Tripping Along

We're back, and nothing disastrous has happened. It wasn't all a walk in the park, mind you, but it was... survivable.

The drive up was mercifully uneventful, as was the return. Handling splodgy nappies isn't fun at best, but in motorway service changing rooms it becomes an adventure I didn't care for. The way we went through nappies at home, though, was another story entirely. It was enough to give poor Spawn the worst nappy rash in his life, forcing me to break out the Sudocrem, because the antibacterial cream I put on him regularly stung too badly.

We took a half-day trip to Whitby, mainly because Grumpy wanted to stock up on 'the best kippers in the world', directly from the smokers'. Despite it being so close to the Halloween Gothic Weekend, there weren't any visiting goths to ogle in the streets yet. Being strapped for cash meant no indulging in raiding the local gothic shops, more's the pity. Monster and I agreed we'd have to save up until the next visit and take a trip there by ourselves, with retail therapy as our sole purpose.

On the good side, Spawn loved his fish and chips from the Magpie, and even I polished off my portion; it was more manageable, not to mention head and shoulders better, than those from the local chippy (which I have already decided I'm not going to eat again, because they make me gag and end up being a waste of money). And while the two of us waited outside, since Spawn much preferred to watch and pet dogs to queueing up, I was approached by a BBC radio reporter who interviewed me on meat consumption. From vegetarianism I ended up pushing the Mediterranean diet. I promptly forgot which station it would air on, let alone when, though.

Otherwise, it was cold, and mostly rainy, so we stayed inside. Once more there was no internet to leech off the neighbours, so I read a lot - about 600 pages in just under four days, in fact. One 375-page book went in just over a day. I even delved into the Kindle, finishing the prologues to The Fall of Atlanta. Who would have thought that the Ravnos would be one of my favourite storylines there?

We returned today, starting out after lunch, instead of tomorrow, because Monster grumbled that she needed more time to do her coursework; her Vista laptop won't connect to our new net provider, while our XP ones, plus the Kindle and iPhone, do just fine. (I was hard pressed not to gloat at that, after she called the Kindle a 'crap piece of software'. Snotty little bitch.) A good part of the drive was in the dark, listening to music, with Spawn gradually falling asleep, and the gathering felt more companionable than anything we had done for a long time.

We'll be taking Spawn to the doctor's tomorrow, to see what's wrong with his bowels. I put down money that he'll be fine before the end of the day.