Organic-Ally

Wednesday morning: Mum of son's mate stopped me to ask if son was OK with what she felt was a miserly show of a party bag. They had included a note to explain that instead of filling the bag with 'more toys', they had given the money saved to a boy they support in Africa through a charity. The amount given is enough to buy the boy a year of education. What a good idea, I thought. Was my son bothered? Did he complain that there were no expensive toys in his party bag? Or colour pencils? Finger puppets? Balloons? Whistle? Not at all. He was pleased that he had sweets that he normally does not get from us. (And he's going through them very, very slowly.) Compare that to the previous party where he was given a lot of goodies, including a tamagotchi (or whatever you call it). Unfortunately the tamagotchi does not work despite our putting two expensive LR44 batteries in it and you can imagine the frustration caused. Moral of the story: more expensive gifts do not necessarily ...

Hayfever bad over last weekend. It was so bad last Friday I used up all my hankies (could not turn them around quickly enough). Even borrowed some of my son's old hankies. When even these ran out, I had to resort to paper. Big mistake. Nose was already pink from constant pressure of nose-blowing. Within minutes of using paper, nose turned a bright red. It was painful and I had to take to bed. Sunday morning was still bad and I had to take to bed instead of going to church. Monday morning, met my ladies for prayer as usual and they prayed for some relief for me. Found myself saying, 'It's not that bad because I know it's not going to last forever.' Have been trying a new regime now for the week: (1) wipe nose with soft cloth hankie (organic cotton of course), (2) smear Vaseline all over nose area to prevent chafing and inside nostrils to trap pollen, and (3) slick on some Vicks Vapourub if necessary to clear the air channels. High pollen count in the last few days bu...

Following from last post: my son has just received a birthday 'post-invitation'. We'd be invited, made our responses and now the map to get to the venue was given. On it we've been told, the birthday boy is 'equally happy' to receive £2 towards a collective present. So it's confirmed: we have started a trend. Yay! If you've done something like this, or plan to, do share your experience with us so we can compare notes. Thank you. Back to Organic-Ally .

It is a cliche. (Sorry I haven't learned how to put the accents in.) But we learned this lesson in a different way recently. It was my son's sixth birthday. He is allowed a party on alternate birthdays. My rationale is 'us Chinese don't celebrate birthdays'. We made it special for him last year by taking him and a mate to his favourite theme park. The year previous to that, I went to a lot of trouble to organize a party with an entertainer, healthy food (as if children care!), nice party bags, and even issued parking coupons to allow parents to park on our road. A friend was on 'traffic warden watch' as the permit does not kick in for 15 minutes after they arrived. Otherwise I would have had to give each parent an extra parking coupon at £1.50 each. I decided to be, uhm, miserly. Son disappeared into the kitchen as soon as the entertainer began and kept away for much of the party. He was quite overwhelmed. I toughed it out for two hours and then sent the gue...