I stayed up way too late on Friday night crying and laughing at Comic Relief and then had to get up for work yesterday morning so felt rather spaced out for most of the morning.
Infact most of the morning passed in a bit of a blur. I like my two morning shifts – Wednesday and Saturday the best. Not just because they are half days although obviously that helps but because they are the two busier days out of the week and although I’ve adjusted to the pace of the library now and it doesn’t often seem agonisingly slow any more like it did when I first started I’d still rather be busy and have plenty to do than be kicking my heels.
I came home and everyone else was out in the garden. My Dad had been here for most of the morning and there had been gardening, bug hunting and general outside-y stuff happening. Our plan had been to spend the afternoon at the allotment but when they finally came in they hadn’t yet had lunch so it was already about 230pm by the time we were thinking about heading up there. Davies wasn’t keen (I think he’d had his fill of outsideyness by then) so we decided to put it off til today instead.
We’ve been meaning to get along to our local Emmaus for ages as I’d told Ady about it and he wanted to have a look, I thought there might be stuff useful for my knitting / rag rugging etc and then during the houseclearing that’s going on across the road at Dragon-Lady’s house one of their vans pulled up during the week to take out some of her furniture which reminded me so we decided to go there.
Davies and I had had a long chat about giving to charity on Friday night when we made an online donation to Comic Relief so I gave them both a pound each to spend in the shop. Ady and I didn’t find anything there this time – I suspect it is one of those places where on a good day you find loads of stuff you want and other times there is nothing. Scarlett found 3 soft toys she wanted but headed to the tombola stand (which was raising money for Comic Relief) and handed her pound over she thought to pay for her toys but they thought to buy 5 tickets for the tombola. I went over and realised the misundertanding on both parts just as she was pulling her second winning ticket out – she got a packet of pens and a little salt and pepper shaker set which she was delighted with. When I explained to her what had happened she imediately said ‘well I need another pound to pay for my toys then!’ even thought she’d already put them in her bag so she went off to do that. That meant I had to give Davies another pound (he’d found a Feathers McGraw rucksack to buy) but he didn’t win on the tombola anyway.
We had a walk round the ground of the place which used to be a nunnery and is very pretty with lovely gardens. We left and Ady and Davies went into Sainsburys on the way home where they were ages. Scarlett and I waited in the car; her playing her DS until I realised Davies had left his too so I played that.They were ages though.
Home for tea for the kids followed by a bath. The book I fought to get the library to order – Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics
We then had the first couple of chapters of the third Mr Gum book – Mr. Gum and the Goblins
I made a carrier bag ragrug (that brings my count of ones made ready to sell to a whopping 2 but at least it’s a start). Ady dug out the mincer attachment for the kenwood chef and re-minced some mince I’d bought that was really thickly minced which I hate, which much improved it and he made a lovely pasta bolognaise and we watched some old Ed Burn standup on a sky channel which was very funny.
Today I had a lie in without really having a lie in if that makes sense. It was only 9am which isn’t very late anyway but the radio had been on in both the lounge and the kitchen which drifts up the stairs and into my sleep since about 7am so I didn’t feel like I’d had a proper lie in. Also no one was dressed or breakfasted when I came downstairs so I was grumpy about that and we didn’t end up getting out til nearly 11am :rolls:
We went over to my parents first to collect some frogspawn from their pond. We take it every year as the fish simply eat the whole lot otherwise. One year we did get to about five froglets but they all died while we were at Kessingland :(. Another year all of the frogspawn died overnight before even turning into tadpoles which led me to suspect the bucket they’d been in hadn’t been washed out properly from whatever stuff was in it before and last year there were none at all. This year had a healthy amount and we took it all to the allotment for our wildlife pond along with a handful of watersnails which Dad had in abundance in his pond. We all stood chatting round the pond and could happily have stayed longer but wanted to get up to the allotment really. I’ll blog about all of that properly over in the relevant place to save repeating myself.
I wasn’t really in the right mood for it today though and we’d not thought to take more than bottles of water so started to get hungry. I also need to take some handwash and hand cream as although I have gotten over getting my hands dirty in the first place once the dirt starts to dry and cake on my hands I need to wash them. I must make a list of all the things that would be useful to have up there and make sure I gather them altogether to take next time we go.
We came home and the kids wanted to stay outside so they played in the garden while I got the dinner on (ham in coke with roast potatoes, mash potatoes, parsnips, peas, yorkshire puddings and gravy. Well gravy for some of us, others had ketchup ;)) and downloaded photos.
Scarlett had a bath while Davies and I went to the shop together, then played with the magnetic letters (he wrote ‘I love mummy and daddy’ I wrote’ Davies is 8, great, a bit late and my mate’ for him to read and then we cooperatively wrote ‘the truth is a lemon meringue’ which we’ve left up on the radiator :))and then did a Where’s Wally puzzle. Davies then went out in the garden with Ady while Scarlett continued having her very long bath indeed. Sometimes, just sometimes, she’s a bit like me that girl ;).
They came in, she came out. Ady brushed her hair and Davies had a shower while I served up dinner. Over dinner we talked at Davies request about ‘things we like but other people don’t’ and had to go round the table naming something each that we liked but at least one other person round the table didn’t. Inventive, if rather random 😆 We finished the Mr Gum book and then I went for a bath. I was supposed to be peaceful and relaxing and I wanted to finish the last few pages of my book. It was sort of relaxing and I did finish my book but both kids followed me in there and begged to wash my feet (I had some foot scrub stuff and a face pack I wanted to do) so I had both legs stuck out of the bath in different directions while they scrubbed and then Tarly peeled off my face pack which sort of got in the way of reading my book. They finally went to bed – Davies to listen to You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum (BBC Childrens Audio)
Tomorrow we’re spending the day with my Mum although we’ve yet to decide exactly what we’re doing. Don’t want to jinx it but it would be nice to finally have a Monday morning where noone is feeling too ill to go somewhere…