Nearly New Madness

I had heard lots of mothers talk about these "nearly new" sales that the Nation Childbirth Trust (a nonprofit mother and babies group) puts on. All the talk was that one should get there early and that people literally ran to get to the items they wanted. I imagined the old Mervyn's commercial where the woman was tapping on the doors, saying "open, open, open." So, today there was one for the NCT group in East Lothian (the county just east to Midlotion, where Edinbourgh is) and I decided that we should check it out. The sale started at 2:00 pm, which meant that we needed to leave the house at 1:30 if we wanted to get there at opening.
We ended up getting there at 2:05 or so, and there was a HUGE line (or as we say here a queue) of people around the block, literally waiting to get into this auditorium type place. I decided to hop out of the car, while Simon found parking and brought the boy in. It was such a zoo in there! Women running around with huge bags, shoving items in them and running on to the next. Mothers and fathers rummaging through tables of clothing and toys and grabbing anything and everything. The feeling in there was so frantic, I had totally forgotten what I was thinking about getting. I felt the urge to grab up tons of stuff and punch people out of my way! It's amazing how the power of mass hysteria works! And that's not too far from how this place was!!!
I had originally gone there to look for this sleeping bag type thing that people put on the strollers to keep babies warm while pushing them around. Well, if there were any of these footmuffs as they call them, I would never have known. I walked over to the stroller section, but there were only a few actual strollers and some mothers frantically looking them over to see if they wanted them. I couldn't have exactly gone over and looked at the item in another mom's hands, and I didn't see any muffs just laying around. So, I though to myself.... Well, Marius does need some more long sleeve clothing and perhaps a jacket. He's got plenty of clothing right now, thanks to lots of friends and family who have given him stuff. But, his current jacket may not fit in another month, so I thought I'd better just look to see. Since clothes is so expensive here, I was shocked at how cheap everything was. I ended up getting a thick warm jacket, 4 sweaters, and a long sleeve flannel shirt. I'm kicking myself for not getting any pants, but it was just so loud and crazy, I couldn't hear myself think in there.
On a whim I picked up a toy with lights and buttons for Marius too. In the end I only spent £9.50 (about $20) for the lot of things. Amazing! I'm never going to buy Marius anything brand new again! Except for the odd diaper (Oh, did I mention that I've made the switch to cloth diapers??? I'll save that story for another blog) and wooden (not "made in China" with toxic lead paint) toy.
Once all three of us got out of that place, Simon made us all sit down to gather our whits about ourselves! He was way more stressed out than I was, and he just walked in late, found me, and told me to get out of there. I was the one doing the looking and trying to think of what me may need in the next few months, while trying to look out for "the good stuff." Well, luckily there's another sale in Edinburgh next month. I'll totally be prepared then! Plus, my local NCT chapter is looking for a volunteer to organize their nearly new sale in April. One of the perks is that you get the pick of the lot before the mad rush.... That's incentive alone to put in the hours of work needed. I'm going to email the chapter president and volunteer my services!
Once we caught our breaths, we decided to head over to Tantallon Castle, which we have been intending to see for months. The place was spectacular! I swear, there are castles every 5 miles or so in Scotland, and they are all SO cool! This one has perhaps the best setting though. It's right on the coastline on a bluff. The views of the Forth were spectacular! And the castle itself was super cool! This one was complete with a moat (although not filled), pit prison, and spiral staircases. The stairs always freak me out a bit, since they're SO narrow and in the shape of wedges, so the step goes down to nothing in the inside of the spiral, if that makes any sense...
Well, even though I will still need to use blankets with the stroller to keep Marius warm for now, it was quite a nice day. Tomorrow we'll probably try to check out some more flats/houses for sale. Thursdays and Sundays are the open house days to do this. Who knows where we'll look tomorrow. We're still waiting for the freaking dollar to go up before we transfer our down payment dollars into pounds, but since the Federal Reserve just lowered interest rates again in the US.... The dollar has plummeted in value much more sharply than it had been going before. So, we're hoping that things will bounce back up a bit in the next week. NOT BLOODY LIKELY if you ask me.... Thank you George W. Bush, for putting the US into a huge debt of a black hole and making the US dollar worth slightly more than toilet paper!!!!!! But really, I'm not upset about my life savings disappearing before my very eyes..... I'm just waiting for the US to issue new dollars like Mexico had to do with the peso once it got to be too worthless.... OK the US dollar won't get THAT bad, but it is super crappy at the moment.

OH... P.S. Happy Birthday Paula!!!!! Today my lovely sister has a grand total of 40 years under her belt! Let's just say that she's less than ecstatic about the monument.