A/N Hello again! Hope those of you celebrating Thanksgiving had a great time! Here, I can tell Christmas is just around the corner because I got sunburnt hanging the washing out!
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
EPOV
I loved Felicia, but maybe I wasn't quite so fond of her when she appeared at the side of the bed at 5am and wanted to climb in too. I'd spent a good hour during the night repeatedly returning her to her own crib in an effort to get her to go back to sleep. Sookie kept saying that the key was to be firm, consistent and not let her think that being awake was more fun than staying in bed. I pointed out that I really wasn't having any fucking fun and Sookie was welcome to take over if she wanted.
Felicia just giggled.
Eventually though, she did fall asleep. Probably from sheer exhaustion. Once she was asleep it was hard to reconcile the sleeping child with the angelic look on her face with the tiny goblin who liked to run round in the middle of the night, chase Bob and empty cupboards.
But it didn't last, because now it wasn't quite morning, it certainly wasn't fucking anywhere near the time I wanted to be getting up on a Sunday, and here she was again, tugging at the bedcovers and saying "Up, Daddy! Up!" quite loudly, while Sookie lay next to me, pretending she didn't know what was going on.
"Felicia, you need to go back to bed" I said, trying to will myself into a sitting position, and failing miserably.
"Up" Felicia repeated cheerfully. She often gave the impression of not really understanding what was going on, but I suspected it was more the case that she remained convinced she was going to carry on with her original plan despite any objections I might offer.
And sometimes it almost seemed mean to try to convince her otherwise.
I managed to roll over to face her and prop myself up on an elbow. Felicia took that as a sign that things were progressing nicely and she held out her hands for me to help her up. I sighed and pulled her onto the bed.
"You've got to go to sleep if I let you in here" I said, as she climbed over me and wedged herself between Sookie and me.
"OK" Felicia said, crawling under the covers. Once she was settled I lay down again as well.
Then the wriggling started. Felicia's idea of going to sleep and mine were quite different. There was a lot of squirming and a small heel kicked me in the thigh several times. Fuck, she was as bad as her mother.
"Be still, Felicia" I warned her.
"Hmm. Up?" she said scrambling into a sitting position and looking around.
"Lie down."
Felicia just looked at me. Then she turned to look at Sookie. "Mummy, up time?" she asked.
Sookie sighed and rolled over. "It's really early" she said.
"Those were my thoughts, exactly" I agreed. Felicia sat between the two of us humming a song to herself. Then she squealed "Ah-la!" really fucking loudly.
Amelia stomped into the room. "You're all up" she said.
"No" said Sookie "We're not. We're trying to get Felicia to go to sleep."
"She's not asleep; she's in your bed. Why?"
"She climbed in" Sookie explained.
Amelia sighed, then climbed onto the foot of the bed and crawled up until she was sitting between Felicia and Sookie, who was moving ever-closer to the edge of the bed.
"Ah-la! Ah-la!" Felicia chanted, happy to see someone else up and about at this fucking ungodly time of the morning.
"Argh. Don't touch me like that Felicia! Mum! Felicia's poking me!"
"Felicia, just be gentle with Amelia" Sookie muttered.
There were a few moments of relative silence then Amelia asked loudly "What are we doing now?"
"Sleeping!" I said, probably more loudly than I'd intended but, fuck. Why didn't they want to sleep?
"No. That's boring. Let's do something else. I could tell you a story" Amelia said.
"No thank-you, Amelia" I said, hoping to cut her off.
"Oh. Um, well how about I tell Leesha a story. Once upon a time…"
"How about" I interrupted "I put TV on and you two sit there nicely and quietly for a bit?" I figured the drone of kid's TV couldn't be any worse than one of Amelia's long-winded stories and it might make them zone out.
I sat up and turned TV on and put it on the right channel. Only according to Amelia it wasn't the right channel, I needed another kid's channel. So I changed it. "Wot Wots" Felicia cried when I did and, stupidly, I thought this might keep them entertained for a bit.
