Fireplace - Michael Sheridan

Elizabeth has ordered some new chairs.  The boxes arrived yesterday.  They’re a little smaller than I was expecting.  When they arrived yesterday, I thought they were really well broken down for flat pack, and light too.  Wow!  I also know I wasn’t paying any attention to what she’d ordered anyhow.  In fact, the only reason I knew these were chairs, is that it was the third time I had coordinated with the courier.  Yesterday I dumped the boxes in the sunroom.

This morning, Elizabeth has opened one of the boxes.  Max is eating his breakfast.  He’s tipping his drink between cups.  He’s already combined hot chocolate, extra milk, extra water, Elizabeth’s tea and whatever else he could find.  He drinks a mouthful.  I've seen this before and am past cringing.  He pours it all to another cup.  He drinks again.  He tries to pour it over his strawberries.  I stop him as I walk past.  His cup is larger than the strawberry bowl.  It would not have gone well.

Max’s daycare has always said he is their best eater.  Meals are served there in batches by age group.  But if someone turns up to a different group, they’re allowed to eat then too.  Max is notorious for turning up to whichever is first and staying through three sittings.  These strawberries are his second breakfast, having had a yoghurt about half an hour ago.

Elizabeth is trying to get out the door to go to work.  We have a gas plumber turning up in about an hour to work on the fireplace.  We’ve been getting a fireplace installed for what seems like the last six months.  It should be ready for summer at this rate.  Today, the manufacturer has sent a replacement for the computer unit.  Whatever!

“If you leave now you can get me a coffee and still be back here in time”, she says.  This is normal for a Saturday morning, as the coffee shop at the hospital is not open on the weekend.  And it keeps Max contained in the car seat while he eats his third breakfast.  Some savoury ham pastry from the coffee shop.  He’ll come home and probably then top the three breakfasts off with a mid-morning snack.  This should get him through to lunch.

I’ve just noticed that the boxes with chairs, have plants in them.  Not chairs.  Elizabeth explains that she had also ordered a fake green wall.  The chairs are coming Monday.  Okay, I think.

Now Elizabeth is going.  So, Max and I are trying to be on the way out the door.  We plan to leave just a few minutes after Elizabeth.

I’ll let Max have a water in the car.  Occasionally, I experiment with hot chocolate or decaf coffee, but this usually is a short-lived phase.  He likes to pour drinks.  In the car this means they could go everywhere.  Or, he might just want to watch it all trickle out of the cup, and so it goes on to the carpet.  Recently, he learnt to pour it out the open windows and it goes down the side of the car.  It dries there and is sticky and hard to remove.

 “Max, get your leopard and go to the car.”

I go to find my wallet and keys.  Max goes to finish his drink.  Elizabeth is now gone.

One of the other things that daycare does, is to teach children what to do with leftovers and plates.  What Max has taken away from this lesson is that he should pour his leftover drink into a pot plant.  It is easy to teach him to pour stuff.

I get back with my things, and Max’s leopard, and I find max is pouring his drink into a pot plant.  The new one in the cardboard box in the living room.  The fake plastic green wall.  I send Elizabeth a photo captioned, “Max poured his drink into a plant.”

She phones me, on hands-free from the car.  She is somewhere between total horror and hilarity.  We agree to put it outside to drain.  Then I try again to get Max into the car.

We get the coffee to Elizabeth at work and make it back in time for the plumber.

Max goes outside to play with the hose on the upstairs veranda.  Just outside the living room.  I close and latch the door near the hose, as I normally do, so he can’t bring the hose inside, and set the door at the other end ajar so he can get in when he’s done.  The plumber sets up in the living room between the fireplace and the door at the other end.

The glass comes off.  The rocks come out.  There are little piles of screws everywhere, and bits of the metal chassis.  Dave (not his real name), the plumber, is examining the new computer unit to make sure it’s the same as the one he’s replacing.  Max has a drill.  There are three separate moments of terror as first I notice, then Dave, then Dave’s teenage daughter.  I separate Max from the drill and whisk him off to another room.

It turns out Max had come inside because his pants were too wet from the hose and they had started to fall off.  I get him changed.  He goes into our bedroom to play with Elizabeth’s hairdryer.  I go to turn the hose off.  The fireplace is coming together and has started working.  Dave stays for a few minutes to test it, then, happy that the jobs done, again, he leaves.

I report back to Elizabeth then check on Max who has moved to a different hose.  This time the one on the bedroom veranda.  I close those doors to keep the water out.  Dave has gone.

Heading back to the living room, I find that the fireplace is out, the remote is reporting an error and there is a blinking red light in the display panel.  I report this to Elizabeth.

While I’ve been texting, Max has managed to find a bubble gun and a bottle of fluid for it.  He’s got the cap off.  Luckily, there’s a foil seal. 

I herd Max outside, tear the seal off the bottle and pour some of the fluid into the dish.  I take the gun from Max intending to show him how it’s used, but the batteries are flat.  I hesitate for a moment and Max takes the open bottle of bubbles and slowly pours it all over the ground.

I stop to think about how to clean this and Max goes inside.  Deciding it’s easier to abandon the bubbles for now, and hope he gets them with the hose later.  I get back inside just in time.  He’s in the fridge again.

He has a cup of murky water, probably his breakfast cup from earlier.  He’s topped it up with milk.  He’s drinking and pouring and drinking.  I put it all back in the sink and start with two fresh cups.  He seems happy.

Realising that I have about forty-five minutes until Sam, Max’s therapy assistant, will arrive, and knowing that Max needs a change of scene now, it seems like a good idea to take a drive for another coffee.  There’s a coffee cart about ten minutes away.  Maybe Max will eat the rest of breakfast number three.

I wind Max’s window down and turn his side of the car toward the cart so we can watch each other.  He is eating.  He pours his water bottle out the window.  That’s why he has water, I think, cuckling internally.

We get back home with a few minutes to spare on Sam arriving.  In those few minutes Max has managed to get to a hose again and is soaked.  Again?  This will be clothing change number 5 today, but thankfully Sam is here to take over for a while.

Max and Sam are going to go to the trampoline park, and then a playground, and then lunch.  I’m going to ride my bike and switch off for a few hours.