Plague diary: Shopping

I went to the shop today. This was my second attempt. Last time I tried there was a queue the length of the outside of the supermarket. Today I avoided the queue by going at stupid o'clock at night.

I've hardly left the house at all since getting sick, so a trip to the shops was a big deal for me. I've lost lots of leg muscle sitting around all day, and I need to start using it before my health starts suffering from plain old neglect. I wore a hoodie, a hat (I got a terrible haircut just before the lockdown), and a mask with a handful of reusable bags. I'd been told many things about supermarkets in this new world, and I was very curious to see it myself.

It was 20:30 and very few people were in the shop. So the one-way shopping I was warned about wasn't in place. Here were my main take aways

• It was pretty easy to stay 2m+ from everyone else at this hour. Only twice did I have to adjust my path to get around or make room for someone walking nearby.
• No eggs. At all. Why eggs, though?
• No vanilla
• There was flour. Bread flour only, though. Not sure what that means besides everyone must be making cookies or something
• there was plenty of dishwasher stuff except rinse aid. Which is the one thing I'm out of. I can't imagine everyone else is out of it at the same time. But evidence shows otherwise.
• The shop finally stocks the brand of decaf espresso that L likes. And it's on sale!
• I left uncomfortable picking up items to decide if I wanted them. So everything I picked up I bought. It meant for a bit more impulse buying than I normally do
• All the tellers were in the same queue. You'd just queue up and go to the first free teller. Just like passport control. No more getting bitter seeing the queue next to you going faster than yours. I do so hope they keep this.
• Big clear plastic barrier between the tellers and the buyers. Which is good to see they're trying to keep their staff safe. That said, only one of the tellers had a mask. So I guess they felt safe. I do so hope I'm not longer contagious.

The walk back was kind of hard, as I'm not used to the exercise. The mask actually made it notably harder to breathe, and I was kind of dizzy when I took it off.

I keep my outside clothes quite separate from anything I wear in the house but I suspect it'll be impractical to wash them after every time I leave the house. I wonder if, over time, we'll start having disinfectant closets for outsidewear, so it can be made safe from viruses. Something like UV-C lights or some kind of spray. It would make me more comfortable about contamination.

Unsupervised

On Sunday we decided to try an experiment. Could we leave the girl home alone in the house for a few minutes while we popped to the shop?

She's 6½ now, so being unsupervised for a short period is perfectly reasonable. Well, for a 20^th century child. For a 21^st century child... Well, that remains to be seen.

By the time I was her age, I'd been wandering the neighbourhood unsupervised for some time. Though that was the suburbs, so it's not entirely a fair comparison. I'd also been left with my brother in a car waiting for my mum to do quick shopping. And how different is that from going with L to the shops that are 200 meters from the house to pick up a few items for dinner?

We were a bit hesitant to try this out, Last year, L left R alone in the house while she gave a package to one of our neighbours. She'd agreed with R in advance that she was just going to be gone for 5 minutes. But, when she got back home, R was panicking, putting on her shoes and readying herself to go outside looking for L. She wouldn't talk about it for ages, but eventually she'd told me that she didn't realise L had left, so when she found out she was alone in the house, she wasn't ready for it. Hence the panic.

At least we knew what we needed to avoid this time. R was hesitant when we first brought it up, but then I pointed out all she'd need to do is Skype us from her iPad if she needed us. That turns out was the 21^st century solution to the 21^st century problem of being alone. She was now perfectly fine staying at home since we'd be at her electronic beck and call. I just needed to test that she was signed in and could make a call. After much cajoling, she finally made a test call to my phone and all was ready. Just some final goodbyes and we'd be on our way.

Ok. We're going to head out now. Skype is working. Just call or send us a message if you need anything.

Playing on iPad Ok. Bye.

And if you get hungry, there's rice cakes on the counter.

If I get hungry, I'll just heat up some pasta.

Wait... No... No. You're not to use the oven or microwave by yourself, and definitely not when you've alone in the house.

Of course I won't turn on the oven by myself.

Remembering when she burnt a rice cake in the microwave And the microwave. Don't use the microwave. You must not use the microwave.

but I know how to use the microwave.

Immaterial. You're missing the point. Just don't use the microwave when we're not in the room with you...
Actually – Just. Don't. Use. The. Microwave.

You had to mention food, didn't you?

And so on.

We did get out of the house and make a quick trip to the shop. While in the check out queue, I decided to check up on her and sent her a message. No response, of course. Since Skype is now terrible at actually sending notifications, I figured it was nothing. But since my job is to worry, I just kept thinking of the worst possible situations. I send message after message, and kept thinking of more and more horrible mishaps. By the time we were on our way back, I was practically expecting smoke coming up from over the hill.

In the end, no, the house wasn't on fire. She just decided that she'd Skype her grandparents and was ignoring any messages that were showing up.

The experiment was a success. We did find a way to comfortably leave her unsupervised for short periods of time and managed to get dinner. I also learned that What could possibly happen? is just an expression, not an invitation to brainstorm.

My fantasy nappy bag

Nappy bags are troublesome. Off the shelf nappy bags always have some major failing and other bags always have something which makes them not quite right for the job. Part of the problem is we have unusual requirements which few manufacturers cater to. And even when we find something which is great, the girl gets older and requires something new to be carried around with us.

Most nappy bags look like a standard woman's over-the-sholder handbag. At this point I have so much RSI from parenting I'm not willing to carry anything of any decent weight on one shoulder for any length of time. So that style is right out.

