In Search of Creative Solutions or "So your Honour, that's when I snuffed them..."

Well the water heater is fixed so I don’t have to bathe in a bucket anymore. On the other hand, life inside the pumpkin is getting increasingly stressful on the sleep front.

The bed is not that large and I find myself every night trapped between my daughter the nocturnal contortionist and my husband, who snores for Peru. My daughter refuses to sleep on the camp bed provided for her (it is really uncomfortable) and even if she starts off in it inevitably crawls in next to me at her first opportunity.

Her fertile imagination has made her terrified of the dark, being alone, doors, diseases. The other day I asserted my right to watch CNN instead of the Disney Channel and have paid a heavy price because she is now paranoid of swine flu. She seems to think she can catch swine flu from herself so she sits in the room rubbing antiseptic gel onto her hands and getting me to scratch her head when it itches. The TV remote control gets the same treatment even though she’s the only one allowed to use it.

Once she is asleep she grows an extra set of limbs and thrashes around while I try to protect her unborn brother from pre-natal decapitation. And for those of you who are now saying to yourselves “I told her so, should have trained her child to sleep in her own bed years ago” (you know who you are!), why not turn your self-satisfied omniscience to finding a cure for snoring?

I’m not talking about a benevolent buzzsaw here. This is the Hallelujah Chorus without benefit of tuning fork. I lie in bed at night with the words of that old limerick running through my head:

There once was a man from Calcutta
Who anointed his tonsils with butter
Thus reducing his snore
From a thunderous roar
To a soft, oleaginous mutter.

As the volume, tempo and pitch rise and fall I think to myself: did I marry the wrong nationality? Should I be seeking some similar culinary solution? Some pisco down the gullet? An ear of choclo inserted into each nostril?

As the hours pass I fantasize in verse:

An enterprising chick in Peru
At her husband’s snoring debut
Solved the problem right quick
With a dynamite stick
Two clothes pegs and super-stick glue.

So far my family members have survived each night unscathed (and wake up rather more rested than me!) but if we don’t find an apartment soon I cannot take responsibility for what may happen.

In other areas things are improving. I am slowly weaning my mother-in-law off my arm, though she still tends to loom over me at unexpected moments like a benevolent Norman Bates.

Daughter starts school Monday so I have been buying a most comprehensive uniform in grey and red which involves many layers. Shirt, tie, tunic, knee socks, jumper (or chompa as they call it here), and jacket for daily wear and an equally complicated kit for sports. In true schizophrenic latino fashion the shop assistant also sold me dark blue lycra shorts to wear under the tunic so the boys won’t see her underwear in the playground but, in the same breath, advised me to shorten the skirt to a couple of inches above the knee.

Smuggies starting school is a Good Thing. In addition to her getting an education I will now have access to the TV and will not have to deal too often with the recent excess of creativity which has resulted from prolonged inactivity in the house.

Over the last week she has designed and made a dress for her abuela fashioned - with the assistance of a pair of paper scissors and glitter glue - from an airline blanket she nicked off Virgin Atlantic. This was greeted with cries of delight but regret that – unfortunately – it did not fit. She then designed herself a rather sexy blouse by cutting out the crotch of a pair of tights and putting her arms through the leg bits as sleeves. Again, with liberal application of glitter glue.

It is not that I object to her creativity. It is most admirable. But you try explaining to a psyched-up nine-year-old that she can’t wear her work of art in public because the non-cognoscenti might think she is actually walking around with a pair of torn panty-hose around her neck.

She then decided that husband and I had not had enough time together and needed to go on a date. She persuaded her abuelo to drag the kitchen table and two dining chairs up on the roof where she jury-rigged a spotlight and set up dinner for two. I was required to put on a dress and when poor Bigboy got home he was stuffed into a tie and had his hair brushed. Then we were both herded upstairs and offered an extensive menu written in yellow highlighter on white paper (i.e. completely unreadable) which turned out to consist of a choice of leftovers served with great élan and much broken crockery from running up and down the stairs in the dark. All to the delighted stares of the neighbours since most roofs in Lima are used for hanging washing and nothing else.

Today she has been planning a great surprise which involves much secret research on the internet and I caught her packing my underwear into an overnight bag. I told her that whatever she is planning we can't afford it, so now she is trying to extract her wobbly tooth with a length of dental floss so the tooth fairy can subsidize the trip. This is accompanied by a gory blow-by-blow commentary. "Oook ummy, dere's blud!"

Enough! Let school begin.