Ah, youth

It’s a beautiful thing, waking up to the Scottish Highlands. Highland cows tromping about the highland grasses, with highland expressions, while some highland sheep nearby just look high. Wake up with a coffee (as long as it isn’t that Nescafe shite,) and sit out on the mossy hill, watching the fog pouring its way around the mountains. I wish every morning here was like that.

But not today. Today, my morning began with the face smoosh from a 4-year old’s chocolate-smeared hand, and accented by a high-pitched shriek of joy (on his part of course.) It was like getting healed by a midget televangelist sponsored by Nutella. Praise the lord, and pass the ammunition…I’m probably going to shoot this child before the day is out. With the devilishly sadistic innocence that is childhood, I half-believe that he’s read my prior rant against Nutella, and just wanted to remind me, performance-art style, of his own views on the subject. The half-dozen flies that I hear and feel circling above me every night are psyched at the chocolate shrapnel smears that now dot the sofa around me.

Of course, that’s only one of the trio of adolescent awesomeness that literally abounds at every waking moment here. It’s not yet noon, and yet the youngest one has successfully found time to wail 7 times for mom. She could be sold in the auto department at Best Buy with her child car-alarm wailing, one of those popular ones that change intonations just slightly every four stanzas. Maaaa, maaaa, maaaa, maaaa, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mom, mom, mom, mom….Meema, Mamu, as long as it’s got the letter “M” and a couple vowels, it’s workable material.

Something in the refrigerator smells bad, and I have to keep myself from thinking about rotten dead meat, and then rotten dead baby, and then…well, wondering how far I could escape after my murderous rampage. The odds are in my favor, with no internet and scant cell reception in this glen. Evil thoughts make me smile.

The kids must’ve found out the short, but intense laundry list of things that I abhor, and have made a week-long routine of them, extra special for me. The youngest one is running in circles, singing the theme song from “Mamma Mia.” All those musicals out there, and she’s singing this one? At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up tomorrow morning, being force-fed apple skins, and forced to walk on nail clippings. She doesn’t have any clothes on, which is their standard M.O., but she’s got some pretty unique self-made Crayola marker art that has her looking like a cross between Braveheart and the living canvas of a blind amateur hippie.

It would seem that any attempt to involve food in this post is being completely subverted by these carbon-based torture instruments. Let’s go pick some wild garlic down by the river, I think. There’s even a few buckets in the yard to do just that. Seems all too easy…until I find that Mr. Nutella fingers has decided to answer the call of the wild in said bucket.

I need to escape to the tea rooms and post this. While I firmly believe that we need less people on this planet, if I don’t leave here soon, I’m going to start supporting my own cause. Murder by urine-soaked bucket….could be a first.
Let the Scottish experience begin…..