Stocking up on karma

Scarlett is down again 🙁 She has a real corker of a cold, streaming nose, horrid cough, overbright eyes, flushed cheeks and permanent temperature. Poor baby hasn’t really fully recovered from pre-Christmas illness which left a nasty cough. She is bright enough in herself and has periods of flagging interspersed with mad running around and giddiness though. The worst thing is under her nose and around her mouth is red raw. I’ve been slathering on the sudocrem and hoping it heals quickly.

Davies seems to be on the cusp of it too so I suspect the first few days of the coming week will be quiet ones. We were due to go to a birthday party (Lily’s, of Liam and Lily fame) this afternoon but cancelled as I thought it would be unfair to take our germs to a party full of children who are all going back to school tomorrow and I didn’t think either of the kids was really up to it. (In hushed tones, Ady and I didn’t really fancy sitting watching kids leap around a soft play place either).

Instead we answered the door to various freecyclers coming to collect stuff from the playroom – two no-shows mean we still have some puzzles and the kids old tables and chairs. Hopefully they’ll go tomorrow or the tables and chairs become firewood and the puzzles can go to the charity shop.

I delivered the bits to the woman who had the pasta machine for me and a friendly and mutually grateful swap was executed – she has 8 children and as she said herself ‘no time to be making pasta!’ so the toys were gratefully recieved. I on the other hand was glad to be rid of the clutter and fully intend making pasta if only the once!

We wanted to go and check up on the allotment and get rid of some stuff on the compost heap so we had a brief visit there, as blogged in the relevant place.

We then had a brief run around trying to get pasta flour. I’ve since googled and would probably have a go with normal flour but managed to get some in Tescos in the end. It was mad busy in there and the queues were huge. I ended up behind a guy who tried to chat to me in the queue but I just smiled and gave a one word answer. I don’t want to be rude but neither am I really in the market for making friends at the supermarket either. However he was flustered about something and left his credit card in the chip and pin reader. I noticed and handed it to the cashier who was in the process of swapping over with someone else. They seemed unbothered and said they’d keep it at the till incase he returned for it and then hand it in to customer services.

As I left the store I noticed the man walking back to his car having taken his trolley back so I ran (yes ran!!) across the car park to catch him and told him he’d left his card. Assuming he’d realised fairly quickly he’d still have had the hassle of going back to the store, if not the hassle of cancelling his card and waiting for a new one if he’d not realised where he’d left it. Worth the running I reckon :).

Back home Ady cooked roast dinner and the kids and I played some games. I’m really not that in to board games and the kids only want to play one or two games. I just don’t think we’re sitting down for a long time and concentrating on stuff sort of people.

I did lots of looking at vegetarian cook books (borrowed from the library, clearly not something I would own ;)) and have pretty much planned the menu for the Not Swingers Vegetarian Dinner Party Requiring A Table next weekend.

We had dinner, all of us, sitting at the table and talked about dolphins, holidays and correct usage of cutlery.

The children annoyed me before bedtime which resulted in no story 🙁 Hopefully we’ll make up for that with some additional reading together during the day tomorrow. We were due to meet Julie at the stables for some riding but the forecast is for freezing cold conditions and so I rang Julie to cancel as I don’t think Scarlett should be outside for ages and she said she’d have rung me to cancel anyway as she’t not take the pony out on frozen ground. So tomorrow Ady is back to work and the rest of us have nowhere we need to be and a whole pile of books to read, kits to make, various last few places to declutter and a kitchen just desperate for some baking to be done in it :). I need to make some brandy snaps as I’ve not been able to find any anywhere, have a play with the pasta machine and Davies has some leftover Smarties from his Christmas stocking he wants to make cookies with.