a weekend of single parenthood

I have been mostly a single parent this weekend. On Saturday a very important minister of some description (nobody seems to remember the details, or even his name - and he didn't seem to be quite sure what he was doing here either, but suits were worn and lunches were had, so I guess it was an effective use of taxpayers money to send him to Nepal?) arrived in BGN, so Hubby had to get all suited up and go to work for the morning.
Luckily it was the super dooper spring fair at school, so I had something else to do with the rest of the family. The kids had overpriced candyfloss and samosas, and I got to sit on the PTA stall and sell old books. By the time I got to the book stall, however, only the literary dregs were left, so I had to resort to the hard selling tactics (reducing everything to ten rupees - about nine pence). I'll give you a couple of examples:
How to pass your civil service exams; The benefits of urine therapy (this means drinking your own wee, by the way); Finding God in unexpected places (where? behind the sofa with the broken remote? And also, as someone pointed out, if God is supposed to be everywhere, surely nowhere should be unexpected?) and many, many more of a similar quality. At the end of the fair the unsold books were boxed up and taken back inside. I think they may get rolled out again in the summer fair - in which case I might have to buy up a few titles to spice up my bookshelves and make random visitors think I'm more interesting than I actually am.

Picture this, if you will:

Guest arrives and I scurry into the kitchen to put the kettle on. In the meantime, Guest checks out my newly souped-up bookshelves and thinks: this is the first time I've been to this house, let's have a neb and see what she's really like...oh my! She is an evangelical wee drinker with aspirations to become a civil servant. I never knew - what a dark horse indeed!
I turn up with a cup of tea and Guest looks at me in an entirely new light, as a hostess with hidden depths and interesting hobbies and a life outside of just being a cashmere-addicted army wife.

Hmmm...although this would only work were we actually to have guests over, which, let's be honest, is an extreme rarity. One couple did attempt it this weekend, but had to contend with Gary stalking the chocolate chip cookies and Twin 2 showing her pants, and having to shout over the sound of the generator, so not sure whether they will ever come back...

On Saturday night I stayed in, just in case anyone else in the family succumbed to the scary green D&V lurgy, and Hubby went out to Thamel for a goodbye get-together for a friend. None of the kids were ill and I finished off the Bombay Saphire, hurrah. Hubby then returned and hurled his guts up all night. He swears it was the mushroom carbonara, and nothing to do with the quantity of whisky imbibed.

So today he was ill in bed, and I was a single parent again, curses!

So that was my weekend - how about yours? x