While chatting to Akra Jr between his dashes to the bathroom to be violently sick in the early hours of this morning, we tried to explain why he wasn’t feeling himself at the moment.

“It’s a bug there,” I point. “In your tummy.”

Along the way, this got translated in the three-year-old brain to “there’s a spider in my tummy, mummy.” The concept was quite cute, and he didn’t appear to be grossed out by the idea, so we’ve run with it.

“Here – drink some more water, it’ll help flush out the spider.”
“You might be sick a few more times before the spider comes out.”
“Milk and yoghurt are the spider’s favourite foods, they’ll only make him stronger. Have some apple instead, he hates that.”

We’re pretty sure he knows it’s a game and not a real spider. Absolutely certain. Definitely.

Oh hell, we’re scarring him for life, aren’t we?!

As if ‘flu wasn’t enough this season, we now have the sicky bug doing the rounds.

Beginning to forget what all of us healthy at the same time was like.

Today has been one of those days where you look at your watch to see if you need to start thinking about dinner yet, then realise that not only is it an hour earlier than you expected, but you got the baby up from his nap an hour too early as well.

Afternoon dragged a bit.

I have a great deal of respect for the Samaritans, mainly because I had a friend who volunteered for a similar scheme at university so I know of the intensive training and selection procedure, and I know how emotionally wrecked she used to be on return from a shift. They do hard and vital work.

So I was rather cross to read that the Sheffield branch has been refused a much needed lottery grant for the only reason that they “hadn’t fulfilled the priorities of the National Lottery Board to appeal to the young, the elderly, ethnic minorities, asylum seekers and people who are disadvantaged”. Surely you’d be hard pushed to find a more inclusive organisation – as Ken asks over at Nanny Knows Best, are they expected to ask your age, ethnicity and bank balance before they speak to you?

I’ve always suspected that the National Lottery grants were a complete con – an excuse for the government to drastically reduce their charitable support while funding the bizarre over the genuinely needy. This only confirms it for me.

via Nanny Knows Best

The first ant of the season has just been spotted in the living room.

Time to invest in Nippon shares again.

Over the last couple of months, particularly when we were recovering from ‘flu, I’ve developed the habit of occasionally taking the laptop upstairs for an early night’s surfing/playing games in the luxury of my own bed – only playing games is becoming slightly less than restful.

The main problem is that without an integral CD player, I have to remove the wireless network card from the PCMCIA slot and replace with the CD player gizmo, not only making for awkward lap balancing, but rendering my PC incapable of accessing the net at the same time. More and more games now seem to insist on having the CD in regardless of whether you’ve performed a full install, all in the name of “copy protection”.

The whole concept of copy protection is making me increasingly angry. Not only can you not make decent backup copies anymore, but the only people it disadvantages are the legitimate owners of the software. I shouldn’t HAVE to download a cracked version of a game (and thereby risking viruses and trojans) just to play something I legally own in a manner that is convenient to me. And don’t get me started on those games that won’t let you play without the CD but won’t let you get patch updates from the internet without the game running at the same time. I’ve been experimenting with using Virtual CD but it’s hard to work out which settings each game needs, as each manufacturer’s copy protection seems to balls it up in new and interesting ways.

Have I mentioned I would like a new laptop?!

Just finished the shopping order online. It took me over an hour today.

Half the problem is all the different things I have to remember – Li’l Bhaji is now eating separate meals to us, and I’m trying my very best to make them fresh and mimize the jars, simply because that’s what I did for his brother and I think it’s better that way.

As a result, the rest of our diets has plummeted – into the mire of convenience and processed. So I’m determined to get some fresh stuff and get back into better habits, while still acknowledging that cooking time is limited.

Enter Saving Dinner – fantastic idea I thought, someone else gets to plan my evening meals and provide a shopping list (I bought the book rather than subscribed to the site… just in case). Except it’s all in bloody american (apologies to my US readers) – I’ve had to translate every single line before I could do my shopping. Cilantro apparently is the same stuff as coriander (so why didn’t they write that, gah)… I’ve had to translate from cups through ounces to grammes. I’m hoping cube steak is the same as cubed beef. Sainsburys online apparently haven’t heard of kale, unless that’s called something different here too.

I’ve got a headache. And no it didn’t save me any more time, and the shopping bill will be about £10 dearer than normal because I have precious little stock cupboard stuff. This had better taste divine.

Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to Pewari
Happy Birthday to Me!

… but not for meeeeeee *sob*

Akra has just got a new laptop – a Dell Inspiron and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The keyboard is beautifully weighted and I’m trying to convince him that I could write a novel that would hit the best seller lists by the end of the year with that keyboard, but he’s not convinced. Says he needs it for his work or some other such lame excuse like that.

*sigh*. As if my web surfing and shockwave gaming needs aren’t higher priority than that!

Spring is officially here. Well, maybe. Funnily enough we don’t have groundhogs in Worcester, but if there were I’m sure they’d be out and about, packing up their little hibernation supplies and planning their summer hols.

There’s a definite scent in the air of weather change – I noticed it yesterday afternoon. The catkins are out (would you say they were flowering?) and the local council lawnmower man has been out cutting the grass.

So can someone tell our ‘flu/secondary colds/infections to PLEASE GO AWAY NOW?! Poor L’il Bhaji has got another high temperature this evening and started to sound a bit wheezy, I’m still in snotty grotty mode and Akra has his annual hacking cough. Akra Jr is just suffering from attention starvation. All in all we’ll be very glad when cold season is officially over.