No day can be pointless, can it?

One of those days you get to the end of, and you think, 'I made it'.

It's not Tiger. She's calming down. That seems to be the opportunity for Squirrel to be flexing her pre-teen muscle by rolling her eyes, crossing her arms and saying 'whatever' before exiting the house with a few dozen door slams.

I do not know where she gets this from. We do not own a TV. We watch DVDs on the computer and that's it. They don't say 'whatever' in Ice Age, do they? If they do, I may have to write letters.

I could say she gets it from the kids she mixes with. Only we haven't mixed with that many in the past month, and the ones we have met are lovely, well balanced funny kids whose parents home ed because they care deeply about stuff like rolling eyeballs and whatevers. So it's not that.

I blame Disney. Yeah, I blame Disney. It cannot be me. I am sure I have never said 'whatever'. Well, not with the arms and eyeball combination, anyhow.

Of course I tried to address the situation by buying a ball set. That seemed like the sort of thing to do. Badminton, tennis, sticky ball things. All in a pack with balls down at the second hand shop. I thought, Co-operative sport. Team games. That should fix it.

Only within fifteen minutes there's an almighty fight over the sticky balls, enough screams to be heard in Beijing and arms going like windmills with Dig forcibly separating the co-operative team players.

It doesn't get any better. For the rest of the day Dig mopes about with his face in his hands telling everyone how he once heard a father of twins say that you can tell one twin off for doing something, she stops and the other one starts doing the same thing. So you never get a break. We all looked at Shark.

But no day can be wasted, right? So I'll say that the outcome of the day is a reminder of the 3R rule - Responsibility, Resourcefulness and some sodding Respect - and, as Squirrel was heading for a grounding to the year 2030, we now have a reward sheet in the house. We tick it to reward responsible decision making. For which read, when your sister offers a provocation, put your arms down, close your mouth, decide not to take her up on it. Get a tick. Get 10 ticks, get a visit to Ice Scream in the IFC mall for the lotus paste delight.

The other outcome of the day was as Dig opened the fridge door with the dodgy shelf, his bottle of white wine sprang out and threw itself at the tiled kitchen floor. As that delicious fragrant grape seeped into his socks, he muttered 'I can't take any more'. That's my line. I think we must have bonded.