NotSheep

As far as I’m concerned, Wednesday and Thursday were non-days. They just didn’t happen. I spent Tuesday night feeling feverish and blergh, and then on Wednesday morning, the car wouldn’t start. It had been a little iffy for a couple of days and we’d booked it in with our mechanic for Thursday, so that will explain why it refused to start on Wednesday. So Scratchy didn’t go into work, and once I felt able to drag myself out of bed to sit in the driver’s seat and try to get the thing started once it was rolling down a hill, that’s what we did. A neighbour came to help, and eventually we managed to get the engine going, and I went back to bed. And more-or-less stayed there until this morning. The kids were great; they all entertained themselves very nicely and even helped out a lot with Toby so I could rest more. Not much “education” going on, obviously, but they’re always learning, even if it’s not what I’d planned By yesterday I was out of flu-mode and into heavy-head-cold mode, and by this morning I was feeling almost normal. Still on antibiotics for the next few days, but I’m certain they were necessary; looking at it with a clear head (rather than a flu-fug one), I’m fairly sure I actually had an abscess rather than straightforward mastitis - though thankfully one that would drain on its own and didn’t require me to meet another scalpel.

So I lay there feeling sorry for myself while Scratchy took the car to the mechanic. He wasn’t able to get it fixed until Thursday, so we couldn’t do Cubs or Scouts on Wednesday night.

This has triggered further discussions about buying a newer car. We’d been talking about looking for something newer next year, but when Henry arrived we considered buying something bigger. Once you get to the point of needing more than seven seats, the number of available options rapidly shrinks. There’s a Volkswagen van which seats either eight or nine, depending on seat configuration; I went to look at one this morning, and while it’s big enough and spacious enough and would do, I’m just not really taken with it. It’s a modified van, and it looks like a van and it drives like a van. (For North American readers, a “van” in the UK is a commercial cargo vehicle. What you call a “van”, we call a “people-carrier”.) Also it’s only been on the market for two years so the cheapest ones are still £15k. And also insurers won’t cover the nine-seat version as a private car, so we’d have to go for the eight-seat version. Yes, I know that would be enough seats for now, but it would be nice to have a spare one to take along a friend or for any possible future needs wouldn’t it? And £15k is an awful lot of money to hand over for one extra seat, especially when you don’t just love the car, y’know?

So back to the drawing-board. Currently under consideration is the purchase of a new (to us, definitely not brand-new!) seven-seater of some description, to be kept alongside what we’ve got. Cons: double the insurance and road-tax, and if we all go somewhere together, we’d have to take both vehicles. Pros: a lot less money to hand out initially and we’d have a backup vehicle if anything went wrong.

Opinions? Or, if you have more children than the average bear and have managed to suss this one out, tales of what you’ve done and how it worked out?

After two stops at car shops, we had a fast food lunch (and crikey is that so not cheap when there’s six children to be fed including two who eat adult-sized meals!) Then Henry and Barney went to the small museum in town, mainly so Henry could buy some postcards. We’d all have gone, but we only had about 20 minutes, and that wasn’t enough time to find parking, get all the kids out, get all the kids to the museum from the car-park, gather them all up again and get back to the car. Note I didn’t even try to factor in the time for all of them to go around the museum in there - just the peripheral stuff wasn’t do-able, so the big kids went and the rest of us didn’t.

We did all go swimming though; Toby had a thoroughly good time again - in fact I had to wrap my legs around him to stop him diving down the steps head-first while I tied the cord in Freddy’s shorts. We stayed in for ages today too, and everyone really enjoyed it. When we first went in, we were the only ones there, and even when we left, there were only a couple of other kids in the pool. Henry and Barney stayed in for even longer than the rest of us, and Freddy went to soccer while I picked up Scratchy. Soccer for George is not happening this season; he just doesn’t want to do it. I wish he’d said so before it was paid for; it’s not as though they’re ever signed up for anything they don’t want to to.

Home for chili (one l) from the slow-cooker, which I, in ten minutes of domestic goddessness, had thrown together this morning before we left. It’s very nice to come home after a long day and find dinner all ready and hot and smelling delicious; I need to make more use of my slow-cooker.

We weren’t home five minutes before R and G from across the road arrived to play with our lot, so people ate in a sort-of relay system before Scratchy took off to basketball with Barney and Henry. Henry hurt his foot in the pool - not seriously, it’s just a scratch and a bit of a bruise, but it was bothering him enough that he didn’t want to walk on it; however it wasn’t bothering him enough that he didn’t want to go to basketball

Tomorrow: swimming, Fit Kids, gymnastics, basketball, maybe library…