Attempts to Take a Bath (by sarah)

a) the water appeared to be orange - Alaric assured me that this was just clay particals from the heavey rain and that it was fine so I put lots of my nice bath pearls in to try and convince myself it was going to be a nice bath and that I wasn't sitting in something from a cess pit.

b) just lowered my backside into the water when - wha wah wah nick-nocks oh dear wet oh dear icky yuck wah wah wah. She had been sleeping and everybody else was out so I had mistakenly thought that I could have a bath to get rid of aches and pains and not be in the way.

c) Jean retrieved and de-festified back in the bath this time with her splashing me from the side, I here voices, Barbaras come back. I hurriedly start washing thinking they are bound to want to use the bathroom and I was right.

d) they tell Jean she must be about to enjoy her bath so now she thinks shes getting a bath and objects when I get back in the bath enough to make the bathtime unpleasant - I give up and get out.

With dispair I note that not enough time had actually passed for my nice bath pearls to have dissolved meaning that all their nice oil was wasted :'(

I should have known better really.

Public transport and the State of the World (by sarah)

I been thinking on the whole bus fare thing again and I am again struck by the stupidity of the world - like the restruant waste thing I am just erked I really am.

And you know what the worst bit is? Everyone expects me to have some radical view point on resources and oil when they find out about the degree - good grief I'd have thought that dealing with things like resources should be obvious?

Why are people so governed by mass media? Its driving me nuts. As I'm sure I've said before I think that reguardless of weather we have a significant affect on the climate we should be treating the resources as just that - resources and that means managing them properlly, nothing is infanite in this respect and to waste what we have is just stupidity on the grosses level. At the same time ramming stuff down the general publics throat continuously is not going to work. People are fed up of trying their best and being told - but its not nearly enough - the result? They give up and dont bother with anything.

I am thinking that things really do need to be targeted a level up - the companies, the countries inferstructure etc... The public transport being prohibatively expensive for a start is just pathetic as is the fact that imported food of the type we grow here is cheaper than that from just up the road! What is going on with that one? I mean come on!

Now I like variety - I would hate to see imports go but we don't need to import everything, do we? Why are our farmers commiting suicide? Why do we have very few full time farmers left, its slipping to the realms of hobby and a hard one at that.

I'd have thought that having an island that can not produce even its own food is just a bit dangerous? Maybe I'm pessamistic, maybe I am too hippy-esk for my own good but the whole thing just annoys me.

Sigh - I don't know what the answers are. I know my GCSE Business Studies teacher thought I had a humanitarian approach to running things which came through heavily in my business plans. Happy staff = less theifts etc... but never mind - I'm just babbling in dispair now.

The Nitty Gritty Comb (by sarah)

Jean being at nursery and mixing with other children occassionally comes home with head lice or nits these are little blood sucking insects that live in hair and as I told a panicking mum - they prefer clean hair and just about all children get them. Infact when I was at school you were thought of as dirty if you hadnt had them leading to a strange fashion of scratching your head on a regular basis reguardless.

Now the first time we got some full marks shampoo which worked really well and came with a free nitt comb (this have lots of thick metal teeth that scrape the lice off of the scalp) in fact it worked so well that when Jeans head was itching from a mozzy bite she went and got the box and mimmed putting the shampoo on. But it was expensive and needed to be applied twice over a set period of time inorder to get the eggs once they had hatched but before they themselves could breed so this time when I went to buy some the lady at the pharmacy told me about the nitty gritty comb which has really long metal teeth that tapier to a round point at the end and appear to have a fine archemedes screw type thing going on on each tooth. This reputedly gets rid of the eggs as well as the nitts and is reusable and can be used on every body (this seemed like a good option as me, dad and Al and probably Barbara had already cuaght them!).

It worked fantastically on Jean and Dad and ok on Al but then I tried to use it on me - I have thick, tangle prown, waist length curly hair - I have one word - OUCH!

Not good - I'm sticking to the shampoo! The other thing is that though it has rounded ends I would say that it is a definatly a bit harsher on the scalp. Still its effective 🙂

The Mummy on the Bus says ‘Never again!’ (by sarah)

People have been being horrified that I wait until Al is free to go shopping rather than taking Jean on the bus - now I know full well that getting up the hill to the bus stop with the pushchair is a bit of a no-no. Al struggles to get the pushchair up the other side of our valley which is a lot shallower and due to the narrowness of the lanes if a vechile does come along - in some places you have to pretty much scale the sides to get out of the way - also something I feel I can not physically cope with.

But Tuesday I had people to meet and shopping to get and Als time was already pressed so he gave me a lift in and I said I'd get the bus back with the shopping. Now I recalled there was a reason that we had only taken the pushchair with us once on the bus when Jean was really tiny but that reason had escaped my mind.

