Priorities

[ailbhe]

I am sick. Linnea was sick. Rob is sick. Rob and I didn't even notice we were sick until Linnea got better.

It takes at most 6 hours to visit friends in Dublin by plane, door to door. It takes at least 8, sometimes 10, by train and ferry. But it's easier by train and ferry because Linnea prefers it. It's also more eco-friendly and it may be cheaper.

The most important thing about a restaurant is whether they allow children to wander around in the lobby or similar between courses. Oh, and whether they accommodate dairy-free food.

Seeing pregnant women buying baby formula is painful, but I am too much of a coward to come up with something to say to them, and I can't think of anything to sayanyway. Would you change your parenting decisions based on something a random stranger said to you when you were shopping 7 months pregnant with varicose veins and a desperate need to pee? the best i've come up with is wandering off saying to my companion "I'm glad I never had to get up in the night to mess with bottles," but frankly that's weak.

Ethical shopping pales when I see a fantastic piece of slave-manufactured plastic in Linnea's hands in a shop, as she demonstrated a previously unknown skill - colour identification, for example, or counting. I usually manage not to buy the thing, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.

I am much, much angrier about certain stated opinions, and much, much stricter about both foul language and cigarette smoke. It's not just me it might offend now. It's a child who doesn't even understand what's going on and might absorb it anyway. I have a horrible feeling she said "shit" when she dropped a tub of bicarb the other day.