Given our swell idea of hosting a party for all the neighborhood kids of a certain age, I thought I should try to get a rough estimate of just how many kids that would actually be. Harder than you might think. These kids move around a lot. I need them to all just stay put for a minute, at THEIR own house, in front of their yard, and let me walk by and count them.
Instead I see them here, there and everywhere. Sometimes they are at home, sometimes they are at a friend’s house, and sometimes they are living for a while at their grandmother’s, or at another relative’s. It isn’t at all clear.
I don’t even know where my neighborhood would officially begin or end; since I walk across the entire village to and from work, I have “neighbors” that side too. And Erto and his family don’t live nearby, and they are definitely invited.
I have just about decided it will be more than 100 kids, if they all came and if they tell their friends who I didn’t happen to invite, per some oversight. So the plan is definitely no meal, just fruit and drinks and sugary treats to send them in circles and then home again.
Call me crazy. Yeah, that ship has sailed. I realize this will have to come out of my “slush fund” from home, rather than my PC allowance, which is meant to keep me in sweets and treats, but not hundreds of kids.
The whole thing will hopefully give my Girls something to plan and look forward to, as well as the opportunity to “share” me with others who weren’t quick enough to claim me. They are a bit protective of and territorial with me, I have noticed. Some of it is about them getting treats and being able to hang out in a relatively nice house, away from their families, siblings, and potential chores that need doing. Some of it is that they have actually grown to like me and respect me as more than someone who does all the aforementioned.
But they keep a watch, to be sure, and share me with one another on a seemingly “truce” kind of status. They got this brilliant idea when it got really hot last week that they should have me freeze water bottles in my freezer and one of them would come by around 6 am and pick them up. I used to get up at 6, so I had to start getting up a few minutes before and change out of my sleepwear into clothing I could actually walk outside wearing. But Sisi has since totally fixed that by waking me up consistently at 5 or 5:15 every morning. She is on the “its burning daylight” theory of things (this means that when the sun is up, you should be up) and I don’t think she realizes it is too hot for me to go back to sleep, or I am sure she wouldn’t do it. At any rate, I am up and dressed now by 6, but that isn’t my point. It’s so darned hot, I forgot my point.
Oh yeah. So they bring the bottles back in the evening for refill. For a while they would just throw them over the fence and I would find them when I got home. (The bottles that is.) Lately though, I have been coming home at different times and am discovering that they actually wait around a bit to see if I am coming home and if I am, they want to come in and fill their bottles up themselves. And get a drink of water, or tea, or hot chocolate, or whatever small treat I can give them before I kick them out.
One day, two of them came first and I kicked them out with a piece of fudge each. Then the third came along just as they were leaving. She came in, got her drink of water and piece of fudge and I kicked her out. Well, the other two girls were waiting to make sure she only got one piece, just like them. Fair is fair. And I don’t play favorites because they would kill each other and that would be awkward.
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