One word? When seven would do…

which is something I tend not to do. Not sure if this because I hate putting it out there, whether I genuinely am an optimist who talks myself out of being miserable long before I’ve managed a blogpost or whether I just don’t like to wallow but it’s been a fairly shitty couple of days and it’s far from over yet so I’m in a suitable frame of mind to write it all out tonight.

So let’s start with Friday as we left Centerparcs. We’d been planning to head to Leeds when we left Sherwood to stay with friends there for the night but on Thursday morning after Davies had been ill I decided to cancel that on the basis that if he had a bug then we shouldn’t be taking it to someone’s house and if it was simply from sheer exhaustion then that would make for him being a fairly crappy houseguest. Felt sad about that, particularly when he seemed fine on Friday but it proved to be the right decision in the end.

I had in my head that Sherwood was only 3 hours from home so had my first unpleasant surprise when satnav told us it was over 4. The weather had turned and we all got drenched in the rain walking back to the carpark from the pool when we left so we sat in the car in soggy clothing for what ended up being over six hours thanks to Friday afternoon M25 traffic. About an hour from home I was overcome with such tiredness I got special dispensation to close my eyes for a nap and woke to find we were far from the M23 where we should have been and on a diesel hunt which was proving fruitless. The fuel gauge had shown enough for 90miles of journey when we set out and satnav said it was 88 miles so we knew we’d need to refuel before we got all the way home but planned a petrol station near home. Thanks to sitting idling in traffic it had gone down very suddenly and started flashing as 5 miles of fuel left about ten miles before we actually found a garage. So that was fraught.

We finally got home around 730pm with two very tired children and our plan was to run a bath for them while their dinner cooked (promised pancakes that we’d never managed to cook while away), then get them to bed at a still sensible hour,unpack the car, have a bath and dinner ourselves before an early night.The two things I most miss when away -my bath and my bed.

We walked in to find the boiler making very odd noises and a pipe that had been dodgy for a while had burst. Ady shot off to B&Q for a replacement leaving me with nothing very productive to do. He’d taken all the unpacking including the milk and eggs we needed for the pancakes so I couldn’t make those, and due to the boiler not working the house was rapidly getting cold with no heating and I couldn’t run a bath as no hot water. In the end I fed them pasta, which got first complaints and then terrified silence when I shrieked at them.

Ady returned, fixed the pipe, got the pilot light relit but failed to get the boiler to flare up. After a huge screaming row with me stomping off to the bedroom, Scarlett crying, Davies looking terrified and Ady telling me to ‘just shut up!’ which is about as firm as he ever gets things calmed down and we got the car unloaded and put away, the children to bed, dinner cooked and some medicinal alcohol consumed. Ady went to bed and I sat up awhile longer before starting to turn off my laptop ready to go to bed when Scarlett screamed from her room. I knew what it was before I got there and sure enough there was a pile of sick in her bed and a very upset Scarlett :(. She was in dire need of hosing down with vomit in her hair and everything and she threw up twice more in the hall just on the way to the bathroom. I called for Ady and he came and had to start boiling kettles to clean everything up while I took Scarlett upstairs for a shower. Our shower is tiny, in the eaves of our loft conversion and only really suitable for children as I can barely stand full height in it and certainly struggle to lift my arms up to shampoo my hair etc. So to try and get in enough with Scarlett to clean her up was very tricky. And everywhere was sooo cold :(.

Scarlett and I sat up for a while in the lounge and she started to doze off in my arms, it was about 2am by now, Ady had finished clearing up and we were all very cold and very tired so decided to go to bed. Surrounded with towels and bowls Scarlett and I went to our bed and she proceeded to wake every 15 minutes or so to be sick more. She was hysterical, I lost count after 10 of how many times she woke and was ill and we finally went to sleep properly at about 5am.

We woke at 10am when Dad rang on the doorbell to welcome us home.

We then called the plumber repeatedly until he answered his phone and came round at about midday. He quickly ascertained that it was a printed circuit board issue in the boiler and questionned whether it was worth the cost (about £300) or whether we should consider a new boiler given something had gone wrong with ours just last winter and it is now 16 years old. He said it had a couple of leaks and was showing plenty of signs of wear and tear and looking old and tired. He left promising to speak to his mate on Monday and see about a PCB for it.

