Day 28

L-L-Let me tell you a story.

Finn's class at school are l-l-learning all the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, and each Friday they send home a marvellous creation known (quite inventively) as 'The Sounds Book'. The Sounds Book is in fact a blank exercise book; l-l-lovingly wrapped in rainbow smiley face paper and covered in contact by Finn's devoted mother, with the aim of inspiring affection for it...

Each week, Finn's teachers paste a paper strip with the 'Sound of the Week' (insert 'L' sound here) to a new blank page. The unspoken agreement is that Finn, at some stage of the weekend, will hunt through magazines to find pictures of things that begin with that l-l-letter. He will then, in all of his five-year-old dexterity, cut these out and paste them into The Sounds Book, complete with informative captions. Thus, over the course of the year, the blank book is transformed into a beacon of l-l-linguistic l-l-literature.

In reality, what happens is this: On Monday mornings, Finn's distracted mother discovers The Sounds Book in his schoolbag, where it has l-l-languished in self-indulgent l-l-laziness all weekend. What then ensues is a frantic dash by Finn's demented mother, through the increasingly sliced up pile of magazines to find anything, anything at all, that could be contrived to be beginning with the Sound of the Week (this morning some very suspiciously cocktail-like beverages clasped by bikini-wearing celebrities and snapped through a telephoto lens were cheerfully passed off as 'l-l-lemonade'). Finn's deranged mother, by now running ridiculously l-l-late to work, then packs away The Sounds Book for another week and sets about getting the children out the door, while Finn, delightfully unaffected by the need to participate in this ritual, happily chants whichever creative ditty has been assigned to the Sound of the Week ("LICK-ing a Lollipop, Lick Lick LICK! Lick-ing a Lollipop, Lick LICK LICK!"). Until the following Monday morning, when it b-b-begins all over again.

Sadly, Finn's demotivated mother has been as yet unable to break the unfortunate cycle of The Sounds Book. Monday mornings remain a tribute to the educational adage that parents do the l-l-lion's share of the homework. She has, however, been suffering all day l-l-long with the L-L-L refrain imprinted on some deep, primal, pre-coffee part of the brain, resulting in a strange sort of brain echo whenever anyone uses an L-word.

It's been a l-l-long weekend, and I must apologise for the l-l-lack of blog action: I'll just say this - everything went to crap.

L-L-Literally.

So now that my traitorous gastrointestinal system has been brought back into l-l-line, I'm picking up where I l-l-left off. It may only be fifty-seven days of digging in, now, but rest assured, those three days were taxing enough in their own special way. I don't feel the need to elaborate.

And, I think that despite neglecting just about every other item on my l-l-list, I have finally worked up a permanent cure for L-L-List Item #4 'Sushi Eating'. Not a problem, any more, ever. If I ever eat sushi again, it will only be after a l-l-lobotomy.

M xx

P.S. OTT, but who the heck managed to convince Toni Collette to do that new ad for the Commonwealth Bank? Blackmail, for sure.