One of THOSE days

ISo, yesterday was an equally terrible and rather nice day. I got Daisy off to kindy just after 7am, and it was already ridiculously hot outside. Not as hot as the day before (+42C), but still promising to go well above +30C. I am over it, it's relentless, the humidity is stifling and the forecast does not predict much relief in the near future. 

I called the gym crèche to check if the air conditioning was working for once. Because it's not the kind of weather in which you in good concience can leave a five month old baby in a non air conditioned space. 

If you know anything about children, you'll know that as soon as you pick up the phone to have a conversation, the noise begins. Clara was perfectly happy on my lap until the leisure centre receptionist picked up on the other end. That, apprently, was her cue to start wriggling and wailing. I had to ask the receptionist to please repeat three times without a chance of hearing the answer, and ended up saying "Oh ok, thank you!" and hanging up without actually knowing whether the crèche was air conditioned or not. I decided this meant the universe did not want me at the gym that day.

Instead I set up camp on the livingroom floor. I pulled all the blinds down to shut the radiating heat out, put pillows and blankets on the carpet for Clara and I, aimed the fan in our direction, and switched on the tv.

There we spent the entire day. Clara played, rolled, fed and slept in a continuous cycle. I watched documentaties, starting with "Blackfish". And I cried on behalf of the orcas, the trainers, everyone that bought into the romantic idea of training whales in captivity. 

Then I watched "Happy people: A year in the Taiga". And I cried at this because it was so very much like home. I could smell it: the forest, the river, the melting snow. Everything pulled at my heart: the squeak of the snow, the way the smoke from the chimneys rose in a straight line towards a faintly green winter sky, the lushness of the birch trees, the pike in the fishing nets. (Also, the fact that it was -30C in the Taiga and I have to endure over 60 degrees hotter temperatures upset me a little).

Then I watched Steven Fry travel around America, and at that point I was on a roll so I kept crying at the beauty of Maine, and Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and South Dakota. (Shame Trump is in charge of all that now. That's worth crying over too).

Clara didn't seem bothered by this odd way to spend a Monday. In fact, she is in one of those developmental stages that babies have, where she needs to be held and carried and fed almost constantly. So she was pretty pleased being right next to me, with the breast only a head's turn away all day.

All this lying about and crying was accompanied by all the fatty and sugary stuff I could dig out of the kitchen cupboards, so now I'm evening things out by actually sitting on the exercise bike at the gym whilst writing this. And for the record, the crèche AC is working today.