incremental progress

Gone shopping

c has come back from the farm with Bryn's pirate shirt. Bryn created this masterpiece with a perfectly good striped shirt and a pair of scissors. c wants one of his own, but doesn't have a suitable shirt - it apparently Must Be Striped, and preferably in the same colours as Bryn's.

I'm a boring old fart, who values her money, and won't buy him a brand new shirt to chop holes in so he can look like a pirate. So we went to Save mart, where the clothes from the charity bins end up being re-sold. I have a friend, who is a university researcher and has a pretty good income, and is addicted to Save Mart. She made me go there when l lived in Canterbury, and lo, there are wonderous bargains to be had there. I bought this fantastically cut jacket for the son, apparently brand new from France, covered in black and white sheep on a scarlet background for SEVEN DOLLARS. I have bought several things for myself and the kids, and it is SO CHEEP.[sic]

Seemed like the perfect place to buy clothes to cut up. And you'd think, when you were buying something that you planned to mutilate before wearing, and then planned to wear on expeditions that involve mud, lots and lots of mud, and cow pooh, and so forth, that ANY OLD SHIRT WOULD DO.

Not so.

They had a whole warehouse of clothes, and there was nothing that could be cut up and worn. But he did choose a real cool purple shirt with a white hibiscus print (read Hawiian) that he is wearing. Without cutting. And seCd hand boxer shorts. And I got the baby a pair of overalls, red and covered in stars, and made by JK for four dollars. And a flower vase. And we just busted a ten buck note.

That Save Mart, it ain't mecca, but it sure is good.

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This entry was going to be about pediatric medicine, as h went to the hospital last night, but he is fine now, no thanks to the hospital mob. Fortunately the doc who sent us there gave us some antibiotics, and it is the only different thing I have done in the last 24 hours as opposed to the past week. And today was the first day in three days that he has eaten solids, crawled or smiled. Viral, my ass.

Pediatric medicine seems a very inexact science, even to the doctors that practice it. I discovered this reading Cn's notes when he was in hospital for a week, and Cfirmed it in Cversations I had with the staff that week. Everything I have learnt supports the theory that half the time, they don't know why what they do works, but it does. And they and we appreciate that.

Posted by Toni at March 28, 2005 08:18 PM