Smokey the Magnificent

Pardon my tardy blogging, I’ve been a busy Smokey.

Not surfing the net for a week was intensely frustrating, but I got a fair amount done. I should make it an every-second-week thing, maybe.

On Friday Mum and I travelled up to Auckland to go to Savemart, a kind of huge warehousey second-hand clothing store. Our city has a Savemart too, but as it turns out, it’s nothing like the Auckland version. It was awesome. Nearly every piece of clothing was designer - labels like Jacqui-E and Cue - and there were quirky, good-quality, well-made clean outfits as far as the eye could see. I want to live next door to it! Second-hand clothing is wonderful - a sort of ethical/ecological get-out-of-jail free card because whatever sweatshops and pesticides went into making the clothes, they’ve already been bought… so snapping them up is really doing the world a favour rather than the reverse. I like it.

I ended up getting a brown woollen cardigan and a Pumpkin Patch top for the snortlepig, and a faintly steampunky cream blouse and arty Jacqui-E grey winter dress which is even breastfeeding-friendly(!) for myself, all for about $60. It’s not an uber-cheap op shop, obviously, but a darn sight better than buying new.

This week has started productively with a fervent display of domesticity in my part. And high time too. We’re having guests for dinner on Wednesday, Bible study starts back up on Thursday and Mainly Music and singing group continue as usual, so I’ll no doubt I’ll be my usual industrious self. In a still-in-bed-at-9:30 kind of way.

But more to the point: if you were stuck in a two-metre cubed dark box for a week, with food passed through a tiny slot every so often but no human contact, would you rather be totally alone or have a gerbil in with you?