Day 12: tech support, baby ninjas

Someone said to me around the time that la p'tite was born that when you have a baby, the baby itself is the most amazing wonderful thing ever, but that it will make the non-baby rest of your life speed off to hell in a handbasket in a most expeditious fashion, and, you know, it is kind of true still even though we are nearly ten years in. I am feeling a pang of sympathy for all the hapless IT helpdesk employees I have inflicted my forgotten passwords on over the years: literally every time that I got on the phone to start a phone visit with a patient yesterday, something would go wrong with the digital school setup and I (me! ha! the universe is laughing at the thought) would have to provide tech support. There's also the random injury factor (we were playing Baby Ninja Training Academy out in the garden, as you do, and I added a couple of really pretty spectacular exemplars to my bruise collection), the cooking factor (a pot of chili will feed me for the whole weekend; however, when she's around, I feel this inconvenient compulsion to provide somewhat varied nutritious meals, which turns out takes some time and effort), and the chore factor (I wanted to get laundry and seed starts done, she wanted to play Baby Ninja Training Academy; I got the clothes into the washer but not out of it, and half the seeds done, so I'm counting it as a draw).

She is, however, good for a laugh, which is nothing to sneeze at in these trying times: as we were falling asleep last night (I know the Good Mummy Handbook says that kids should sleep in their own beds, but you know what? fuckit, coronavirus) she was telling me jokes.

Q. What goes on and off and on and off?
A. An on-and-off machine.

Q. What goes on and off and up and down and sideways?
A. An on-and-off-and-up-and-down-and-sideways machine.

etc.

Speaking of tech support, she also had a virtual playdate with another child from her class, who is not quite the alpha-dragon that madam is, and the conversation went like this:
Her: Let's play Ninja Academy.
Other kid: How do you be a ninja?
Her: You spin your stick around like this, then you do ninja-y things.
Other kid: What's ninja-y things?
Her:
Other kid: Are you just going to read?
Me (shouting from other room): Don't read when you're on a playdate with another kid! That's rude!
Her: OK, OK, OK, OK, I said OK.
Other kid: Have you ever noticed how many letters sound like ay? K, J... may, play, day, lay, say...
Her: Do you want to draw dragons?
Other kid: I used to be really good at drawing dragons. Now I'm terrible. How do you want to do it?
Me (off-camera): do you want some paper and pens so you can draw, and then you can hold the drawings up to the camera and show each other?
Other kid: can we use whiteboard?
Her: What's whiteboard?
Other kid: Here, share your Zoom screen with me, and then at the bottom of your screen you can see the whiteboard icon, then you click on whiteboard, and then you can use whiteboard to draw...

We had Zoom dinner with grandparents & trophy BF last night, which was a little bumpy to get going but ended up being very successful and I think we will do it again soon, and then madam had another chess game with her grandfather snuggled up with the computer next to the fire, which was all kinds of cute, and I fell asleep with my cup of tea and my book on the sofa.

It feels a little bit like a long-haul trip via steamboat from Victorian England to some farflung colonial outpost, this coronavirus thing: steamships are safe enough that you are mostly assured that you will arrive at your destination, but there could well be some crocodiles along the way, and it will take months to get there, during which time you are stuck with just the other people on the boat with you, and there's not a lot to do but wait, and for those of us lucky enough to be travelling second-class, play tiddlywinks or shuffleboard or shipboard cricket or whatever the hell they used to play, and go for walks along the deck and hang over the prow of the boat singing "The Heart Will Go On," at least until the hospital gets back to us about working  the shifts in the Emergency Department once the storm really hits.