The Road to 40 Day 110/365: Early Arrival

Vino knows about my blog, and I asked him what he would put as the title if he were to make his own blog for the day. I made it into the title of today’s blog.

Just before 6am, he was squeezing himself on my space in bed already. I know the time because I took a peek. This usually happens when he still wants to sleep. I wanted to take note of the time so I can tell him later.

He didn’t fall asleep though. After trying his luck with certain positions, he gently tapped my cheek to wake me up. I opened my eyes to see a wide-eyed Vino looking at me as if saying “let’s get up, I can’t sleep anymore.”

We got up and I had him settled on the sofa first while I prepared breakfast and his stuff for school.

I let him watch on his tablet this morning because we were in no rush anyway. There’s a school of thought that would say this is not ideal, but that’s why we have different schools.

We had a lot of time, so I was able to wash the dishes before we left. I had the idea of taking public transport going to school for an experience. I know for a fact that the school doesn’t open its gates before 8am, so it would not make sense for us to take a cab.

The last time we were early, our cab wasn’t allowed to go inside, so we alighted near the gates. We even had to queue because they weren’t allowing anyone in yet.

This time, there were not a lot of people yet. As we walked up, he was so happy that it wasn’t crowded at all and no one was rushing him up the stairs. At 7:50am, we were already at their canteen.

Vino’s bag is really heavy because of the books he borrowed, so I told him I’d take him upstairs to his room.

He was happy to be the very first kid there.

We went down to the playground, where barely any kids were playing because it was so early. I stayed on so that he can have someone with him while he waited for his friends to arrive.

Soon, a guy came down with a football and goalkeeper gloves and asked if Vino could kick shots to him. I told Vino to learn from the guy. He was in Year 6.

Now that he had a playmate, I was practically non-existent, so I said my goodbyes and left.

It was still early when I got home even if I took the bus. It was almost the time that I’m waiting for a bus from Vino’s school going home. With a lot of time on my hands and a lot of things to do at home, I did what anyone would do – sleep.

I feel a bit guilty knowing I still had stuff to do, but I figured I can do them later and still have time to spare before picking up Vino.

When I got up, I started clearing some stuff in the kitchen. There is still some work to do there, but I cleared some cups and bottles that we don’t need.

Honestly, there are a lot of cups we don’t need. There’s only three of us and about 20 mugs in our cabinet. But, some of them are for visitors when they come, and some are just cute, like the olaf teapot and cup.

I was suckered into buying it at Coffee Bean a couple of years back. It’s not that he was a good salesman, I just also found it quite nice. Che sounded off, so we got it.

But we actually have a teapot that can serve more people, and it actually has small cups. This doesn’t have a practical use because Che is a coffee drinker and I’m a juice drinker in the morning. Yet it’s here, and it is still going to stay.

Still, I was able to clear some of the water bottles no one is going to use. I’ll get on the condiments maybe next week. I looked at the pots and I realized they had specific functions for me, so I couldn’t dispose any of them. Some of the knives have to go though.

Seeing the time, I had to go and pick up Vino already. He asked to play football again, but I said we should go because he had football practice.

After tidying up a bit, eating some snacks, and washing his lunchbox, I got rice ready so that it was cooked by the time we got home. Unfortunately, my brain registered the fact that I didn’t turn on the rice cooker when we were in the cab already.

At least, his football gear was complete, with both my basketball and his football with us.

When we reached practice, it was a full slate of kids, with two new recruits. Our old coach was out, I’m guessing because he was attending coaching classes.

New dude was a bit more stern, which I think is good. I honestly feel that I’d lose my patience with these kids if I were in his place. But I’ve been with the team long enough to be able to tell some of the kids they should listen to their coach when I see them being unruly.

After watching some of their drills, I went to do shooting drills of my own. I haven’t been able to run or play basketball recently, so I’m just trying to pace myself for when I can do either one soon.

The kids had a game, as always, and one of the dads told me that the coach wasn’t watching the game and didn’t even call fouls. From my observation, he was looking to boost the confidence of one of the key players, and everyone else were just pieces in the bigger puzzle he was building.

Ultimately, the kids had fun and they were able to play a high-scoring game against each other.

I planned on cooking up a frozen dish Che and I got at Jewel the other day, but Vino asked if it was possible to order 4Fingers. I initially thought of rejecting his idea, but I remembered we didn’t have rice. So he won.

We are now at Ant-Man in our Infinity Saga journey. There weren’t a lot of things to clean up, so it was fairly quick once we finished eating.

He already took a bath, so we were in bed before 10pm. It took a while for me to find his nasal spray, but after applying it, we were ready to sleep already.

After his experience being the first kid in school for his class, he asked me to wake him up at 6am again. However, I told him it’s a bit late for that as it was closer to 10:30 than 10pm.

He pulled up his blanket and turned to the side and it didn’t take long before he was fast asleep.

It’s relatively still early from his usual sleep timings, so I’ll see how he will wake up tomorrow.

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