So Close

Is it ok to tell little white lies to your spouse?

I am a very bad liar.  Not because of any particularly deep moral sense of right and wrong but because the effort of having to keep up pretences is more trouble than its worth.  And I actually don't like being deceitful.

Having said that, I know there is a place for little white lies.  Answers to "do you like my new hair cut" or "does my butt look big in this" sometimes require a little creative accounting when it comes to honesty.  

I try my best never to lie to my husband.  Firstly because I am not very convincing, secondly because he ALWAYS seems to know if I am not telling the full version of the truth and lastly because I don't believe deceit has any place in the relationship.  

*Note: My husband is not nearly as averse as I am to little white lies or distorting the full version of truth and will happily NOT disclose to me exact amount he paid for his big screen super-duper fuel-injected new TV. "It wasn't expensive". or "It was a good deal". Yeah right buddy. It was probably ridiculously expensive!!  He doesn't lie, he just chooses not to tell me everything. He feels that we operate on a need-to-know basis.  He needs to know everything, and I need to know nothing. 

Today we had a little incident at home. Max knocked over our brand new lampshade and it broke into pieces.  Rose and I froze in horror. Our first thought was "Marko is going to FREAK OUT!"  Marko is very, um, careful? protective? caring? anal? about his/our stuff. You can always buy a second hand car from Marko because you can be guaranteed it will be in excellent condition. No scratches, no broken door handles or sticky stains on the carpet. And it will still have all the original packaging. Marko is always moaning about how the kids ruin / break / scratch / damage everything. Sometimes when he is really cross and he wants me to have hateful thoughts about him, he says "I am the only one in this house that cares about our things" which is crap and annoying and only very slightly true. I also care about our stuff but I am not quite as anal.

Anyway, Max broke the new lampshade. We knew Marko would not be happy. Rose volunteered to take the fall but I said that I would do it. But I knew Marko would be able to tell immediately that I was lying if he saw my face, so I thought I would email him. Let him get over his pissed-offness before he got home.  But then when it came to it, I couldn't do it. It would have been a lie to say that either myself or Rose had broken the lampshade and I don't want him to think that I would lie to him. 

I decided to be deliberately vague so that I didn't lie but I also didn't get Max into trouble:

Me via email: "The one new lampshade in our bedroom is broken (kaput), knocked it over by accident, SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I thought that was quite clever. I was just congratulating myself when I got his reply:

Him via email: "Who knocked it over?"

FARK.

Me: "Does it matter?"

Him: "Yes. If it is was any of the children, you are covering up for them. If it was you, it was an accident"

Me: "It was an accident xx"

No reply. We will see what happens when he gets home tonight. Hopefully by then he has calmed down. I will have to distract him somehow....

So, after that loooooooooooooong intro - here is my question: Do you think it is ok to tell a little white lie? Would it have been ok for me to take the fall for Max? To pretend it was me who knocked over the lamp instead of Max? It really was an accident that it got knocked over. (He was swinging his lion around and the lion hit the lampshade and the lampshade toppled over. Could happen to anyone!)

Would that have been an acceptable little white lie or not? Is there such a thing as an acceptable white lie in a relationship?

Sleeping in on our first day of school holidays

Today is the first day of school holidays. (Well actually, its the last day of school term but I never send my kids on the last day as school only last for 2 and a half hours and they play games and stuff. I am NOT getting up early and making them put uniforms on just to play games for 2 odd hours).

Getting the kids up, fed, dressed and at school in time is not my favourite activity. Plus I get stuck in the stop-start traffic coming home. Plus it is dark and cold and really, it's not a huge amount of fun. 

This day couldn't come soon enough, this has been a looooooooong term. I am not sure why. It just feels like it has been a long slog. Maybe because the weather has been revolting, I have been extra busy, it was a very busy term in terms of extra murals etc. Anyway, I have been looking forward to being able to lie in a bit and avoid the horrible early morning school run.  

