Of Pest and Post

Well, in my last post I was celebrating the fact that The Booba's sleep habits were permitting me some time in my 'garden' in the evenings. Ha! If there's one thing I've learnt over the last 11 months in baby-world (the parallel universe we enter when we become parents), the only constant is flux! Negotiations with The Booba over when he will go to sleep in the evening have recently deteriorated to the point where the B.H. and I are eating our dinner in shifts. Thus, unfortunately, not much time left for blogging (or, in fact, much else). As I often say..its just as well he is so cute!

Its probably time once again to take stock of how my 'no new stuff' excursion is faring as a whole. Well, so far I have to say its a positive experience for me - honestly, at the moment I don't feel deprived at all. This sounds corny but if anything I feel like its probably enriched my life. Having a 'no new stuff embargo' has forced me to be more creative, and its certainly freed up some time (not to mention cash). We have never been diehard shoppers, but still quite often precious weekend days seemed to be consumed by seeking out one thing or another that we 'needed'. When we recently went to Melbourne - shopping mecca - we had a more relaxing time than we otherwise would have done, I suspect, because we didn't feel pressured by that special opportunity to go and acquire things.

Other than Christmas gifts my only misdemeanour in the last month took place yesterday - and I think you'll agree it was justifiable. We're currently under siege by wasps - I've had to kill three that I've found in The Booba's bedroom over the last two days (not a nice feeling). I did try to lure the wasps with a D.I.Y. trap constructed from a cut up soda bottle and some apple juice laced with dishdrops (manna from heaven for a wasp, supposedly) that I put outside. However this was met with upturned little waspy noses - our cats' outdoor water dish clearly offers a much more highly rated wasp beverage. So off I went to the local hardware shop in search of heavyduty wasp-murdering equipment which the B.H. put to good use yesterday evening. I'm disappointed to report however that the new fandangly 'irresistable to wasps' plastic traps that I purchased are, at this point, rather lacking in the dead wasp department.

In between anti-wasp missions yesterday I went to the Post Office to send off a birthday package, regretting the fact that I didn't have any old parcels to send it in. I used to think that reusing old parcels wasn't 'allowed' or something, but, emboldened by receiving one from someone else, I sent off my Christmas gifts in old packages I had luckily been saving for no apparent reason (as is my wont). Anyway, yesterday I was pleased to find that you can now purchase parcels at the Post Office made from 100% recycled paper. Unfortunately the lady working behind the counter considered it her duty to inform me that "they're heavy you know" and that it would therefore be costing me, I don't know, a whole extra 50 cents in postage. When she then went on to tell me that my not-at-all-urgent parcel would be taking a whole extra day to arrive than if I was using the 'Express' post option I started to feel a bit ratty and said as lightly as I could "oh well, it doesn't matter, its worth it". I was annoyed by the assumption that the extra 50 cents and the day's delay in parcel arrival would deter me from choosing the more environmentally friendly option - and a little saddened by the suggestion that for this lady at least, it would. Lets face it, unless you're on the street, 50 cents isn't going to break the bank, and maybe its ok if sometimes things don't happen as instaneously as they possibly could. Ok, rant over.