Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Shopping and dentist

I broke a tooth a couple of weeks ago, so this morning was my dentist appointment. I was so nervous!! Just because it’s a new dentist for me, and I don’t know if she’s any good, you know. But it all turned out well – no x-rays, no injections, no drills, no sucking machines. Not that they don’t have that stuff, she just didn’t need any of it – she simply applied some sort of stick-on stuff and then blow dried it. Seems that it is a permanent arrangement. It felt awkward at first, but has already compacted and settled as it is supposed to. And all that for the whopping price of £1.10!! On top of that, I got to wear huge blue sunglasses, I suspect as a courtesy for the patients so the bright dentist lights don’t bother our eyes.

Grocery shopping day today, and not a day too soon. We were down to the last toilet roll. Still a hassle doing the shopping though. I started at Queen Mary’s and got a bag-load of stuff there, put it in the car, then walked to the Emporium, bought two presents for the boys since we are on school holiday next week (I like to provide a small present for the first day, to make it special – a tradition they will remember), then to the bank to deposit £s. Also exchanged some St H currency for Pound Sterling. This goes into an envelope for one day when we have a holiday, because we can’t do anything with our St H £s in SA. So we have a stash of money here, so that if we come across a British note, we swap it out. Okay, then back to the car, drove down the road to find a parking closer to Spar. Did all the Spar shopping, lugged it to the car, then went home, dropped off the shopping and put away the freezer stuff, picked up the DVD which I had forgotten to take back, then to town again. Parked right outside Thorpes, what a blessing. Walked down to drop off the DVD, then all the way back up to the car, past the car to another shop to buy some nail polishes. Since I am surrounded by the male species, I have to do things like paint my toenails hotpink to feel girly-girly. This accomplished (and a more subtle shade of pink purchased too), I could do the Thorpes shopping. Then down to the wholesaler for 18l of milk, to the car with it, then across the road to Tinkers for more cold stuff. Finally, home to unpack everything! The boys are great unpackers. They take all the bathroom stuff upstairs, and de-paper all the toilet rolls and put them in the basket, and put away the other bathroom cleaning stuff into the right places. Can definitely see their use developing!

Nick and I have been trying to sort out the boys’ Christmas and Aaron’s birthday presents. We need to get some stuff from the States because the stuff here tends to be junkified, so for their big presents it’s better to get it elsewhere. Anyway, after spending ages on-line over the weekend and more or less deciding what we were going to get, I dialed up after 10 last night and placed the order with ToysRUs. It took a long time, and at the final stage it said, “Sorry, we can’t deliver to this address”. Sometimes they have restrictions and can’t send to a postal address. Doh! I wasn’t happy. I had to start again with Amazon, trying to find similar products. Eventually at 11 the line dropped and I went to bed. I have to try again tonight, but am going to see if we can order from Hasbro or other similar places, instead of Amazon which is apparently very expensive. I know that Amazon delivers to our Ascension address though, and sometimes shipping is free, so it’s a safe bet.

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