time to talk?

One never knows...

Anyone who has been to our house the last year knows that we had a very sad little loveseat. Two, actually. A blue one that we bought back in '97 or thereabouts, that had very little cushion left, broken boards, no bottom or back... And a green one that was given to us by our neighbors in Cheveley when they needed to make room for guinea pigs. It was pretty comfy, actually, but the cushions were attached by zippers, and most of the zippers were broken, so the cushions were always falling off. Last week while Bob was off work he made two trips to the dump, and now we don't have either of the loveseats.
I have the loveseat we bought soon after moving here, and Bob has his recliner, but the children needed somewhere to sit. So one day we made a trip out to Feltwell to the furniture store. See, I had joked about getting beanbags, and Bob thought it was a good idea. He looked online, and then we went out to the store to see if they had any. Well, they did, cheaper than online, so we got 5 of them - 2 pinks, one black round, and two two-tone long ones. Then we walked through the store just for fun.

While the children took turns in the bathroom, I looked at the refrigerators. There was one by LG, cost over $1000. It had a through-the-door ice and water dispenser. But when I opened the door, it soon became apparent that this wasn't what it appeared. Instead of a little plastic line going through the back to the house water line, providing fresh water on demand through the fridge, there was a small reservoir on top of the fridge door. In the freezer was a fancy little setup for making ice. Not an automatic icemaker, but two mounted icetrays with a lever to turn them out into the bin below, and a system for filling them. Of course Bob didn't have his camera to take a picture of this. I just couldn't get over this top-of-the-line fridge with its stone-age technology.

One thing I forgot to mention in the birth story was the kicking. Elijah was clearly awake throughout labor, and between every contraction he kicked constantly. He is so strong, he literally almost knocked me over a couple of times by the kicking. Made it hard to relax.
On a related note, though Elijah was more than 1 1/2lbs bigger than William, William had bigger feet by nearly an inch. Bigger hands, too, I think, though we didn't measure them.

I'm not sure I want to get started about prints. Oh, it's frustrating! We have got prints from Tesco before, and they usually turn out well. But now we don't live 5 minutes from a Tesco and things get more complicated. They have online stuff, where you can upload photos and order online for pickup or delivery. But they don't use cookies, so any change or delay in the order and all information is lost. Also, their crop tool thing (where you can preview and choose the crop) doesn't work on Firefox (our browser of choice). And, last time we tried it, one picture file (out of 20 that we were ordering) was "corrupted" and it canceled the whole order. So it's not easy to use. Anyway... I ordered some prints from Snapfish about two months ago, and they arrived last week. Can't really blame them for the delay, as it went through military mail. But. Instead of cropping the digital files, they stretched the images to fit the print size. So everyone looks tall and thin, with long heads. And one picture of Cedwryck in a red checked shirt turned out with about 1/4 of the squares black instead of red. What's up with that?? So that was disappointing, and I won't order from them again.
Well, we did those football pics, and got some orders, so we have to print them somehow. Started with Tesco online, but wanted to check the crop. So Bob opened IE, and found the order was gone, so he loaded up again. Looked good; went back to Firefox to place the order, but the page had refreshed, logging him out and erasing the order. And then we saw that the wallets would take 5 days or more to process. So we tried plan B. Loaded the pics onto a flash drive, and went to Brandon. Of course it started to rain as we were getting ready to go. Drove out there, parked, and walked up to the picture store (the rain slowed down). The guy there was very friendly, and worked with us to get everything organized. I hesitated when I saw the posted prices, so he added up everything and gave us a discount - quoted a price of 11GBP and change. So we left the order with him and went to the charity shops and back home. Bob went alone to pick up the prints, while I got the family ready for the homeschool party. When he got back we took a look. 5 of the pictures were ruined by some dirt that apparently fell on them while still wet. The pictures we'd ordered multiples of only had single copies. The pictures Bob had worked to size to 5x7 with white borders to allow for trimming to fit into our frames, were printed out 5x8 and no borders. And the guy had charged 15GBP. So yeah, beyond frustrating.
So Saturday we decided to go to Tesco. Thought we'd check out the one in Bury. It's a bigger store than Newmarket, and less crowded, but they don't have a photo center. So we drove on down to Newmarket, where we discovered that the photo center was closed. As it was only 4pm, Bob asked what the hours were. Turns out they don't even have regular hours now, and just open it whenever they have someone to work. Right. So here we are over a week later, and Bob going back to work, and no prints to deliver.

Oh, how I feel.
When I got up to shower off after delivering Elijah, the first thing I said was "Wow, it feels different to not be pregnant." Though exhausted from lack of sleep, I feel SO MUCH better than I have for the past month or two. My pelvis hasn't gone back to normal yet, and it hurts to turn over in bed or to lift my left leg more than a few inches, but movement is much easier without 15 lbs of direct pressure. I can sit on the couch or a chair. I can bend over to pick up things off the floor! My body has responded faster than my brain, and I still have some re-training to do, to remind myself that I can do things myself rather than having to tell someone else to do it. Another funny thing is that if I stand bent over (at a counter or changing table, for instance) for very long, my lower back goes sort of numb and tingly. hmmm. My appetite has returned, but I'm not ravenous. Acne has returned and body odor has escalated.

Today is the beginning of our new normal, and so far I haven't made a good start, spending all morning on the computer. But I had some catching up to do! I hope to start walking today. There's also school and house work, grocery shopping, and Thanksgiving on Thursday. :-) Maybe we'll do normal next week. Either way, I need to get off the computer.