This picture has nothing to do with anything, just though you hadn't seen Dot for a while and she looks nice and bonkers in this picture. Now onto the serious stuff...

Is somebody trying to tell me something?

So New York’s been a bit of a struggle. Firstly my computer refused to connect to the internet from Lucy’s apartment, hence the radio silence – well, that, and the fact that Dot’s decided she’d rather protest for four hours than go to sleep at bedtime. Last night the wily little bugger had four of us taking it in turns to rock her off, and every time we relaxed, thinking she’d gone down, snap, the little eyes would open, quickly followed by the little mouth, and back to the griping, grizzling and caterwauling routine. Think it was her drunken Daddy who finally got her off around ten (knocked out by the alcohol fumes, perhaps?). But obviously the baby had to take precedence over the blog (the baby takes precedence over everything, little darling).

On top of that, I have to confess we’ve strayed from the righteous path. Yesterday afternoon we somehow found ourselves in Zara Baby where we were hoodwinked into buying some distinctly non-organic and almost certainly non fair trade (but extremely cute) stripy cotton tights. Zara makes exactly the kind of disposable fashions we’d promised ourselves we’d eschew in favour of second hand, vintage, long-lasting and organic garments. Bad bad Freya and Dot! At least we asked for no plastic bag with our purchase (by the way, let’s all start doing this as often as possible. We were in Club Monaco yesterday too (looking, not touching, promise) and I noticed they wrap everything in tissue before it goes in the bag, as do most shops. Of course it feels rather wonderful when you get home and unwrap your shiny new item from its gorgeous parcel, but think how much even better it would feel to be able to be all smug about saving a tree instead (especially around ‘the holidays’ when I dread to think how much damage all those pressies cause to the environment as most are wrapped once by the shop, then again by us in wrapping paper). Might even assuage some of the guilt of the shopping spree (hey, we’re getting good at these conscience-easing shopping tips). OK, rant over).

And then to cap it all off, I just committed the cardinal household cleaning product sin – I used…BLEACH! In Lucy’s shower I realized I’d forgotten my shampoo so helped myself to her rather lovely Clove Aveda shampoo and conditioner – you know, the stuff that dyes your hair (of course I only picked that bottle because it was the more environmentally conscious choice than the Pantene). Well, I would have told you anyway Lou, but now I’ve been totally caught red – or make that sort of reddish-brown – handed because the conditioner somehow splattered off my hair and dyed the tub and tiles instead and WOULDN’T COME OFF no matter how hard I scrubbed. So I dripped my way to the kitchen to look for white vinegar, the eco-friend’s alternative to bleach, but all I could find was Clorox. So I did it. I used as little as possible but bleach is bleach is bleach. And goddamn the stuff, of course it worked. Anyway, as penance I have since spent ages scrubbing my hands a la Howard Hughes to get rid of all traces before Dot wakes up from her nap. Don’t want to be corroding her precious baby skin with horrid bleach and fumes now, do I?

So do you think somebody’s trying to tell us something? We’ve had a lovely time really, but maybe it’s time to go home. We’re slipping back into bad habits here in Vice City.