There's a number of lines of nappy-bags-for-men, all of which look like courier bags. These take some weight off the shoulder, but distributes it right across the child – since she's sling-carried. So that's not an option either.

That pretty much leaves backpacks.

Fine, there's plenty of backpacks out there. Surely someone must make something that fits my needs? Well… so far it appears not.

So, what do I need?

• A compartment for food. Enough for 2 meals - just in case we're away for longer than expected, or she decides she's ravenous. Ideally this would be insulated so it'll stay cold/warm, but that just just a wild dream.
• An outside pocket for her water bottle. Or at least somewhere to store it where it won't leak on anything else.
• An outside pocket for an umbrella. We live in London. The only way to ensure it won't rain is to take an umbrella with us wherever we go.
• A compartment with enough room for a change of clothes in case of accidents. Plus some extra space for a jumper or coat and a few small toys or books. Even better would be enough room for a jumper for me, so I don't risk getting cold.
• We're ECing her, so we need a place for the portable toilet seat we have to carry about. And it's got to be in a separate compartment from the clothes and food. The compartment has to have enough room for her nappies.At his point we carry around 1 or 2 cloth nappies with covers, plus a couple of emergency disposable nappies, just in case. I can live with these being in the clothing section, but the "toilet" section needs enough room for them once they're used.
  For those unfamiliar with reusable nappies, used ones go into a wet bag, aka The Bag of Yuck, until I can get home and trasnfer them into the laundry pail. The "toilet" section has to have enough room for the wet bag filled with 2 nappies and an entire change of soiled clothes. However, as long as the change-of-clothes compartment gets smaller as the toilet compartment gets bigger, I'll be happy.
• It's got to have enough room for stuff I need with me. All I really need is enough space for some pills, lip-balm/moisturiser, a couple of cloth grocery bags¹ and, as I said before, a spare jumper. L probably would like a bit more space for her stuff since she doesn't usually have as many pockets as I do. This could go in the clothes section, but I'd rather not have to dig through baby socks and suchlike to find my ibuprofen.
• I don't need a changing mat. I can't remember the last time she had a miss outside the house that we needed to put her on a mat to resolve.

When she was an infant, we got by rather nicely with a Petunia Pickle Bottom bag. It could be a backpack or a shoulder bag. Plus it was tasteful – not too girly or too manly, and never looked awkward with what either of us were wearing. When all we had to worry about was changes of nappies and clothes it was great. But its one big section doesn't play nicely if you have toilet seat and clothes and nappies all together, leaving no room for food. We still use it when travelling since we only have disposable nappies then, which take up less room.

We've been mainly using an old laptop backpack for the past several months. It's got 3 sections, one of which is tiny. So we often end up putting the portable seat in the big compartment along with the food inside a thermos bag. Which takes up far more room than it should. It's passingly acceptable, but ends up packed to the gills almost all the time. And it'll only get worse as she'll need more food (and fewer changes of clothes, I hope) over the coming months.

Sooooo… that's a backpack with a minimum of 3 big compartments and 2 outside pockets. Plus, ideally another smaller compartment. Every time I go to a baby shop, I have a look at what bags are available. Some have some really great ideas, but so far nothing has worked. I've even toyed with the idea of getting her a small backpack to carry her food or clothes, and I carry the rest in my backpack. After all, her back does face out in the sling. But I can't see that working. So I'm still at a bit of a loss and kind of exploding around the edges.

¹ At this point it rarely occurs to me I can still go to a shop if I haven't brought my own bags. I usually just skip grocery shopping on the way home if I don't have a bag I can put them into.

Scary illnesses

Yesterday the wee one came down with a tummy bug. It was really rather scary seeing it. I was at the grocery store with her in a sling facing out so she could enjoy the sights. Turns out, if I'm alone having her face outward is not a good idea. Beyond hearing her breathe and vocalise and holding her hand, there's no real sign to tell what she's doing.

So my first sign that something is wrong is she spits up and I rush to catch it with a muslin. But it soaks through and just doesn't stop coming. I turn toward the hand mirrors on display next to me, and I see her throw up again, this time out of her nose too. I get her out of the harness, sit her on the floor and clean her up. She's quiet, but not out of it. I can't tell if she feels nothing unusual's happened or she's upset and weakened beyond crying. I worry that, since it's cold out, I overbundled her and accidentally burnt her brain out.

I'm not putting her back in for the trip home. I just pick her up and walk quickly homeward. Her being sedate through the whole experience makes it worse. The world just cut out and there is just us, and blurry obstacles between us and home. 5 minutes and one panicked call later (she's not well, get the door) and I'm unbundling her on the bed. She seems fine. She's turned on her belly doing the cat pose. Then she surprises us by bawling unconsolably for half an hour. Something she's not done for ages.

L tries consoling her while I call NHS direct asking for advice. She falls asleep by the time I'm off the phone.

In the end, she throws up huge amounts two more times. I feel slightly better in that it's clearly not because I bundled her up too much. But worse too because she's clearly got something wrong. It's almost certainly due to her catching her mum's tummy bug (which we thought was food poisoning). They say it'll likely be over in 72 hours (40 more to go) and just make sure she doesn't dehydrate.

She did it again today while I was taking her down the stairs. Two very volumous vomits with stuff coming out her nose. That's still really weird to see – though it's also a good sign that something is Not Right. She seems to be coping better with it today – no 30 minute bawl session following the incident, just some patience while I run around shedding icky clothes, cleaning the girl, floor and whatnot.

So, it seems we just sit and wait and have towels at hand in case of more trouble.