They were quiet for about ten seconds. Felicia lost interest in the TV programme and started pulling my chest hair. "Daddy's nudie" she commented to Amelia.
"No he's not, he has pants on. Probably" Amelia sounded thoughtful.
"I do, and Felicia, that hurts" I told her.
"Sowwy" she said in a small voice. Then she braced a hand on the side of my head and reached over to grab the remote control off the bedside table. She pressed something that made the channel on the TV change which caused Amelia, who hadn't really been watching the TV anyway, to roar in indignation.
"Leesha! Don't touch that!" Amelia yelled, snatching it out of Felicia's hands. Felicia yelled back and made a swipe for it, but Amelia held it away from her. "Mummy said no, didn't you Mummy?"
"Mummy says be quiet now" Sookie said.
Felicia decided another attempt to grab the remote was a good idea. She stood up, but soon discovered that the bed wasn't a nice firm surface and she wobbled briefly, before sitting back down again, on my pillow so that her diaper-covered bottom was half across my face.
"Watch out, Leesha" I said, pulling away from her while steadying her with one hand.
"Sowwy" she said again, turning around to face me, having forgotten Amelia for the moment. She stroked my cheek. "Prickly" she commented.
"Yep" Sookie muttered from over on the other side of the bed.
"Uncle Calvin is too" Amelia added. "It's for sore bums."
"Prostate cancer" Sookie amended.
"Yeah, that" Amelia agreed. "I don't get how prickles helps that." Sookie and I were silent, knowing that any explanations would take a long time and would just lead Amelia into a whole bunch of random questions.
"Prickles" Felicia commented, stroking my face some more.
Then something plastic almost got poked into my eye. "TVs on the wrong channel. 'Cos of Leesha. Fix it." Amelia was trying to give me the remote then.
"Say please, Amelia" Sookie warned.
"Yeah, please."
I looked at the remote; it was hard to miss given that it was almost touching my eyelashes. I looked at Felicia, staring down at me from where she was sitting half on my pillow. I looked at Amelia, sitting behind her and leaning down waiting for me to do something. I sat up a bit and looked at Sookie, who had given up trying to sleep and was now staring at the ceiling.
"Who wants pancakes for breakfast?" I asked as I sat up and looked at the clock. 5.35am. Fucking fantastic.
"Me!" Felicia said happily.
"Are we getting up?" Amelia asked as I got out from under the covers. "I thought it was sleeping time. Mummy, are we getting up?"
Sookie was sitting up as well. "Yes we are, Amelia" she said.
"Oh. Well OK. If you really want we can get up early then."
I lifted Felicia off the bed and went to find a t-shirt to throw on. Sookie had disappeared into the bathroom. Amelia, realising she was in danger of being left behind yelled "Hey! Don't leave me!" and jumped down too.
It was going to be a very, very long day.
SPOV
After the stupidly-early start to the morning thanks to Felicia I was hoping the rest of the day would go fairly smoothly. I had been feeling pretty good the night before, due to the fact we'd actually written some vows, and maybe also because of the sex, but a night with the world's most nocturnal toddler had left me feeling a bit worn around the edges.
And that was before I'd tackled today's list of problems or the fact we were hosting a barbecue that evening for our friends.
And I wasn't even going to look out the window at the rain. If I couldn't see it, it might stop. You never knew.
Eric made pancakes for breakfast, which were popular, although I did wonder whether two small girls who were happy to get up at 5am really needed a sugar-high but maybe it would get us all through the morning. I just wanted coffee. Lots of it.
As I was clearing up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen Bob streaked through the family room making his 'I've got a really cool thing you'll love' noise. Shit. I hoped that wasn't a rat. For some reason they were always really easy to catch when it's raining.
"Eric!" I yelled, hastily drying my hands. "Eric, can you find Bob, he thinks he has something cool." I knew if I said rat Eric would suddenly disappear as well. He was really not fond of the rats.
"It is kind of something cool" Eric yelled back. "It's like a…mutant cockroach or something."
My stomach lurched. No, I thought. Not today.
