THE GOOD:
1. I am on holiday for an entire week. An entire week! That's 7 days that I am avec free time and minus Company (bitch included). Whee!
2. MJ's birthday went incredibly well, considering. He was very pleased with all of his presents - which was a miracle of itself - especially the one I got him: a cheapy silly gift from Argos's "fun gifts for Him (£5 and under)" range, which in this case happened to be a Magic 8 Ball. He liked his other gifts, as I said, but it was this one that got him excited, along with the odds and ends I had picked up from Tesco's for his special birthday tea. I'm never going to understand that boy, but that day, things were good. We talked and laughed and even played a game. Fun was had by all.
3. I have been given a portable DVD player to use in my room! And it all came about because Mother's tape player broke...
Mummy, you see, had been using my old tape/CD/radio player ever since hers didn't survive the move from 84 Upton Road to here (seeing as how I rarely if ever used it and she would get a lot of use out of it); and it served her well all that time right up until the beginning of last week, when it finally gave up the ghost and died. After searching round and finally locating somewhere that sold them - the place we usually go for electrical goods is Curry's, but not this time: apparently "tape players are now completely obsolete". To buy new, it was Argos or nothing - she eagerly brought 2. That way we could have one each (she forgot that I rarely touched it, preferring instead to use my little Walkman. ...Something else, incidentally, that is apparently now "obsolete". =sigh=) and that would be lovely. All well and good. Except that when she got home the first one she opened up didn't work. Disaster.
Terribly upset, she waited all morning for me to return home and then waited another hour while Best Friend 1 and Squidgum stayed for lunch (long story), then burst into tears the moment they left. It wasn't the money she minded - she had the receipts and could get that back - it was that the surprise (for me) had all been spoiled, and also that if it turned out that the tape players were all faulty for some reason, how were we going to find another one? Argos had the one type of plug-in tape player; ONE. She NEEDED to be able to play her (literally hundreds) of tapes!
Well, I read the instructions thoroughly and tested the player and then to be sure, tested the other one too. Nothing. Then I calmed her down, explaining that it didn't matter about the surprise - it had been a lovely thought; the fact that the players were broken didn't detract from that - and that if we couldn't get a replacement at Argos, I would start hunting around online (Amazon would have some second hand ones, I was sure); she would NOT, I promised, have to be without a tape player for very long. Then we trouped down to Argos armed with the receipts and two broken (or so we thought) tape/CD/radio players.
To mother's delight, once we got there, it was discovered that there was something elementary that we needed to do (which, I might add, was NOWHERE in the instructions. I checked and got the poor Argos employees to check, too) to start the damn things up; a small plastic thing that needed to be tugged off before they would work. Great. For the first one, anyway. Turned out that the second one actually WAS well and truly buggered, and - they were really apologetic about this, but - there were no more in stock. No problem, I assured them (and mother); I wasn't really interested in having one anyway. So they refunded the money, and that was that. Good good.
Only no! The story was (still) not done yet! Because mother (still) wasn't entirely happy! Yes, SHE had her tape player and that was all well and good, but what about me? OK, so I hadn't wanted one anyway, but she had planned on giving me a gift, and a gift I must have. What did I want?
Put on the spot, I sort of blinked a bit. I couldn't think. We stopped for a can of cold something to counteract the blistering heat and I mulled it over while she waited eagerly for my response. I could have waited and slept on it, of course, but mother was already fraught (the term of back breaking mentally exhausting work has, well, broken her a little, and she was already balanced on a knife's edge, mentally, anyway) and desperate to give me a gift right at that very second, so I didn't want to do that, really.... then it hit me. My DVD drive (is that what it's called?) on Niles has broken and I had missed being able to use it - when mother and I wanted to watch something completely different to one another but still be in the same room, it was very handy - so how about one of those little portable DVD player things? How much did they cost?
Well, her face just lit up, I'm telling you. We were running short of time at that point (evening of fish n' chips and games etc. at The Grandpapa's), so had to leave it and troupe home again to get ready, but I checked online on Curry's website and as it happened they stocked one that was the exact same price as the tape player she had wanted to give to me. So come Saturday morning, down we went to fetch it, and now I am the proud owner of a 9" screened DVD player. Yay!
- My word, that was a long explanation.
THE BAD:
1. The shelter that took Destiny called on Sunday morning, early, to tell Karen and Gavin that unfortunately Destiny had not made it, after all. They said that there was nothing that could have been done, and certainly nothing that THEY had done while Destiny had been with them; it was just "one of those things".
Poor Destiny. Poor, tiny little thing. Karen is beside herself, obviously. We were so hopeful... At least she had known affection, even for such a short time. That's the only (small, very very small) consolation.
2. Bingo had his yearly boosters a this Friday just gone. No problems there, only that swelled wart on his foot, the one that he keeps catching and making bleed (I mentioned it before, I think) may be more of a worry than we had first thought. I mean, I didn't like the thing; it looks horrid and the one side of it does keep filling with blood so that we have to drain and then bathe it, but it didn't seem to be bothering HIM any. I just mentioned it in passing with the intention of asking whether we should leave it as was or lop the damn thing off and be done with it, only to be told that there was a worrying mass just beneath it and it needed to be tested. Mother gripped my hand at this point, and I felt myself go pale. I managed to get through the rest of the visit - everything else was fine - then burst into tears as soon as we left.
I know that I am overreacting (I always do, over Bingo. Mother says its a maternal thing) and I know that probably it will turn out to be nothing, but the idea of Bingo being mauled about (AGAIN) to take samples to be sent off to test (AGAIN) for goodness knows what is unbearable. Not to mention that if the results are 'worrying' (as they were last time) he will need another operation and there will be another agonizing wait while a biopsy is performed...and as luck would have it, we had bumped into a man I sometimes meet while we're both walking our dogs and the smallest of his three (aptly named "Tiny") has just been diagnosed with some malignant disease or other that they have detected in - you guessed it - a small lump found underneath a swelling on the side of her foot... oh, I just can't bear it....
He goes in for "sampling" tomorrow morning. We should get the results three or four days after that. =sighs=
3. This is a completely stupid and whiny-arsed thing to complain about, but WHY do supermarkets seem to always have special offers on Coca-Cola rather than Pepsi? I mean, I LIKE Coca-Cola - we've been enjoying some over MJ's birthday weekend and it's really nice tasting stuff - but I prefer Pepsi, I really really do; yet all the big shops have only Coca-Cola on offer the majority of the time and not Pepsi. Why?? They're both gorgeously addictive fizzy drinks and both equally bad for you and both so expensive that nobody that has to budget their money even a little bit could afford to buy regularly unless they were on offer, so...? What is it that the Yanks say? Colour me confused...
THE UGLY:
1. I have a pimple just a little bit shy of the centre of my breasts. A big pimple. A painful pimple. A really ugly pimple. Oh, and I also have bug bites ALL over me. Everywhere. Including my face. Add that to being lank and slightly greasy (sexy!) due to the muggy weather and I'm not feeling terribly pretty right now, not at all.
2. MJ brought some clothes round to be washed. He has three sets of clothes, this is the first lot in 6 months and he doesn't do any himself. Need I say more?
3. ...did I mention the pimple/bites?
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