The weekend that just was . . .

I was out to book group on Friday night. We'd been reading The empire of the sun by J. G. Ballard, a story about a boy caught up in a camp near Shanghai after Pearl Harbor. It was a good read and we had a good discussion but several of us also stayed on to watch the movie too.

We were out to dinner on Saturday night to Steve and Bec's place to celebrate Steve's recent birthday. We didn't stay very late, mainly because we were nagged to go home by Ishbel. Steve's boys had their friend, Ben, having a sleep-over and once Ben's parents went home I don't think they were giving Ishbel much time.

It was a good job we did go home when we did because Catherine arrived on our doorstep about 5 minutes after we got home. She'd left a couple of books at Heather's house on Friday night which I'd picked up for her. I'd taken one back to Penrith Library when Ishbel and I were down there during the day but I still had another one. Catherine stayed for a cuppa then we were able to get to bed - I had plans to be up for RFS training early the next morning.

About 1am I heard Ishbel come in to the room. She just started to tell me she was feeling sick when she vomited - luckily she was just near the bathroom door and most of it went in there, but in there all over the place. It was a while before we had her cleaned up and the bathroom sluiced out! I don't know if it was something she ate during the evening (asking around no one else had a problem) or if it was brewing anyway. She'd had the day off on Wednesday complaining of nausea. Then she'd been fine and eating like a horse again by midday. When she complained of nausea again on Thursday morning shortly after having run round the garden with the dog I told her she was going to school anyway.

Ishbel slept with us the rest of the night - thank goodness for the king bed. Not that I slept much - I find it hard to get back to sleep again once I'm disturbed and a couple of times I was just about dropping off and a dog barked (not Bella) and I was awake again.

When the alarm went off at 6:30 am the last thing I wanted to do was go to training but we'd promised to pick Kieran up so off went Jamie and I. Rob had a cricket match so he couldn't come.

It was a good training session. We took the truck out to one of the lookouts and ran a whole load of hoses out and down into the bush. It was hard work hauling the hoses back out again but it was fun. We took a detour via Sharon's on the way home. She'd taped Taggart for me on Friday night - the one programme I can watch where the people don't have an accent!!! We'd been unable to use our video player on Friday night (when Taggart is screened) because the child lock had managed to be put on. None of us knew how to take it off and we'd lost the manual. By lucky chance our friend Jim came round on Saturday afternoon and took it off for us. Jim repairs TVs, DVD and video players for a living and has come in handy a few times recently.

The boys have their School Certificate exams this week. After that things wind down for them at school. The schools aren't allowed to start the Year 11 syllabus. They're allowed to leave school if they have a job and wanted me to write a note to that effect. Guess what answer they got? Jamie has a week of work experience at Ian's work and it's not long till Robbie goes off to Japan at the beginning of December. We have an orientation day for that this coming weekend.