31-05-16 Weather of the Gods

Tuesday 31st May 2016
Weather made for the gods’ pleasure today: warm, sunny, blue skies, whisps of fluffy white clouds, cooling southerly, breezes under the pines. Definitely the ideal climate to enjoy south-eastern Attica’s waters…and an icecream cone afterwards.

No matter how I try, and how many mornings I get to practice, it is still impossible to get out of the house before noon. Again washing our clothes and dried items put away. Again, Kingsley taking two full hours to eat. Today it’s two slices brown bread with butter, then veal sausage, then an egg. Necessary because we go for hours, and today we do just that: firstly a swim in the deep end, next play with Vasilâki and his gramps, then walks to the fig tree, then play on the rocks, then Kingsley calls out ‘Nani-nani’ while erroll and I chat, so under the pine tree’s shade we sit for an hour while he passes out and I develop dead-leg.

The boy deserves a piravláki ( mini magnum cone) and his favourite place to buy it from is the perîptero (pavilion-kiosk). Today Kingsley pays the idioktîtis his €1 and is given in return the cone. With a face full of icecream, our grocery shop together is whine-free.

What next: shower, screaming in protests due to hair being shampooed, like a horror film scene, that much panic in his eyes, throat, lungs. Takes a long while to calm him including tactics of breastfeeding under the running shower, telling stories of our day, making him giggle, allowing him and only him to declare when we are to get out of the shower. Next our daily ritual out on the balcony: the anticipated lunch picnic! Today we have olives, tomato, cucumber, paximáthia, chicken biftèki, and an egg.

All this means only one thing: late afternoon nap for two hours and once he is awake at 8:30pm, we are at it once more: feeding and playing. Tonight he gets patatoûles and the rest of the chicken biftèki. Nothing goes to waste. We get out to the playground late but it’s filled with kidlets even at 930pm, so he runs with his new squad.

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