Attack of the Giant Tulips

Another lovely day. While Mrs. Ottawacker remains in Sundridge, we found ourselves unable to celebrate Mother’s Day with her. Until, that is, we called her – and she told us she had had enough of working on the house (they are trying to clean up her dad’s house for sale) and was coming home. The problem has been, as ever, not setting parameters for shared tasks. Mrs. Ottawacker had slept over at the house with one of her sisters, while her brother had gone to stay with another sister down the road. Mrs. Ottawacker had been up at 5:30 scrubbing walls – while other members of the family had rolled in at 10:30. “I didn’t drive 5 hours to sleep in,” she said, quite fairly. The problem is, though, unless you agree in advance that this is what you are going to do, wires can get crossed, and tempers frayed. (Or, in the case of Mrs. Ottawacker’s side of the family, lips get pursed and conversation is reduced to a minimum.) Anyway, the upshot of the conversation was that they were coming home a day early and I was to pick her up from her brother’s in Kanata at around 3.30.
 
Having pointed out, rather timidly, that I had to drop Ottawacker Jr. off at his goalkeeping practice at that time, that his session was only an hour long, and that it wasn’t really a good time to do it, I heard the lengthy, rather eloquent silence at the other end of the phone and said I’d do it. It’d mean driving 60 km through congested streets and blocked highways, but I’d do it. Brownie points in the bag, I settled down to watch the Liverpool versus Arsenal game (interesting, frustrating, irritating), made Ottawacker Jr. some lunch (cheese and ham omelette), and then cleaned up evidence of our Chinese takeaway. Then I drove Ottawacker Jr. to his practice, filled up with petrol, drove to Kanata, picked up Mrs. Ottawacker, drove back to his practice (arriving only 10 minutes after it had finished) and then went home.
 
Then, while they showered and I sorted the laundry, I cooked dinner, listened to the tales of woe from the weekend, was told how happy Mrs. Ottawacker was to be home (and we to have her home), and allowed Ottawacker Jr. to stay up late to watch an episode of Doctor Who. Parenting, it’s a doddle.
 
I realised, later, that I had not taken a photo of the day. Thankfully, Ottawacker Jr. had. On his morning jaunt around the city’s bus and train routes, he had paid a visit to the ongoing Tulip Festival, and had managed to catch sight of the world’s largest tulips. Either that or he had seen the Lilliputian coaches arriving and taken a sly picture.