Home at 1830 bearing pouches of fishy cat food, coupla cans of chopped toms, Wiltshire ham, "C" batteries, you know the score. Pleasing kitcheny smell of freshly cooked pizza pervaded, but that wasn't all, oh no, that wasn't all.

Wifey was coated up and heading out to (yet another) skool mtg, leaving yours truly to deal with the remaining pizza slices -- yum -- plus:

• Middler sulking upstairs having fallen out with her departing mother over what to wear for the up and coming Victorian day,
• Eldest fretting over latest maths homework -- not too bad -- then switching to a fret level of onze re French devoirs ("I can't do it", "I'm rubbish", "Bruno chasse le facteur", etc),
• then the cerise sur la tarte in the form of a phone call from a fraught wifey: hi, sniff, I've scratched the car, sniff, again, sniff

Oops. Spilt milk. It's only money. Take a look in the morning.

Meantime the male 40 per cent of the household calmly proceeded to prepare a shoe box of goodies for Operation Christmas Child. Was pleasantly surprised to witness The Boy's apparent non-material bent, happily packing the box with a bouncy ball, toy car, stationery items and his now-too-small woolly Spider-Man hat. We chaps, you know, we just get on with it.

Later, for some light relief, looked up wifey's biorhythms for today only to read this:

Today your barometer of emotions is jumping from high to very low. Take it easy and have a cup of tea; tomorrow is another day.

Now-now-now-now now-now-now-now (that was the Twilight Zone theme).