Saturday morning was Robyn's Fun Day at school. I took the girls but poor Peter was stuck at home with Daniel, who has been sick and miserable with an awful gastric thing since Wednesday evening. The girls thoroughly enjoyed the morning. I remember my own first school Family Day - I was in grade 4. I remember being enchanted by the magic-like transformation of the school. The kids were enthralled by stalls like the tombola, where for the price of a R2 ticket you could win a piece of junk or a piece of absolute junk.

I helped on the Face Painting stall for an hour on Saturday morning. I volunteered after a note came round to the class moms saying 'absolutely no artistic talent required'. Panicked when I reported for duty and saw the 'samples' and 'easy instructions'. After watching a couple of other novice moms transform kids' faces into butterflies and spidermen, I decided to give it a go, choosing my own kid just in case. Lauren was characteristically with the result. (There were no mirrors at the stall.) I decided not to inflict my lack of talent on any other innocent minors, and stuck to tattoes and hairspray for the rest of the hour.

I also helped on the food stall, which was run by the fund-raising committee itself. The night before I helped preparing food for this (frying 70kg, yes 70kg, of bacon, and slicing hundreds of mushrooms, tomatoes and onions. Fortunately, irritating-woman-from-UK was not there, and it was quite a relaxing evening (helped along with a large quantity of red wine) after all the sick-kid-stress of the last week.

Poor Daniel has been sick so much. Though a small part of me was relieved to get to work this morning, the rest of me wants to resign right now and just keep him home from school (even though he loves school, he probably would be happy at home if I was there, though this would depend on how good a job I did). Peter suggests I ask for a long leave of absence instead. That would allow me to keep my shares, which pay smallish but helpful dividends twice a year, and would not burn bridges.

Mull, mull, mull.