Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I don't know why. But Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Check back in a couple of weeks, when I'm less Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!.
KF, I love that your son's consultant said, "we need to get him healthy, coeliac or not."
PB, my husband was staring into a can of cider on Tuesday and he said, "I don't understand carbonated water..." which turned into a "Sitting in the Garden thinking and talking..." We knew that carbonated water is water (H2O) and carbon-dioxide (CO2), because one just "knows" that. But he wanted to know how it was in there. So we looked it up, and learned about the chemical formula for it, and how the CO2 gets dissolved in the water under pressure, blah blah blah. We sit in the garden and think and talk, and sometimes learn.
But what we still haven't figured out is the answer to a previous "Sitting in the garden thinking and talking" question. There was a bug crawling on the ground between our chairs, and it caught my eye because it was Very Unusual, so I pointed it out. My husband said it looked like a caterpillar in the process of becoming a butterfly or something. We watched it and it was pretty awesome. It crawled onto a blade of grass so it was in a vertical orientation and just clung to that grass blade and slowly, over two hours, the wings gradually unfurled, and then it flew away. About 15 minutes into the process, I'd looked up what to expect, and we just watched it happen. BUT while we were watching it, my husband asked, "How do animals know to do that...? They weren't taught it. It's instinct. I get that. But, like, how is that actual behaviour/instruction stored so that the animal does what it's supposed to do at the right time? That thing 'knew' to put itself upright and just wait. And then when the wings were ready, having never flown before, it just took off and flew away like it had been flying its whole life." I looked that up. Innate behaviour. We didn't find a satisfying answer to where/how innate behaviour is passed down genetically.
Anyway, my five:
1. My husband's birthday was last week, as I have mentioned in previous weeks. His gift from me (a super cheap welder that was even cheaper because it was either a customer return or a shop display, and it had some cosmetic damage) went over better than I'd hoped. He mostly liked it for the reason I chose it: it was stupid cheap and gave him an opportunity to try the thing and figure out what he wants to spend big money on. I would've liked to have got one that was gas/gasless, and not just gasless, but, again, this one was stupid cheap. It was meant to be a "get your feet wet" kind of thing, but now he's thinking it'll do the job, and he'll spend his money on a plasma cutter, and he'll be all set for less than the cost of the welder he would've bought if he could make himself spend the money.
2. His parents came to visit last Tuesday. The last time we saw them before this was at Christmas 2019. Today marks 10 days since they were here, and there's no sign of illness, so I think we're safe. The day of the visit was good, too. It was a warm, sunny day, with just a gentle breeze. We sat in the garden and ate tasty food while distanced. They came in their campervan, so they had access to a toilet. At one point, my MIL took a step toward me and my chair was behind me so I couldn't step back and I made a rather frantic "Ahhhh!" sound and did a pushing gesture with my hands, and then felt weird for my reaction and apologized, but she said she wasn't offended, and she gave me space. The whole visit is fraught with much more emotion on my part, but it's over and nobody seems to have got ill from it, and now we can put them off for another year and see how things go. I think my husband was more frustrated than I was, because he's tired of having to defend our choices to others when what we do is so important to us, and it doesn't affect them at all.
3. So far, my husband has not been told to come back into the office. Meanwhile, I'm watching the news articles trickle in about civil servants not being compelled to go back to the office, so we'll see if something happens there.
4. The National Lottery sent me a promotion in email: play Set For Life for four weeks in a single transaction (£1.50/play x 4 weeks = £6), and they will credit my account with £5. So, even though I normally have my husband buy our lottery tickets (for tax reasons because the IRS is a jerk), I bought 4 plays of Set For Life for £1, so far. If any of them pay out, I'll be profitable. And it was 4 weeks of "maybe...!" for £1. hah We are so desperate to retire. Blargh.
5. I mentioned it already in another thread, but I'm still chuffed about our 50% LTV on our house. And now I've checked Money Saving Expert for the best mortgage offers, and the one we're taking at our current lender is the best rate, so this mortgage renewal is going to be dead easy. Yay!