Last night I told Marko "I am looking so forward to being able to lie in a bit tomorrow morning and take it easy".

You know how this is going to end, right?

Last night at inthemiddleofthenight O'clock, I felt a tap on my head, like I do most nights.  I don't even pretend to argue anymore and I just open up my duvet for Max to crawl in.  Except that this didn't feel like Max (bigger, bonier) plus it could talk: "I had a bad dream". Ok, Kate.  She is the one that sometimes has bad dreams. Although she usually picks Marko as her go-to middleofthenight person.

Anyway, I shifted up and went back to sleep.  But my guest in the bed was wriggly and annoying and after he/she elbowed me in the chest I thought bugger that and at about godknowswhattime O'clock, I got up and went to sleep in Kate's lower bunk (she usually sleeps in the top). I reached for the top bunk and grabbed her pillow to use. That is when Kate suddenly sat up and said "Mom! What are you doing here?"  

Great. I had the wrong twin in the bed. Now I had one awake child plus another in my bed. 

"Sshhh, I am having a sleep over in your room. We will cuddle in the morning"

And off I went to sleep again.

A few minutes/hours/days later (time melts into one when you are NOT sleeping), I felt another tap on my head. It was Max. I sighed (sobbed), lifted the duvet and he crawled in. Max is a more familiar guest and I managed to sleep for a while (seconds? minutes? maybe even an hour!).

And then it started raining heavily outside and I had Kate next to me telling me that she thinks it is hailing and could we cuddle now.  She was about to climb in next to me when she saw Max "What is HE doing here?" she asked with much disdain. "I don't know Kate. I don't even know what I am doing here"

My biggest concern was waking Max because when Max is awake there is no rest for anyone, so I carefully extricated myself from the bed (which is not easy when you are on the bottom bunk of a double bunk, against the wall with a sleeping 4 year old next to you.) I thought about cutting off some of my limbs in order not to wake up him, but I managed to get out successfully.

Kate and I then went to go sleep* in Max's bed (the bottom bed of his double bunk), while Adam slept in my bed, Max slept in Kate's spare bed and Marko snored his way through all of the above. (*By 'sleep' I am using the figurative interpretation as Kate wriggled and rolled and kept asking me if I was awake yet)

Eventually at 6:20 I gave up and said that Kate and I could get up. "Yay!" she says, "can you make me some tea?".  

I wonder if 6:20am is too early to have wine. 

It has been a great start to our school holidays! I feel relaxed and refreshed already. 

Marko and the baby birds

I am not a massive animal lover. I respect animals and I believe that their protection is very important (I abhor cruelty to animals), but when I donate money to various charities, I always choose the charity that supports people (children/ old people / lifeline etc) first, before animals. I always choose the hungry child over the hungry dog.  I like people more than I like animals.  (Marko is a HUGE animal lover.  He would always choose the hungry dog over the hungry child. And I think he likes animals more than he likes most people.)

We have lovely trees outside our bedroom window and a young dove made her nest there recently.  Marko and I have been watching her build her nest, sit on her eggs and then hatch two little babies recently.  We keep our distance as not to startle her and the babies. I have been feeling quite maternal towards them, watching the babies grow

Tonight Marko came into my study in distress. The storm that we are having in Cape Town has dislodged the nest and the babies are on the ground in the cold and wet! (You see, this is why I don't like to get too attached!!).  Marko is now outside in the pouring rain, fashioning come kind of protective device to protect the baby birds from the elements while still making them available for their mother to feed them. (Poor Marko said he lay awake last night thinking about how he could strap an umbrella to the tree to protect the birds when the storm came. Unfortunately the storm came before he could do his MacGyver plan.)

Poor little babies. I can't stop thinking about them and wondering if they are ok. Nature can be really tough. (Also, I love that my usually tough, stoic, sometimes-terribly-annoying, stubborn husband has such a soft side. I am quite fond of him. Mostly.)