Planning, doing, achieving

We are preparing for the arrival of Aunty Dee. Her presence seems weeks away, but if we don't get on with it, she will be here and staring mournfully at the state of the floor wondering what possessed her to travel several thousand miles to be asked to sleep there.

For the arrival, we must:

1. Buy a bed. This will involve Ikea. Me and Dig will stare glumly at furniture that we don't want and don't like while the kids run around in delight and tot up forty thousand dollars on pink plastic wall lights and furry flower rugs. Forced into making a decision on the bed because time is running out, we will put it to the Squirrel test. She is the only one who can be bribed to test each display bed in store as if it was her very own. In five minutes we can apply the equivalent of five years regarding durability and resistance to glue, scissors, footprints, and a cuddly platypus called Platty.

2. Look at the washing machine. The one in the cupboard that I have never used. It is time. Aunty Dee might have underwear that she does not want to see on a Facebook page set up by the local laundry woman who posts pictures of our smalls for the merriment of three million Hong Kong Chinese. To approach the washing machine I first slap on rubber gloves, and press its buttons with the end of a wooden stick. This is sensible. I have been electrocuted and I am not having that experience again.

3. Put up hooks. Behind doors, on walls, in cupboards, in hall. All kid coats, bags, hats and towels permanently live on the floor. Either buy hooks or charge entrance fees. We might be an early work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

4. Put it off for as long as possible, and maybe until she is on the airport bus to Central, but eventually squirt blue, white and green fluids around, hoping that by their very presence the collections of moulds, dirts and unidentifiable marks will simply get up and go without the aid of cloths, brushes, or me.

5. Strap the broom onto the handle. It came off after the kids took it to the roof and used it as a pole vault.

6. Find some miracle cure for the ongoing curtain problem. Honestly, these curtain tracks are rubbish. Sticky tape, string, and staring at them in a menacing manner are no solutions.

7. Resolve to sweep the floor every day. Yes, I will do that. No I won't. Yes I will. Could we hire a maid for two weeks?

8. Be resourceful with cardboard boxes. These inexplicably mount up against the walls. I fancy they appear overnight, almost as if brought by fairies. I have an aversion to throwing them out in case I can build a table from them. I am sure I once saw a craft book about making attractive furniture from cardboard. I would very much like to have a go. The fairies are trying to show me the way.

9. Make Dig do stuff. I don't know. Just help. I have run out of all strategies, like self piteously saying I do it all, when this is clearly not true and I do none of it.

10. Buy place mats for the dining table. For the last two months I have employed sections of beach mats and pieces of cardboard because somehow buying place mats was like making a commitment to living here. I deny it, but I cannot expose Aunty Dee to a piece of cut up beach mat stuck together with dried alphabet pasta. Let us not forget what is her main employment.*

* Social worker.