Thé-eine

I can't sleep again. This time it's not because of stress but because of a cup of tea I had at 2 PM. Hard to believe one little cup of tea can do this much damage. I met a friend and we sat down in a Sainsbury café, so it wasn't high tea or anything fancy. The tea hadn't even been that good. It's about 1 AM and my legs feel like running down the street and across the Channel. Restless leg syndrome, my foot. It's what the French call "thé-eine." Or at least that's what my sister-in-law calls it. Kind of cute, isn't it? (If you didn't catch the similarity to "caffeine," don't worry, I didn't at first either).

It is sad that my blogs tend to be in the middle of the night. I try to keep my blog up-to-date, but it usually falls by the wayside. Partly because Certain People insist it is a waste of time. Certain People think I should spend every waking moment studying French.

Honestly, though, given the circumstance I think this is a great way to use my time. I am dead tired but I can't sleep. How better can my foggy head and bloodshot eyes be put to use? Let me count the ways. Watching tv - specifically, championship poker; a repeat of the evening news; or movies that are so old I can count the pixels in the picture? Uhmmmm.... I will stop there... it hurts trying to think of what else to do.

In fact, it has made me feel rather sleepy...

Oh, before I go, I should at least update you on our lives. Just on the off chance someone out there wants to know how the sale of our flat is going, we are still waiting for the buyer to get their mortgage linged up. It seems the lady who has made the offer is haggling with her mortgage provider, trying to get a better deal. I didn't think that was possible in these market conditions? Anyone think she's trying to pull a fast one? Anyhoo, we are waiting. While we are waiting for that, I am also waiting for our estate agent's useless "conveyancing broker" to send some forms through so that we can know who our solicitor is, fill out the forms and ensure whoever they are can act on our behalf to move this sale forward while we are away on our 3-week holiday (that's in about 30 hours' time). I put "conveyancing broker" in quotes because I am not sure what it is they actually do besides charge me a fee to hook me up with a conveyancer (aka solicitor, for you non-British folk). The more I think about it, the more I feel had. Stupid and had. Why did I go with our estate agent's "conveyancing broker"? Because I thought it would make things more efficient if everything was in-house. Little did I know they would just turn around and pick any old solicitor anyway. I feel so had.

Now my blood pressure has risen a few notches, so I am going to turn back to my non-practical, completely pointless ramblings which seemed to be making me sleepy.

In fact, I can think of nothing more to say, and trying to think of something to say has made me sleepy...

We got an offer!

We can hardly believe how fast it's happened, but the very first person who viewed our flat has made us an offer. Amazing. All that franctic redecorating I did for the second viewer was pretty pointless after all.

So now, the real madness starts.

I feel a bit overwhelmed, like all I want to do is bake muffins, like that girl on Grey's Anatomy.

I need to learn French... fast.
I need to sell some books and clothes on eBay.
I need to stop cooking so much fancy stuff and de-prioritise that in a big way.
I no longer need to look for a temp job (I guess?).
I need to open a bank account in France
I need to look into how to get a mortgage in France.
R needs to get a job in France... ASAP!

Oh Lord, please keep us from panicking.

Rice Pudding

Poor little L has had such a bad cold, and the runs to go with it. The doctor prescribed him a liquid electrolyte diet for the next 24 hours (that was last night). That means no milk and no solids (banana is apparently okay), just this awful-tasting stuff that is supposedly blackcurrant flavoured. Even cough medicine tastes better. L rejected it at first, but this morning it must have dawned on him that that was all he was getting. He quaffed 200 ml down in no time. Then we watched Thomas the Tank Engine (08:26) and then he started rubbing his eyes around 09:00. Normally, he wouldn't want to sleep until around 10:30. Of course, the illness is sapping his energy. But could I be starving him unnecessarily? Is this really how to treat the runs? I feel like his life force is dwindling, as if he were wasting away before my eyes. My son could typically be described as a Tasmanian Devil-type character. Yet today, even when he was playing in the living room, he put his head down on a cushion several times, as if his head was again too heavy for his neck.

Knowing he would be off this liquid diet tonight, I wanted to make him something special that wouldn't irritate his tummy. So I tried to make rice pudding. We had an unopened bag of Tesco pudding rice in the cupboard. I mixed 50 g of it with the specified amounts of milk and sugar, and sprinkled nutmeg on top. Then I saw the baking time -- 2 to 3 hours! What kind of rice takes that long to cook?? I set the oven timer to 2 hours, wincing at how much energy this bit of rice was going to use. There are people starving in South Asia who would probably kill for this rice, who probably know how to cook it using a pot, a bit of water and an open fire, and here I am using a million kilojoules to bake 50 g in milk and sugar.

Well, needless to say, I justified this use of energy by claiming it for my energy-less son. I hope he can stomach it.