Seri's Wheelchair

£931.40 = 40.5%

Keep it up! We're doing great! THIRTY-FOUR donations have raised all that money. We still need £1368.60 - I think a neighbour of mine is going to do a sponsored walk, which will help. He's recovering from a sailing accident which initially left him paralysed from the neckdown; now he can do most things most of the time, though opening jamjars can be problematic.

We don't know how the latest surgery went for Seri; we know there were complications and she ended up in the ICU.

http://ailbhe.livejournal.com/636202.html for the whole thing...

Update: 30 August, 11 pm: £1045.99 = 45.5%

It was really very like the time I smoked a cigar

Yesterday in the playground...

Well, yesterday I was having a truly terrible day. I was tired, Emer was tired, Linnea was tired and cranky. So when Maria called and invited us to the park I was delighted. I got us all fully and properly dressed - at something tedious in the afternoon - and we went.

(Our street has been extended now and run into the new housing development in which the new playground has been built; this is convenient for access and irritating because of the extra traffic on the roads. At some point I will become agitated enough to agitate for proper pedestrian crossings on Beresford Road in particular. Grr.)

In the playground, Linnea and Louis went that way and Emer and Phoebe went that way and all was shrieking, running around almost hitting people with sticks, etc. Then another family arrived and played too. A boy climbed the climbing frame and got his trousers caught on it, ending up hanging from it shouting for help - that was fine, his mother helped him. His slightly smaller sister climbed up to the top of it and was just wondering whether to go over the top or come back down when her mother scolded her anxiously and guided her feet down. After that, she played in the baby section (where teenagers were climbing on the roofs of the climbing frame, must try that some day).

Maria and I remarked to each other that we were watching gender socialisation in action. It was, well, remarkable.

I was sufficiently irritated by it that instead of sticking to the zip-slide as I usually do, I also climbed the climbing frame and put all the kids in the roundabout and span it so fast I felt queasy.

Emer loved it. I didn't.

But I don't like feeling told what to do. I don't like the idea that little girls this and little boys that, when no-one has a control-group raised in a gender-neutral bubble to compare with. I really hate it when it means a competent girl climber isn't allowed to go where a less competent boy climber was encouraged to go.

Grr, bah.

Also, the little girl's shoes were too small; she took them off later and wiggled her toes at me. Her feet were longer than the outsides of her shoes.

Metaphor.

Trundling along

(Why is Rob fabulous? Because he repairs keyboards and bakes a mean banana bread.)

We - I - recently went to IKEA as part of an all-woman all-night babyless heady gallivant. I - we - bought the girls a new bed, because Linnea loved the bunkbed when she was in nappies but was distinctly less impressed when she had to climb down to use the loo, and in fact developed a fairly serious anxiety about it. We had the same available floorspace as before, so I wanted a trundle bed.

But in all honesty, I've always wanted a trundle bed.

There are many reasons why - they are efficient, easy to make up, friendly because the occupants are more side by side than up above each other, the word "trundle" is brilliant (say it! trundle trundle trundle, rumble drum belaboured!) but above all else, before any other attractions, is this:

Mary and Laura Ingalls had one in one of the Little House books. Every morning they had to do "chores," a fancy American word for what we called "jobs." And the first one was to make up their bed, tucking the quilts in on each side, and push it under the big bed. This fabulous, exotic, exciting and foreign literary bed design was called a Trundle Bed.

AND NOW I HAVE ONE IN MY HOUSE I AM SO SQUEEEEEEEE!