Woke on a winter morning

Rather later than I should have done what with me needing to get to work and all. 😳

The children had a winter drink and dressed in their winter clothes while I put my winter make up on and got dressed too. I’d very sensibly covered my windscreen this morning in preparation of all the winter weather we had been forecast but we’d had nothing except winter rain so my blanket was just soggy!

I went to sort out car seats ready to put Richard and Rebecca in when we got to Lucy’s but found that although my Sharan had six seats in it the rear passenger one was in back to front. And was rather firmly wedged there. Possibly by taking out the seat infront I could have worked it free but I was now running late with just half an hour to get D&S into the car, drive to Lucy’s, get Lucy, R & R in the car, take everyone back to my house, unload Lucy and all the children and then drive to work. On a winter day. I did make a cursory effort which simply resulted in getting winter mud from the kids wellies from the winter walk yesterday all over my smart winter work trousers. So I loaded the kids into the car and drove to Lucy’s anyway deciding we’d have to draw straws as to which one of us would sit on the floor of the car / run along behind it / work out some complicated fox / chicken / grain boat trip on the river type thing to get children with adult carers all transported back to my house. Or indeed not and go and collect D&S on my winter lunch break to bring them back to mine and hope my Dad (afternoon childcare) would arrive before I had to be back at work for my winter afternoon there.

Lucy instantly suggested she sit on the floor of the car which felt dreadfully naughty but considering it is less than a mile and we never go over 30mph it seemed a sensible, if illegal option. And despite it indeed being winter and despite us being forecast very wintery weather we never had it so road conditions were perfectly safe for such shenanigans. So we managed to get everyone in to my house and me off to work arriving with plenty of time.

Had a good winters day at work and am really starting to feel part of the gang. My favourite colleague (the one I cocked up my speech about Home Ed with who has 4 children and wears really cool clothes – she inspired me to wear my patterned tights to the wedding as she often wears them and looks fab) was working this morning and is always really chatty and friendly. It is slightly akward atm as she had a 40th birthday recently and had a party which everyone at work was invited to, but clearly had been long arranged before I started there, so last week that was talked about a lot and next week another colleague is getting married and they are all full of chat about her reception which they are all invited to. I imgaine if I’d started just a few weeks earlier I would have been around for the invitations and been part of the chats about it a bit more, butI am definitely feeling more included in the jokes and workplace banter, which is lovely. 🙂 This week we are doing a head count of people coming in with the very high tech equipment of a hand held clicker which we click for everyone coming in and then log the number every hour before resetting it and clicking again. So that has been the cause of much ‘oh sod, I forgot the clicker for the last 15 minutes, here, stick about 20 people on it!’ type nonsense with people randomly clicking it when it’s not their turn to be in charge of the clicker and so on. I did miss the childishness of adults when I spent all my time with children 😆 I’m feeling more and more capable at knowing what I’m doing with every shift which is really nice and Yvonne, my direct boss said to me the other day she is very aware that she is leaving me to get on with things much earlier than she would with a normal new starter but is confident that I am fine, so that made me feel all glowy. 🙂

I spent my lunchbreak as usual perusing the charity shops and speaking to Lucy, Davies and Scarlett on the phone. Scarlett is very cute, she spends most of the time telling me she loves me, Davies tells me every detail of everything which has happened in my absense – the telephone equivalent of one of my blog posts really :lol:. Then I came back to the library and had half an hour on the internet. Lovely 🙂 The afternoon passed in a similar vein and then it was hometime. I gathered together six dvds for the kids to watch in the car tomorrow and with Ady on Saturday night (such a fab perk that 🙂 ) and came home to rescue Dad from the four year old demanding he read her princess stories and the six year old creating complicated games with geomags.

I made the kids some tea and then Davies showed me his geomag game which appeared to be based on Super Monkey Ball on X box. I ‘played’ that with him for a while (not sure who was humouring who really!) and we looked at some road signs I’d photocopied from the Highway Code book for him then Ady arrived home.

So there you go, I forgot to winterise the second bit of the post, but I’m sure ‘Nic’ can put that in himself 😉