Fucking Bob.
I followed the sound of Eric's voice into the living room and stood in the doorway. "Um, it's not a cockroach" I said.
"Well, no. It's really fucking odd" Eric said, reaching out a finger to touch Bob's prize which was lying on its back on the floor.
"Don't touch it!" I cried out, which made Eric turn to look at me. Yeah, that had been louder than I'd intended. And a lot more shrill. "Wetas bite" I said, almost using my normal voice.
"Bite?" Eric asked. "Is it poisonous?"
"No, this isn't Australia!" I said. "But it'll hurt. It'll be really pissed off that Bob caught it. Can you tell if it's missing any legs?"
"Um. No. It seems to have an awful lot of legs. It's not really moving them though. I think its dead."
"No it's not" I said rapidly. "They play dead. It's trying to trick you into touching it. So it can bite you."
"Sookie, I don't think…"
"Look, Eric, who's the expert on fucking wetas here? Don't poke it, don't antagonise it, don't do anything to it. Just get it the hell out of my living room."
"Well, how do I do that without touching it?" Eric looked over at me. He was trying not to laugh. At me. I almost hoped the weta did bite him. Serve him right. Honestly, he had no idea. They're vicious. And just…icky.
"I don't know" I said. "Use the dust-pan or something. Just…just…get rid of it." I looked at Eric, trying to get him to grasp the gravity of the situation. He wasn't buying it.
"I'm pretty sure I could just pick it up…" he said. "If I don't get near the front it shouldn't be able to get me."
"Well, it's your problem if it bites you."
"Fine, I'll get the dust-pan." I moved aside so Eric could come out of the living room and then I stood there, watching. In case it moved. When I was little this was my job, watch the weta that was climbing the curtains, or sitting on a shelf, or hiding in a cupboard until Dad got home and could return it outside. So I was pretty good at watching wetas. They didn't move quickly, but they were sneaky.
Eric came back with the dust-pan and pushed the weta onto it with the brush. He held it up closer to his face so he could get a better look. I was pretty convinced the close-up view wasn't that exciting.
I stood aside again as Eric came past. "You sure you don't want a look?" Eric asked.
"Just. Get. It. OUT OF HERE!" I yelled.
Eric came over to stand beside me, still holding the dust-pan with the weta in it. He shook his head. "I don't get you" he said.
"What's not to get?" I asked, stepping away from Eric and what he was holding. I thought I was perfectly normal.
"You can cope with the rats but not one small, harmless insect."
"Well it's not harmless for one thing…"
"Sookie, rats bite too" Eric interjected.
"Yeah, but…they have fur. And sometimes they're cute. Wetas are just…icky. I just don't like them." I stared at the weta lying in the dust-pan. I was not wrong.
"What's happening?" Amelia asked, as she appeared next to me.
"Bob brought in a weta. Want to have a look?" Eric asked, squatting down so Amelia could look in the dust-pan.
Amelia looked and shrugged. "It's pretty yucky looking. Does it eat people?"
I shook my head. "No, it's just a weta. They're mostly harmless really."
Eric stood up and out of the corner of my eye I could see him moving that dust-pan towards me. I was not going to jump, or shriek or do anything else stupidly girlie, but if he brought that thing any closer I was going to have to leave the room.
"Oh. Well that's kind of boring" Amelia said and she wandered off.
I took the opportunity to step further away from Eric again. "You're a lot braver when Amelia's here" he commented. "And you even managed to stop flapping your hands around for a bit."
I glared at Eric. "Yeah, well, I'm trying not to impart any fear to Amelia. Not that I am afraid, of course. I just have a healthy respect for things with really big…pincers or whatever the bitey bits are."
"Sookie, I really don't think it's going to bite you, or me. Look." With that Eric picked up the back end of the weta and held it up. The weta moved some of it's legs around a bit, but to be honest, it didn't look capable of putting up much a fight. Or maybe that's what it wanted Eric to think, anyway.
