Poor again

I got back from Austria/Switzerland to find the children and Irmie in ruddy health as usual. It's a wonder to me how Irmie juggles all this household stuff in my absence. It's bordering on a miracle that she doesn't complain about it very much at all.

And then the sad realization strikes me that maybe the reason she copes so well in my absence is because I do so very little beyond making more mess while I'm here.

Irmie is always genuinely staggered when I forget to give Esther and Julia milk with their Vegemite and toast (you can take the girls out of Australia, but you can never take Australia out of the girls) at breakfast time. She doesn't call me a bad father, but her amazement that I am able to forget this says enough.

I noticed today that Irmie also had mown the lawns while I was away and managed to keep my tomato plants alive - something I fear I will not be able to do in the coming days and weeks even though I have to look over them every time I peer out of my office window.

Of course there has to be a down side. I just checked our extremely modest portfolio of mutual funds and discovered that while Irmie has been cleaning teeth and carpets and cars, she has allowed our wealth to shrink by about 15 percent in the three weeks I was working my fingers to the bone eating lightly grilled venison in the Austrian Alps. This sounds bad (the financial loss, not the venison - the venison was fantastic), but fortunately given the state of our finances that 15 percent equals about 100 euros.

Now I'm back, I pledge to feed and water the girls every time I remember it, to avert stagflation in the US economy and to bring down the price of a barrel of crude to about $50. If I have any time left after that I'll mow the lawn.