Originally broadcast on CHED radio - Date unknown

TWO WEEKS WITHOUT PAY

It's a sad sad story I tell you today, 

About a young mothers two weeks without pay, 

Two weeks without let up, 

Two weeks with no break 

Cooped up in a cabin with kids at the lake. 

The day she arrived, it started to rain, 

It let up for an hour, then started again. 

It rained in the morning, it rained every night. 

She looked out the window, and oh what a sight! 

It came down in buckets, hour after hour. 

The deluge let up and turned into a shower, 

The shower let up and turned into a drizzle, 

The weather report for tomorrow's a fizzle. 

Five kids underfoot with nothing to do, 

Three with a cold and two with the flu, 

The wind is so cold they stay away from the door, 

And they'll all get pneumonia if they sit on the floor.

The comics they've read, night after night, 

In the daytime there's nothing to do but just fight, 

When the future couldn't possibly look more bleak, 

The ancient old roof starts into a leak, 

She runs out of pans to catch all the drips, 

In the morning, there’ll be water clear up to her hips, 

The fire she tries to build is a joke, 

The wood is all wet, all she gets is black smoke.

The bed clothes are damp as a mallard ducks back. 

And the plumbing is definitely not in the shack. 

In the middle of the night, to the back of the lot, 

Five trips she makes with tot after tot, 

While back in the city, slaving away 

Is father and husband, serving two weeks WITH pay, 

The "Pete" club for lunch, and cocktails at four, 

With golf twice a week and poker galore, 

A maid to come in to clean up his place, 

Dirty dishes are something that no man should face, 

And he thinks that he's giving the family a break 

As he lets them all drown in the rain at the lake, 

When mother gets home, if she kills this man dead 

I give you good odds as to what the clown said, 

“It's been really tough ‘batching’", But don't worry dear, 

I've got that same cottage for your two weeks next year!”