Table talk

Rather uncharacteristically, the Man and I went out this morning and bought a new kitchen table and chairs. 

Our old table was passed down to us by my uncle and aunt many years ago when we first got a house together.  Since then, time and two feltpen-and-scissor-happy children have taken it beyond "distressed" to fully distraught.  But still we shipped it out here, along with an odd assortment of mismatched chairs and sundry other oddments of furniture that had seen better days even before they belonged to us.  But we'd always intended to replace the table, and finally we have!

Now we'll also have chairs for our guests (some are arriving soon) to sit on without imminent risk of collapse.  Since we've already had three visitors go through chairs in this house, that's probably not a moment too soon.

Thru voting

We've had one of our jobs-around-the-house days, breaking off from time to time throughout the afternoon to follow the Eurovision Song Contest online.  UK readers, were you watching too?  (US readers, I don't imagine for a moment that you were or can understand why anyone would.)  The children favoured Jedward to come in first for Ireland ("Even though I don't like troll dolls," adds the Girl), so only disappointment for us there, alas.  None of us was very excited about the winners, though no doubt there has been dancing in the streets of Baku tonight.

The Man thinks this photo is interesting but I'm not so sure.  Please vote with your comments (assuming comments are back in action - they've been down for a couple of days).

The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing...

So, it wasn't just me that was knocked out last night - Blogger itself was down and out, hence no post.

Actually I wasn't doing so badly by yesterday evening.  The dental work was all over by noon.  It wasn't exactly a picnic, but not nearly as terrible as I'd anticipated.  However I was so doped up that when I got home I went straight to bed  - and slept for six hours.   I woke up in time to visit an art exhibition at school, and hungrily ate my dinner of yoghurt (I was on a 24-hour cold-soft-food diet).  Then back to bed for another long sleep.

Today I've been feeling pretty much fine, though I'm still on painkillers.  I don't know if it's those, or yesterday's inactivity, or Wednesday's physio or a happy combination of all three, but since losing my tooth I seem to have regained my elbow - no pain there at all now.

The future looks...blurry

The first half of the day had a medical theme.  Physio in the morning (it's helping and my tennis elbow is definitely improving) and a routine check-up at lunchtime.  The doctor gave me a clean bill of health, though she warned me that I'll probably have to wear bifocals before long and asked if I was worried about having a mid-life crisis.  Not until she started on about bifocals, no, not really.

This evening we made it to the 4-H meeting, held in a local church hall, but were chased out by some Boy Scouts who reckoned they had first dibs on the room.  We all (the few that had turned out for the meeting) ended up at our house.  One kid finished making a toolbelt and the Girl made a skirt on the sewing machine, but all the Boy managed to make was a nuisance of himself.

Tomorrow I'm booked for dental work, including extraction of a wisdom tooth.  I'm looking forward to some serious sedation, so there's a good chance someone else will be writing the next blog entry you read here...

Bracelet breakthrough?

For several months, off and on, I've been working with one of my fair trader contacts to develop a fair trade fundraiser for the kids' school.   The idea is to commission a cooperative of weavers - Mayan Hands - in Guatemala to make friendship bracelets in school colours.  Tonight I presented the idea and some sample bracelets to the PTA, who have agreed to put in an initial order for 300.  Everyone anticipates that the bracelets will sell well, and that there'll be more orders to follow.  And since our school colours are in fact shared by the whole school district, I'm hoping other PTA's will decide they want the bracelets too...  It could grow to be quite a big thing.

This venture opens up some great opportunities for introducing a whole lot more people to the concept of fair trade.  I'm pretty excited and really hope we make a success of it. 

Active kids

The call came the other day for someone to make a 5' tall cut-out of an "active kid" and naturally I couldn't resist volunteering.  Well, I have to admit it, I am still congratulating myself on the success of my giant carrot a few months ago.  The 5' kid is going to be used as some sort of healthy-choice related counting device during Healthy Kids Week starting next Monday.

An active kid is slightly more of a paper-cutting challenge than a carrot, I must say, but I gave it my best shot.  Now it's  hanging about on the back of our front door until I have to take it in to school.  Tonight without the hall light on it looks disturbingly as if a large, terrified child ran right through the door without opening it.

When the Man got home from work I cashed in one of my Mother's Day coupons and we all went for a walk at Five Rivers.  Though we picked the Beaver Tree trail we didn't manage to spot any beavers, but we did spy a chipmunk and a whole gaggle of geese, and just generally had a happy little hike on a perfect evening.

S.O.L.

We were in BestBuy today, purchasing an electronic gadget.  A helpful young assistant explained things to us, including an insurance policy which meant that if we were to drop or otherwise damage said gadget the store's "Geek Squad" would repair or replace it - "But" he added, "If you set fire to it or drop it in the pool you're S.O.L."

"S.O.L.?" we queried.

"So outta luck." 

You could say I was S.O.L. when, having realised we were out of dishwasher detergent, I decided to put concentrated washing up liquid in the dishwasher instead.  Ever wondered what would happen if you did that?  Well, a nice clean kitchen floor, for one thing...  Hmm, maybe not S.O.L. after all.

And decidedly not outta luck in my (US) Mother's Day gift today from the kids:  a homemade book of coupons.  I can now insist that, without complaint, they stop whining about feeling hungry; turn off the CD player; go on a hike; or give me hugs (to a limit of 5,000).  Plus a few other things that arguably they should do on demand anyway, but still it's lovely to have them offer.  Each coupon can only be used once, mind you, and not at all after the expiry date of August 31.