Surprise!

The kid was home alone for the first time today in the new house. Dad kinda moved with us last week.. :-) But dad's with the brothers this week. Of course, new neighbourhood and not much to do. Internet is still to be installed, he's beaten all his PS2 and PC games - a couple times over.

So he watched some Dr Phil (!) and Days of our Lives (!) - before he ended up on a "date" with two chicks (!!).

OK, let me start at the beginning.

Yesterday he and my dad went with a friend of dad's to Cape Town to go ice-skating. Her granddaughters were along too, and one other loose attachment (baby brother?) - so quite the crowd. They also went to a movie and grabbed supper (which means the supper I made last night ended up uneaten...). They had an absolute ball and got on like a house on fire. One girl is a grade above him, the other probably a grade below him.

So today the girls decide it's movie weather, and perhaps J would like to join them? I got a call from granny on the cellphone, but J doesn't have a phone here (and, amazingly, no cellphone neither - in this day and age!), so I told her to take a chance and drop by. Hoping the kid was at the VERY least dressed.. :-)

They did - picked him up, took him off (with the house keys - which star shortly in this story) and entertained him with DVDs all afternoon. Meanwhile I arrived home around 5, waiting for the kid to get home (granny said she'd drop him off). At 6:30 my cellphone rings and granny's on the line - please can I come get Jason, she's going out. Now it's just after sunset, I've been reading in the car for an hour and a half (thank goodness for my emergency Reader's Digest Condensed Book in the cubby!), and my car Has No Lights. It's getting dark. So I dash through the back streets, hitting every out-for-a-drive driver in the place (or rather being stuck behind them), and get there in serious dusk. Greet great-gran (who wants to chat - sorry, gotta run), meet the chicks and the bouncing-around boy-kid, stuff my teen in the car and race home, holding the lights on brights (only way they work, makes turning and changing gears interesting), but watching them and the dash lights slowly fade away..... until near darkness once home! Serious issues there. Hope the car starts tomorrow - and again, thank goodness for a spare one of those just in case.

So finally it's 7, pitch dark, we're home, I can go pee at last, the house is opened etc.

And then the kid tells me what ELSE he's done with his day.

He got SO bored he CLEANED THE ENTIRE HOUSE! He washed all the bathrooms, basins, taps, the kitchen sink and surrounds, swept the floors, WASHED THE WINDOWS (well, tried to) upstairs, cleared out the last of the unpacked boxes in his room, chucked out the junk...

SJOE! I think I should leave him home and bored more often. In the meantime I've shown him where the vacuum, the sponge mop and bucket and extra paper towels are.. ;-) I've also managed to arrange that he keep the house clean in exchange for his allowance going up.

Then more suprises. He reckons he can WALK the 4km THROUGH TOWN to go visit his new chick friends! This from a couch potato. He says he now knows the way, and will need a cellphone. As I've been wheedled into getting one with MMS and other fancy things (shortly), I think that's doable. He can have my old one, which is on prepaid and which he can top up from his allowance - and I can go fancy. I'm also going to need to cut another set of keys.

Anyhoo, he and his two chick friends are off to Century City in Cape Town on Friday. The kid is finally getting a social life. Getting off the couch, away from the computer, and doing stuff!

Between that and the house-cleaning I'm completely blown away...