"You're…you're as bad as Jason" I managed to get out before I turned and walked away. Yeah, I wasn't afraid of wetas, but if I was, then it was all the fault of Jason bloody Stackhouse, that's for sure.
Eric laughed and headed off to return the weta to his natural habitat. Which was far, far away from me. They'd been trimming trees in Mr Dearborn's place over the back fence the day before and I guess the weta's branch had been cut down and Bob had found him wandering around.
I hoped to God that branch hadn't been a weta suburb or anything.
Thankfully when I next saw Eric he'd lost his new friend and had almost stopped teasing me. Yeah, he thought he was hilarious. I'd remember this the next time Bob had a rat. Maybe I could bribe him to bring one in? How would I tell him that's what I wanted though?
Maybe, though, he'd just get totally the wrong end of the stick and bring me a weta instead. Ugh. It would be useful to have a cat that understood me, but I suspected that Bob wasn't that cat.
We spent the morning doing housework and getting ready for the evening while Eric fretted about the weather. The rain was easing though, so we'd probably be OK. Well that's what I kept saying. It sounded plausible.
Eric kept trying to check the weather channel and look at the rain radar. I told him it was a waste of time. It's Auckland, so you look out the window and it's either raining, or it's not. But he never believes me. He just kept muttering about putting the barbecue under the sun umbrella.
I had my own worries. I'd been stuck with what to do with the girls after our ceremony. Eric and I were going back into the city for a night alone. In a hotel. I was quite looking forward to it.
The problem was that all our regular babysitters were unavailable. Tara and JB were getting his mum to collect their kids from Piha then spending the night in their bach. Judith was coming but she was about to burst and kept saying that she thought the baby was coming early, so I really didn't like to burden her with an extra two kids. Halleigh hadn't had a full night's sleep in 9 months and I suspected that dealing with Felicia at night might send her into a psychotic break.
So I was really running out of options. There was only one person left. Someone who wasn't going to the ceremony.
Lorena.
I found Eric checking through the fridge to make sure he had enough drinks cooling for later on. "I'm going to go and talk to her" I said.
"What? Who?" Eric asked, shutting the fridge. Oh yeah, I thought, he hasn't been privy to the train of thought I'd been running with for a while.
"Lorena. I'm going to go and ask her. About having the girls. She's still their nana, after all. But I'm going to do it in person. I think it would be better that way. Do you think? Or should I phone? Maybe if I bribe Judith, she'll ask for me? No, I can't really do that." I stopped, Eric was just looking at me.
"You're rambling" he said.
"Yeah, I know. But I'm a bit nervous."
"What's the worst that could happen?" Eric asked, leaning against the kitchen bench.
"She could say no."
"Well, you're no worse off then."
I sighed. "She could say no and tell me I'm a horrible person for getting married again."
Eric shrugged. "You already think she thinks that, so it wouldn't be news. And you're not a horrible person, so it wouldn't matter. And you still wouldn't be any worse off. But at least you would know, one way or the other."
"Yeah, you're right, you're right. I should just do it."
"You should. And you should probably go now, while Felicia is napping and before we have to get ready."
"I should. Is she really napping and not running about?"
"She is" Eric said proudly, which made me slightly suspicious.
"What did you do?"
"Um. Nothing much. I just figured out the key was getting out of the sleeping bag in the first place, so I fixed that problem."
"How?"
"Safety pin. I just pinned the zip to the material of the bag. Seemed to fix her."
"Well, good work. Let's hope she doesn't figure out safety pins, or else there'll be blood everywhere when she sticks herself with it." Eric looked thoughtful. Maybe he hadn't thought of that scenario.
"OK. I'm off then" I said, reaching up to kiss him goodbye.
"Yeah. Good luck" Eric said a bit absent-mindedly. Maybe he was still worrying about the safety pin.
I'd just worry about Lorena.
As I pulled up outside her block of flats I was half-hoping she'd be out. But I knew that if she was, I'd only to have to do this at a later date.
I walked up the path and knocked on the door. I could hear Lorena inside and a moment later she opened the door. "Sookie?" she said, looking confused.
