Saturday, February 25, 2006
Catching up
Miss almost-1 has a mild cold, which appears to be the inevitable consequence of a visit to the indoor disease vector play centre. Still, when I was sitting there the other day watching her play, neck-deep in germs plastic balls, I was thinking about how many childhood infections she *isn't* being exposed to, courtesy of the public education system and Big Sister. Even Ms 8, by this age, was mingling with other little plague carriers kids and their germs at creche.
Our washing machine is highly unwell - probably the pump. We can't get anyone to look at it til next week, so I'll be spending at least part of the weekend lugging buckets of dirty nappies to my ILs' house, the next suburb over. Still, at least I can go to my ILs', where I can drop them off and come back when they've finished, instead of having to hang out in a laundromat for several hours to get them done. It means I can come back and clean the house while I'm waiting (Oh, lucky me).
Ms 8 and her grandmother have gone to the circus. We originally had tickets for last Saturday's show, which was cancelled, but fortunately everyone involved was able to make the new time. My mother and father have finally joined us all in the late 20th century, with their acquisition of mobile phones (something they said they'd never do). Unfortunately, the phones still aren't of any use in contacting them, due to the fact that my father left his at home, and my mother discovered that the instruction manual to hers is the size of a small encyclopedia but contains very little useful information, such as, say, how to turn it off when you are going to a live performance (and no, there isn't a button marked "Off"). In the process of trying to find out, she forgot her PIN and the phone now needs to be reset before she can log back into it. In any case, Ms 8 being away means that I have been tidying up in her space, and have come up with Plans (yet more Plans) for simplifying and streamlining her stuff. The Beloved thinks my idea would work, now to run it past Ms 8 when she gets home.
I have just gotten home myself from picking up a big collection of plant pots, seeds, potting mix, watering cans and other gardening paraphernalia which I scored for Ms 8 on Freecycle. She has really gotten into gardening in the last six months, and has used pretty much everything which I gave her for Christmas. So she was thrilled to get a big pile of new seeds, in particular - her snapdragon seedlings mysteriously disappeared into the chaos on our back deck, but now she has two more packets to plant. Freecycle is such a fantastic resource for unschoolers!
