Four more sleeps

And really quite excited about our holiday. Not entirely sure why (except it is a long time since I had one) and hoping very hard that this weather holds. While the rest of you have had stair-rods along with Bill-n-Kate, Cheshire has had high summer. Like we used to have when we were children: day after day of unrelenting sunshine (presumably because I have invested in a rainwater butt). Cameron, in a really dramatically underhand bid to avoid doing any packing at all, has swanned off to Houston for the week. Maggie is being super-whingy-whiney (I alternate between blaming two grandparental visits in quick succession – she often gets a bit strange afterwards – and daddy being away. Or is she a bit poorly, who knows. Or the heat. Or just four.) Tamsin is interminably teething, and we are still overrun with critters of all description.

Slugs, check. Spiders, check. Mice – now in the kitchen cupboards so b*ll*cks to being humane, I’ve been out for proper traps this morning. Blackbird flying round the morning room battering against the windows, check. Next-door’s dog coming and depositing, um, deposits on our lawn. Check. Until I put a note through her door* yesterday and now she has blocked the hole in the fence (hooray). Unfortunately while blocking it she investigated what he was barking at and found a rat in the hedge (did you say you had a compost bin because perhaps that is attracting them). Have purchased larger traps to go with the small mousey ones: intend to spend the rest of the week before we go away disposing of rodent corpses. Unceremoniously.

Today I bought new nappies. Not terribly momentous, I agree, but the old ones had been in near-constant use for 4 years and were looking a little sad. (How much money I have saved. Smug, moi?!) The tipping point came when I realised T was either holding them up with her hands or giving up and taking them off altogether – the elastic had finally given up the ghost and, now we have sunshine glorious sunshine and she is no longer in a pop-up vest, they were feeling the effects of gravity. Rainbow bots, purchased all those long years ago, are no longer in production (mine are no longer beautiful icecream colours like those in the picture but a kind of nondescript grey), so I went along to see Lizzie, my local nappy dealer. I knew one of her neighbours so we started with a bit of a gossip (Chester is like that) then I came away with two discounted discontinued end-of-line bamboozles (slim-fitting, very absorbant, take forever to dry, she says). Apparently I am alone in my love of a coloured nappy as the lovely bright yellow and purple are no longer to be manufactured (all these people who want boring white nappies have not fully considered staining, I suspect). Four fluffles (bulky but fast-drying and oh my goodness as soft as a cloud: I’d like to cuddle one if that wasn’t a bit weird. White. Nippa fastening rather than velcro, which will take a bit of getting used to), also discontinued for reasons unknown as they are enormously popular. Four state-of-the-art flexitots (mid-bulkiness; fit like a disposable ie slim round the waist baggy underneath, which is a bit peculiar but ok). They have velour inners! I’d wear one myself (if, you know, I wasn’t toilet trained. Which I am.) Some people become nappy junkies and like to try every sort; others (like me) find ones they like then just stick with them and stop looking – so no more nappy chat, maybe ever.

*A very polite note, and it is all quite amicable. We like our neighbours. Apart from her horribly yappy dogs that bark all the sodding time when she is at work (but have very cute puppies). And the other side has a horrible barky dog that scares even me never mind Maggie (Tamsin doesn’t bat an eyelid) and whose “deposits” remain on the nice new patio for an unseemly length of time, making hanging out my washing really unpleasantly smelly.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:37 pm and is filed under ethical living, wittering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.