And still they come

Illness

The antibiotics seem to be helping my chest - in spite of terrifying one of my guests (I had a trail of ranting guests today, most unusual, more later) by laughing until I stopped breathing, I am feeling much better.

Hurrah for antibiotics!

Boo, boo, hiss for antibiotics! I have a cyst in my earlobe, an itch where I would expect to find thrush, and an upset in my tummy.

Visitors

Guests arrived and ranted - in all, we covered traffic, roadworks, guests, hosts, doctors, midwives, consultant obstetricians, La Leche League (I wasn't ranting about that, because I haven't seen them being militant) and stuff I've forgotten.

Then people came to pick up Freecycle stuff - the house is getting emptier! People are taking out stuff away! We don't need to landfill it - something our little hoarding souls won't really allow us to do. One of them ranted abou traffic too.

The guest without a baby of her own dealt beautifully with my having one - treated Linnea like a real person rather than a pet or a germ, which is all I ask, really. Since I don't coo over every baby I meet - they're all so inferior to Linnea what's the point? (ask yourself: Is she joking?) - why should someone who doesn't even claim to like children? Acting like she believed my baby is a human being with all the rights human beings generally have was lovely. Though there was the occasional terrified rictus. I make them too, sometimes. Linnea has that effect on people.

One of the guests with a baby had brought said aforementioned baby to have the MMR jab and left her housekeys behind. Then the baby fell over while pushing Linnea brutally to the floor (she was unharmed) and cut his upper lip on his teeth. The blood was copious and the sound of the impact was alarmingly loud.

Pomes

The journal that started off being Linnea's proxy journal and turned into my Linnea Pomes journal has been renamed to lnc due to recent liberalisation of Livejournal policy. I don't know whether it's a good thing overall but I benefit from it.

(In other Linnea news, today she found a key on the table and tried to use it in the front door. She's so clever!)

Travel plans

My and Linnea's summer itinerary is as follows:

Fri 03 Jun Not at home, in the UK
Sat 04 Jun Not at home, in the UK
Sun 05 Jun Not at home, in the UK

Fri 24 Jun Travelling to Dublin
Sat 25 Jun Attending a wedding in Dublin - no calls please
Sun 26 Jun In Dublin
Mon 27 Jun Travelling to Aran
Tue 28 Jun UNTIL
Tue 19 Jul In Aran, on holiday, relaxing! No computer!
Wed 20 Jul Travelling to Dublin
Thu 21 Jul In Dublin
Fri 22 Jul In Dublin
Sat 23 Jul Travelling home!

Fri 29 Jul Travel to CCDE
Sat 30 Jul Attend CCDE
Sun 31 Jul Travel home

Please note that Rob is travelling from Aran - Dublin - home on the 9th and 10th of July.

So I'll have only three whole weeks with my mother instead of the four we had originally hoped for, but the wedding and CCDE are not movable feasts, so there you go. I am aware that it's only a combination of good luck and very careful forward planning that makes this possible at all.

My First Bra

I was out in town with my mother and my sister. I was about 13, ish - it's hard to know really. We were in a department store, but I don't know which one. In the underwear department.

Forgive me, this brings great hilarity and at the same time great "It's difficult to talk about this so. I'm going to do it in. Staccatto. OK? Ok. *deep breath*. OK," type feelings.

Anyway, I was trailing along, all four-foot-six of me, and looking longingly at the bra display. I was the only girl in the class who didn't have a bra. I had received a crop top for my thirteenth birthday, which I was very proud of until I got to PE class, where it was revealed to be not really a whole lot better than the woolly vest that preceded it. And as for the school trip where there were communal showers for after windsurfing - oh gods. I shudder even now.

Mum turned around and saw me, wistful and languishing, and said "You don't want a bra, do you?" very loudly. Or at least in normal, conversational tones, anyway, which is impossibly loud when you're discussing a first bra. I nodded as invisibly as I could. "But you don't need one," she bellowed, heartlessly. My eyes filled with tears. My feet dug little holes in the tatty carpet. I burrowed into the concrete floor.

I don't remember what happened next. The next thing I remember is standing in a changing cubicle with a horribly inadequate curtain, having worked out how to get the bra on, knowing the one I had was the smallest size in the shop. It was white cotton, 32AA, and the cups were empty. They flapped. Flap, flap, flap. It was awful.I think my little sister was there - if she was, she was sympathetic, because I don't remember any additional humiliation - just that I was the only girl in the school without a bra, and the smallest one available was miles too big. It burned. It flooded me with shame and self-loathing (I was a teenager, remember).

I don't think I told my mother it didn't fit, but she probably knew. She bought it anyway. She did know that there's more to a bra, when you're thirteen, than a support undergarment.

Ever since, I have worried about how I will deal with my own daughters' first bras.

(Comparatively recently, my mother was despatched to buy a 38DD or larger bra for me. I felt a little triumph.)