Sun, travel, and dreams that won't come true

Sun:

Friday was a beautiful day. I left the house in the morning with Linnea and we went to the park. We met Rob for an early lunch at a cafe on the corner; I had a chicken and stuffing sandwich and it was pretty good, which is unusual for chicken in restaurants. One of the guys at the cafe is taking two weeks off now, because on Friday morning shortly after 8 am he became the father of a real-life outside-the-womb baby. Everyone was doing well in spite of a 39 hour labour.

A friend of mine and her baby joined us, and then she and I pootled into town; I picked up the Free Junk For Mothers Of Toddlers in Mothercare, and some light shoes for Linnea, and a sunhat, and we headed to Toys'R'Us to look at all the baby junk there. I accidentally bought a swing, and I don't even approve of Toys'R'Us, but Linnea is going to love it. We should get it tomorrow, I think. Then we had a cuppa in the centre of town and then I was late. Oops. So I calle drob, told him where everything for the weekend was, and met him at the train station.

Travel:

We headed to Essex to the in-laws. Turns out that even though I can't have walked more than 4 or 5 miles outdoors, I got an unpleasant sunburn on my shoulders and arms, and even Linnea had a little on the bridge of her nose. Apparently March can be sunny. I felt wretched about Linnea's face until I realised it wasn't bothering her and feeling wretched wouldn't undo the carcinogenic damage I'd already done her. Instead, I have vowed to use sunscreen from now on, even if it's only a little sunny. If it's sunny enough not to have a jumper, it's sunny enough for sunscreen.

We were going to pop out first thing on Saturday morning and pick up a new, even bigger carseat, to store with the in-laws car so that we can visit them (practically inaccessible by public transport - one can get so far but no farther, apparently) but it turned into a marathon, price-comparing trip that meant we had to stop for Linnea's lunch in the middle of it and it took until after 2 pm. Then we had a pleasant afternoon in the garden.

Until a neighbour dropped over and in the middle of his friendly chit-chat (men shouldn't change nappies because it's women's work, for example) he asked something along the lines of "When are you having another? You can't have them too far apart," or "you have to space them right' or something. All I said was "I could go into the physical details but I don't think you want to know" and then after a "decent interval" I left and went upstairs for a cry. I was shaken for the rest of the day and still not great this morning. I want to be about to have my second baby. I want to be able to decide to get pregnant. I can't have sex yet. I'm still triumphing that I can have a bowel movement without much pain and usually without crying out or weeping.

So that sucked.

Then when we left I found out that my in-laws paid for th carseat, and my father-in-law gave me half the cost of our train tickets over. I do understand that they are only doing this because they care and they like to, but I hate hand-outs, and we don't need them, and I'd much prefer us to do this stuff on our own. I'd like a period where I didn't feel under obligation to anyone, where we provided necessities and essentials for our own family from our own resources. I don't mind in the least receiving desirable, frivolous gifts from them - a whole post will later be dedicated to the most recent one - but I dislike having essentials provided by parents when we are 26 and 30 years old, and it's at least 6 years since we lived with parents or on the charity of parents, if not longer. The generosity is stifling, you know?

Dreams:

Last night I dreamed that there was a new marketing technique. Advertising had found a new niche. Dial tones. Instead of picking up the phone and hearing BEEP, I picked up phones and heard "Buy NEW improived Thingummy shampoo!"

To stop the advertising and dial the number, one had to dial 17. And some advertisers had worked out how to override this so that one was forced to listen until the end of their ad before being able to dial out. Even when one was dialling the emergency services. I needed to call 999 for the police because [dream-eroded scary situation involving bad people who didn't know I was there but were going to hurt unspecified good people] and couldn't because of this advertising thing.

Hm.