"Hi, Lorena. I, was, um…well, I've come to talk to you. If that's OK?"
"Yes, yes. Come in. I was just finishing my lunch."
I followed her into the living room and she turned off the TV. She'd been watching Antiques Roadshow and eating a sandwich before I arrived, by the looks of it. It didn't seem the most exciting way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
"Can I get you anything?" Lorena asked me, resuming her seat.
"Um, no. I'm fine thank you. I've just had lunch myself" I said, as I sat on the sofa opposite.
"So, what can I do for you?" Lorena asked, fixing me with a stare that just made me uncomfortable.
"Well…" This was really hard. I twisted my hands in my lap and watched them intently for a bit. "I was wondering if I could ask you to babysit for me. Next Saturday night. And have the girls overnight." I looked back up at Lorena but couldn't really read her expression.
"Next Saturday?" she asked. "I'm playing bowls in the afternoon."
"Well it wouldn't be until later on. After dinner, say, that we'd drop them off…" I trailed off. Surely she knew what I was doing next Saturday. Did she want me to spell it out? I wasn't sure of the protocol.
Lorena turned and looked at the window. "I suppose I could…" she mused.
"The girls would love it" I said, a bit too brightly. "They love seeing you and it would be nice for you to have that time alone with them." As long as you don't say anything else mean about me, you poisonous bitch, I added in my head.
"And it would be a favour to you, wouldn't it, Sookie?" Lorena asked, as innocently as she could muster.
Shit. "Yes. Yes, it would" I agreed. "It would be a big favour to me. And to Eric."
"Mmm" Lorena pursed her lips at the mention of Eric's name. She was silent for a bit. I decided to go for broke.
"I think Bill would have wanted them to spend time with you. Get to know you" I said. Lorena didn't say anything to that. "So really, it wouldn't be so much a favour to me as…as maybe a way of remembering Bill. They're all that's left of him now. And I think it would nice for them to know more about where they came from. I'm open to that…as long as, well as long as things are…civil." I didn't want a repeat of Lorena telling Amelia I'd run Bill off.
"Fine" Lorena said after a minute's thought. "Yes, I can have them here next Saturday. They can have the twin beds in the spare room. Felicia's OK in a bed, now isn't she?"
"Yes" I said. Well it would be less dangerous for her to jump out of than a cot.
"Fine. You can just phone me sometime and let me know exactly when you're coming here and I'll be waiting for them." Lorena smiled at me, but really it was more like a grimace. She was trying though, I guessed.
"Thanks, Lorena. I really appreciate it. I just…well, next Saturday is going to be busy for us all. It's nice to know they'll be in good hands overnight."
I stood up to leave, and Lorena followed me to the door. "Thanks again" I said as I walked out. "I'll call you. 'Bye Lorena."
"Goodbye Sookie."
I started to walk down the steps to the path, when Lorena said "Sookie, wait just a minute." I turned and went back up the steps. "Yes?" I asked her.
"Um. I just wanted to say…good luck." Lorena said the last bit quietly and kept her eyes fixed on a point past my shoulder, but I got her meaning. I was right. She was definitely trying.
"Thank you" I said, before I turned and headed back to the car. Well that was another of the worries off my list. Now I was left with getting through the barbecue.
I looked at the sky as I got back into my car. Over the city there were bright spots, but if you looked South it was all dark, heavy clouds. The weather was definitely Eric's problem I decided. I'd done enough worrying for one day.
Yeah, wetas are not at all nice to look at, but mostly they are harmless. Unless they're mad and they bite. They get mad sometimes when they've been manhandled by a cat and have lost a leg or two. Can't imagine why that would upset them. The appearance of today's weta is brought to you by Peppermintyrose who thought it was only fair that Eric should encounter at least one in NZ. We don't have anything poisonous here (that's Australia) but wetas often freak people out if they see them.
And The Wot Wot's are a kid's show made by our own Weta Workshop. If you have very small kids, they're very cute and quite entertaining.
Thanks for reading!