What NOT to do at the start of the summer holidays...

.... decide your child's book bag looks a bit grubby and throw it in the washing machine while he's eating lunch, without checking first to see if there's anything inside.

(BIG mistake number 1.)

Kei finished school this morning for the summer holidays, and was invited to a friend's house for the afternoon. After lunch he came skipping up: "Where's my book bag, Mummy?"

I assumed he wanted it to carry his Nintendo and snacks to his friend's house.

"It's in the washing machine. You'll have to take your rucksack."

His face crumpled in shock.

"But my summer homework's in it! We're all going to Shinya's to get started on our homework together. Shinya told me specially to bring it."

He'd taken his satchel to school this morning as well as his book bag, and until today had always brought his homework home in that. In my hurry to get everything washed, I hadn't realized the book bag was heavier than it should be. I rushed frantically to the washing machine. Maybe I could somehow separate the pages and dry them out?

But the finished load at the bottom of the machine was smothered in small flakes of pink and grey paper. I fished out his book bag and opened it. Empty. I'd turned Kei's summer homework into papier mache, and the holidays hadn't even started yet.

Ooops. And I thought I'd been doing so well at this kindergarten/school mother thing lately.

I pacified Kei's floods of angry tears with abject apologies and the promise to go straight round to his school that afternoon to pick up another set, and took him over to his friend's house. Shinya's mother collapsed into uncontrollable giggles when I told her why Kei didn't have his homework with him. I left him playing Nintendo with five other first-graders, and went over to the school to tell them what had happened.

Kei's teacher had to try very hard to stifle her laughter too. Fortunately she had a spare set of homework prints, but then came the really embarrassing part.

"What else was in there? Is anything missing?"

"I have no idea," I confessed miserably. "The pieces are far too small to tell what they were. But there must have been a colored sheet in there, because a lot of them are pink ...."

"Ah, the health record. That's very important. You need to stamp your seal on it, and bring it back at the beginning of next term. I'll have to make out another one for you, and it'll take a little time."

Bowing repeatedly in shame, I promised to come back later and pick it up. The teacher saw me out, hand over mouth, her eyes dancing with mirth as she sympathetically assured me that everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I bet she can't wait to add this story to her "idiot parents" repertoire.

But my idiocy wasn't over yet. When I got home with Dan, I looked at the disgusting pile at the bottom of the machine, thought about how much work it would take to pick all the pieces off by hand, and decided to do what I usually do if I leave a tissue in the wash - run the washer repeatedly on the rinse cycle until all the paper is washed away.

(BIG mistake number 2.)

Half an hour later, as I was hard at work at an already overdue translation, the washing machine started beeping. I opened the lid with a feeling of foreboding. It was full of water heavily clouded with paper flakes. I stopped the cycle, set it to Drain, and pressed Start. Nothing happened.

Oooooooops.

So although Kei has another set of homework to keep him happy (and I even went back to pick up his reissued health record too), we now have a totally clogged-up washing machine. So far this evening I've fished out all the paper-covered clothes and rinsed them in the bath, bailed the water out of the washer with a bowl and poured it down the sink (through a fishing net to avoid blocking the drains as well!), and unscrewed the beater part at the bottom of the drum to see if I could clear the place where the water drains out. No luck at this point. Once the boys have gone to bed, I'll turn it on its side and unscrew the drain pipe from the bottom, to see if I can clear it out from that end. Watch this space and wish me luck....

Thank goodness, Kentaro is on night duty tonight, so with a bit of luck I can get it sorted out before he comes home tomorrow. He'll add it to his catalogue of proofs of my lack of common sense, and my inability to think about what I'm doing until it's too late. Days like this, I really think he might be right.


Update: We'll have to call out someone to repair the wretched thing. I did manage to unscrew the drain section from the bottom and remove a five-yen coin that had got stuck there, which I was hopeful would do the trick - but no, the water still isn't draining out. Rats.