure do increase as one grows up.

So, you put the pieces together.  There are the pictures and there is the update on a regular day in our lives.  Just put the two  together to form a coherence (that’s another word we picked up). The first one has been done for you. This post will make as much (non)sense as you make of it.  Here goes …

The early bird gets the worm but not clean water.  Unless we first scratch the birdbath clean.

Once the day breaks, there is no break for us.  The most difficult task inevitably is getting Mom to sit in one place.  She is constantly buzzing around and we have no clue where we are supposed to be.  One just about flops down and off she is like a whirling dervish.  She does not realise no chores will get done without us. We barely figure out her directions when our navigation systems are stymied by the cleaning lady.  Do we help with the sweeping, or the mopping, or then the dusting?  So we divide ranks and do all three.  It’s exhausting, the coordination.

We invariably find ourselves running between the indoors and the outdoors.  Things don’t happen in a way designed to rest our little legs.  We still have to figure out why the birds are not fed at the same time as the plants are watered.  Why can’t Mom decide to tend to the same part of the house when we are in the mood for it?  Then she complains about the number of times she has to wipe us. Parents!

We often find stuff behind sofas and under beds when we delve into hidden areas (usually to finish chewing something we know Mom will go all soprano to see in our jaws). Stuff that makes us sneeze (and get caught). Interesting as the stuff is, we decided after some consultation that it has to go. Sadly, it doesn’t always.  One day we realised why – the cleaning lady cuts corners – literally.  So we put our heads together again and came up with a Plan.  There is an inverse relationship between sizes of paper and cleaning them.  The tinier the bits, the more the cleaning skill that is required.  Now some areas are either cleaned to our satisfaction or the cleaning lady gets her head bitten off for missing them.  It was our little secret test until Mom’s brother came for a visit and tripped on to our little game.  He slipped us an extra tit bit for our ingenious Cleaning Assessment Plan.  So fired were we by this appreciation that we have now taken it upon ourselves to inspect behind all the curtains in the house too, tugging them every once in a while to check for suspicious objects.

Then there is the laundry.  Folding clothes trailing from Mom or Big Sis’ arms is – is – delectable!  Nobody folds clothes the way we do.  And Mom could never wrap her sari round herself if we didn’t do it for her.

Sniffing the aroma as barometers of the appetising-ness of what is in the kitchen, helping Mom to start the laptop, transporting the scrub from bathroom to bathroom to ensure each bathroom is sparkling (can’t understand why Mom hunts like crazy in a bathroom for one when all five are lying together snugly in another), knocking Mom down with a jump to let her know that the monster machine has finished the laundry and is making awful sounds … there’s just zzzzzzzzzawawaw much to do in a house.