Well Stayatworkfatherofthree is certainly glad March is over.   Let’s see, arrived in Bangkok on March 9th and within a few days Mum calls me from Australia to report her computer and online banking had been hacked, then Dad passed away and not three days later Cyclone Debbie skirted around the coast putting us all on notice.   Set up the mahjong table in the bathroom with our cyclone kit and first aid box, every plastic container we could find was filled with water (since used to wash dishes and water plants).

Not all bad news.  Was elected President of the Parents’ & Citizens’ Association (PTA for Nth. America) at the Island school and coined a monumental sound bite that I will elaborate on in another post as it will be the cornerstone of everything we do this year.   Those two things alone propelled me through a whirlwind accounting nightmare I had previously left in Bangkok last November and our colleagues’ spirits were all lifted by the ease with which their leader handled each obstacle without a raised tone.

Stayathomemotheroffour returned to Thailand with Charlie to finish selling our apartment so we can move closer to getting boat and living on the sea.    She has been gone two nights out of the 29 nights she will be away and the boys finished Term 1 yesterday so the house is a bit of a disaster already.

Nevertheless, never shy to accept a chaotic environment to tame, we had hotdogs for dinner last night and watched the LEGO movie for about the 40th time, laughing our way through dirty clothes, growing pile of dishes and litter of cyclone preparations no longer needed.    Woke at 4:30am and surveyed the manor with a cup of black instant coffee and a pipe or three of Davidoff Specialty Blue mixture.

By 6am, when our drought induced water restrictions allow us to use a hand held hose for an hour, I had dragged out the massive green hemp living room rug from IKEA Thailand to our back yard and started to hose and scrub all the baby formula spills and squashed banana away.   Have you ever tried lifting a wet 4m x 3m rug onto a kids climbing gym?  See above picture and note the two (2) classic green banana lounge sun beds required to spread it enough to dry today.

Pancakes for breakfast with the boys in between washing machine loads and then finished mowing the front lawn by 10:30am ready for fruit cordial and biscuits morning tea with Alpha and Bravo.  By 11am we were having a video chat with Charlie and Stayathomemotheroffour as they had arrived safely in Bangkok at around 22:30 last night.

Boys are now flipping through volumes of free supermarket recipe magazines tearing out things they would like to make for school lunch and home meals.   They are about half way through 19 of these and picking mostly dessert ideas with some sandwich options.   It is a start and enough to get a shopping list together for our trip to the mainland tomorrow.

There are good reasons why I am a Stayatworkfatherofthree, although homemaking with my two wonderful sons is not one of them.   Time to hang out the towels and finish mowing the edges in the backyard while I ponder how to flip the rug over on the climbing gym without a ten foot spatula.