Mr Woog and I found ourselves away for the weekend. Just the two of us. It was a great way to end the 2 long, long, long weeks that made up the school holidays from hell. Hell because the Winter Holidays coincided with the peak of my kids totally irrational and abominable behaviour.
Did you know that an 8 year old boy has a hormone surge around this age, rendering them completely horrific? Grunting and back chatting, peppered with occasional crying bouts. Mood swings greater than Sean Penn going through menopause.
Lord give me strength.
But back to our romantic getaway.
Sitting at the airport waiting to board our flight away and I am rabbiting on about this and that while Mr Woog tried to read his book. He nods and grunts occasionally before closing his book and suggesting we "Try to synchronise our social time."
What the fuck does that even mean?
Turn out it means that I am to shut up when he is trying to read.
I question him about this anti-social attitude and then.......
HE LOWERS HIS ARM LIKE A BOOM GATE AND TELL ME IT IS A SHIELD OF SILENCE. THAT ANYTHING I SAY WILL BE REFLECTED OFF THE SHIELD OF SILENCE.
The Shield of Silence got quite the workout over the weekend. I also discovered it deflected nasty looks and death stares.
Over dinner one night, the shield of silence was left at home as we talked and talked and talked. Mainly about how other couples in the restaurant seemed to have the shield of silence placed permanently between them. Or they were mute.
Arriving back at the airport to return home, the shield came back with a vengeance. And when our flight was called, I immediately started doing what I do anytime a flight is called, and that is the dance of the rearrangement. Checking my boarding pass, turning off my phone, putting my book in my bag, realising that I had but the wrong book into the wrong bag, trying to find my mints, working out whether I should buy a bottle of water now, or wait until I get on board and pay twice as much for the same bottle of water...... you know the drill.
I looked up to see Mr Woog walking across the tarmac towards the plane. I had been abandoned. And it was at this time shit got interesting.
The lady with the scanner decided that my bag was too big and so I had to go and squish it like a bitch into that metal frame thing, which was not looking promising. Everyone else was now on board, and I was expecting to see Mr Woog running back in search of me. Frantically. Like from a movie. And we should run towards each other with the sound of police sirens wailing over the thunder of big jet planes. And have a big, big pash.
Nadda.
THEN, after I had squished my bag into the metal frame and took about 4 minutes trying to get it out, I was again held up at the departure lounge as another plane needed to fire up and get going. I stood there watching. A man came running up to the gate screaming "THAT IS MY PLANE! LET ME GET ON MY PLANE!" but the scanner lady just laughed a tinkling little giggle. I stood there with Mr Late for the Plane and pointed to my plane, telling him that that was MY plane but my bag looked too big and now I am holding up that plane. But I was fairly sure I would make it. Because his plane had to get out first.
Death stares. Deflected. Shield of Silence? Mentally activated.
Eventually I was allowed onto my flight and I kept my Shield of Silence up as I deflected more death stares from other passengers. Until I got to Mr Woog who had his head buried in him book.
"Ummmm, did you wonder where I had got to?" I asked.
He looked up and said "I did start to think maybe you had had a heart attack.."
"Oh did you? AND YOU WERE JUST HAPPY TO SIT HERE AND READ YOUR FUCKING BOOK WHILE I AM ON A FUCKING DEFIBRILLATOR IN THE BACK OF A FUCKING AMBULANCE?"
"I thought you could just get the next flight......."
And there, standing in the isle in the middle of the packed plane, I raised both hands and lowered them in a DOUBLE SHIELD OF SILENCE, which remains in place even until this very moment.
Apart from that, we had an excellent weekend.
