It’s all still a bit ‘limbo’ round here. The van is still at the garage so I can’t start packing stuff into it and gathering stuff in one area to move into the van feels a bit ‘for the sake of it’ rather than actually useful. I thought about boxing up dvds and games but they may still be watched in the last 3 weeks. Really it would only take 2 or 3 days to pack the whole house into boxes so it seems pointless cluttering up the playroom with boxes full of stuff we might as well still leave in cupboards or rooms where they might even still get used in the next few weeks. Suspect I have packing apathy 😉 I think I might be a bit logisticked out really and far more inclined to savour my last few days of languishing on the sofa wired up to my laptop before all that working for my supper kicks in.
In the post this morning was the standard accepting my resignation from the council along with a personal letter from the head of the library service wishing me success and thanking me for the Chatterbooks work and Reading Group stuff I have done. I suspect this has been orchestrated by B, the head librarian but regardless it is very touching to have been recognised and had noted the things I have done there. Felt quite glowy :).
I blogged over on WW and went to pack some ebay parcels up. D&S were playing with geomags and requested we walk into Lancing to the post office so we did just that. Interesting conversations along the way about deja vu, dreams (I’d had a horrible dream about Scarlett being hit by a car which haunted me still today 🙁 and after eating cheese and crackers late last night and laughing to Ady about how I didn’t believe all that cheese gives you nightmares nonsense too!), brains and memory. We spent a tiny bit of the journey walking in step with a woman who wanted to chat to us so I indulged her for a while and then we had a conversation about talking to strangers and why she might have wanted to – loneliness, friendliness etc. I mentioned how we get lots of people in the library who probably don’t talk to anyone else all day apart from us.
At the post office the queue was incredibly long, snaking all the way round their barriers and to the door, probably about 30 people deep. I guess we were there about 20 minutes. At the very beginning Davies noted a little reflector thing screwed to the wall and I spotted a LED opposite so we speculated on whether it was a counting device (they have one of those on the doors of our local ELC) or maybe an alarm and whether it would be a visible or invisible light beam if it was an alarm. I told the kids about the Mission Impossible scene where they come down from the ceiling and Davies told me about how that had been replicated in a W&G film. I promised to look out the original clip for him but we forgot, must try and remember tomorrow.
Then one of the women from Book Club came over to say hello and catch up on our plans which led the kids to ask whether I knew her, I think they’d decided I was an random chatty old woman magnet 😆 We talked about parcel boxes and packaging, Scarlett’s soft toy ducks that she’d brought along with her and played our usual game of guessing which cashier we’d be served by. Finally parcels sent we popped to the bookshop which is closing down, but prices not reduced enough yet, apart from all calendars for £1 so we bought a plain ‘decorate yourself’ one for the van, sure we can find somewhere to pin it. We also went to the bakers for rolls for lunch and cakes for after, the charity shop for a nose and the library to let them know some Book Group people will be dropping money in for a collection for some flowers for B.
We walked back home and had lunch – Scarlett and I had chicken soup that Ady made on Friday and was very delicious :). I had a quick check of emails and then we did some boxing stuff up. I did most of the bookcase before deciding the boxes of books take up far more room in the playroom than just leaving them on the shelves. Scarlett boxed up all her books and I went through her clothes to pack up everything she’s not taking. Davies went up to do his but didn’t qet quite so far without me prompting him. Felt like we’d made a start 🙂
The kids went off to play in Davies’ room while I sat down with tea and my cake from the bakers and checked emails, dealing with a couple of replies from hosts in Scotland. I put the chickens away, sorted out firewood and lit a fire and then sorted the kids tea out and tackled the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen. Ady arrived home while I was still in the middle of that and the kids were eating their tea.
We all had a big conversation about various things and I read out an email we’d had from a potential host detailing their concerns with WWOOFers with children along with my reply. It was interesting talking it through and coming up with ideas of scenarios we might happen upon and how we think we should deal with them along the way.
Nic:
Bad: Annoying email
Good: Yes email from Scotland
Learnt: cheese giving nightmares. I researched this a little, having always written it off as a myth and found nothing to properly substantiate it but that cheese does contain something that people on anti-depressants are advised to avoid. I also found some research about different cheeses giving you different sorts of dreams along with a theory that it is thinking about having the nightmare that gives you them and whilst the cheese may trigger the thought it doesn’t trigger the nightmare. I suspect this is more the case and if I’d not mentioned cheese and nightmares last night I either wouldn’t have suggested the notion to myself or would simply not have tied it in as cheese related.
Scarlett:
Bad: grazed my knuckle – not dreadfully, she had just noticed it when we were doing B, G, L and in Scarlett’s world it is the last 30 seconds that count more than anything which has gone before 🙂
Good: Tidied my bedroom, she was proud of this and happy that she is so excited about WWOOFing that any minor wobbles about chucking stuff away were overshadowed 🙂
Learnt: About how thermals work -Ady brought home another set each for them (as they had not taken the first set off yet!) and she looked at the packet with the explanation of how they work.
The length of conversation took us way past bedtime so they went to bed, we had dinner and tonight I expect to dream of boxes 🙂
Davies:
Bad: Feel sick 🙁 – he drank some coke with his dinner and it often gives him a weird feeling in his tummy. Not really sure why he still tries but he’s old enough to make the decision himself and it never goes further than mild discomfort so I guess if he decides it’s worth that to drink it I’m not going to stop him.
Good: Get to tidy up in the morning – he’s room had been left very much mid-tidy and he was supposed to be returning to it after dinnre but he got excused due to feeling wobbly.
Learnt: About deja vu. He’d described the feeling so I’d told him the name of it and what I knew of theories to explain it, then we dug further with a Proper Google and read some more about it.
Ady:
Bad: Official announcement not made at work – everyone was supposed to be told about his resignation today but the MD is off sick.
Good: Local fish and chip shop is stocking mackrell burger a la Hugh
Learnt: Mutant seeds at work (geraniums) – I didn’t really grasp this so Ady’s bringing home an actual seed to demonstrate but apparently in order to bring on germination of seeds they prick the seed shell and add some chemical to them to encourage them, but in messing about with nature had gone wrong somewhere and have confused the shoots to go away from the light rather than towards it. Or something 😉