294. Normal people

I write a blog in English and it is read by French speakers. Now I have started a blog in French and it is read by English speakers. Even my blogging life makes no sense. To think I started this to maintain a steady level of sanity … 

I really need to have a normal weekend, to do things normal people do. Normal people go and buy a dishwasher when their dishwasher is beyond repair. I mean the kids have been moaning for months about why I am not buying a new dishwasher. I've been giving evasive replies and never admitted to them that I just thought it was highly educational to experience life without a dishwasher. Many skills are involved: organisational ones, planning abilities, being conscious of the planet in the wide universe, etc. I've been hinting at this to see but was always met by at best a shrugging of the shoulders or a rolling of the eyes, at worst with kids crossing over the garden to take piles of dirty dishes to the annex where granny lives. That was not normal. It got worse, and even less normal. I did not want to buy a brand new dishwasher while everyone was home (and I was away) because I wanted to use it while it was brand new. But now I have been back home for a week and already I am getting fed up doing the dishes but this, I won't admit.

So after market (butcher thought I'd run away somewhere)  and drink on a terrasse and lunch on the patio I called Baby.

'I'm going to the shops. Do you want to come? We'll buy a dishwasher.'

She looks at me with an impertinent look. I give her my mother-is-angry look, the one that means watch out or I change my mind right now.

'OK. Good idea!' She says and quickly disappears to get ready.

In the shop I walk up and down the rows of dishwashers as a general reviewing the troops before a battle. The ones that I find suitable I leave the doors wide open, so for a dishwasher it means almost flat on the ground. Then I wave to a shop assistant (after having carefully studied the colours of their uniforms as I have so many times addressed and embarrassed fellow customers). Meanwhile Baby is carefully reading all the labels, checking the insides for easily raising top drawers, for the right number of jets and studying the benefits and drawback of cutlery baskets versus trays. I think she is also pretending the crazy woman dressed as a priestess is not her mum.

The vendor is with me now and he is walking me up and down the rows of machines, tripping over the lids I have left open and shutting them while talking. I make up my mind when he starts telling me about the one he's got at home and what his wife thinks of it.

'I'll take that one.' And I point.

'And I'll have a washing machine too. Can we look at washing machines, please?' 

'Mum! That would make three washing machines!' She sounds a little shocked.

I frown at her. I do not want the sales assistant thinking I enjoyed his talk about the dishwasher and just want to hear some more about washing machines. Still he goes on about the one he thinks would be suitable for us. I do not like it and move up to the one with a picture of fish swimming in the sea.

'Oh yes! This one! I did not think of showing you this one.'

And he is off on an other speech, this time going on about all the plastic in the sea, and all the plastic we eat with our fish, every day we eat 2 kilos he says. I want to tell him that we do not eat fish every day but I don't. I think Baby would not let me get away with this.

We carry on shopping a bit and then I drive home thinking it is good to act as a normal person now and then.