I had shopping, I had torrential rain, I had a soggy baby and a pushchair I never collapse becuase it hurts my wrists to do so. I put Jean on the bus and gave her her now soggy blanket (bus was late and there were a lot of people waiting for it. I struggled with folding the pushchair up and then discovered that it was an awkard fit even when it was folded - then I remembered 'Oh yes I couldn't get onto these buses easily with the crutches becuase of how narrow and steppy there are.' A lady on the bus helped me get Jean past the urine smelling old guy who had his shopping trolly in the ilse taking up more space than the pushchiar would have, muttering to himself and occasionally shouting - whilst I wrsteled with the shopping and pushchair. On the seat I lift Jean sending my poor arm into spasm enough to grit teeth, so then I'm worried that the nice lady who's just helped me is going to think I'm mad or rude or something.

The next bit was fine as Jean was entranced by the 'Oh dear water! Wet! Floor water!' though one of the men on the bus was commenting loudly that 'no wonder the buses never run on time' as my attempts to get one the bus had obviously taken some time. Jean happily played peek-a-boo with school girl behind us (with the nice lady who helped), this was up until she founf the yummy! some nice person had shoved their sandwitch down the side of the seat which of course Jean found and being two wanted to eat. So then I have a disgrunteled child who does not understand why mummy wont let her eat the perfectly good yummy - and I think why hadnt I noticed it when I sat down, coming to the conclusion that as the bus started to move before I'd sat down I was a little pre-occupied!

Annoyed with not being allowed to eat yummy or stand on the seat Jean decides to get off of the seat and as I try to stop her my spasming arm decides to get worse meaning that I could not stop her flying off the seat at the bus suddenly stopped - fortunatly she landed on the shopping which was all soft stuff. After two more escape attempts she was imprisioned on my lap with my good arm holding the wrist of the bad arm as I had very little use of it. Miffed Jean wriggled as best she could to escape though eventually she gave that up.

The to the next fun bit - getting off of the bus. Fortunatley urine smelling man had gone taking his shopping cart thing with him but that still left me with Jean, shopping and a folded up buggy and a bus stop next to the A46 and I mean RIGHT next to it - no pavement or stuff. An old lady retrieved Bob the duck who Jean had hurled for me and I managed to stop her just before she dived off the bus whithout me. I then had to make sure I had a grip on her with one hand as she wanted to look at the 'doot doot cars!' whilst I wrested the pushchair off the bus, over the shopping I'd had to put down becuase I jsut could not physically do anything else.

I grabbed the shopping retrieved the pushchair from the mud (where the shopping had to take its place) reinstated the pushchiar pulling a muscle in my back as this is a proceedure you really need both hands for and a chin just really doesnt cut it! Child now thouraly soaked as it was still tipping it down - rammed into pushchair with soggy shopping half squashed uncermoniously dumped into the basket underneith bag on back I headed across the road into the pub where they dried the blanket for me and made extra hot hot chocolate for me whilst I waited for Al as we needed to be somewhere else in an hour.

Jean thought it was a great day out.

I think bus journeys are out intill she is no longer in a pushchair - the journeys fine on my own but not with a pushchiar. It is probably doable with two people but not on my own! Oh and did I mention the fact that the driver didn't have any change so the trip cost me £3 instead of the 2.50(60) it should have 🙁

The shopping was fortunatly all still usable at the end of all this which was a relief though I did discover that I'd forgotten the urgent nick-nocks (pull up nappy-nicker things) for Jean!

Jeans’s Sit Down! No Mummy’s Sit Down! (by sarah)

For saftey reasons Jean's car seat has had to be moved from the middle seat of the van into my seat. This has cuased great indignation and much wailing on Jeans part. She calls seats and chairs 'sit-downs' so we now have her wailing 'Nonononono Jean's sit-down, no mummy's sit-down!' followed by the hurlling of her wackwack (bob the duck), once she has realised that Bob is now out of reach we get, 'MY wack wack, My wack wack, wrong sit down!' Wail.

There's tears and everything but mostly it has the unfortunate effect of wanting to make me laugh :/

She's had to be moved even though it means I now have to climb over the drivers seat to get in, becuase her legs are now long enough that she can and does put her foot on the gear stick!

She also becomes indignant if her dinner place is not set out right and if adults have more cultery than she does!

There has been a marked difference in her playing from before the flood - before the flood it was all water and cars now she likes playing with cuddly toys and even dolls which she puts to bed and feds and things. Also the nursery tell me that she loves playing 'hair dresser' which makes scense as we have a little brush for her as she was always nicking mine and Als brushes! She is still obsessed with anything machanical though which is cool 🙂