Scarlett wasn’t sick any more but was understandably very wobbly and infact still is. She is crying at the slightest thing, being super clingy, a nightmare at bedtime needing someone to stay with her til she falls asleep and really just wanting to stay up til I go to bed and then come with me. I know this is all in reaction to having been ill but it is very wearing and I am very cautious of it becomming a habbit if we are not quick to deal with it the right way. Which at the moment is being firm about being tolerant at the moment but allaying all her unfounded fears about nightmares and noises in the dark and so on.

I decided I really did need a bath on Saturday and the kids needed one too having not properly washing the swimming pool off themselves yet so we started boiling kettles and pans and then Ady had the idea of attaching a hose to the shower and running that into the bath. I’d started filling buckets from the shower last year but quickly given up as the running up and down stairs, sorcerers apprentice style was just too crazy. The hose does actually work though. It’s fairly slow and I dread to think what it is costing but if we all four have the bath then the shower isn’t running for any longer than it would be for four seperate showers anyway.

One end goes into the bath
and the hose trails up the stairs
into the bedroom
where it collects slightly as it’s too long really, through into the ensuite
where it connects to the shower hose

For someone like me who baths recreationally aswell as for hygiene reasons this is practically an essential.

Not sure what else happened on Saturday now but it would have involved lots of layers and plenty of sighing. Particularly as my car still wasn’t going so I was spending time reseaching breakdown recovery and reading the small print about how soon after starting a policy you could phone for home start and whether that would be cheaper than calling out a mechanic or horrors – taking my Dad up on his offer of towing me. Both Dad and I agreed we hate towing / being towed and that we only seem to do it with each other.

Sunday was a better day, although I ended up sleeping with Scarlett again. The sun was shining and I took myself off to the laundrette to get all the holiday washing, the few days backed up laundry from before we went away and the fall out bedding and pyjamas from the vomit bug (and I notice the towel which we were using as a bath mat from Centerparcs too – oops! It had been vomited on by Davies so Ady had rinsed it out with his pjs and shoved everything in a bag together, not realising it wasn’t our towel). I suppose it took about 2 hours and cost about a tenner to do two large machine loads and then get it all dry. I went and bought chocolate and a cheap magazine (more to get change for the dryers than anything else) and sat reading, munching and ignoring my fellow laundrette users. Whilst nipping out for change a white car beeped at me and there was Ady in my car which Dad and he had got started with jump leads and much dampstart spray :). It’s still running fine now and is booked in to a garage tomorrow to be checked over while getting new front tyres as recommended in the MOT last month.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, I read a pile of books to the kids at bedtime and aside from needing me to sit with her while she fell asleep Scarlett slept through. Phew.

Today I’d been hoping for news on the boiler front and even holding out an outside hope of it being fixed but having got everyone up and dressed and breakfasted (then washing up with a big pan full of boiled water) for 9am I heard nothing. We watched TV and at 1130am I started ringing my Dad and the plumber, leaving messages for them both. We had lunch and then decided we needed to go out to test my car was still starting so went and bought Scarlett a new pair of boots (her old pair were starting to leak and fall apart and were very smelly) and a new pair of wellies as she has been having Davies’ cast offs for the last couple of years but is now the same size as him. What I spent on expensive wellies for her I saved on her boots being half price so that was fine. Also got Davies some sore throat sweets and nipped to the library to collect a pile of books that had arrived for us. Thanks to the facebook grapevine they already knew we’d had a nice holiday, kids were ill and we have no boiler! 😆

Davies and Scarlett have been stars today, spent ages out with the chickens, tolerated me wiping sudocrem on their poor sore noses (both have colds and are doing a fine Rudolph impression), done some ‘experiments’ which basically means making potions with the various oils and scented waters I got Scarlett for Christmas, watched some TV and generally just got on with it.

They finally had their long awaited pancakes for tea and we read another pile of books at bedtime. Ady and I did the crazy hose thing again for a bath having finally heard from the plumber via Dad that he’s not sure when he’ll next get here but it almost certainly won’t be tomorrow. After some discussion and debate we’ve decided to go for a new boiler and Dad is going to lend us the money so we’ll need to renegotiate with our creditors to add repayments to Dad each month for that. Dad was ringing the plumber back to tell him we want a new boiler as soon as he can possibly come and sort it so hopefully we’ll hear tomorrow when that might be. Fingers crossed for sooner rather than later.